Oankali

The Oankali are aliens from Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago).

General

The Oankali are naked grey bipeds who have tentacles instead of sensory organs. They control their evolution through "gene trading" with other species they meet. They have eidetic memory and carry within themselves maps of their complexly branching evolutionary tree. They are strongly attracted to difference and sense biological capacities on a molecular level. Because they communicate through their tentacles, the Oankali have developed vocalization only to communicate more effectively with humans. They avoid causing pain to others in part because of their own biology; causing pain for them means receiving that pain as well. They are extremely repulsive to humans.

Gender

The Oankali have three genders: male, female and ooloi. Males and females have no visible sexual organs and the female has no birthing orifice. The ooloi is referred to using the neuter pronoun and is the only one to have external sexual organs, its "sensory hands." The ooloi controls reproduction and is able to heal others (Oankali or of other species). In discussions on the fsf listserv in the late 1990s, many readers mentioned that like the human characters in the Xenogenesis novels, they thought of the ooloi as somehow male.