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So humans and these aliens will be interacting in this story and reproduction will be one of the clashing differences they have, so my question is how would western human society react to this form of reproduction?
For these aliens the sexual dimorphism is such that the males are the hosts and the females are the parasites. It's alot like reverse angler fish dimorphism and this is how it works: the females are basically really small tubes with arms and attach themselves to the males' gonads; when the female does it also her immune system and everything else combines with the male's body and they become one. The females know only one thing and that is to attach to the best male and reproduce as fast as possible.
The females outnumber the males 100 to 1. There are three gonads on the male and once they are all taken the females just attach to the previous female forming long chains that look like tails.
As for gestation and birth well gestation occurs in the male once the female has been fertilized and sends the eggs to an organ to store them and then after a 80 day period the one male has a live birth and is sent through a canal through the chain of females and then after that one hundred females are born in tiny eggs. And yes the next up in line females can fertilized when a canal grows up through all of them and send the fertilization material and retrieves and births the eggs. The fertilization and birth cycles only happen once a decade as well.
Amoeba
Posted 2018-02-15T01:40:44.027
Reputation: 3 561
How closely will humans interact with these aliens? – IEW – 2018-02-15T01:51:08.013
a common individual What's that ? How individuals react will be different, and how different cultures react will also tend to be different. As the fundamental issue is how well the aliens and humans mix/co-exist without major problems or resource clashes. – StephenG – 2018-02-15T01:52:23.527
@IEW pretty closely, up to the point where humans and them are paired together for missions and they are the most common alien species on earth – Amoeba – 2018-02-15T01:52:29.610
@StephenG layman, and im mostly referring to Western culture reactions – Amoeba – 2018-02-15T01:53:24.657
"Layman" tells us nothing. "Common individual" is about as descriptive as "average opinion". Opinions and reactions would vary wildly from person to person. As such the entire question is opinion based. – StephenG – 2018-02-15T02:00:23.263
@StephenG okay then I'll take out individual – Amoeba – 2018-02-15T02:01:33.527
I doubt anyone could tell you how people would react to "apple and blueberry flavored Coke", let alone how they'd react to such a radically different reproductive system in a species whose intent, general interaction and behavior in a social sense are unknown to us (on Worldbuilding SE). Your question remains unclear/vague in this sense. We don't even know if people can communicate with them on an everyday level. – StephenG – 2018-02-15T02:14:34.143
1I mean, I feel pretty confident that the "average opinion" would be confined to "ew, weird" ... followed by acceptance, humorous mild curiosity, and memes. And while this question may skirt the edge of opinion based, I feel confident saying that it's clearly easier to model a reliable human reaction to a reproductive system in particular than it is to a flavor of soda. I'm just also not sure what more there is to be said about it than the above. – Random – 2018-02-15T02:31:58.727
human biologist on the other hand will be fascinated as it is a complicated mess of a reproductive system and just like the complicated messes on earth they love to study them. the real question is how with they react to humans who actually talk to their females and treat the sexes as equals (hopefully) and evaluate mates on intelligence. – John – 2018-02-15T02:45:32.967
There are so many animals on Earth with so many ways of reproduction (excluding what is becoming less frequently known as perversion amongst ourselves) that, quite frankly, I don't believe any reproductive behavior would particularly surprise anyone. In fact, it's more likely that we'd shrug our shoulders and say, "OK" and ignore it because, like an expletive in a foreign language, it doesn't really mean anything to us. I should think the only reason it would matter is that the "tail" gets in the way of getting a job done, then it would be annoying. Unless there's a odor... that might work. – JBH – 2018-02-15T06:05:07.770
3One more thing, while I expect there are many on this site who would disagree with me, I personally think that trying to develop anything for shock value is forcing the story and inevitably cheapens your work. Develop your creatures for a purpose of their own and let the story tell itself. Perhaps it will shock, perhaps it won't (it might surprise you where your story takes you). But forcing it will never win you an award. Which is a long-winded way of saying you shouldn't have been surprised by the responses to your question. – JBH – 2018-02-15T06:16:05.370
1Personally, I'd wonder how they can move around and not accidentally crush their attached females and offspring in making. It does not seem a very safe way of reproducing. – Real Subtle – 2018-02-15T12:08:47.900
1In Fury Born, by David Weber, has three species - two of which are fairly similar, and one that is very dissimilar. Of course, the first two were mortal enemies, being close enough for differences (including gender and social roles) to be offensive, while the third was so different there weren't reasons to fight. We'd have a harder time with a subjugated gender or caste that was visually similar, even if biology was involved in that division, due to our history and attitudes... your species' females aren't similar enough to them or us to be "people", they'd likely be overlooked. – Megha – 2018-02-16T08:51:13.953