Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:same species.jpg|link=Green Lantern|frame|They're the same species? You're kidding, right?]]
{{quote|'''Jen:''' Wings? I don't have wings!
'''Kira:''' Of course not. You're a ''boy''.
|''[[The Dark Crystal]]''}}
As explained [[Non-Mammal Mammaries|elsewhere]], we primates have certain visual cues we rely on to tell a woman from a man; men are generally taller and more muscular. Women are shorter, more curvaceous and have breasts. This is because we are ''Sexually Dimorphic'' animals.
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There are several alien or fantastical creatures in which the sexes are wildly different. This tends to run towards the extreme end of the Earth scale and beyond: they could be greatly unequal in strength or intelligence; one sex could even be reduced to an inert breeding machine (like the real-life scale insect) or parasite (which actually does happen on earth with deep-sea dwelling angler fish)!
Tends to go hand-in-hand with [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]. See also [[Cute Monster Girl]], [[One-Gender Race]], [[Humanoid Female Animal]], [[Mister Seahorse]], [[The Ugly
Taken to the logical extreme, this leads to [[Improbable Species Compatibility]].
Do also take note that this trope, in spite of its name, is not limited to species with binary sex systems.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime
* We reiterate: See [[Cute Monster Girl]].
* This also ''appears'' to be the case for the plants in ''[[Trigun]]'', with the girls in bulbs with the big strange eyes and all, and the only two guys walking around looking like blond men. But later manga material shows that Vash and Knives really are just mutants (probably throwbacks; the odds that the people who engineered the plants didn't use human DNA are vanishingly small), because some female independents come from space; the twins are just even weirder.
==
* [[Green Lantern|The Zamarons and The Guardians of the Universe]]. The [
** Even more confusingly, there are ''also'' female Guardians who look like Guardians. They originally came to be when Kyle Rayner (possessing at the time the godlike powers of Ion) recreated the Guardians years after Hal Jordan (at the time possessed by evil entity Paralax) wiped them all out. Of course in the current series all this is ignored and the guardians are shown in flashbacks to have been always both sexes. Don't ask where that means the Zamorans came from. [[Sarcasm Mode|Aren't retcons a wonderful thing]]?
* In Phil Foglio's ''[[XXXenophile]]'', Martian females are all gorgeous, buxom, four-armed women, and the males are tiny, squat, furry, mostly shapeless (and, incidentally, ''non-sapient'') hexapods with disproportionately large sex organs.
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* In ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (comics)|Legion of Super-Heroes]]'', male Dryads look like large masculine-seeming humanoids made of stone. In some continuities, female Dryads look like large masculine-seeming humanoids made of crystal. (In others they look like the male dryads with narrower waists and [[Non-Mammal Mammaries]].)
* Male Warlocks from ''[[Nemesis the Warlock]]'' walks on a pair of goat-esque hooves, while female have centaur-like bodies.
* This concept seems to have been parodied in [[She-Hulk]]'s series with the Thaloomians, the interdimensional race that the Living Eraser is a member of. Males are short, chubby, and toad like, while females all look like She-Hulk. The ruler of these aliens wanted to marry Jenn, claiming she resembled the perfection of his species. Jenn herself claimed it was like "one of those cheesy pulp-style science-fiction worlds where all the women are fabulous babes and the men look like something I'd scrape off the bottom of my shoe!" Of course, it's doubtful even the typical kidnap victims would be any less angry towards her abductor...
== Films -- Live-Action ==
* The Devaronians of ''[[Star Wars]]'' (See picture [[media:200px-Devaronians.jpg|here]]). The males look like devils. Hairless, with pointed teeth and large triangular horns. Also kind of small. The females are tall, hornless, covered in thick fur, and look like humanoid lemurs.
** Some artists, especially the great Jan Duursema, draw female Devaronians that look a little like the lemurs shown above, and more like hornless versions of the males (or red skinned humans with black spots), as seen [
*** Female Devaronians vary a lot, from the fairly hairless Sian Jeisel to [
** Another ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] example are the Cathar. Men look very much like saber-tooth lions who happen to be bipedal and have opposable thumbs. Women tend towards the [[Catgirl]] end of the scale.
*** Though, rather humorously, female Cathar looked just as animalistic as the males until they decided [[Catgirl]] Juhani in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' was a Cathar. Perhaps explainable due to the two being subspecies of one race.
** Not to mention the Twi-leks, where the men range from "mildly ugly" to "monstrous" while the women are almost all attractive.
** Maybe a case of [[Beauty Equals Goodness]], seeing as nearly every male twi'lek seen is a corrupt evil bastard, while all females are good people or at least innocent slaves.
