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

[Phantasm]

I've always considered a few genders for aliens:

Male, Female, Hermaphrodite, Hermaphromorph, Neuter, and Referee.

The first two are self-explanetory. Hermaphrodites have both male and female sexual organs; Hermaphromorphs can change gender, either at will or under various circumstances; Neuters are essentially those that lack sexual organs of any kind, unable to participate in the reproductive process.

Referees are those who act as matchmakers; while technically genderless, they have the ability to induce 'heat' in those with female genitalia, cover any of the other genders with pheromones that attract those with opposite genitalia, and act as guides to ensure healthier offspring among those with female organs. (They also make excellent diplomats with other sapient species.)

[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.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

I love this thread, and want to carry its babies around in my navel. :]

[talonthehand]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

I love this thread, and want to carry its babies around in my navel. :]

Seriously, I've been working on a scifi setting off and on for the past couple years (well, mostly off), and this'll give me a solid base for a variety of critters to populate those worlds...when I get around to it.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by starslayer

Don't nessassarily get hung up on 'male/female'.

Some microbacteria 'trade' genetic information between each other. If a species were to become intelligent but retain that early genetic ability they might have conscious control of this ability when breeding; in which case 10 goblaps get together, one of them molts a blank (a completely genetically void section of stem cells) then the ten of them take turns conferring traits until it is a whole genetic code then it starts to grow.

I'll give it my eyes, ohh your eyes are good so I will add my mathematical ability, ohh that would be an excellent pairing with my musical background...

Such a species would react to change very well as they can select the most efficent breeding traits in one generation to react to lean, and the most powerful but expensive ones in times of plenty. Depending on how strong there sense of individual rights are they might also purposely breed for tasks selecting traits suited for those tasks

My 'Helians' are somewhat like this:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...c2782707778b1f

They exchange 'genetic' material optionally, by a process akin to the process by which they feed. Further, their hereditary information changes in response to changes in their physiognomy and other factors, they are rather 'Lamarckian'. Also, there is no sharp species boundary among the life-forms of their environment, any 'animal' form can exchange genetic material with any other and have it influence offspring.

(Note that humans and other mammals have a 'changing' element of heredity as well, in a vastly smaller way, in the form of methylation of genes).

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Greetings, all!
[list][*]Three sexes, as in the Player of Games by Iain M. Banks: the male, female, and the 'apex', whose function is basically the transit of spermatozoa. But that seems like a not-too-useful build from an evolutionary perspective.

It adds complexity, for no obvious payoff. But special case circumstances might just work. For ex, if the 'third sex' was actually an entirely different species, it might exist in symbiosis with the first species, perhaps carrying the offspring of the other species in exchange for protection, or food.

Another possibility, a plant form that acts as a sessile 'uterus' or 'pouch' for the development of animal life forms, in exchange for being 'protected' or spread by the animals.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Fish

An extreme case is the angler fish, where the tiny male actually fuses with the large female and atrophies away until virtually nothing of him is left.

This could have variations. For ex, borrowing an idea from E.E. Smith, which he applied force-field based creatures, you could have a species where the male and female don't jsut mate but merge, into a single parental form of the species, to look after the offspring. If sapient, this could produce a very alien psychology, esp. if the mind of the merged entity is a different being than either of the sapient 'pre-parents'.

Then, of course, there is the Pak life-cycle of the Niven 'Known Space' universe, which consists of child, then a subsapient 'breeder', when, after reaching the end of the reproductive years, a metamorphosis to an asexual sapient 'Protector' stage that instinctively guards and protects the children and breeder age Pak. Humans are in fact descended from the Pak, and we can produce Protector-stage humans if conditions are right.

Then there are the 'Eddorians' of the Lensman series, who are rather like unicellular beings in that they don't really die except by violence. Instead of dying from old age, an old Eddorian fissions into two new young Eddorians. They are absolutely, totally asexual.

You could have aliens like starfish, in which severed bits of the body can grow into a new alien. That could be the standard means, or it could be a side-means, with sexual or other reproduction also in play.

Then there are the dragons of Pern, which have two kinds of female (the enormous Golds and relatively small Greens), and three kinds of male (in order of decreasing size, the Bronzes, the Browns, and the Blues), who fill in the size range between the female Gold and the female Green.

