Talk:Sphinx/@comment-33287020-20181107142309/@comment-4010415-20181107151513

To be fair, fire breath is honestly one of the most basic special abilities you can give a monster, similar to the lightning breath weapon that the Sei Feilong has. Some of the other special abilities we've seen have been more specific.


 * Leaking goo that spawns more Grimm - Dragon. Probably reserved for giant Grimm who are really, really old.


 * Skype (Uh, I mean, video-audio communication) - Seer. Its head is basically a crystal ball. It was specifically designed for this in a way that other Grimm aren't. They could honestly slap "Spits fire" on any Grimm with a mouth because of how basic an ability it is.


 * Possessing objects - Geist... because it's a ghost.


 * Merging Grimm - Tentacle Grimm thingy. This is super specific. Also, if I recall, the manga refers to this Grimm as a "possession type", claiming that it is possessing the King Taijitus along with merging them together. Weiss explains that its ability is specific to possessing "organic matter" (I'm sure she meant "living tissue", considering the Geist used a tree, but whatever), unlike a certain other possession type (Geist).

The Geist and the tentacle Grimm bring up an interesting point, though. They're both considered possession types. This means there can be overlap in ability types among Grimm. So it's possible that multiple Grimm can have elemental breath weapons, and breathing fire may not be specific to only one species of Grimm.

TL;DR - Breathing fire is a super basic monster ability, so we don't really know if we can use that as solid evidence that the Sphinx and Manticore are of the same species. While other Grimm have abilities that are different from this one, most of their abilities are very specific, instead of basic.