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Essentially, is everything just 'nom nom biomass' to them, or does the hivemind know for example that chaos renegades are the fallen from the imperium? Or are they both yummy humans?

They learn and adapt ti individual enemies, therefore if the tyranid's have encountered an enemy before, they remember and recognise the best way to deal with them.

The tyranids don't care about galactic political clashes. They just want to kill.

"Eat or starve" is all they need to understand.

Do you truly understand the feelings and motivations of the New York strip , and Filet mignon on the plate in front of you....

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Do you truly understand the feelings and motivations of the New York strip , and Filet mignon on the plate in front of you....

Yes. its asking that I consume it. I am more than happy to oblige

Yes but the hivemind is sentient. And man can understand the differences between dogs and horses, and know how they act and what they like and they're feelings etc etc. and we can eath them.

LordGirrit wrote:
Yes but the hivemind is sentient. And man can understand the differences between dogs and horses, and know how they act and what they like and they're feelings etc etc. and we can eath them.

Yes, it is sentient. But it doesn't care.

I imagine they can tell the difference in as much as they adapt to overcome various enemies, but I doubt they really care about who the different groups are. I recall reading somewhere that Tyrant Guard have Space Marine DNA in them and Zoanthropes have Eldar DNA, so the Nids have to at least recognize the different races and their intrinsic capabilities on a genetic level if nothing else. i would imagine it's more of fighting styles and tactics they would care about rather than "power groups" per say.


And, of course they can separate the different species of the galaxy by taste (surprised nobody mentioned the obvious joke answer yet).

I feel the nids can tell the difference in their fighting styles because that affects them, but their political views don't matter to the nids. This is my opinion.

Genestealers, or at least the humans they infect, are able to manipulate planetary politics in their favour.

LordGirrit wrote:
Yes but the hivemind is sentient. And man can understand the differences between dogs and horses, and know how they act and what they like and they're feelings etc etc. and we can eath them.

Its sentient, but not in the same way we are sentient. It is above the feelings and thoughts of such simple organisms.

Its like the different between a human and pools of edible algae. Humans don't think about what the different algae think about each other and their relationships. Its just more food.


All Tyranids together are a single super-organisim. The individual creatures are analogous to the cells that make up the body of a larger creature.

The Hive Mind only adapts to its enemy that its fighting, and stores the information for future use. It doesn't care what its fighting or why they're fighting. Its only drive is eternal insatiable hunger.

They understand 2 things.

That they are hungry, and that every other race in the galaxy = FOOD!!!

I don't really see the Tyranid hive mind as anywhere near as adaptive or smart as some people would like to claim it is. It just... doesn't show any of that in the lore.

To the extent that hte Tyranid hive mind CAN understand, it likely at least recognizes the differences between, say... the Imperium and Chaos, or Tau and Eldar. At least through the nutritional value at any rate.

 Melissia wrote:
I don't really see the Tyranid hive mind as anywhere near as adaptive or smart as some people would like to claim it is. It just... doesn't show any of that in the lore.

This is a matter of perspective. The Hive Mind is an intelligence on a completely different scale to our own, perceiving the universe around it through very different means. If you're asking if you could "connect" to the Hive Mind and ask it how it's day is going, and what it thinks of the new Elder Codex then you're probably not going to have much luck. What you're asking it about will have almost no meaning to it all. I would liken it to a bacterial cell in your body asking your brain how a specific white blood cell is feeling today; you've got no idea, because that' not how your awareness works. A "Larger" intelligence might have better luck, like a C'tan in its natural form or a particularly powerful Warp entity, as their perception is very different too and they also exist on a grand scale.

I particularly like a quote from one of the older Tyranid books about Tigurius making a true psychic connection with a Tyranid and how he "saw" the layers of intelligence as he looked up through the Synaptic web; first the alien mind of the Termagant, then "the steel will of its leader", then "it's primogenitor, coldly assessing him from the void" and finally beyond that an "ageless, immortal hunger" that he could barely understand and knows we could never kill. As he looked further up through the web, the harder it was to make sense of what he saw and bind it up in terms we can understand.

You'd be much better off asking how intelligent a Hive Tyrant is, or perhaps whatever controlling intelligence exists at the heart of a particular Hive Ship, as those are much closer to our level of sentience (more so a Hive Tyrant than a Hive Ship, of course). In that case, I think the answer has got to be "very intelligent indeed". On a local level, I imagine a Hive Tyrant is more than capable of understanding factions, social structures and so on.

The Hive Mind is the total of all of this on a cosmic scale, but in the same way that you're not directly involved in how your body is fighting off that cold or digesting lunch, neither is the Hive Mind itself directly involved in ordering those Termagants to fire on the Guardsmen with the heavy weapons rather than the ones to the left with the Lasguns.

As mentioned Genestealers can infiltrate political systems, which requires a rather high level of intelligence and understanding of complex systems. They also are capable of understanding military hierarchies and targeting leaders for assassination, as they did with an Ork Warboss in one piece of fluff in their codex. So yes, they do operate on a far higher level of intelligence than "kill, eat, repeat". They are probably just completely without empathy for alien species.

Xyptc wrote:
The Hive Mind is an intelligence on a completely different scale to our own, perceiving the universe around it through very different means.

