Is Lamarr Actually Tamed?

[Haze]

I had a question about Lamarr.
Kleiner said that Lamarr had been debeaked and was harmless, and ate water melons, but even if she had been debeaked, how come she was friendly?

She should still attack people and have her original behaviour, just without inflicting damage, but she seems very tame, following Kliener around, and she even looked around the door like a dog when Gordan and Alyx teleported into the lab after a week.

This must mean she is actually tame and not just debeaked, otherwise she would still try to attack people and not show the 'domestic' traits she seems to have picked up.

Also, it says she was debeaked, but how come she cant still hurt people with her claws? She still has those, unless she chooses not to hurt people anymore?

 

[Link]

What claws? The beak is the only weapon.

Anyway, if he raised it, it would probobly be friendly. Much like a tiger can be hand raised (reletivley) tame. Also, it does attack barney when he opens the HS room.

 

[Ludah]

I think that after attempting to futiley attack people for a while, Lamarr realized that there was no point. When Kleiner starts offering alternative forms of sustenance (the holy watermelon), it learned new behaviors while abandoning old ones, as well as forming a relationship with Kleiner. After all, he is the hand that feeds.

 

[Ennui]

Lamarr isn't friendly. She tried to eat someone's face when you first meet Kleiner. I can't remember who though. Watermelons are just another form of sustenance, as Ludah said.

It's kind of like a kitten with no teeth or claws, that acts like a lion.

 

[Asknoone]

Lamarr isn't friendly.

Except to Kleiner, that is.

 

[Haze]

But headcrabs have claws, the ones out front, they have 4 legs, 2 at the back, and 2 at the front that are smaller and you cant see them very well, they also have 2 claws that they hold out in front of them when they walk, how do you think they walk with their claws raised? Or two back legs?

But she does have domestic traits.

 

[Darkside55]

Yeah, Lamarr still has her claws. Two wrist claws and four clawed toes on her back legs, so theoretically she could still inflict damage with them; however, those claws are only used in gripping smaller prey than the headcrab itself or when coupling with a host, using the claws as grips. Since she can't couple I'd imagine the thought never strikes her to embed her claws in a person, but she certainly could...but Kleiner must have at least attempted to train her not to do that.

 

[Temppe]

The bottom of a headcrab has a gaping bloody hole. What posseses Kleiner to wilfully say "here my pet, hop up", indicating his own head. He must be mad!

 

[McPaper]

All pets ie a dog still bark and bite people, it doesnt mean that they are not trained, they just dont like the people. Ie. Barny and lamarr

 

[Haze]

Aww, I want a headcrab now.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Maybe it's like castrating a dog or a cat, they calm down a bit?

 

[Que-Ever]

The bottom of a headcrab has a gaping bloody hole. What posseses Kleiner to wilfully say "here my pet, hop up", indicating his own head. He must be mad!

I don't think it's blood, just the coloring she has. I bet kleiner gives her a bath every once in a while :x

 

[durtay]

I kill that thing everytime I go through that portion of the game

 

[Tagaziel]

Good luck on killing Lamarr without any weapons and/or when she disappears o.5 seconds after seeing you.

Also, check the upper right corner of Kleiner's corkboard, there's a sheet of paper with a drawing, which strangely resembles notes which could be taken during a dissection/operation of a headcrab. Also, in Half-Life, the headcrabs are shown to posess a 'sack', which contains the 'appendages' essential for zombification and/or eating.

My theory is, apart from debeaking, Kleiner also removed the glands producing the zombification toxins and any other organs, that would make Lamarr aggressive.

As for his remark in the laboratory... would you listen to 15 minutes of science talk about what was done to the headcrab?

-- Mikael Grizzly

 

[Darkside55]

Also, check the upper right corner of Kleiner's corkboard, there's a sheet of paper with a drawing, which strangely resembles notes which could be taken during a dissection/operation of a headcrab. Also, in Half-Life, the headcrabs are shown to posess a 'sack', which contains the 'appendages' essential for zombification and/or eating.

The post-it note shows a picture of the fast zombie with the words "evolution? mutation?" written on it.

Which "sack" are you referring to? If you're talking about Half-Life 1, do you mean the sacs on the baby headcrabs, or do you mean something in the maw of the adult headcrab? Because there were no sacs on the adult headcrabs in HL1.

In HL2, classic and poison headcrabs have four dangling pouches of skin and muscle at the hips and shoulders; are you referring to those? Because we're not sure what those do, but based on some research I've done they appear to be either intakes or waste excretion ports. They may contain the mutagens necessary for zombification, that's one theory, but Lamarr still possesses those pouches...were they so important to the zombification process, Kleiner would have removed them.

