Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-6589306-20130228113457/@comment-24944355-20150111064414

In one of the Ciaphas Cain novels he discovers the remnants of a bio ship frozen in ice that predated the formation of the empire - older than 10,000 years. In a later novel of the series several gaunts of that ancient remnant were placed in a chamber with gaunts from hive fleet leviathan & both groups immediately started killing each other. In fact it was found that the telepathic signals of part of the ancient bio ships cortical node disrupted the hive mind of the modern Tyranid fleet. Now as there has been no reported battles between any of the various hive fleets of the current era the evidence would indicate that all those fleets come from a common source with the same hive mind. The ancient bio ship on the other hand probably came from a completely different source that has been separated by enough time & distance from it's origins that a separate hive mind was formed with enough difference to cause signal scrambling when meeting modern Tyranids.

This seems to indicate 4 things, first that all the current Tyranid incursions are coming from the same origin point, second that Tyranids when separated by enough distance from their original hive mind for long enough will form a new hive mind, third that a tyranid hive mind has a limit on how far it can maintain control of its bio forms & fourth that due to the signal interference caused when separate Tyranid hive minds meet that there would be a fight to the finish at any such meeting, meaning that there is a limit to how many reinforcements the hive mind the galaxy is facing can throw at the empire as it can expect no help from another hive mind