Elves and their strange characteristics...

[Peter_20]

I always thought the Elves were a very strange and interesting race, and they have always been my favourite race.
Anyway, the Elves seem to possess various oddities and characteristics that are beyond the reach of most humans.
First we've got the immortality, something that actually is beyond the reach of humans.
There are several other weird "oddities" as well, usually demonstrated by Legolas:
they seem to manage fine without much sleep, and a walk in the forest will suffice just as well - "it's rest enough".
They also seem to have a VERY good sense of balance, and can run along a small piece of stretched rope without falling.
They hardly leave any footprints, and they can practically sleep while walking.
They are a strange race, indeed.

Do you know of any other strange Elven characteristics? :)

[Landroval]

Concerning Legolas, Tolkien also retorted to criticism that he was too effeminate:
He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgul, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship.
In the letters, Tolkien also commented:
I should say that they represent really Men with greatly enhanced aesthetic and creative faculties, greater beauty and longer life, and nobility
They have certain freedoms and powers we should like to have, and the beauty and peril and sorrow of the possession of these things is exhibited in them.
At the greatest length, Tolkien talks about their faculties in Letter #181:
The Elves represent, as it were, the artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane nature raised to a higher level than is actually seen in Men. That is: they have a devoted love of the physical world, and a desire to observe and understand it for its own sake and as 'other' – sc. as a reality derived from God in the same degree as themselves – not as a material for use or as a power-platform. They also possess a 'subcreational' or artistic faculty of great excellence.
Tolkien also commented in the drafts that Aragorn may have magical abilities only due to his lineage that connects him to the elves - as magic cannot be learned, but is an inherent quality. There is also the pesky problem of elvish ears :D