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    #76
    Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
    Among Wraith the sole purpose of the Queens is to replenish their numbers, they could not stop doing that when it was needed the most that would remove their purpose.
    Queens provide some other benefits, like enhanced telepathic powers to keep the ship in order and to interrogate enemies.

    After the civil war and/or after food supply becomes sustainable, the Wraith could breed all Queens for a while to ensure each hive has a Queen again to start replenishing their numbers. From how Todd described Snow giving him a daughter, the Wraith have more control over the genders of their children.

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      #77
      I still do not see it as plausible that 60 females could keep an entire race alive if they have babies the human way, I just do not see it, it is just to much of a bottleneck.

      Was not Snow the name of the daughter?

      Comment


        #78
        Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
        Was not Snow the name of the daughter?
        Interesting... There must be something about the way it is worded in the book, because others have interpreted it that way too. Looking on pages 34 and 35 of "Homecoming," it is worded ambiguously, now that I re-read it. It is clearer on page 279 when Todd recalls Snow's zenana preserving the hive, which makes Snow the Queen and mother.

        Todd's daughter's name was Alabaster, per Jo's blog.

        Comment


          #79
          I just though it was the daughter as Todd remembers getting a daughter and right after he thinks of how gentle Snow's mind felt on his while he watched her sleep, that just made me think it was the daughter he was talking about.

          Comment


            #80
            Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
            I just though it was the daughter as Todd remembers getting a daughter and right after he thinks of how gentle Snow's mind felt on his while he watched her sleep, that just made me think it was the daughter he was talking about.
            If Jo drops back by the thread, this could be useful feedback. The other example of someone with the same interpretation is here: http://forum.gateworld.net/showthrea...1#post12310604

            Comment


              #81
              Snow is the Queen who took Guide as a consort. Alabaster is the daughter of Queen Snow and the consort Guide.

              You have no reason to trust me on this, but it's definitely so.

              Comment


                #82
                I am not saying that is not so, or that it is not clarified further on in the series. I am just saying that early in Homecoming the way it is written makes me think that Snow is the daughter whatever or not that is right or not.

                Comment


                  #83
                  Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post

                  Yes off course they do not need to reproduce as often as humans do, but still it would be to slow a reproduction, especially since they do loose allot of men in battle. And also we never, ever see a pregnant Queen. If human reproduction was to be how they did it, if they where going to have a chance in hell of reproducing fast enough that would mean the Queens would be constantly pregnant and we do not see one who are. This is the strongest indication that they do not reproduce like humans do, it just would not work.
                  And of course you're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree.

                  Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
                  They can be one percent bug and the rest human for all I care. I am just observing that with 60 and most likely less females they could not keep their numbers up through normal pregnancies, and especially not since none of those seen, over 10 percent of them, where not pregnant.
                  This is a very arbtrary figure, and I'm under the impression that you are simply adding up the number of hives and deducting the rate of attrition with regard to Queens? So you don't think there would be more to Wraith civilisation than what we've seen on screen i.e. hives? You don't think there would be an industrial base from which all this tech is derived, or that their society might be semi-nomadic, or possibly that there could be an agrarian facet to the culture? How do they feed their children, which are established as requiring food to live, where are the children kept, who cares for them, and how? Who manufactures all the equipment we've seen, and where is their industrial base?

                  No society exists in a vacuum, and Wraith are way past the hunter gatherer stage. This is a species that has FTL, and therefore must also have much greater recourse to methods we do not understand ourselves. Indulge me, and say if Wraith do use IVF (or equivalent) to manufacture blades/clevermen, then they could be podded up for gestation, which would bypass the need for pregnancy. But Wraith did not, could not, evolve and then pull the tech from out their backsides - that is sheer idiocy - so at one time in their evolution they would have had to rely on old-fashioned sexual reproduction.

                  Other factors you have to add in are the very distinct possibility that the Ancients did more than have a negligent hand in their evolution, and that they were used by said Ancients as some kind of experiment.
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                    #84
                    Originally posted by Isolde View Post
                    Other factors you have to add in are the very distinct possibility that the Ancients did more than have a negligent hand in their evolution, and that they were used by said Ancients as some kind of experiment.