*** Probably the case, as looking at some "good" male Twi'leks, like [
**** Unless of course it's Darth Talon, because [[Evil Is Sexy]]. Only for females, though. Which brings us full circle back to the dimorphism trope.
* The novelization of ''[[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home|Star Trek IV the Voyage Home]]'' would have you believe that [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Saratoga_helmsman,_2286.jpg this] is a male [http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/2/26/Ilia.jpg Deltan]. No other source corroborates this, and it can be assumed to be an error.
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** Played straight with the pictsies, tiny [[Bee People]] whose female breeders ("keldas") start out the same size as males, but grow twice as tall and spherically-fat after a lifetime of birthing hundreds of offspring. A kelda's rule over her clan is absolute, as she's mother to most and wiser than any.
*** Which isn't saying much as male Pictsies are impulsive and slow to think, even for a [[Proud Warrior Race]]. They'd probably all be dead without a kelda to keep them in line.
* Similar to Discworld, ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' inverts the trope with the dwarf race, with it being stated that female dwarves are often mistaken for men due to being similar to the males in voice and appearance. As every male dwarf we encounter in the book has a prominent beard, some readers have interpreted this as meaning that the female dwarves even have beards.
** In the films this became a rather comedic scene where Gimli humorously explains this phenomenon to a human woman. The human woman (Eowyn) then turns around and looks at Aragorn to see if Gimli is pulling her leg, and he mouths, "It's the beards," and gestures at his chin.
** Confirmed in ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', which says "For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike."
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* The future aquatic apes (Mer) from ''[[Primeval]]''.
* This trope is played with in the first season of ''[[Farscape]]'', where a Yenen named Staanz (played by a male actor) turns out to be an attractive ''female'' of the species.
* In the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' episode "Beer Bad", a group of male frat boys - and Buffy - drink cursed beer that causes them to "de-evolve" physically, mentally, and psychologically into Neanderthals. The males undergo a drastic physical change, becoming brutish and bestial with crooked teeth, heavy brow ridges, and plenty of extra hair, their intelligence only barely better than an animals'. Buffy, however, still looks mostly human and attractive, a [[Nubile Savage]] type, and can still talk, albeit in [[Hulk Speak]]. Possibly justified in that Xander took her home earlier than the others and they thus drank far more of it.
== Oral Tradition ==
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'''Kira:''' Of course not. You're a boy. }}
* Planet Koozbane from ''[[The Muppet Show]]'' showed a "[[Getting Crap Past the Radar|mating ritual]]" of the Koozbanian creatures and they looked nothing alike.
* Played with by Ronn Lucas. His main puppet, Scorch the dragon, learned from a book that he was missing a certain anatomical feature and must, therefore, be female. {{spoiler|He was holding the book upside down and did, in fact, have the horn shown.}}
== Tabletop Games ==
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*** And very likely going extinct, if gynosphinxes aren't having enough daughters to replace themselves each generation.
** There are also medusae—complete with snake hair and petrifying gaze—and maedars—which look more-or-less like bald human men—which are the male and female of the same species. Since 4th Edition this dichotomy in dimorphism has lessened; while male medusas are still bald (and have a gaze that poisons anyone that it falls upon rather than a petrifying gaze) they are quite obviously recognizable as members of the same species as the females.
** ''[[Pathfinder]]'' has the lashunta, a humanoid extra-terrestrial species with males and females so vastly different that it affects their racial ability score modifiers: their males are short, stocky and covered with hair and have a +2 bonus to Strength and a -2 penalty to Wisdom, their females are tall, thin and graceful and have a +2 bonus to Charisma and a -2 penalty to Constitution, both sexes have a +2 racial bonus to Intelligence.
* The ''[[Talislanta]]'' game does this with not one, but two species:
** In the first example, the stooped, wrinkled females are Gnorls and the gangly, monkey-like males are Weirdlings. The former live in elaborate cavern homes, while the latter live in simple burrows; they inhabit different regions, but come together every 50 years or so to mate. Both sexes were named separately by outsiders, who'd thought they were different races at the time, and no Gnorl ''or'' Weirdling will admit what (if anything) they call their mutual species.
** In the second example, female Batreans are [[Green-Skinned Space Babe|Green Skinned Space Babes]], complete with hyper-seductive pheromones, while their male counterparts are grotesque, hulking ogre-ish creatures. The females are intelligent and live in Polynesian-style villages, while the moronic males shamble around in the jungle, looking for edible things to hit.
