Unknown. Odo survived for hundreds of years in Children of Time without any seeming ill effect. Why's this on the Voyager board?
I'm not entirely sure but there's this line from the female founder to Odo (DS9 - favour the bold): You are a changeling, you are timeless!. Which does suggest to me they could very well be. Also, why is this in the voyager forum ?
Maybe not immortal, but certainly damn near it compared to human lifespans. Why is this on the Voyager board?
I'm sorry. I made a mistake. Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but it seems that the cells which comprise a changeling would degrade over time. I don't know, maybe not.
Well, it seems likely that they're made up of something. And unless Odo's people can somehow overcome the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, it'd seem that they'd eventually break down, even if it took eons.
I dunno, it's quite possible the the body functions that break down in us "solids" could be rejuvenated just by the process of shapeshifting itself. And why is this on the Voy-- okay, okay the horse is dead, we forgive you!
Are the same changlings always made from the same goo? Odo without access to the link would be confined to the same Goo until he dies. He calls sleeping "regenerating"? What if he really is replacing all the cell loss from he day, he could lose and gain 5 pounds of goo every week? It's just a question of goo depredation as he gets older.
Didn't Bashir take some goo away and this stressed him out? He wanted it all back. So I'm thinking it doesn't replenish if any is lost.
In the beginning the changeling baby Odo was raising was growing rapidly. Maybe the Changelings replace mass by eating their young just like the Doctor has to eat other "sentient" holograms to stay sane. After all, Odo had a really good reversal of all his health issues that time he ate a baby.
Imagine if they never stopped growing. They could take over the quadrant by swallowing it in bronze goo. If they do make new changlings and then consume them to replace mass lost through age the ones that were sent away might have been the best off. I'd imagine they would be consuming the infants before they had any real personality or sentience, they were just material that they needed.
But linked Changelings, are we sure that their personality is specific to the goo they walked into the link with? No matter how many babies they eat, their fragile child personalities are still in the link either growing up, or pissed and resentful suffering from an arrested development? Oh. Is that why they send their kids away out into space? Just 100 my cheese grating ass. Maybe a hundred at a time, but it's the only way that they can have fully formed accentuated distinct personalities to bring growth and evolution to the link.
Although not everyone reads the books and will consider that vaild information (they aren't canon, afterall), it's touched upon that basicly, the Founders can't die of old age, but are ofcourse not immortal. The sickness in the Great Link almost killed them, and we've seen atleast three Founders die onscreen (The Adversary, Apocolypse Rising and By Inferno's Light). Interestingly enough, right now I'm reading the story by David R George III where some backstory is explained about the Founders, and how they used to be solids (as stated in one of the episodes of DS9, so that IS canon) and how the Progenitor, a massive changeling, made them all changelings. They were then considered newly formed, not infants, and couldn't procreate anymore. Even at the time of Odo's return, there were still newly formed Changelings in the Link, who hadn't seperated yet from the Link.
That wouldn't work. Odo was conditioned/engineered to Orgasm the first time he even saw the nebula he came from. Although Laars was a complete bellend.
But if they formed their own link some of their programmed desire for their people might be satisfied so that when they saw their origin world they no longer uncontrollably wanted to blend with it but instead just fancied it somewhat. And perhaps their resentment at being abandoned and their distrust of their people would not be over ridden. They were getting what they most needed from their mini link so they had clearer heads. This might be why they didn't send them out by twos or threes, not just because they would learn more if they knew nothing of who they were. But because it would interfere with their programming.