                    I agree. Based on what Carson said about his previous theory being possibly faulty, I'd say we could assume the uneven gender ratios in Wraith population are unlikely to be purely the product of a natural evolution process but could be the result of some sort of genetic engineering/meddling. Who meddled and for what purpose remains the question.
                    Last edited by Draco-Stellaris; 14 March 2011, 05:57 AM.

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                      #85
                      This is a very arbtrary figure, and I'm under the impression that you are simply adding up the number of hives and deducting the rate of attrition with regard to Queens?
                      I am using logic, if you have 60 or so hives, which is what is stated in the show that there are, then there are a maximum of 60 Queen as there are only one per hive. 6 is ten percent of 60. In addition since allot of Queens have been killed of the number is probably lower than that, but 60 is the maximum.

                      So you don't think there would be more to Wraith civilisation than what we've seen on screen i.e. hives?
                      Off course there is. But since what one have seen on screen is the only thing one have to go on anything else would be pure guesswork, entertaining guesswork, but still guesswork.

                      You don't think there would be an industrial base from which all this tech is derived, or that their society might be semi-nomadic, or possibly that there could be an agrarian facet to the culture? How do they feed their children, which are established as requiring food to live, where are the children kept, who cares for them, and how? Who manufactures all the equipment we've seen, and where is their industrial base?
                      Interesting questions. I would assume that they take quite a bit of supplies from the worlds they cull, and their ships is certainly big enough to contain nurseries and fabrication facilities. However anything about this again would be speculation, and even if they did have a central depository or a city somewhere that would not really support the idea that they breed like humans do any more than if they produce all they have on their ships.

                      No society exists in a vacuum, and Wraith are way past the hunter gatherer stage. This is a species that has FTL, and therefore must also have much greater recourse to methods we do not understand ourselves. Indulge me, and say if Wraith do use IVF (or equivalent) to manufacture blades/clevermen, then they could be podded up for gestation, which would bypass the need for pregnancy. But Wraith did not, could not, evolve and then pull the tech from out their backsides - that is sheer idiocy - so at one time in their evolution they would have had to rely on old-fashioned sexual reproduction.
                      I am not sure what IVF is but I assume it stands for some sort of artificial gestation. However that is not what am suggesting. There is allot of creatures who do not birth live young. Fish do not grow their young in tanks, the female sprout out a huge number of eggs, which the male then fertilize. (there are variations but this is the most common.) Spiders do not grow their young in tanks, they lay huge amounts of eggs which is then placed in sack like constructions until they hatch. Ants do not grow their young in vats, the queens are fertilized once and then over her lifespan say every now and then plop out an egg which eventually hatch. Birds do not grow their young in vats they lay eggs.

                      I do not know where you got the idea that I think the Wraith grow their young in test tubes, off course they do not. However I do not think they do the hubba hubba, go pregnant for nine months and then birth a baby. If I am to guess I would say it is more likely that it works like with ants or spiders, with the Queen somehow being fertilized and then producing unfinished offspring in some sort of pod which then matures and hatches as that is a much more effective way to produce many offspring than a nine month pregnancy which results in one child.

                      I am not saying that there is no sort of sex involved, but I doubt that it is the same as with humans. Let us take common black ants as an example. A few individuals, males and females do not become workers, soldiers and so on, instead they grow wings. These winged ants will fly out of the anthill and mate, allot. After this the male wing ants die and the females are fertilized for life and they, unless killed kill become the queen of a new hill, just as an example here, another example, the Chile Rose tarantula, the female will live for 16 to 40 years, but they do not die of old age, at some point the female get an itch she can not scratch and she stops eating and at the same time she send out pheromones to attract a male. The male will fertilize her. The weakened female will then build a nest and lay her eggs, then she will starve herself to death so that when her myriad of young hatches they can get their first meal from her body. Great white sharks appears to be giving birth to live young, but instead the female lay eggs, but the eggs are internal, the male then fertilizes those eggs, then they hatch still inside the mother. A myriad of tiny, baby sharks live inside their mother, fighting one another, killing and eating their siblings until only the one or two strongest remain who are then born.

