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I hear it repeated quite often (as well as fish for some inexplicable reason), when the only similarity is that they have hooves. Lots of creatures have hooves not just bovines. And seeing as the tau almost definitely eat meat (hunting was a big part of the culture of the fire caste before the etherials, and is still used in their tactics) I really don't get it. Is there something I'm missing here?

I can't say I've come across that before. I would assume it's just the hooves.

The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer - Damocles Gulf Edition

The Tau are descendents of herbivores. Being omnivorous is a recent development for them. So yes, they are more closely related to whatever their planet's "cow" would be than they would be to any other analogous animal from Earth.

So they are omnivorous cow people. And even when they were still living in a primitive state, they almost certainly still got the vast bulk of their nutrition from plant based sources.

These are based on findings of the Imperial survey team that originally cataloged the planet of T'au. They determined the native sapient species was a descendent from local plain dwelling herbivores, obviously turned omnivore at some point.

3rd edition codex has an imperial survey report of the accellerated evolution of the tau, and suspects they might have been genetically altered from another creature (like cows). C'tan is suspected to be behind this.

Was made to explain why no mention of tau had been done before, like the dark eldar who just showed up, the necrons and tau were given good backstories.

Their development was certainly not natural, although I believe any alleged tampering happened after the original survey was taken. The warp storm was what covered their accelerated development.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The Tau are descendents of herbivores. Being omnivorous is a recent development for them. So yes, they are more closely related to whatever their planet's "cow" would be than they would be to any other analogous animal from Earth.

So they are omnivorous cow people. And even when they were still living in a primitive state, they almost certainly still got the vast bulk of their nutrition from plant based sources.

These are based on findings of the Imperial survey team that originally cataloged the planet of T'au. They determined the native sapient species was a descendent from local plain dwelling herbivores, obviously turned omnivore at some point.

There're two funny things to point out from this.

The first is that Tau warfare is based on their traditional hunting methods.

The second is that human beings are descendants of herbivores, and that being omnivorous is a recent development for us.

The kroot literally being descended from a bird, also makes people make up a parrallel for the tau.

Also there is prescedence for the eldar to claim humans are monkeys (mon-keigh). Why shouldnt people call tau bovines?

C'tan is suspected to be behind this.

Uh.... what?


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 triplegrim wrote:
The kroot literally being descended from a bird, also makes people make up a parrallel for the tau.

Also there is prescedence for the eldar to claim humans are monkeys (mon-keigh). Why shouldnt people call tau bovines?

"Mon-keigh" sounding like "monkey" is a joke on the part of the writers. It's simply the Eldar word for "human", but is otherwise just the 40K writers having a laugh.

It's Imperial propaganda. Pure and simple. "Cows" don't exist on the Tau homeworld. There are plenty of other animals that are herbivores and have hooves that they could be compared to. It's just the Imperium's way of calling them dumb beasts.

As for the "mon-keigh" thing, yeah it's a writer's joke, but they actually gave it a backstory in the Eldar 3rd Ed codex. Apparently, Mon-keigh were an actual race in early Eldar history that the Eldar exterminated. They weren't too bright and were cannibals. Presumably, in-universe, the similarity to the word "monkey" is a coincidence.

Cows don't exist anywhere in 40K. They've been replaced by grox. "Descended from cows" is a fan-construction, not an in-universe belief.

Cows are from Holy Terra anyway and so should be objects of religious veneration.

"When the Emperor was a boy, holy cows roamed the land."

They're really more like camels than cows anyway - they have soft-toed feet with wide tips, rather than hard-toed feet with relatively narrow tips.

I can't remember the reference, but I thought the advanced evolution of the Tau was atributed to the Eldar?

On a side note, the bovine references are simply fan made, and the fish references are actually Imperial Classifications not something the Tau themselves actually call themselves. This is more obvious if you read IA3 where it has the "classfied" document in front of the unit entries and it says things like "designation devilfish." Of course GW has never been one to be consistent with who's perspective everything is named from...

Nocturus wrote:
I can't remember the reference, but I thought the advanced evolution of the Tau was atributed to the Eldar?

It's either supposed to be the Harlequins, or the Necrons. Supposedly, brightly colored, lithe creatures appeared on T'au the day that the Ethereals came to Taun. Also, bright fireballs in the sky as well. There was a whole thread about it not two weeks ago, I'll see if I can't find it.

It's all fan-theories. No one knows for sure.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer - Damocles Gulf Edition

This is correct haha

There's a current theory that the majority of herbivores are not really herbivores, and will eat meat if given the opportunity. Most just never get the chance as they lack the ability to hunt, or even tear flesh due to their flat teeth.

However, Deer have been observed eating nesting chicks alive, as well as living bats trapped in nets that scientists used to catch the bats for study. Vegetarian birds have been seen chasing off carnivorous birds from meat left out on birdtables.

As meat is an incredible food resource for most animals due to the large amounts protein and fat compared to that found in plants, a lot of herbivores will supplement their diet with meat when they can in an opportunistic fashion. It's entirely possible the Tau changed their diet once they evolved tool use, and the ability to actually kill and prepare other animals. That doesn't preclude them from having herbivore ancestors.