Is Gollum a hobbit or a weird frog thing???

[Samwise_Gamgee]

In FotR, Gandalf says that "He must have been of a sort of hobbt," or something like that, and I read in the Barrow-downs encyclopedia (http://www.barrowdowns.com/Description.asp?Size=&Param=EntryID&Data=188) that he was a type of hobbit. Which one is it??? If he is a hobbit, then what about his "birthday present"? In the true story, Smeagol/Gollum strangled his friend Deagol, because Deagol found the Ring in the Anduin, and when Smeagol asked for it, "Because it's my birthday, precious, and I wants it," Deagol says that he already gave him a present. Don't hobbits give each other gifts on their birthdays instead of receiving them??? And if he is a hobbit, then Bilbo isn't the oldest hobbit in history..."For 500 years..." AAH!!! I'm confuzzled!!! :confused: Is he a hobbit or a weird frog thing???

[Ñólendil]

He's what any Hobbit would look like, given the One Ring and thousands of years. He was of the Stoorish Hobbits of the Vales of Anduin, who had different birthday customs. He looks the way he does because of long years of torture from the Ring, and living in the dark.

Bilbo's still the oldest Hobbit in the known history of the Shire.

[FrodoFriend]

He's like a pre-Hobbit. He's a member of one of the hobbits' ancestor races. There are plenty of topics about this, by the way.

[Khamûl]

He was either a type of hobbit or a close relative of the hobbits. (I believe that he was a Stoor.) When Deagol found the Ring, Smeagol/Gollum wanted it. I think that this was the corruption of the Ring already starting in his mind. His birthday was just an excuse for him to kill Deagol and get the Ring. As he got older the Ring twisted his mind and his body, so he didn't really look like a hobbit.

I hope that helped answer your questions.:)

[BeardofPants]

Ai! Ai! Hobbit evolution! :eek:

[The Grim Squeaker]

ONCE I WAS A HAMSTER! NOW I AM A DUCK! run from the evil elves i tell u!

[FliPip]

*releases sack of lavender bunny wunnies*

[Elf Girl]

Will you keep this to General Messages? We are trying to discuss Tolkien! Legolas!


Anyway, I pretty much agree with everyone else about Gollum. He was once a hobbit, now he is not.

[Aragorn_iz_cool]

:p Well he was a hobbit, I think after all these years he's become a diffrent specis.

[Starr Polish]

Originally posted by The Grim Squeaker
ONCE I WAS A HAMSTER! NOW I AM A DUCK! run from the evil elves i tell u!

Gerbil?

And I don't think Gollum is another species of hobbit. In my mind he's a grey knobbly kneed hobbit like creature, who didn't change species over 500 years. Even evolutionists will agree that's not really enought time to make a completely new species, and you can't really change an individual's species.

[Menelvagor]

Well, but it wasn't really evolution; it was the corruption of the ring. Imaging what you'd look like if you lived in a cave for 500 years eating fish and sqeezing orc necks by using the foundation of all modern evil while slowly being consumed from the inside.

[Elf Girl]

Well put.

[Durlomiel]

apart from making him greyish-green and in other ways ugly, the ring seems to have added a piece of non-hobbit physiology. I'm talking about the way Gollum's eyes glow/reflect light, whichever it is. There's a shot in the movie when everyone is sitting in Moria and we see him behind a rock and her eyes glint. Well, I dissect eyes as part of my job, and when I saw his eyes glowing, I thought "what has Gollum got in its eyeses? It looks like a tapetum, but only cats, dogs, and rodents have those."

Another question of creature-evolution, I suppose.

[Menelvagor]

I think that was more a product of sitting in the dark for 500 years. Definately his adaptation skills were enhanced by the ring, or his eyes wouldn't be so pronounced, but I believe the purpose of them were to improve his eyesight in dark places, much in the way his senses of smell and hearing were enhanced. (see RotK, the Emyn Muil chaper)

[Menelvagor]

Btw, thank you Elf Girl! :)

[Samwise_Gamgee]

I know why his eyes are big!!! :eek: It's cause it's so dark in his cave, so his pupils grow widerer and widerer trying to see into the dark, and there's never much light (except when he leaves the cave) so his pupils never get smallerer, just bigerer =D

[Elfhelm]

Maybe its soft clinging hands and toes were finding crevices that no hobbit could ever have seen or used, but it looked as if it was just creeping down on sticky pads, like some large prowling thing of insect-kind.

So explain that. :confused:

[BeardofPants]

I would imagine that a creature accustomed to finding it's way in the dark like that did not immediately get "night vision". It's first few hundred years were probably spent groping in the dark, and climbing inaccessible crevices to excape orcs.

[Strange-Looking Lurker]

Gollum did not evolve: he was corrupted.

[Menelvagor]

BUT, the ring did want him to survive, it did not want to hang around at the bottom of a subterrainian lake forever. It wanted Gollum to live and so helped him to survive by increaseing his senses and makeing him adapt, if you will.

[Durlomiel]

Lamarckian evolution aided by the One Ring.

Charles Darwin would have a field day.

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by Durlomiel
Lamarckian evolution aided by the One Ring.

Charles Darwin would have a field day.

I believe he did. :p