how does the wraith...

[Elitie]

...reproduce?

this is my first post so if this has been overly asked, please excuse me and have mercy on the flames.

but really tho, how exactly do these wraiths reproduce? they can't possibly be asexual can they? altho they evolved from big bugs and all...but they still got plenty of human genes in them...not to mention the whole point of having a queen...unless

...the whole hive ship worth of wraiths gang bangs the queen?

[Ouroboros]

Nobody really knows.

There's all sorts of speculation out there but personally I don't think the queens bear any sort of children directly. We've seen 3 of them and none of them ever appeared to be pregnant. Ant queens or other insect queens by contrast are constantly pregnant and laying eggs. The Irratus bugs also don't seem to be a hive structure type insect anyway so there's really very little support for the idea of Wraith queens being akin to queen beas or ant queens.

As fas as where more Wraith do come from I'm inclined myself to think that the hiveships, being biological, have something to do with it. I can more easily see scores of Wraith growing in those honeycomb type things we saw in rising that I can see the queen birthing them all.

This would also explain why children are rarely seen. They probably stay very near wherever they're born from and cared for until they're older or need to be moved for some reason like Ellia was.

[FallenAngelII]

Nobody really knows.

There's all sorts of speculation out there but personally I don't think the queens bear any sort of children directly. We've seen 3 of them and none of them ever appeared to be pregnant. Ant queens or other insect queens by contrast are constantly pregnant and laying eggs. The Irratus bugs also don't seem to be a hive structure type insect anyway so there's really very little support for the idea of Wraith queens being akin to queen beas or ant queens.

As fas as where more Wraith do come from I'm inclined myself to think that the hiveships, being biological, have something to do with it. I can more easily see scores of Wraith growing in those honeycomb type things we saw in rising that I can see the queen birthing them all.

This would also explain why children are rarely seen. They probably stay very near wherever they're born from and cared for until they're older or need to be moved for some reason like Ellia was.

1) Why would the Queens have to constantly be pregnant? You spawn hellspawn when you need to and they are already short on food.
2) We know next to nothing about the Iratius bug. We cannot speculate on whether they have queens or not.
3) Or it could be they don't want kids running around the ship causing trouble.

[Ouroboros]

1- Insect queens always are. I'm just mentioning that since the whole hive/insect thing is typically where the idea of hivequeens as being roughly analagous to ant queens comes from, but it really doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.

2- We know enough to say with confidence that it's not a hive type insect. The one Shep got on his neck was by itself in it's own web not part of any hive, and the swarm in the cave seemed to be just a disorganised mess of the same type of bug with no clear seperation into castes and no queen present. Since there were eggs present it was probably a mating swarm, a method through which come insects do reproduce. It's interesting to note as well that in such types of insects one gender does typically tend to outnumber the other by a considerable amount.

3- Could be indeed. We have no idea where Wraith kids come from. The hive nursary idea is just one possible explanation.

[FallenAngelII]

1- Insect queens always are. I'm just mentioning that since the whole hive/insect thing is typically where the idea of hivequeens as being roughly analagous to ant queens comes from, but it really doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.

2- We know enough to say with confidence that it's not a hive type insect. The one Shep got on his neck was by itself in it's own web not part of any hive, and the swarm in the cave seemed to be just a disorganised mess of the same type of bug with no clear seperation into castes and no queen present. Since there were eggs present it was probably a mating swarm, a method through which come insects do reproduce. It's interesting to note as well that in such types of insects one gender does typically tend to outnumber the other by a considerable amount.

3- Could be indeed. We have no idea where Wraith kids come from. The hive nursary idea is just one possible explanation.

2) As opposed to the ones in "Conversion". We cannot draw any conclusions on that one bug that attacked sheppard. Just because some insects form hives does not mean they always stick together. Some wander off, maybe in search of food. A whole swarm of them rampaging through the countryside would scare off the prey. Also, that was a swarm of insects together. How can you base anything off of that, especially their caste system?

