How long do shapeshifters live

Legends allow for transformations into plants and objects, and the assumption of another human countenance. According to the Encylopedia. Examples abound of the shape shifting of plants, animals, humans, and gods. Shape shifting can be caused either by the object changed or by an external force; it can occur for good or for ill and for reasons simple or profound. Shape shifting is found in essentially every religion and mythological tradition.

By no means is it a phenomenon restricted to unsophisticated cultures remote in history and geography from the dominant civilisations. The effects of the sickness are less pronounced, but still rather noticeably debilitating.

Still in this same episode, we're introduced to another shapeshifter who continues to be a recurring character throughout season 2, and into season 3. However, this character does not change bodies during this time. He also does not exhibit the same sickness suffered by the other shapeshifter, which was attributed to having remained in one body for so long. S3E4 we are introduced to yet another shapeshifter. Through dialogue, we find out that this shapeshifter has maintained the same body for at least five years.

It's even possibly implied that the shapeshifter mentioned earlier - the one introduced in S2E4 - has been in his body for at least the same duration. Again, the latest shapeshifter does not appear to be suffering any ill effects from his prolonged period in this one body.

In fact, it is a critical part of the latest shapeshifter's character story that he intends to remain in his current form indefinitely. Is there anything in standard canon, or official commentary or documentation, to state how long a shapeshifter can effortlessly maintain one form?

Or, is there anything mentioning how shapeshifters can safely and reliably extend this period? This appears to be one of those cases where there really just is no consistency. Since we've only witnessed this condition as having affected one particular shapeshifter so far, we might speculate:.

The above might explain why we've only seen one shapeshifter affected by it, while others appear able to spend entire lifetimes in one form. However, there's currently no known canonical explanation nor any known explanation from an official source. Additionally, with the show progressing to a radically different storyline in the fifth and final season, it's not likely that we ever will see an explanation. One feeding on homeless people might accidentally nab an undercover cop or eat someone in front of a security camera that they did not notice.

One might get arrested for something unrelated to cannibalism, but once in jail, there is no way to eat without getting caught. This inevitably means society as a whole will know that wendigos exist, and investigators will be well versed in hunting them down. I suspect this will probably result in one of two outcomes:. A - People will do everything they can to drive the wendigos to extinction.

You will need special licensing to work anywhere you might have access to corpses to make sure you are human. Wendigos will need to stay constantly on the move. If they are able to take on multiple human faces, they may be able to remain mostly hidden from society, but if they only have 1 human face, facial recognition technology and social media will drive them out of developed nations because staying ahead of law enforcement indefinitely is unfeasible, and getting harder each passing year.

Otherwise, they will probably stick to countries with unstable governments and join up with Cartels and other criminal organizations which are already in the habit of getting away with murder. B - They will get mostly wiped out until some government declares it unlawful to kill them. If the government recognizes wendigos as sentient beings with all the rights and privileges of personhood, citizenship, or an endangered species then the government might portion rations of human remains to registered wendigos basically feeding them the leftovers of registered donors after all transplantable organs are removed.

In this case, the species will mostly survive in the light of day, but a small minority may choose to hide what they are for fear of a genocide. This small minority would be those individuals who feed on the homeless and already dead in the previously addressed methods to stay undetected. Shadow found himself looking away, not from revulsion, as he would have expected, but from a strange desire to get the girl some privacy. It would be hard to be nakeder than this open thing. Jacquel tied up the intestines, glistening and snakelike in her belly, below the stomach and deep in the pelvis.

He ran them through his fingers, foot after foot. He sucked all the blood out of her chest with the vacuum pump, and measured the volume. Then he inspected the inside of her chest. Jacquel grasped her heart, cut it at its top, turned it about in his hand, examining it. Jacquel removed each lung. The left lung had been stabbed and was half collapsed. He weighed them, and the heart, and he photographed the wounds. From each lung he sliced a small piece of tissue, which he placed into a jar.

He weighed each organ, recorded them as normal and uninjured. From each organ he took a small slice and put it into a jar of formaldehyde. From the heart, liver, and from one of the kidneys, he cut an additional slice. These pieces he chewed, slowly, making them last, while he worked. Your Wendigos need flesh to survive. It is not the calories they need; they can eat what humans eat. It is the humanity of the flesh.

They need it but they do not need much. In their roles as mortician, coroner, diener they have access to the flesh of the dead. They take what little they need from the bodies that they care for. No-one notices. If they can survive on corpses, a lot of bits can go missing at a crematorium before the oven. The family still gets a pile of ash with no idea what's actually in the ash or if it's all of their loved one.

In the modern era, a pack or society of wendigos could hide out in various conflict zones. But since not ALL will be willing to give up the comforts of modern life, some who try to make modern life work will be caught, and that ends it for everyone. Syria, Somalia BUT it only works as long as no one suspects the existence of wendigos.

As soon as two or three get caught in the modern world, people will be on guard even in war-torn areas. We watch for Ebola outbreaks even in the Congo right now. Anything that preys on humans will be terminated quickly, even an intelligent hunter, unless it is truly a lone wolf.

Unlike most other monster species, shapeshifters do not appear to be able to sense others of their kind, even when they know the shapeshifter in question. Mia Vallens was unable to tell that her ex-boyfriend Buddy , whom she was specifically trying to escape from, was impersonating one of her patients.

Furthermore, even after she knew that he was, she could not identify which one he was for the Winchesters. While some shapeshifters appear to simply cycle through appearances and never settle on one particular permanent appearance, others of the species appear to have a preferred appearance they use when they are not impersonating another person.

Its unclear if this form is simply one they like or, since they are born naturally and grow up like humans, whether its their original appearance.

In Mia's case, her chosen form is not her original appearance as she stated she changed her face to avoid Buddy. In Buddy's case, he had his chosen form so long that Mia had a picture of him in it. Shapeshifters are creations of the Mother of All Monsters, Eve. The first shapeshifter in all existence was the Alpha Shapeshifter. In Skin , Sam and Dean hunt down a shapeshifter who is turning into peoples loved ones and then killing them.

The shapeshifter is killed by Dean. In Nightshifter , a Shapeshifter started using his abilities to rob banks and jewelry stores in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by studying the patterns of employees or buyers then killing them in an apparent suicide and taking on their form to commit the robberies while presumably hiding in the sewers between the places it robbed.

Eventaully, Sam and Dean Winchester pick up on the pattern and realize they are dealing with a shapeshifter from its retinal flare on a security tape shown to them by former security guard Ronald Reznick it had beaten up who believed it to be a "mandroid.

They identify it as taking the form of the bank manager from the retinal flare the shapeshifter displays in the security cameras, but Ronald, as no one believes him, takes over the bank to stop the "mandroid" and the shapeshifter escapes before Sam and Dean can get it. It then kills another man, hides his body in the celling tiles and takes on his form. In the episode Monster Movie , a shape-shifter is goes a town during Oktoberfest as iconic monsters from the old Hollywood movies.

Dean and Sam investigate the several murders. The first victim was found with bite marks on her neck, much like a vampire would leave, while the second victim has wounds that look like a werewolf attack. After a mummy rises from his crypt, Dean determines that it is a shape-shifter.

The shapeshifter is later killed by Jamie , who he abducted. The Alpha shapeshifter is revealed to be going around make more of his offspring by shapeshifting to women's husband, and then having another shapeshifter abduct it and take it to him.