sapient n.

We hold that any extraterrestial organisms likely to be of great interest to most human beings must employ this same adaptive mechanism. Otherwise we would be unable to communicate with them…. We propose calling such organisms sapients…. They are frequently called sentient beings, but this fails to distinguish them from, for example, earthly cows. Sapients seems to us both simple and clear.

The CWC might be utilizing the sapients because they possessed powers or advantages Terrestrials did not have.

There had been a time when Dane thought he would never tire of watching the crowds that thronged these streets, lizard-men, cat-men, bird-men—or, to use the terminology of the Unity, the enormous Galactic civilization, protosaurians, protofelines, protoavians; and others, people of every conceivable species of sapient.

Aliens from another dimension have constructed a complex artificial solar system millions of years after the destruction of Earth and populated it with reconstructed humans, terrestrial life forms, and post-human higher Terrestrial sapients from Earth’s past.

If the Earthlings who invaded them were reasonably enlightened—as Rampart was—primitive Indigenous Sapients often prospered.

I was never happy about those war-addicted fools hijacking the label Homo sapiens. We're the ones who have the opportunity to be true sapients, and I think we ought to take it.

‘They do it so they can get away with eating other sapients?’ Ruti demanded in horror… ‘Only if those sapients invade their pool.’

The main life-form is an incredibly ornate corporate ecosphere, legal instruments breeding and replicating. They mug passing sapients and use them as currency.

He’d seen both back in Central space—sapients picking through trash or carrying everything they owned.