Eating and the Jem'Hadar

[Photon]

So what is it do they need to eat or simply choose to eat.

Hippocratic Oath: Garanagar said, "we've breathed the same air, EATEN THE SAME FOOD....." yet
the Jem conversing w/Dax on the Defiant said the Jem Hadar does not need to eat.

So I'm guessin' its optional. The K-white can sustain them but do they need nourishment if the white runs low?

 

[Kegek]

Good question, actually.

I'd always assumed that K-White is their be all and end all. They don't need to eat, period, the drug provides their needs. In that sense, it's less like a real drug and more like air - which we need a continuous supply of or we'll die.

I still figure that's the case, and Goran'Agar was different - he didn't need the white, due to the malfunction, but he did need food. So he was trying to wean his friends away from the drug and onto food, hoping that might work as a solution.

 

[Photon]

I'll buy that.

 

[Kookalaka]

I seem to remember a comment in the DS9 companion where a writer covered u-- err, explained that particular "...eaten the same food..." line as a figurative statement, rather than a literal one.

But I could just be hallucinating again.

The white-to-food thing works for me. Assuming that they have some manner of digestive system, as I tend to believe

 

[DanTheGrey]

I just assumed that the white was all the sustenance that they *needed*, but that didn't mean that they couldn't eat. In at least one case I figured that Jem'Hadar that didn't need the white needed some sort of nutrient source and that eating was a way of the troops bonding. They just don't bother with it while out in the field since it takes away from their duties.

 

[Apogeal Alpha01]

Interesting question. If they could save themselves by consuming food when the white ran out, why wouldn't they? I assumed that since they were designed to exist on the white alone, why even allow for another way of acquiring sustenance? There must be contingencies for times when the white isn’t available for reasons other than to punish the Jem”Hadar. Of course, the means of producing enough food to feed the legions of Jem'Hadar would be a daunting task.

 

[-Brett-]

According to the relaunch books, the K-white can sustain them, but when they go off the white (like Goran'agar and his followers) they need food.

 

[Timo]

We can surmise the Jem'Hadar have a digestive system in their childhood, to sustain their rapid growth. They simply cannot accumulate body mass at the rate we witness in "The Abandoned" if they live on nothing but little tubules of liquid (or in fact on thin air, as that child was not hooked up to his bottle of White until late in the episode).

The digestive system probably largely goes offline when the Jem'Hadar attain full body mass. But it could still linger, and be reactivated in times of need.

As for the statement in "Hippocratic Oath" being "figurative", that can't be so because the very point of it is that Goran'Agar and his troops have shared the same source of sustenance. And that ain't so if we're speaking of the White.

Timo Saloniemi