In either case, Lamarr's still hostile towards certain people, like Barney. It's just a behavioral thing. There would also be no need to remove any mutagen-producing glands if Lamarr was unable to deliver them through her fangs.

Oh and I would have listened to Kleiner talk for fifteen minutes about how he operated on Lamarr, but that's me.

 

[Tagaziel]

I refer to the yellow sheet of paper, with an analysis of the inside of a headcrab drawn on it with blue ink. The proportions of the drawing implicate it's a headcrab.

Second, the 'sack' I mean is the thing inside HL-1 deathclaws, which partially obscures it's zombification intestines. Just kill a headcrab and look at it's belly, inside the mouth. That's what I mean.

Reference: It's the yellow paper in the middle:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y209/Grizzly0/Headcrabdissectiondrawing.jpg

-- Mikael Grizzly

 

[Darkside55]

Right, that note. Hm...I have to thank you. Do you know, every time I looked at that note my eyes would focus on the zombie drawn in the upper-left hand corner of that paper? And when I would look at that larger, circular drawing (being zoomed in when I viewed it) I could never make it out. Seeing the corkboard panned back like this, I finally see what that drawing is. I really, really, really appreciate you bringing that to my attention. Perhaps I can get some information out of it.

As for the sac, here's a picture of the HL1 crab:

Headcrab underbelly

Which part are you talking about? The yellow, circular object underneath the "cords" in its mouth? Or the white area with the needle-like teeth? Because that's bone. Those cords and whatever else are in there might still be in the headcrab's mouth in HL2, just we can't see them. They might be tucked away. But with classic and poison headcrabs, I don't think there's anything in there responsible for mutations. It probably wouldn't be in the maw.

Maybe with the fast headcrab though, since they don't have a beak. They must change their victims in some way, and it could only be through the maw.

Edit: only had to look at the drawing for a second again to get some information out of it. It's definately a fast crab depicted in that drawing, which means the whole sheet is about fast headcrabs and fast zombies. If I'm interpreting this drawing correctly too, there's a needle-like protrusion at the back of the fast crab's maw, here. Again, going to have to look at it some more, but this is fantastic because my theory on how the fast headcrabs zombify, and in fact how these creatures take control of the host body, fits in perfectly with this. I knew it had to come from the maw here, and near the back, but a needle? My idea was more along the lines of hundreds or thousands of tiny barbs lining the inside of the crab's mouth.

Really, thanks again for that picture. It helps confirm one of my theories that would've only been speculation otherwise. This is actually photographic evidence.

 

[Tagaziel]

I mean the sharp, needle like structures inside it's belly, as they seem to play an important role in the process. The beak may be used for 'biting' through skull, while the needles, alon with the four bigger claws to clamp and deliver the "zombie-fluids".

Also, I bleieve that all headcrabs share the same basic principle of host take-over and zombification, therefore whatever headcrab dr Kleiner examined, helped him "treat and amputate" Lamarr's aggresion...err... nodes.

-- Mikael Grizzly

 

[Darkside55]

Classic headcrabs and poison headcrabs zombify in the same way, but dissecting a fast headcrab wouldn't help much with operating on Lamarr. They're radically different.

And those needles don't exist anymore in HL2. For whatever reason, Valve removed them. The beak is responsible for delivering the fluids. In fact, there are only two fangs that inject the mutagens, and coincidently those were the only fangs the headcrab had in the first game. The beak is a new addition; it replaces the needle plate. But in both games, the mutagens came from those curved fangs the classic headcrab uses to walk.

 

[Tagaziel]

The small ones, right?

The change between designs can be attributed to the adaptation of the headcrabs to environment, the ones in Half-Life 2 have arrived just after the resonance cascade, and had little time to adapt. The Half-Life 2 ones are much more effective, compare the time it takes them to zombify their hosts in Half-Life 1 (hours) and Half-Life 2 (minutes, example: the bombed shanty town).

Last, all headcrabs share the same principle of zombification and are of one genus. Therefore, dissecting one can help understand others. It's the same with animals - to understand a specie we dissect/examine their remains from all development/evolution stages.

Before I end, may I add, that the proportions between the right drawn leags and left suggest it's a classic one. The right one are one withe the body (hind), while the left are over it. It may be also that Kleiner only examined the inside of a 'crab, not the whole underbelly.