[BC - 303]

my guess, sex, from the quote in Allies
"we have an entire wraith encyclopeidia, and we dont know where to start"
"when i got my first encyclopeidia, i started with S"
"as much as the wraith repoductive system may be interesting..."

[The Prophet]

Well, My preferance would be selected Females that are raised & tought to bear children. They are impregnated repeatedly taking in consideration the Period cycle, greatly protected & once there they reach the menopause, disposed of. The eggs that are hatched are stored in Combs, classed into castes & fead. They transform into Human-Larvae like creatures which then grow to toddler bugs who them grow to Ellia-type Wraith who then become Full-Fledge Wraith.

It'd be interresting to see a Winged-Wraith... Just for fun...

[The Ori]

They reproduce by doing the naughty. HeHe

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

1- Insect queens always are. I'm just mentioning that since the whole hive/insect thing is typically where the idea of hivequeens as being roughly analagous to ant queens comes from, but it really doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.

An example can be seen in the Goa'uld even. They grew an egg sac to birth their young.

[Chutzpah]

Oh, i thought they didn't reproudce

I guess i figured if you never die of old age, and have nothing else with the ability, or will to kill you then you never really need to.

[Ltcolshepjumper]

what if the Keepers reproduce, since they watch over the hive.

[Ltcolshepjumper]

As fas as where more Wraith do come from I'm inclined myself to think that the hiveships, being biological, have something to do with it. I can more easily see scores of Wraith growing in those honeycomb type things we saw in rising that I can see the queen birthing them all.

if the ships do the reproducing, then why are there different types of wraith?.
... unless... it's in the programming.

[Ouroboros]

2) As opposed to the ones in "Conversion". We cannot draw any conclusions on that one bug that attacked sheppard. Just because some insects form hives does not mean they always stick together. Some wander off, maybe in search of food. A whole swarm of them rampaging through the countryside would scare off the prey. Also, that was a swarm of insects together. How can you base anything off of that, especially their caste system?

I actually talked about the covnersion ones too in my last post. Lots of otherwise solitary insects swarm together like that when mating times comes around and that's what the ones in the conversion cave seemed to be doing.

The one in 38 minutes had built a web by itself out in the middle of nowhere.

Every sign right now points to Irratus bugs being solitary hunters more akin to something like Spiders than organised social insects like Ants.

what if the Keepers reproduce, since they watch over the hive.

If we cut it down to just keepers that makes the numbers problem worse since there seems to be even less of them around.

if the ships do the reproducing, then why are there different types of wraith?.... unless... it's in the programming.

The way I see it the queens probably direct the ship's birthing of new Wraith soldiers/darts etc. Their role is to determine what the hive needs next and tell the ship to make it. I'd say they probably do this via psychic communication with the hiveship itself which is why only they can do it and not the psychically weaker males.

[Elles]

This may be repeating some of the stuff already said here, but... yeah...

Personally I don't see why they'd want to reproduce. After all, they don't die of natural causes, and it wouldn't be mutually good for either us or them. If the population was constantly growing and none of them were dying of old age, wouldn't resources such as us humble humans become scarce? But maybe the reason why they hibernate for so long is not just to let the population on their feeding grounds increase, but also for population control.

But you know, the Wraith must know that if they start reproducing they're going to undo themselves.
"Our feeding ground has not been that rich in 10,000 years."
--The Keeper Wraith-Type-Person
The Rising, Part II
They do know that they're running out of food and the fact that they've awoken early is going to make their food problems... worse. They need to start dying faster... That's where P-90s come in...

All I know is that there are already too many Wraith in the Pegasus galaxy, and if they make even more while they're busy trying to get to Earth, it can only be very bad.

Bit of a dark thought here, if they end up killing every human in the Pegasus galaxy, it would be the end of a great threat. Same Pandora's box dilemma...

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

Well they would need to replenish there losses. True more Wraith mean more mouths to feed but say a majority of the Wraith are killed in a hiveship then who will gather food for the others in the darts? The Wraith rely on their mass numbers against technologically advanced foes and no reproduction means no numbers to throw at the enemy. Anyway hope we see something that relates to this next season.