HORTA


Non humanoid silicon based lifeform from Janus VI. Horta are silicon based 'blobs' that live underground. They move through the rocks using powerful acids secreted from their glands. Horta can only be contacted telepathically. The Horta have no artificial technology but their powerful burrowing abiites have aided mining operations on Janus VI. Horta are quite friendly and have joined the Federation, but do appreciate visitors not visit several chambers they keep for personal use.

The HORTA is a very rare case of mineral intelligent race. The HORTA has been met for the first time in the pergium mines on Janus VI there. The first approaches with the Horta have been rather dramatic, because the miners came killed from a "monster that moves in the rock." . Spock understood however of have met something of intelligent, after a mind meld with the horta. The Horta has revealed herself to be a based species on the chemistry of the silicon whose natural habitat is the depths of the planet. The Horta is been therefore revealed a pacific species that now cooperates to the extraction of the mineral.

The horta moves through rock digging tunnels, as easily as humans walk through air. The eggs of the Horta are silicon globes (the miners have been keeping them as souvenirs and/or destroying them - the horta was killing the miners with her acid in self-defense to keep her species alive (and stole the life-support system to try to make the miners go away) Every 50,000 years the race of horta all die, saving the one mother horta to take care of the eggs.


Note : In the episode The Devil in the Dark, Kirk and Spock discuss the possibility of silicon-based beings (or beings not carbon-based) apparently forgetting that Nancy the Fotiallian salt-sucker was silicon-based. McCoy later comes down and says that silicon-based life is impossible.