                      There are so many ways nature produces young, and each species have a way to do it which best suits the needs of that race. Why would not Wraith be the same way. Off course the Queen is in some way fertilized, however for a race with so few females it makes allot more sense for her to produce young in a way that A do not weaken her as much as normal human pregnancy do and B produces many babies at once.

                      I agree. Based on what Carson said about his previous theory being possibly faulty, I'd say the uneven gender ratios in Wraith population are unlikely to be purely the product of a natural evolution process but could be the result of some sort of genetic engineering/meddling. Who meddled and for what purpose remains the question.
                      I could be that the Ancients developed Wraith as a way to see if it was possible to live of energy completely. They might not have considered that that energy would come from human beings. I am just guessing here, but for some Ancients on the road to Ascension the idea of being sustained by Energy alone might be very seductive.

                      Comment


                        #86
                        Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
                        I am using logic, if you have 60 or so hives, which is what is stated in the show that there are, then there are a maximum of 60 Queen as there are only one per hive. 6 is ten percent of 60. In addition since allot of Queens have been killed of the number is probably lower than that, but 60 is the maximum.
                        Here is an excerpt from the transcript for "Underground." 60 is the best guess of the Genii for he number for active hiveships and doesn't seem include other facilities, like the cloning facility used in "SOW," or they would have paid that location a visit.

                        http://www.gateworld.net/atlantis/s1...ipts/108.shtml

                        ATLANTIS. CONTROL ROOM. Elizabeth and John walk over to a console where Doctor Peter Grodin is working.

                        WEIR: Major, I thought you might like to see this.

                        GRODIN: A lot of the information we downloaded from the data storage device was encrypted, so we're still working on that.

                        SHEPPARD: Yeah, I didn't think it would be easy.

                        GRODIN: But we were able to ascertain the existence of twenty-one Wraith hive ships just in our quadrant of the Pegasus galaxy alone.

                        SHEPPARD: Twenty-one?!

                        GRODIN: And there are indications of far more elsewhere in Pegasus.

                        SHEPPARD: How many more?

                        GRODIN: Well, there's no way of knowing for sure. Perhaps sixty, or more.

                        SHEPPARD: That's a lot of ships.

                        GRODIN: Some of them already appear to be on the move.

                        Comment


                          #87
                          Here is an excerpt from the transcript for "Underground." 60 is the best guess of the Genii for he number for active hiveships and doesn't seem include other facilities, like the cloning facility used in "SOW," or they would have paid that location a visit.
                          Off course 60 is not an exact number however there is nothing in the series indicating that there are much more. That being said even if it was five million hives the fact would remain that the female to male ratio would make human type reproduction both impractical and improbable. Most living things have a type of reproduction which git their needs, there are a few exceptions like pandas who have a reproduction so impractical it is amazing they have survived this long, however for the most part, evolution make it so that a race's method of having babies fit the race's needs.

                          Now the only way that Wraith could possibly be having children the same way humans do are if the Ancients indeed genetically engineered them and put in a bottle neck to control reproduction, however barring something like that it is just not logical for a race where less than one in two thousand individuals are females for a female to use the better part of a year to produce one child.

                          Comment


                            #88
                            Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
                            Now the only way that Wraith could possibly be having children the same way humans do are if the Ancients indeed genetically engineered them and put in a bottle neck to control reproduction, however barring something like that it is just not logical for a race where less than one in two thousand individuals are females for a female to use the better part of a year to produce one child.
                            That is what I am guessing. The Ancients meddled in everything else, and, as was said in WDC, the lack of files on the Wraith in the Ancient databases is suspicious.

                            Comment


                              #89
                              I still think it is more likely that it is ant like reproduction going on, but I am not completely rejecting the idea of Ancients having meddled with Wraith and tried to put in a bottle neck in reproduction for safety which then failed.

                              Comment


                                #90
                                Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
                                Off course there is. But since what one have seen on screen is the only thing one have to go on anything else would be pure guesswork, entertaining guesswork, but still guesswork.
                                Hmm, by this logic we should never entertain anything other than what we have seen on the screen, so speculation is out of the proverbial window. So, in that respect, I don't think you should bother with the books, as most of this is developed in a way that you will find disagreeable.

