Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Difference between revisions

Tends to go hand-in-hand with [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]. See also [[Cute Monster Girl]], [[One-Gender Race]], [[Humanoid Female Animal]], [[Mister Seahorse]], [[Ugly Guys Hot Daughter]] and [[Bee People]]. For a (relatively speaking) more subtle sex difference, see [[Tertiary Sexual Characteristics]].

Do also take note that this trope, in spite of its name, is [[Bizarre Sexual Polymorphism|not limited to species with binary sex systems]].

== Comics ==

** 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|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.

* The Piggies and Buggers in ''[[Ender's Game|Speaker for the Dead]]''. Especially the piggies. The buggers are about as sexually dimorphic as real bugs. Both species call ''humans'' weird for having sexes so similar that both can perform the same societal function.

** The piggies' life cycle and reproduction is strange enough that it really deserves to be explained in full detail (though put in spoilers). [[spoiler:Both sexes start out small and grublike, but the dimorphism starts quickly. The males develop into the pig-like form that the humans in the story first assume were the only form, but will develop into enormous trees upon death and retain their sentience upon ''being ritually vivisected''.<br /><br />The females, on the other hand, almost all stay small and grublike, and after a certain time are carried by the pig-like males to the trees, and are ''impregnated by said trees'' via pollen. Then, when the young they're carrying are ready to be born, they ''eat their way out of their mother''. In addition, the occasional female will develop into a pig-like form like the males to serve as a matriarch, and eventually also be vivisected to become a "mothertree", which holds all the young and nourishes them with its sap.]] "Bizarre sexual dimophism" doesn't even ''begin'' to cover it.

*** This is all a relatively recent development from an evolutionary standpoint, caused by {{spoiler|the Descolada, a highly-adaptable virus that literally unravels DNA strands. The only things that can survive it are those who have adapted to use it}}.

* The insect-like society depicted in ''Hellstrom's Hive'' had breeding-machine females not conceptually unlike the piggies.

** [[Dougal Dixon]]'s work has a lot of this, like the Matriarch Tinamou, Bardelot and the Common Pine Chuck from ''[[After Man a Zoology of The Future]]'' and the Dingum in the New Dinosaurs

* [[John Varley]]'s ''[[Gaea Trilogy]]'' features a dimorphic intelligent species in which the gas-inflated males are living blimps and the deep-diving females are organic submarines. They begin life as sexless, snakelike animals, then choose which adult sex to metamorphose into when their consciousness and race-memory emerges. Mating takes place at the ocean's surface, aside from which the two sexes never interact.

* In ''[[The Steerswoman]]'' series, female demons are tall, spray acid from under their arms, and can make sculptures (out of a wax-like substance that their bodies produce). Male demons are much shorter and cannot make these sculptures. {{spoiler|Since these sculptures are how demons communicate, this is a major social barrier.}}

* ''[[Retief (Literature)|Retief]]'': In ''Retief and the Pan-Galactic Pageant of Pulchritude'', an alien comments to [[Ambadassador|Retief]] on the 'remarkable sexual dimorphism' of Terrans, after Retief slips a ringer into the titular beauty pageant: {{spoiler|a female Bengal tiger}}. The alien is apparently used to sexual dimorphorphisms extreme enough to make this plausible, and doesn't notice the difference between human males and females, except to suggest that the human with the large protrusions on his (actually 'her') upper thorax might want to see a doctor about it.

* Thuxians from ''[[Buck Godot Zap Gun for Hire]]'' exhibit a fairly mild form of this trope, assuming that the one male and one female seen in the comics are typical examples of their sex. Thuxians look vaquely like Xenomorphs in the ''[[Alien]]'' movies (they have a similarly shaped head, no visible eyes and somewhat similar tail). Al (male) is green, the back of his head is rounded and his face is shaped so that he looks to have a large nose (he doesn't seem to have nostrils, though). Tal (female) is blue and her head looks more like that of the Xenomorphs, extending further back and not having a nose like Al has.

** Maybe Al's just ugly.

** In particular, firstborn children are considered to "belong to the goddess" -- like actual hyenas, the first pregnancy is almost always fatal to the child. A firstborn who survives is seen as an omen and a lucky charm, a blessed person who was ''given back'' by their deity.

** The author, Ursula Vernon, based a huge amount of the work on the real-life characteristics of the anthropomorphized animals; while the mythology is taken from real world myths and legends. Definitely someone who [[Shown Their Work|did the research]], and did it well.

** 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!") The purpose of the size difference in male and female birds of prey is also to discourage competition for food between a mating pair. The larger female can catch large prey (and have plenty to feed her chicks) without worrying about the small male getting in her way.

** Peafowl are good examples of extreme difference between the sexes, as are most Galliforms (Chickens, pheasants, turkeys, etc.)

** 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|Wholesome Crossdressers]]."

** 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.

[[Category:Double Standard]]

[[Category:Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism]]