He looked at the creatures. Was that woodlice? The Mish wanted to attack with woodlice? He gave the computer a disbelieving look which it, obviously, couldn't respond to. Then ones that looked like Mish and Neko began to appear as well as some four legged creatures. He wondered what that meant, had these things been spawned from a Neko who had taken free sexuality way, way too far?
Then Kashi told him her opinion. Darnell thought about it a moment and said, "But they would need lots of... energy." It dawned on him. He took Kashi by the shoulders as if to shake her and said, "Kashi, you're brilliant!" He paused a moment, his hands dropped back to his sides and he said, in a more normal voice, "If that's true they would have to have an incredible cellular replacement rate to facilitate quick changes, which would entail several identifying markers such as reinforced telomeres. In addition, while some cells won't regenerate for some species all their cells would have to be capable of being generated unless parts of them didn't change through transformation in which case only those cells wouldn't be generated. Not to mention we have samples and we can just measure their cellular regeneration rate." He gave Kashi a slap on the arm, "Have more confidence in yourself."
It didn't make everything make sense, if they were sucking out the energy for transformation then it didn't make sense that they hadn't transformed yet. But it was a theory and one that was worth investigating. He said, "Computer, predict the cell generation rate from this DNA, identify any regularities related to cell generation in the DNA for all types of known cells from the creature." That should be easy enough considering cell generation was DNA's most basic purpose. "Also, bring up any records of the creature's cell generation rate for all known cells in the creature's body. If such studies have not occurred, please patch me through to whomever happens to be looking at the samples right now for a request."