[Space/Aliens] Reproductive Features: alien, exotic and weird ideas

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

More from Uplift:


"Tandu are hermaphroditic. They exchange genes by eating the spore-pods of dead Tandu; once fertilized, they lay a dozen or so eggs at a time."

"Other Methods" from GURPS UPlift:
"Parents lay eggs in host creature, which is eaten away by the developing young. (Or perhaps the parents suffer this fate!)"
...
Mating may be fatal to one or all parents.
Young compete among themselves murderously, yet are sapient and grow up remembering how they killed (and ate?) their siblings. [Thri-Kreen and Tohr-Kreen in D&D are this way]
Yound are produced when an adult is torn painfully into many pieces, each of which grows up into a different adult with most of the parent's abilities but few or no memories; the adult is gone."


You can also look up Neogi reproduction, from D&D: http://www.dotd.com/mm/MM00225.htm
It seems pretty reasonable for an extraterrestrial species in a scifi setting, perhaps with a little tweaking.

This doesn't have to be as ghastly as it is usually presented. For ex, a species in which genetic material is exchanged once or more during life, fertilizing multiple embryos (using these terms loosely). After the natural death of the parent, then the embryos gestate and consume the corpse of the already-dead parent.

Still not 'nice' by human standards, but not as horrific as the way the neogi and their ilk reproduce.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the 'Moties' of The Mote In God's Eye. They are all (IIRC) born male, then turn female, and have a window of time during which she must become pregnant or else she dies. If she does become pregnant, after she gives birth she switches back to male and the cycle starts over, through his/her lifespan.

Naturally, the Moties have major overpopulation problems.