The second part is right, but the first part disagree with. The Hive Mind's intelligence isn't really all that great from what I have seen. It's not very good at adapting tactics or organisms.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tgjensen wrote:
As mentioned Genestealers can infiltrate political systems

Until the hive fleet arrives, genestealers are independent of the hive mind. They are capable of "calling" the hive mind whenever their population is concentrated enough, but I doubt that before then, they're capable of receiving orders from it.

tgjensen wrote:
As mentioned Genestealers can infiltrate political systems, which requires a rather high level of intelligence and understanding of complex systems. They also are capable of understanding military hierarchies and targeting leaders for assassination, as they did with an Ork Warboss in one piece of fluff in their codex. So yes, they do operate on a far higher level of intelligence than "kill, eat, repeat". They are probably just completely without empathy for alien species.

Also, don't forget Deathleaper. It not only assassinated a major leader, it completely demoralized the entire political structure of a planetary defence by toying with him first. That would suggest to me that they understand power structures, which is probably sensible since Tyranids are an intensely hierarchical race. They're just very unfathomable to us because they are so alien.

I object to the idea that Tyranids are somehow "unfathomable" to us.

The 'Nids know that various other things in the galaxy are tasty and they know how to deal with them in combat. They leave the philosophy and internal politics to things that are less hungry.

 Melissia wrote:

Xyptc wrote:
The Hive Mind is an intelligence on a completely different scale to our own, perceiving the universe around it through very different means.

The second part is right, but the first part disagree with. The Hive Mind's intelligence isn't really all that great from what I have seen. It's not very good at adapting tactics or organisms.

Just out of interest, how are you measuring this intelligence? Comparing it to what? What would it have to do for you to say "hey, yeah that's pretty smart"?

I think 'nids' would compare prey or food like any other intelligent animal would, without empathy, cold and with an animal intelligence eg a lion hunting its prey.

I've always seen the tyranids as like the equivalent to our immune system (although eating for sustenance rather than defence).

At the base you have all the different specialised cells which are analogous to the table-top models. The ones that actually do the fighting.Those with highly specialised roles for different tasks, yet all communicating.
The hive mind is more like the mix of signal cascades and responses driven by chemicals (although in lore driven by psychic powers) rather than a being that thinks about things in the way we do. Just a mix of signals and reactions to events that are happening.
It may seem like it can consider and plot, but in reality it's just the huge amount of information being fed to it that allows it to react in such a sentient manner.

At least that's my take on the space frogs.

 Griddlelol wrote:
I've always seen the tyranids as like the equivalent to our immune system (although eating for sustenance rather than defence).

At the base you have all the different specialised cells which are analogous to the table-top models. The ones that actually do the fighting.Those with highly specialised roles for different tasks, yet all communicating.
The hive mind is more like the mix of signal cascades and responses driven by chemicals (although in lore driven by psychic powers) rather than a being that thinks about things in the way we do. Just a mix of signals and reactions to events that are happening.
It may seem like it can consider and plot, but in reality it's just the huge amount of information being fed to it that allows it to react in such a sentient manner.

At least that's my take on the space frogs.

Haven't you more or less described what human "sentience" is as well?

No-one would say that a white blood cell is smart, but if you put the whole body together you've really got something. Further, I doubt that said white blood cell (or an invading bacterium) has any understanding of what a human sentience is, and there is a very interesting comparison between that and the us-Tyranid Hive Mind dynamic.

... except that we CAN understand the Tyranid hive mind's sentience, and we're debating about it right now, in a way that white blood cells/bacteria would be completely and utterly incapable of doing regarding human sentience.

I have always thought of the Tyranids as a incredibly evolved Army ant swarm, that conqured its home world, then system them maybe galaxy, and when all was tyranid, it found was to move on, its stratgems and tactics, are all learned behavior, that has become imbedded in the race.
Just like ants on earth, they come to a problem, and find was to survive or overcome it, either through adaption or brute force, everything to them is just another lesson to learn and trick to add to their species.

To us as a outsider looking in, we see intelligence and sentience were maybe there may only be incredibly advanced instinct driving them, the psychic prescense could also be a by product of their massive amount of lifeforms..all focused on one purpose, the hivemind just a gestalt force pushing them ever onward.

Makes them creepier for me at least.

Tau, and IG are chewy
Orks are exrtra chewy
Eldar are soft and chewy with a delicate flavour
Marines are crunchy with a soft centre
Chaos Space Marines are crunchy with a soft centre but taste like they are out of code.
Necrons are extra crunchy

 Orlanth wrote:
Tau, and IG are chewy
Orks are exrtra chewy
Eldar are soft and chewy with a delicate flavour
Marines are crunchy with a soft centre
Chaos Space Marines are crunchy with a soft centre but taste like they are out of code.
Necrons are extra crunchy

and verything kinda tastes like chicken.

The Tyranids adapted a startlingly fast pace when fighting the Tau. Each new wave of Tyranids having being grown for the purpose of combating the new Tau offensive.

I think the Tyranids are most likely bio-weapons created by a species that they since wiped out. It explains why they make planetary assaults instead of you know, just releasing a virus into the atmosphere that renders the population into a soup.

Xyptc wrote:


Haven't you more or less described what human "sentience" is as well?

No-one would say that a white blood cell is smart, but if you put the whole body together you've really got something. Further, I doubt that said white blood cell (or an invading bacterium) has any understanding of what a human sentience is, and there is a very interesting comparison between that and the us-Tyranid Hive Mind dynamic.

No. Insects have rudimentary immunity, but are by no means sentient. Just because there are signalling pathways and feedback it doesn't imply consciousness or any sort of feeling of what's going on around the creature or even the potential to suffer.

The issue with sentience is that it's very hard to define, there's no limits or lines placed, and our current understanding of consciousness is thin and fragile. Adding to what Melissa said, the hive mind may have sentience, but it hasn't displayed reason. Reason is what is needed to answer OP's question.