Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Difference between revisions
quote cleanup
m (clean up) |
(quote cleanup) |
||
Line 84:
* [[Jack Chalker]]'s ''[[Well World]]'', in all its glory. Too many examples to list.
* 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''
: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.
** There's also the {{spoiler|apparently female-only deer-like creatures that are impregnated by the grass-like male half of the species}}. The xenobiologists spend half the book puzzled over evidence of genetic exchange (which implies the species don't reproduce by parthenogenesis like some [[wikipedia:Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizard|earth species]] do), yet without any apparent presence of males.
*** 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}}.
| |||