                                Spoiler:
                                Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
                                Interesting questions. I would assume that they take quite a bit of supplies from the worlds they cull, and their ships is certainly big enough to contain nurseries and fabrication facilities. However anything about this again would be speculation ...

                                I am not sure what IVF is but I assume it stands for some sort of artificial gestation. However that is not what am suggesting. There is allot of creatures who do not birth live young. Fish do not grow their young in tanks, the female sprout out a huge number of eggs, which the male then fertilize. (there are variations but this is the most common.) Spiders do not grow their young in tanks, they lay huge amounts of eggs which is then placed in sack like constructions until they hatch. Ants do not grow their young in vats, the queens are fertilized once and then over her lifespan say every now and then plop out an egg which eventually hatch. Birds do not grow their young in vats they lay eggs.

                                I do not know where you got the idea that I think the Wraith grow their young in test tubes, off course they do not. However I do not think they do the hubba hubba, go pregnant for nine months and then birth a baby. If I am to guess I would say it is more likely that it works like with ants or spiders, with the Queen somehow being fertilized and then producing unfinished offspring in some sort of pod which then matures and hatches as that is a much more effective way to produce many offspring than a nine month pregnancy which results in one child.


                                IVF = In Vitro Fetilisation = test tube babies, and no, I didn't think that. As for the remainder of your points, I am well aware of other methods of reproduction within different species, and so are the other members of the WDC. I think you'll find that as a whole we're a pretty intelligent bunch of people with a great deal of accumulated knowledge, so you're not telling us anything new.

                                However, I would say that you are being either disingenuous if you suggest I suppose ants, spiders and the like place their eggs in 'tanks', or believe that I'm just stupid? Of course not, because they do not have the tech or intellect, but they might if they did. Ah, but again I'm speculating so that is impossible.

                                Spoiler:
                                Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
                                I am not saying that there is no sort of sex involved, but I doubt that it is the same as with humans. Let us take common black ants as an example. A few individuals, males and females do not become workers, soldiers and so on, instead they grow wings. These winged ants will fly out of the anthill and mate, allot. After this the male wing ants die and the females are fertilized for life and they, unless killed kill become the queen of a new hill, just as an example here, another example, the Chile Rose tarantula, the female will live for 16 to 40 years, but they do not die of old age, at some point the female get an itch she can not scratch and she stops eating and at the same time she send out pheromones to attract a male. The male will fertilize her. The weakened female will then build a nest and lay her eggs, then she will starve herself to death so that when her myriad of young hatches they can get their first meal from her body. Great white sharks appears to be giving birth to live young, but instead the female lay eggs, but the eggs are internal, the male then fertilizes those eggs, then they hatch still inside the mother. A myriad of tiny, baby sharks live inside their mother, fighting one another, killing and eating their siblings until only the one or two strongest remain who are then born.


                                Yeah, I know. And so do the rest of the WDC, as this is a subject discussed ad nauseam. You're forgetting we've been talking about this stuff a lot longer than you, hon.

                                Spoiler:
                                Originally posted by Hagazussa View Post
                                There are so many ways nature produces young, and each species have a way to do it which best suits the needs of that race. Why would not Wraith be the same way. Off course the Queen is in some way fertilized, however for a race with so few females it makes allot more sense for her to produce young in a way that A do not weaken her as much as normal human pregnancy do and B produces many babies at once.


                                Fertilisation by numerous partners is best in this regard as it would ensure a greater genetic variation within the species.Too much inbreeding is not a good thing. However, I am at a loss as to why pregnancy would weaken a female Wraith? Teyla wasn't weakened and neither are most human woman, though of course there are exceptions to any rule. Pregnancy is a natural thing, and if it carried so many risks as to leave a mother vulnerable, I believe it would not be the way we reproduce now, as evolution would have put a stop to that.

                                The other thing about Wraith is that as an apex predator, it behoves them to keep their numbers small, as their food source i.e. us is vulnerable, and takes a looooong time to mature. The only reason there are so many about in Pegasus is because Team Shep wandered in and essentially threw a hand grenade that upset the whole balance. In that respect, rapid reproduction is counterindicative.
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