Editing Pak Protector (section)

== Protector behavior ==

Pak Protectors have an innate need to protect close relatives. When a Pak Protector has no bloodline to protect, it usually stops eating and starves, though some childless Protectors can adopt the entire Pak race as their family.

Niven states that Protectors on the crowded Pak homeworld would constantly war against each other to gain advantage for their family and that alliances would last only until one ally sees advantage in betrayal. Human Protectors, and those on the Ringworld, seem to be less warlike and better able to work for the betterment of the entire species (or all of the Ringworld hominids) rather than just their bloodline, though this may simply be a function of how few Protectors with families encounter each other.

Protectors typically die from starvation (from lack of will to live, e.g. if the Protector's bloodline has died out, in which case they simply stop eating until death takes them) or violence. Although Protectors have a vastly extended lifetime, it is not infinite; during the original half-million year journey to Earth some Protector colonists did die from old age.

Because of their enormous intelligence and instinctive need to protect their family (or their species, etc.), Protectors are efficient, ruthless and quite amoral. Xenophobia is a commonly displayed trait: other races are considered either unnecessary or potentially dangerous.
It is observed several times that this intelligence combined with instinct also compels action so completely that Protectors often have little "free will". Niven uses this trait as a plot device several times as characters set up circumstances where Protector characters will react in a specific manner. In ''Protector'', Jack Brennan (a human turned into a Protector) commits [[genocide]] by exterminating the [[Martian]] race ("Aliens were dangerous, or might be, and Pak were not interested in anything but Pak") and also releases a genetically modified Tree-of-Life virus on the colony world Home, turning everyone middle aged into a Protector (and killing all other humans on the planet) in order to create an army of childless Protectors with which to fight the invading Pak fleet. It is indicated throughout Niven's works that humans (''[[Homo sapiens]]'') that have turned into protectors are far more intelligent than their Pak (''[[Homo habilis]]'') counterparts (in much the way that humans are more intelligent than the primates they evolved from) and that the Pak may, in fact, be the final evolutionary stage for the human race as a whole.

Niven explains much of Protector behavior in his Future History, by revealing in ''[[Ringworld's Children]]'' that the [[Amalgamated Regional Militia|ARM]] may be run by at least one Protector and that Boosterspice (which dramatically prolongs human lifespan) is derived from Tree-of-Life.