Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-173.20.10.245-20131101064024/@comment-3146930-20140731033706

Mercen-X wrote: Well, humans and Faunus do both have their own races (black, white; monkey, cat, horse, bull, rabbit) so it wouldn't cover much. When she said species, she could have easily meant subspecies, but nobody would say subspecies just because they mean subspecies. Mutants and meta-humans in the comics universe have never been openly referred to as a subspecies even though that's precisely what they are. And no, I don't recall anyone referring to them as a "species" at any rate either, but that's because they have the alternative of saying said people are discriminated against due to their "powers". This isn't an option in Remnant since it seems everyone has access to Aura and Semblance. What else was Blake supposed to say, "based on his characteristics"?

Think lions and tigers. They are different species of animals, but they are still in the big cat group (Panthera). Faunus and Humans could have a similar connection, being a different species of the Homo-group, so despite Faunus looking mostly human on the outside, they could have a much different anatomy. As far as Aura and Semblance, Pyrrha mentions that all living things have access to Aura so that isn't much of an argument. Lastly as I mentioned above, Blake could have easily said "based on his race" if Faunus were just another race of humans, like how there are Indians or Asians in our world; but she specifically calls him part of a species as if he was different from human.