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Create a culture based in biology
brian334
Member Posts: 2,219 Arc User
in Ten Forward
In another discussion on these forums some time ago the idea was presented of generating a biology to explain a new, (at the time,) species as represented in the teaser blogs. There were many good ideas there, but I was unable to post my own at that time. This time, I'd like to approach the issue from the opposite direction: create a culture which could have arisen from the unique biology of a species.
Star Trek occasionally did this well. (Horta, for example.) Toward the end of the various series this had become inverted, and all aliens were human analogies or caricatures usually intended to show that humanity had after all not progressed in the way GR had dreamed, but was as bad as ever when things got rough. (Quark's speech to Nog on the battlefield.) I'd like to see Trek return to aliens which are truly alien, with cultures that have nothing at all to do with human historical analogues such as Space Romans or Fascist-Commie-Samurai.
So, as the basis of my challenge, I present my finally completed but unnamed species in the hopes that, guided by the biological needs of the race, players can create unique, truly alien cultures with whom humans could interact:
Species Life Cycle:
0: Embryo develops inside an egg.
1: Egg hatches a single male or a single female. The eggs of this species never twin.
2: Infant develops to sexual maturity in about six years for females or twenty for males.
3a: Females already pregnant due to prenatal insemination lay a clutch of between 3-30 eggs.
3b: Females which were not inseminated in the womb lay a clutch of no more than six, but as few as one egg which will always be a female clone of its mother. These hatchlings will grow and age normally if they are inseminated prenatally, and give birth to both male and female offspring.
3c: Females which were not inseminated prenatally and which were not inseminated upon achieving sexual maturity may lay a small number of unfertilized female eggs. The offspring will be female clones of their mother.
4: Females refuse food and water and fiercely guard their clutches from the moment they begin to lay their eggs. This leaves them dead or dying by the time their eggs begin to hatch 149 days later, and their corpse, (or still living body,) becomes the first food of the offspring.
5: Males continue to grow throughout their lives, albeit exponentially slower with each passing year. At some time between their sixteenth and twentieth birthday they achieve sexual maturity, but from this peak their drive and potency slowly declines.
6: The life expectancy of a male rarely exceeds one hundred fifty years, but averages closer to eighty years. On the very rare occasion that an infertile female is hatched, her life expectancy is similar, but infertile females are very rare, and generally only occur after multiple generations of asexual reproduction.
Male/female dichotomy within this species is very pronounced. Females grow very quickly, eating virtually any organic matter they can find. Aside from cat-naps of about thirty minutes every three or four hours, they continue to browse unless disturbed or until required to move to new sources of food. Females never truly achieve sentience, excepting the exceedingly rare infertile females, who live long enough for the relevant areas of their brains to develop. Indeed, even males do not begin to achieve sentience until between the ages of four to seven years of age.
Upon hatching, males tend to disperse from the nest after a single meal of their mothers’ corpses, leaving the more voracious females to fight over what remains. Within a day of hatching, females are usually doubled in size, and are fully capable of capturing and eating any male hatchling which remains nearby. Males typically require over forty days to double their weight, and sleep up to eighteen hours at a time with three to six hours of activity, during which they browse. While both sexes are omnivorous, males spend less than one hour in twenty-four actively eating, while females do little else. As they age, males sleep less, so that by the age of six they are sleeping only twelve hours of each twenty-four, and by age 18 they are sleeping only eight hours of each twenty-four. In advanced age, male sleeping patterns tend to be erratic, and cat-naps similar to the sleep cycle of females replace a regular daily sleep period. At this point in their life cycle, the decline of advanced age begins to affect their physical abilities, and regression of mental faculties becomes apparent.
Young males which have yet to mature sexually tend to be very protective of females, following one or more about as she continually searches for food. Since young males tend to be cooperative, it is not uncommon for two or three to band together to protect a single female and guide her to better foraging. Young males will also feed choice items, especially meat which females crave.
Males which have just begun to develop sexually are typically around half the size of sexually receptive females, which tend to mass close to 200kg. Males will not achieve similar size until around age sixty, by which time their sex drive is greatly diminished. While females are more easily seduced by males with whom they are familiar, a well fed female will allow a strange male to court her if his seduction display impresses her. While neither males nor females are monogamous, males do tend to defend their chosen female from rivals. Within a cooperative group of males, the largest will assert his claim, only allowing members of his cooperative limited access to the female. Of course, a stranger capable of cowing or driving off her guardian males can gain access to a female; however, he is still required to seduce the female who must be properly stimulated to become sexually receptive.