* In one of the many ''[[Star Trek]]'' role-playing games, Orions are presented as having green-skinned females and gold-skinned males. No canon source bears this out. On the live-action shows, no males are seen until ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]'' and they're all green. Many of the [[Expanded Universe]] sources present Orions as having a range of skin colors, but pretty much universally present males and females as having the same range of colors, which generally doesn't include gold.
== Video Games ==
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** For those who don´t feel like checking [[The Other Wiki]], [[Don't Explain the Joke|that means]] [[Hot Amazon|Blood]] [[Love Makes You Crazy|Eye´s]] [[Exotic Equipment]] looks ''almost exactly'' like [[The Woobie|Ed´s]], only ''slightly'' smaller.
** Not even that: Females have a blunter, more square glans penis than males: any size-difference is negligible, with neither males or females being statistically significantly better endowed than the other, and with females equipment being fully-erectable just like the males, for use in dominance displays.
* In the now-long-defunct webcomic ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20210511165014/http://evilish.pensandtales.com/ Evilish]'', mermaids have fish tails while mermen have legs with fins. This makes the former jealous because only the latter can leave the sea to venture on land.
* In ''[[The Mansion of E]]'', male Motihauls have tentacle-like growths on their heads, while the females look more like furless cats.
* In ''[[Draconia Chronicles]]'' while the Dragons and Tigers females that are most prominently featured are anthropomorphic, the males of their respective races are actual full feral formed [https://web.archive.org/web/20120105061404/http://www.2wconline.net/draconia_033.html Dragons] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20120105054217/http://www.2wconline.net/draconia_101.html Tigers]
* In ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'' one character is a barn-sized [[Giant Enemy Crab]] while her mate is the size of a large-ish lobster.
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' has a few sophont species with unusual for Earth reproductive adaptations. Gzeaul male and female [https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2017-04-27 with clothes], [https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2017-06-11 without clothes]. But then, there are marsupial humanoid Qlaviqloids [https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-12-11 with three sexes: male, female, and muftale]; the only differences visible when they are clothed are in head shape and slightly different skin tone, either may or may not be related to sexual trimorphism.
== Web Original ==
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* From ''[[Wakfu]]'', all male Sadida have their entire head, including the face, covered by green hair—and this is true for the juveniles too. The females also have green hair, but their faces are devoid of pilosity.
* A throwaway gag on ''[[South Park]]'' has a male Gelgamek, a stocky green individual marginally larger than a male human of similar age and social standing, mention that the Gelgamek vagina is three feet wide, and [[Vagina Dentata|filled with razor-sharp teeth]]. One can only imagine what the rest of the Gelgamek female looks like.
* The [
* In ''[[Star Wars: The Clone Wars]]'', Female Dathomirians, which are a hybrid between Zabrak and humans, have chalk-white skin and bald heads. Male Dathomirians, however, resemble their Zabrak forefathers (like Darth Maul) with red or gold skin and horns.
* In ''[[Adventure Time]]'', in the episode "Her Parents" the parents of Lady Rainicorn visit Jake, and we discover that the male Rainicorns are far shorter than the female ones. And they eat human flesh.
* In ''[[Treasure Planet]]'' the dog-man alien scientist Doppler winds up a couple with the cat-woman captain Amelia. Fair enough, just one of those soft sci-fi things. However, their children turn up in the epilogue—a litter of kitten-girls and puppy-boys. This could, of course, be [[Gender Equals Breed]], but this trope is also a possible explanation.
* Zane and Zair from ''Redakai'' are a minor example. Despite being siblings (therefore [[Gender Equals Breed|most likely]] the same species), Zane has [[Little Green Men|green skin]], [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|blue hair]], and darkened eyelids—while his sister Zair has light red skin, dark red hair, [[Animal Eyes|catlike eyes]], and a [[Rubber Forehead Aliens|strangely familiar]] patch of bumps on her forehead.
* In ''[[Heathcliff and The Catillac Cats]]'', the male [[Funny Animal]] characters are of the [[Civilized Animal]] type. Riff-Raff's girlfriend Cleo, however, seems to be a step higher on the scale, looking more like the [[Petting Zoo People]] type.
== Real Life ==
[[Image:NBC 2014 Ident.jpg|link=NBC|thumb|He only looks like [[NBC|this]] to try to find a mate.]]
* Fish:
** In some species of anglerfish, after the male attaches himself to the female, his body degenerates until only his testes remain. He ceases to exist as an independent organism, and the female has sperm on tap for the rest of her life. No surprise why the angler fish won the titles of ''[[The Most Extreme]]'' in the episodes "Oddities" and "Appendages". There's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t7E4amWDqI a song] about it. And a [http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler small comic on it], too.