The details are never given, but we're told that a Bronze/Gold mating can produce eggs of any color, but a Brown/Gold can't produce Gold eggs and not many Bronzes.

Or you could have tremendous sexual dimorphim. The land-dwelling Great Dragons in my world, for ex, are all male, the females are pelagic ocean dwellers who look totally unlike the adult males. (Their actual reproduction is fairly straightforward, though.)

Or you could have a species in which the 'eggs' are more like 'seeds', putting out root-like structures to take in food and moisture to sustain the embryro, and not hatching out until conditions are right. Such a species could apparently be extinct, even though their living eggs are hidden away somewhere waiting for the right stimulus to hatch.

[capnq]

Originally Posted by starslayer

Don't nessassarily get hung up on 'male/female'.

Some microbacteria 'trade' genetic information between each other. If a species were to become intelligent but retain that early genetic ability they might have conscious control of this ability when breeding; [..]
Such a species would react to change very well as they can select the most efficent breeding traits in one generation to react to lean, and the most powerful but expensive ones in times of plenty. Depending on how strong there sense of individual rights are they might also purposely breed for tasks selecting traits suited for those tasks (Soldiers have higher 3d spatial senses, reflexes, and overall resilience) or could lead to more accountability for parenting (Why did you EVER think it was a good idea to instill your poor reflexes into your child!?!)

Originally Posted by talonthehand

The science fiction webcomic Schlock Mercenary has a species with three races (male, female and muftale), where the males and females provide genetic material in sperm and ovum like with most mammals, and the muftale raises the newborn in a marsupial-like pouch for a year or so.

Schlock's own species reproduces by a method similar to what starslayer describes above, and is even capable of including other species' genetic traits. (Schlock's desire to produce children with Admiral Breya was a long-running subplot.) I think the process was explained somewhere in the "Quest for Second Sight" subarc of The Teraport Wars, but I can't find the individual strip(s).

Warhammer 40,000's Genestealers use an extreme form of parisitism.

I recall a couple more that I've read in SF short stories, but can't recall titles or authors.

One story had three sexes, male, female, and guardian. The guardians were sterile, but physically superior, and obsessively, ruthlessly protective of their bonded pairs' offspring.

Another story had a sapient species whose offspring were parasitic. The birth process was lethal to the host, but the species' culture required that the host give informed consent before the egg was implanted.

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

The reproduction of plants can be an inspiration, too. Plants have what is called "alternation of generations." It isn't noticeable in seed plants, but in some spore plants the two generations both consist of separate, free-living plants that are generally very dissimilar. The gametophyte generation reproduce sexually. The zygote can become a separate free-living organism (a sporophyte), or a sporophyte that grows more-or-less parasitically on the body of the female gametophyte. The sporophyte generation can be identical to the gametophytes, or it can look totally different. Either way, a sporophyte reproduces asexually with spores, which mature into gametophytes.

I'm not positive, but I think that in seed plants the gametophytes have been reduced to tiny reproductive organs fused to the body of the much larger sporophyte.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Also, there is no sharp species boundary among the life-forms of their environment, any 'animal' form can exchange genetic material with any other and have it influence offspring.

Bacteria may to be able to exchange genes between different species.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

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.

That reminds me of the Martians in Stranger in a Strange Land. I haven't actually read the book so I don't know the details, but I skimmed part of it. Apparently Martians are all born female. After they are fertilized and finish giving birth to some new females, they metamorphise into adult males. I don't know if the females are sapient or not.

[stefanj]

Beyond reproduction, but related to it, you need to consider, um, the route to maturity.

How long does the individual take to grow up? Does it change form? What changes are their in intellect and emotional state?

My very-first RPG supplement described an essentially-mammalian* species that had a sort of extended adolescence. Sexually but not emotionally or intellectually mature. These "kids" were scheming and horny and violent. A strong adult leader could corral them into running a farm or mine or such, but without constant supervision (and intimidation) the kids would run off and indulge in banditry. Civilizations rose and fell for a very long time until someone figured out that removing a certain gland ended this adolescence early. The resulting individual was every-so-slightly less capable than an adult who went through the whole long maturation process. But he or she had many more years of productivity, and civilization became possible.

* They didn't product milk; mom regurgitated food that had been partially digested and spiked with enzymes.