An interesting development within this species is the fertilization process: females are born pregnant. Their ovum were fertilized by their mothers’ mates, and their daughters will be fertilized by their mates before their eggshell begins to form. A developing female embryos’ ovaries are inverted so that her ovum are exposed, allowing sperm from their mothers’ mates to fertilize their ovum. As such, a developing female may have eggs fertilized by multiple males if more than one male successfully courts her mother. The act of fertilization stimulates the growth of the daughter egg’s shell and this prevents further fertilization of the daughter’s ovum from occurring.
A female who was not fertilized before the formation of her eggshell is effectively sterile. In this case, her hormones do not trigger the production of eggshell material, and many of her eggs begin to wither. As the outer membrane of these eggs breaks down, genetic material is released into the fluid which fills the ovary, and may come into contact with still viable eggs. Since this material is not contained in a motile package with enzymes to help in penetration of the ovum’s membrane, as is the case with sperm, only a very few of the potential viable eggs absorb the half-strands of genetic material released by the deterioration of non-viable eggs. Those which do fertilize are virtual clones of their mother, except that the lack of certain enzymes provided in the seminal fluid of the male inhibit the development of eggs in the clones. This leads, in a few generations, to females which cannot produce offspring, and who develop and mature much as do males. Of course, if a cloned female mates, her daughters’ only disability will be a smaller clutch when her eggs are laid.
What kind of culture do you think could develop from such a very non- terran life cycle?
Star Trek occasionally did this well. (Horta, for example.) Toward the end of the various series this had become inverted, and all aliens were human analogies or caricatures usually intended to show that humanity had after all not progressed in the way GR had dreamed, but was as bad as ever when things got rough. (Quark's speech to Nog on the battlefield.) I'd like to see Trek return to aliens which are truly alien, with cultures that have nothing at all to do with human historical analogues such as Space Romans or Fascist-Commie-Samurai.
So, as the basis of my challenge, I present my finally completed but unnamed species in the hopes that, guided by the biological needs of the race, players can create unique, truly alien cultures with whom humans could interact:
Species Life Cycle:
0: Embryo develops inside an egg.
1: Egg hatches a single male or a single female. The eggs of this species never twin.
2: Infant develops to sexual maturity in about six years for females or twenty for males.
3a: Females already pregnant due to prenatal insemination lay a clutch of between 3-30 eggs.
3b: Females which were not inseminated in the womb lay a clutch of no more than six, but as few as one egg which will always be a female clone of its mother. These hatchlings will grow and age normally if they are inseminated prenatally, and give birth to both male and female offspring.
3c: Females which were not inseminated prenatally and which were not inseminated upon achieving sexual maturity may lay a small number of unfertilized female eggs. The offspring will be female clones of their mother.
4: Females refuse food and water and fiercely guard their clutches from the moment they begin to lay their eggs. This leaves them dead or dying by the time their eggs begin to hatch 149 days later, and their corpse, (or still living body,) becomes the first food of the offspring.
5: Males continue to grow throughout their lives, albeit exponentially slower with each passing year. At some time between their sixteenth and twentieth birthday they achieve sexual maturity, but from this peak their drive and potency slowly declines.
6: The life expectancy of a male rarely exceeds one hundred fifty years, but averages closer to eighty years. On the very rare occasion that an infertile female is hatched, her life expectancy is similar, but infertile females are very rare, and generally only occur after multiple generations of asexual reproduction.
Male/female dichotomy within this species is very pronounced. Females grow very quickly, eating virtually any organic matter they can find. Aside from cat-naps of about thirty minutes every three or four hours, they continue to browse unless disturbed or until required to move to new sources of food. Females never truly achieve sentience, excepting the exceedingly rare infertile females, who live long enough for the relevant areas of their brains to develop. Indeed, even males do not begin to achieve sentience until between the ages of four to seven years of age.
Upon hatching, males tend to disperse from the nest after a single meal of their mothers’ corpses, leaving the more voracious females to fight over what remains. Within a day of hatching, females are usually doubled in size, and are fully capable of capturing and eating any male hatchling which remains nearby. Males typically require over forty days to double their weight, and sleep up to eighteen hours at a time with three to six hours of activity, during which they browse. While both sexes are omnivorous, males spend less than one hour in twenty-four actively eating, while females do little else. As they age, males sleep less, so that by the age of six they are sleeping only twelve hours of each twenty-four, and by age 18 they are sleeping only eight hours of each twenty-four. In advanced age, male sleeping patterns tend to be erratic, and cat-naps similar to the sleep cycle of females replace a regular daily sleep period. At this point in their life cycle, the decline of advanced age begins to affect their physical abilities, and regression of mental faculties becomes apparent.