** Whalefish and bignoses are members<ref>female and male, respectively</ref> of the same species of abyssal fish so wildly different from one another that for the longest time, scientists thought that they were entirely different [[One-Gender Race]] species. Not only that, but they have a juvenile stage which is completely distinct from both of them and was itself mistaken for a third species.
* Birds:
** A great many birds have brightly colored males and plain, often larger females. In fact, the word for a male hawk or falcon is "tiercel", which comes from the french word for "one third", because male raptors are a third smaller than females. This makes a certain evolutionary sense—the female has to carry eggs, so a larger body is needed. Males can get away with being smaller (and thus needing less food) because birds generally don't physically fight except in extreme circumstances—it's too easy to hurt a wing and be crippled. Similarly, males normally are bright and females drab so that a nesting female is hard to spot but a displaying male easy to find. (There is also a theory that some species, like peacocks, are essentially advertising their fitness as a mate by showing off a major handicap—a big tail says "Hey, I can walk around with ''this'' strapped to my butt and ''still'' avoid predators! I'm an awesome provider!")
** Peafowl are good examples of extreme difference between the sexes, as are most Galliforms (Chickens, pheasants, turkeys, etc.)
** For an inversion of the usual trend, see the [[wikipedia:Eclectus Parrot|Eclectus Parrot]]. Males are a well-camouflaged green, females are a gaudy red, blue, and purple (Eclectuses are one of the only parrots to practice polygamy, and the females bright colors make it easier for the male to find his ladies on their respective nests). They were actually classified as two different species until (it is rumored) someone caught them mating.
** Another odd inversion: the Phalaropes. For some reason, this group of little Arctic shorebirds have reversed the usual avian gender roles. Females are brightly colored and fight over males, who are drabber and stay with the nest. They have been described [[Put a Bow On Her Head|elsewhere]] as "an entire Genus of [[Wholesome Crossdresser]]s."
** The huia, a strange bird native to New Zealand which was driven extinct by overhunting, had an entirely unique form of sexual dimorphism. The male and female had the same feather markings, but their beaks were shaped very differently. They had separate niches and ate in different ways: claims that they had to work as a team to eat are based on a misunderstanding.
**
* Snakes are very rarely dimorphic, but some species of constrictors have a similar size discrepancy to birds of prey, for similar reasons.
* Inversion: Female Spotted Hyenas have identical-looking genitals to males, with a "pseudopenis" and "pseudo-scrotum".
* Very common among arthropods:
** Spiders are infamous for examples of extreme dimorphism between the sexes. There is a tendency of the males to evolve into wanderers, spending their lives looking for more sedentary, web-bound females, resulting in them evolving to very different lifestyle requirements. For instance, in [
*** Male Salticids (jumping spiders) are often brightly colored and have very large "boxing glove" pedipalps in front, while females are brown or gray with small palps (P. audax, a common lab spider, is an exception to the color rule). Probably because Salticid females are very aggressive hunters, some species' males do elaborate (and hilarious) dances to increase the probability that females will recognize them as a mate rather than a snack.
*** In some species, the male will, after starting the process of sperm transfer (which is typically done with a pair of LEGS, spiders are weird), rotate their abdomen up toward the female's head and try to get her to EAT HIM. This is advantageous for the male, because it will provide her with valuable nutrition when she's finishing up the eggs he's fertilizing and putting them in their egg case. Given the longevity of these male spiders, and the travel time to the next female, he's extremely unlikely to ever encounter a second female anyway.
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** Bagworm moths. The females are wingless, eyeless, near-legless breeding machines. The male moth mates with the female while she is still in the cocoon, and in some species, particularly the [[One-Gender Race|asexually-reproducing ones]], the young hatch out of the female ''Alien'' style.
** [[Bee People|Eusocial]] insects have sexual ''tri''morphism, the reproducing females look different than the Worker females, which look different that the males.
***
** The adult females of some species of firefly are virtually indistinguishable from the larvae (i.e., grubs), while only the males are the elongated beetles we all know and love.
** Siafu/Driver Ants. The females are not small for ant standards (being about an inch long). The male is about the size of a large sausage, hence the term "sausage fly" for him. The "sausage" part is a bloated abdomen that makes them look like very obese dragonflies. This abdomen? Contains sperm. [[It Gets Worse]]. When they breed the females release a pheromone that attracts the male, who usually have nothing to do with the females (for good reason!). The females chew off all his limbs. Then they rip open his belly and impregnate themselves with the contents while the male lies dying.
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