A Cardassian animal whose eggs are eaten boiled, and which Gul Madred serves raw and still living to the starving Captain Picard in Chain of Command.
The taspar is an egg-laying animal of Cardassia. Its eggs are normally boiled before eating, since an uncooked egg contains a gelatinous, still-moving creature.
In Chain of Command, Part II, the interrogator Gul Madred offers the starved and exhausted Picard a meal, which proves to be a raw taspar egg. Picard cracks it open and swallows the contents without hesitating.
The gesture prompts Madred to recall his boyhood on the streets of Lakat, where he once found taspar eggs and had them taken from him by an older boy who broke his arm. Picard seizes on the story, seeing in his torturer a frightened child, and uses it to regain a measure of control.