Young males which have yet to mature sexually tend to be very protective of females, following one or more about as she continually searches for food. Since young males tend to be cooperative, it is not uncommon for two or three to band together to protect a single female and guide her to better foraging. Young males will also feed choice items, especially meat which females crave.
Males which have just begun to develop sexually are typically around half the size of sexually receptive females, which tend to mass close to 200kg. Males will not achieve similar size until around age sixty, by which time their sex drive is greatly diminished. While females are more easily seduced by males with whom they are familiar, a well fed female will allow a strange male to court her if his seduction display impresses her. While neither males nor females are monogamous, males do tend to defend their chosen female from rivals. Within a cooperative group of males, the largest will assert his claim, only allowing members of his cooperative limited access to the female. Of course, a stranger capable of cowing or driving off her guardian males can gain access to a female; however, he is still required to seduce the female who must be properly stimulated to become sexually receptive.
An interesting development within this species is the fertilization process: females are born pregnant. Their ovum were fertilized by their mothers’ mates, and their daughters will be fertilized by their mates before their eggshell begins to form. A developing female embryos’ ovaries are inverted so that her ovum are exposed, allowing sperm from their mothers’ mates to fertilize their ovum. As such, a developing female may have eggs fertilized by multiple males if more than one male successfully courts her mother. The act of fertilization stimulates the growth of the daughter egg’s shell and this prevents further fertilization of the daughter’s ovum from occurring.
A female who was not fertilized before the formation of her eggshell is effectively sterile. In this case, her hormones do not trigger the production of eggshell material, and many of her eggs begin to wither. As the outer membrane of these eggs breaks down, genetic material is released into the fluid which fills the ovary, and may come into contact with still viable eggs. Since this material is not contained in a motile package with enzymes to help in penetration of the ovum’s membrane, as is the case with sperm, only a very few of the potential viable eggs absorb the half-strands of genetic material released by the deterioration of non-viable eggs. Those which do fertilize are virtual clones of their mother, except that the lack of certain enzymes provided in the seminal fluid of the male inhibit the development of eggs in the clones. This leads, in a few generations, to females which cannot produce offspring, and who develop and mature much as do males. Of course, if a cloned female mates, her daughters’ only disability will be a smaller clutch when her eggs are laid.
What kind of culture do you think could develop from such a very non- terran life cycle?
0
Comments
Isn't those lifeforms evolved from Fungi and Pondscum?
There's no such thing.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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It's sentient and it's capable of creating biological puppets to interact with humanoids to keep the humanoids emotionally excited enough to keep feeding the tree.
And on the other hand, why SHOULD aliens be that alien? Presuming that they are mortal beings like us, they will have desires in common, the desire to survive, to procreate, for security and improvement of one's circumstances. Practically every alien in Star Trek,, from Vulcan to Borg shares in these desires if not all to the same degree.
Parasites are typically a form of devolution, in that they become simpler lifeforms than their antecedents as they jettison body parts which are merely redundancies. A tapeworm for instance no longer needs legs, arms, or eyes.
That's still evolution. They're adapting to their environment by changing. Evolution is not directional and simpler forms are still developed from more complex ones. They just fare better in a particular environment.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Back on topic: the point was raised about how alien an alien devised for fiction should be, and my answer is, as alien as the story needs to be. Somewhere between Cthulu and Bilbo is a wide range of human characteristics, motivation, and empathy. I cite The Black Destroyer by A.E. Van Vogt, (better known as Displacer Beasts elsewhere,) which was both truly alien, yet very human in its motivations. (You probably can't get the original, I have it in an anthology, but do get The Voyage Of The Space Beagle in which this masterpiece of poetic prose is reproduced with very slight modifications.)
In the case of the fictional race I outlined above I could imagine these aliens having similar desires but different priorities, for example, as humans so that from a character point of view the reader can empathize. The point is to see how biology guides culture and how culture guides biology..
You don't necessarily need to go that far afield, even. I wrote a scene once where a Saurian (yes, the ones in Star Trek) couldn't describe something to mammalian humanoid crewmates (a Bajoran and a Trill) because she could see into the ultraviolet range and therefore perceived colors that plain didn't exist for the others. See also pit vipers' heat sensing organs or insects' compound eyes.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
..what? It has active cultures!
and we dont know the history behind the changelings ether!!