Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26570372-20150809211740/@comment-14267015-20150809215906

According to what I looked up: sapience is the ability to search for meaning, not just purpose, in the world. Sentience is being able to notice some kind of signal or pattern and be able to interpret it, learn to recognize it, and then be able to use it. So basically, sapience is being able to perform higher thinking while sentience is being able to communicate. Animals like dogs can learn how to do tricks after being trained to recognize specific words and gestures, thus they are sentient but not sapient. Looking at Wildmutt, as he is the Vulpimancer we see the most, the species seems to be able to do both. He could talk to other members of his race and even Gwen could understand him to an extent, and he could think of ways to get around problems and win fights. However, when Ben was Wildmutt he tended to act on instinct at times. All of this leads me to suspect that Vulpimancers, while sapient, are still early in their development. As an example, they are more like cavemen than today's human beings.