Cats natively have a few Astral Projection and ESP abilities, generally including some level of of Astral Sight (with Astral Hearing) and True Sight 1, or just True Sight 2. They also tend to have Astral Travel or Dream Projection. Some other animals also have such abilities, though goats and sheep are often oddly Susceptible to Psi (an Occasional threat; the penalty applies to whatever one is resisting with, not just HT). No Earth animals have currently-known psi abilities that are both non-sensory and affect the physical world (apart from occasional instances of Probability Alteration), though some cats are suspected of being able to teleport when not being observed.
A number of animals on Irar show some psychic abilities, largely ESP, Probability Alteration, and Telepathy; one rare, monkey-like species on Irar is a catalyst creature (Pyramid Vol 3 #29, pp19-22), generally awakening and boosting Meta-Psi abilities. No lifeform native to Irar has displayed Astral Projection (other than Near-Death Projection), Psychic Vampirism, or Teleportation abilities.
The Iassa, or 'Dreamhunters' (Pyramid Vol 3 #29, p21), native to the Southern continent of the Coeb'ld homeworld, are the most populous of several catalyst species that exist on that world.
A less colourful but more robust phenotype of what appears to be an Iassa (raise average ST & HP by one, other stats remain the same) was found on Gormel, which seems to have far fewer catalyst species. One recently-discovered species of flying chameleon native to the Great Islands of Gormel was at first believed to be a catalyst creature, but was soon determined to be something even stranger: A Psychic Vampire and Telepath, with a form of venom that acts like a catalyst drug; the creature repeatedly returns to steal whatever powers have been induced by its venom, as well as feeding on the target creature in other ways.
The various sophont races express ritual psi in different ways, some of which are given more detail in the individual homeworld entries:
The Irari mostly use Autohypnosis or Mathematics as core skills, with a few consolidated styles with most of the known paths (powers), and some still-practiced historical styles which may have more or fewer. Gormelites have many martial-themed psi styles, with the core skills often being Combat Art skills or Meditation; one odd group has a Book style (which was quite surprising for the Irari), based on Autohypnosis. Most Coeb'lds who demonstrate psi abilities at all use psi drugs, and in many cases, have no active abilities without them (though they may have Talents or even Perks for them). They make less use of ritual psi than the Irari or Gormelites, having other effective powers more often, including variants of Astral Projection and Spirit Communication; those that do manifest ritual psi are more likely to use Ritual Magic or similar oddities as their core skill, though there are some who make use of Meditation or Combat Art skills.
Humans are weird, according to Irari parapsychologists. While the other studied races might have many more styles than the Irari do, they still tend to have a small number of core skills (even if the styles mean they have a lot of required specializations, they are specializations of a few identifiable skills), and a small number of clearly-defined Powers/Paths, with some overlap of Paths between styles, and a few strange outliers. The humans, by contrast, seem to have
too many strange outliers: types of core skills include Dreaming, Esoteric Medicine, Fortune-Telling, Computer Programming, various pseudosciences (specializations of Weird Science, Alchemy, Herb-Lore, et cetra), and even art skills (mostly as variants of Symbol Drawing, but not all), as well as the skills that the Irari are used to seeing from the Coeb'lds and Gormelites, while complementary skills and prerequisites could be just about anything. Likewise, the humans have too wide a variety of Books and Paths, and the Paths are sometimes quite strange (to the Iraris' experience): For example, the Path of Fire in many human ritual styles that have it includes not only obvious abilities like sensing heat, igniting & controlling flames, or even teleporting fuel to a fire, but quite often things that are only
conceptually related to fire, like the seasons of summer or autumn (usually not both; also, some Seasonal Paths contain things conceptually related to 'elements' associated with that season), influencing feelings of lust and other 'hot' emotions,
making new things,
inspiring resistance against tyranny, or burning out diseases and other impurities. Then there's that guy in New York City who developed a spider-themed Book style and seems to also be a Gadgeteer,
because he's obsessed with a series of illustrated stories...
The Irari strongly suspect that humans not being genetically-engineered may be a factor in this, as well as being the likely cause of humans very rarely showing psi abilities without a catalyst. The fact that the humans, Gormelites, and Coeb'lds each have a surprisingly wide range of Psi Adept variants (mostly odd limitations) compared to the Irari has been tentatively hypothesised to be either a mammal thing or a primate thing, though they want more data on this.
(The Irari do not know how the Memer-and-Saret express ritual psi, or even
if they do, and know even less about the yet-uncontacted races.)
Thoughts?