Tweel (also referred to as a "Tweerl", the exact pronunciation of the word is said to be impossible for humans) is a fictional extraterrestrial from the planet Mars, featured in two short stories by Stanley G. Weinbaum. The alien was featured in A Martian Odyssey, first published in 1934, and Valley of Dreams four months later. Weinbaum died of lung cancer soon after, and a third installment in the series never saw fruition. Tweel remains one of the most recognised aliens in early science fiction, and is said to be an inspiration for aliens in the works of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
Asimov described Tweel as being the first creation in science fiction to fulfill John W. Campbell's request for "(...)a creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man." According to Jacques Baudou, Tweel is the first non-anthropomorphic thinking creature represented in american science fiction.
Appearance
Tweel's appearance is described as follows:
The Martian wasn't a bird, really. It wasn't even bird-like, except at first glance. It had a beak, alright, and a few feathery appendages, but the beak wasn't really a beak. It was somewhat flexible; I could see the tip bend from side to side; it was almost like a cross between a beak and a trunk. It had four toed feet, and four fingered things--hands, you'd have to call them, a little roundish body, and a long neck ending in a tiny head--and that beak. --A Martian Odyssey, paragraph 24.
Species
In the second story in the series, Valley of Dreams, Tweel's species is revealed to be known as the Thoth: Tweel shows his human companions an ancient Martian mural portraying his species surrounded by what are recognizably ancient Egyptians. When one human describes the mural as resembling the Egyptian god Thoth, Tweel's response is "Yes! Yes! Yes! Thoth! Yes!"; the humans then realize that Martians - collectively known as "Thoth" - visited ancient Egypt, where they gave humans the gift of writing and were perceived as gods.
The Thoth are neither animal nor plant, but something else altogether, which humans could consider to be in-between a plant and an animal judging by the standards set by life which has evolved on planet Earth. The Thoth do not sleep, nor eat or drink. For a few hours each Martian day, they stick their beaks into the Martian soil. They gain nutrients from the soil, in a similar way to how the roots of a plant gain nutrients from the ground. The Thoth reproduce asexually, with two members of the species making contact for a small amount of time until an infant "buds" between the two.
The creatures are highly active and agile, and usually travel in tremendous, city-block-long leaps through the thin Martian air and also aided by the weak Martian gravity. These leaps end with the long beak buried in the ground, as the secondary function of this beak is to stop the creature. They can leap up the Martian cliffs and across valleys with ease. However, they can also move slowly by walking. Upon seeing Jarvis (the human protagonist), trudge along, Tweel walks beside him.
Although the Thoth are more or less humanoid in appearance, their physiology is remarkably different from that of humans; one example of this would be the fact that their brain in located in the chest, and not the head. The Thoth have feather-like appendages that protect them from the chilly Martian nights very well, but these are retracted and invisible during the day. Different members of this species have different-coloured feathers; Tweel's feathers are orange. The Thoth also have sharp retractable claws, but they are very rarely exposed, and only used for defense. The Thoth have an exceptionally unassuming and friendly nature, but are also formidable opponents when backed into a corner.
Psychology and intelligence
Tweel is a very intelligent creature, despite the fact that he thinks very differently from humans. When Jarvis, the story's protagonist, draws the first four inner planets and the sun in the sand, Tweel successfully identifies Mars as the fourth planet, and the Earth as the third. He therefore is civilized, but he thinks differently from humans, for he jumps directly into the circle in the sand that represents the sun on his beak, which he does not consider unusual at all.