-- Mikael Grizzly

 

[AJ Rimmer]

One thing is clear: Lamarr does not behave like a normal headcrab, she is much, much more docile. Still agressive, but compared to other headcrabs she is actually well behaved.

 

[Darkside55]

Headcrabs mutated their hosts pretty fast in HL1 as well. You encounter the first zombie only five minutes from the test chamber; if we assume the explosion and Gordon's teleporting around didn't last for more than fifteen minutes, maximum (it's probably closer to ten), then the headcrabs still zombified people in a few moments.

Last, all headcrabs share the same principle of zombification and are of one genus. Therefore, dissecting one can help understand others. It's the same with animals - to understand a specie we dissect/examine their remains from all development/evolution stages.

The mutagens all work in the same way. I just said the crabs were different because of the way they inject those mutagens, and the strange way the fast crab has evolved. Completely different way of injecting the host. But the science behind how the change works remains the same. So yeah, dissecting one means that the others probably look similar on the inside. In fact that "needle" in the fast headcrab comes out of a flap at the front of the maw; when I was looking at the poison headcrab model (the only one you can see into the maw with), I noticed something very similar. This was awhile back, and then I looked at the drawing and it was the same.

Before I end, may I add, that the proportions between the right drawn leags and left suggest it's a classic one.

The legs are too long in the back to be a classic. It's a fast headcrab. If you zoom in real close to the paper it says "fast headcrab" written on it. It's about one of the only things able to be made out from Kleiner's sloppy handwritting.

 

[XANA]

it's prob'ly in lamarr's nature to do that as a headcrab. i don't think she can help it really. but i do think that lamarr is tamed up to a certain extent. my speculation is that one of the kleiners in half-life found a baby headcrab during the black mesa incident (i was almost going to replace "black mesa" by using the words first letters, but that would give people other ideas) and studied it. although i do find kleiner's conclusion on lamarr's gender quite questionable. anyway, i stand by whatever i just said. peace out (i sound so dumb when i actually say that).

 

[Tagaziel]

Actually, the catastrophic resonance cascade I believe knocked Gordon out pretty hard, and he was lying in the chamber for at least two hours. For instance, there is a scientist lying in the corridor leading to the test lab elevator with a headcrab on, showing no signs of mutation. Also, the scientist sitting in front of the computer in the office by the Coolant sector airlock is undergoing the transformation only, all the while zombies have already started appearing. Also, the damage done to the facility couldn't have happened in approximately 20 minutes. Black Mesa is an ex-military facility, and it's impossible for it to be destroyed so rapidly, it takes a lot of continuously applied force to rip open a concrete wall.

Although the state in which the post-cascade Sector C is suggest that only minutes passed, given the situation of guards and scientists, they may very well just started to get over the shock and think rationally. The falling elevator may have contained scientists bent on shutting down the spectrometer permanently and stopping the rifts from opening even wider.

Another example is the military. Dr Rosenberg called in the HECU in Decay, and it's safe to assume, that this process took at least an hour or hour and half. Furthermore, you hear about the troops coming in around Office Complex. Given the time needed for the military to mobilize, pack up the equipment, soldiers, vehicles and gear plus the time they need to actually reach the facility, it all is, give or take, two to three hours.

Also, the total domination of the surface and full-insertion into the underground base, including estabilishing fortifications, implicates that the military had quite some time to do this.

Just some of my random musings, friends.

-- Mikael Grizzly

 

[Tyguy]

its like taking a dog and making it so it wont attach to your face....wait.....

 

[ríomhaire]

Dr Rosenberg called in the HECU in Decay, and it's safe to assume, that this process took at least an hour or hour and half.

Actualy the military were coming anyway, acording to the OP4 manual a mission in BM was confirmed 2 months prior to the RC.

 

[Tagaziel]

Though it's also mentioned, that they don't know WHEN it will happen. If it wasn't for Rosenberg, they might've arrived later... and Gordon would have an easier job. Well, partly at least.

-- Mikael Grizzly

 

[ríomhaire]

Though it's also mentioned, that they don't know WHEN it will happen. If it wasn't for Rosenberg, they might've arrived later... and Gordon would have an easier job. Well, partly at least.

-- Mikael Grizzly

Sounds like wishful thinking to me

 

[Tagaziel]

Never really had a problem with the HECU troopers, apart from their grenade maneuvers and sheer numbers.

Though I DO wish we had seen more effects of HECU vs. Xen combat, like the ditch with burning slaves in Uplink, or the obviously used makeshift medical station.

-- Mikael Grizzly