[Lalwendë]

From Eomer's words, expressing surprise at Aragorn's fitness, it could be that Men are the usual tortoises of Middle-earth, whereas Elves and Dwarves are the hares.

Originally Posted by Alatar

I'm guessing that the Dwarves were completely different as they were made in private by Aulë. Now, in his mind he may have had some of Eru's thinking, but from my point of view, the Dwarves were distinctly different from the other two races.

Now, we know that elves and humans can mate, meaning that at best each is a subspecies. I cannot think of any Dwarf-human/hobbit/elf cross, and so I'm guessing that they are completely different.

Not that Gimli didn't didn't consider the experiment with Galadriel...

I definitely count Elves, Men and Dwarves as distinct species - each has a different origin in terms of the Creation, and each has definite characteristics. This if course does not mean that they could not interbreed if they desired it, as there is real world evidence that homo sapiens and neanderthals could have mated, and that does not just come from the pages of a Jean M Auel novel! I have even read that the genes for red hair stem from neanderthals - though we shall quickly brush over that one. Ahem.

Originally Posted by Form

One might also add that the home sapiens of the Middle-Earth seem to break down into three very distinct subspecies themselves: homo sapiens, homo sapiens hobbitas, and homo sapiens drúadan--that is, regular man, Hobbit, and Drúadan. And, if one wants to add the Dúnedain as an effective subspecies as well, you get four.

Would they be sub-species though or simply different racial groups? Within homo sapiens we have/had a lot of physiological diversity ranging from tall slender and fair Northern Europeans to small dark pygmies - and putting aside the slightly freakish nature of the Dunedain, most of the races which come under the banner of Men seem to retain similar characteristics, even shared linguistic heritage in the case of Hobbits and the Rohirrim.

The Dunedain are more thorny though - maybe their freakish long lives can only be put down to divine intervention as there is little biological explanation for say the long life of Aragorn, besides him having a superior diet and a mega-slow metabolism.

And what about Orcses? Right can of worms...