Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

I only note that it's strange because Loroi seem to have been based on humans in-universe. I know there are out-of-universe reasons, but it does make me wonder what the in-universe reason the Soia might have had for deliberately swapping it back around.

Speaking hypothetically, of course, Beryl notes that she considers the larger percentage of females (and therefore greater reproductive capacity) to be a basic adaptation for a warrior species. All of the other known "warrior" species (Loroi, Delrias, Barsam, Nissek) are either female-dominated or hermaphroditic.

[RedDwarfIV]

I only note that it's strange because Loroi seem to have been based on humans in-universe. I know there are out-of-universe reasons, but it does make me wonder what the in-universe reason the Soia might have had for deliberately swapping it back around.

Speaking hypothetically, of course, Beryl notes that she considers the larger percentage of females (and therefore greater reproductive capacity) to be a basic adaptation for a warrior species. All of the other known "warrior" species (Loroi, Delrias, Barsam, Nissek) are either female-dominated or hermaphroditic.

That wasn't really my point. I agree with you that, with a high percentage of females, you could create a larger population. But then you have the issue of who is going to go into combat. You can't send the pregnant women or the women raising the children, or you'll lose that reproductive edge. I just think that, if you were engineering a species as a warrior, it would be more pragmatic to have the females' primary purpose be reproduction while the males' primary purpose is fighting - especially if you're using a species that already has a watered down version of those traits as a template. The males only have to donate their gametes, after all, while the females have to spend months carrying a baby then years teaching it.

I don't see how making the sex most responsible for reproduction also be the sex that does the fighting makes sense for a race engineered that way. But then, Beryl is biased in that regard. She's been taught her whole life that the Loroi are Proud Warriors, and since they are Proud Warriors, they must always have been Proud Warriors. She wouldn't realise the contradiction existed.

[icekatze]

hi hi

It really isn't much of a contradiction when you look at the percentage of any population that actually participates directly in fighting during a war. Some of the most deadly wars we have seen on Earth haven't had more than 1/3rd of any given population in the military, let alone killed in the military.

[Arioch]

I agree with you that, with a high percentage of females, you could create a larger population. But then you have the issue of who is going to go into combat. You can't send the pregnant women or the women raising the children, or you'll lose that reproductive edge. I just think that, if you were engineering a species as a warrior, it would be more pragmatic to have the females' primary purpose be reproduction while the males' primary purpose is fighting - especially if you're using a species that already has a watered down version of those traits as a template. The males only have to donate their gametes, after all, while the females have to spend months carrying a baby then years teaching it.

That's an unnecessary overspecialization, reproductively speaking. A female warrior can't bear children and fight at the same time, but she can do one or the other and switch between the two roles as needed. A male warrior can never bear children, and so he's reproductive dead weight when he isn't fighting. Sure, males can be used for insemination, but this takes a very small number of males and can be done entirely artificially in a high-tech environment. You can also go farther to the complete extreme: a hermaphroditic species like the Barsam in which 100% of the population can both fight and bear children (though even the Barsam can't out-reproduce the Loroi, because their greater size and physical complexity increases both gestation times and wear-and-tear on the "mother"). If you want to keep a percentage of your females safe behind lines and always bearing children, you can choose to do that -- but you're not forced to by biology.

This kind of explosive industrial-level reproductive capacity is usually unnecessary and undesirable in a naturally-evolved species (as it will result in catastrophic overpopulation) or even in the modern but comparatively "normal" society that the Loroi live in now -- in which a significant percentage of the population has to work in other jobs full time and you can never have 90% of them fighting. But imagine a hypothetical past (such as that hinted at in the Loroi sagas) in which the proto-Loroi were pure warriors -- having to make war or reproduce and literally nothing else.

[Absalom]

I only note that it's strange because Loroi seem to have been based on humans in-universe. I know there are out-of-universe reasons, but it does make me wonder what the in-universe reason the Soia might have had for deliberately swapping it back around.

Speaking hypothetically, of course, Beryl notes that she considers the larger percentage of females (and therefore greater reproductive capacity) to be a basic adaptation for a warrior species. All of the other known "warrior" species (Loroi, Delrias, Barsam, Nissek) are either female-dominated or hermaphroditic.

That wasn't really my point. I agree with you that, with a high percentage of females, you could create a larger population. But then you have the issue of who is going to go into combat. You can't send the pregnant women or the women raising the children, or you'll lose that reproductive edge. I just think that, if you were engineering a species as a warrior, it would be more pragmatic to have the females' primary purpose be reproduction while the males' primary purpose is fighting - especially if you're using a species that already has a watered down version of those traits as a template. The males only have to donate their gametes, after all, while the females have to spend months carrying a baby then years teaching it.

I don't see how making the sex most responsible for reproduction also be the sex that does the fighting makes sense for a race engineered that way. But then, Beryl is biased in that regard. She's been taught her whole life that the Loroi are Proud Warriors, and since they are Proud Warriors, they must always have been Proud Warriors. She wouldn't realise the contradiction existed.

If you really want a Warrior Race then the Loroi are sorta there. Termites & similar provide the missing piece: a handful of females perform the majority of reproductive duties, being grotesquely adapted via their own biology, with the Warriors as backups that rarely get invoked. You really want the bulk of the population to be capable of reproduction, but not because that makes them a "warrior race": you want it because if they mostly get wiped out, then they can recover faster, and that is what makes them a warrior race.

[Dirty Yasuki]

With regards to any discussion on whether warrior societies should be based around the female gender and what precedents they should follow, I would like to submit that ants and bee colonies on Earth are protected by drones and all drones are inherently female. (and sterile females at that) The males of the species' only purpose is to reproduce and die. They serve no other purpose.

Nature and biology seems to have found a precedent for having females be the de facto aggressive members of their species.

[Arioch]

The "queen" model may superior if you lay eggs, but for live birth you need more bodies to get more babies. Some ant queens can lay tens of thousands of eggs per day, but it would take a seriously freaky body to birth that many live babies.

Also, they have recently found that many "worker" bees, ants, etc. aren't actually sterile. Some of them occasionally sneak their own eggs in with the queen's batch and hope that nobody notices.

[Krulle]

Do it like the seahorses:
Hand over the egg to have it bred by the father.
As adapted and genetically engineered species you could use sterile worker drones to carry out the babies, so that the queen can reproduce like hell.

But we're getting too far from the template, and far into hypothetical discussions how such a society would look like.

[RedDwarfIV]

I agree with you that, with a high percentage of females, you could create a larger population. But then you have the issue of who is going to go into combat. You can't send the pregnant women or the women raising the children, or you'll lose that reproductive edge. I just think that, if you were engineering a species as a warrior, it would be more pragmatic to have the females' primary purpose be reproduction while the males' primary purpose is fighting - especially if you're using a species that already has a watered down version of those traits as a template. The males only have to donate their gametes, after all, while the females have to spend months carrying a baby then years teaching it.

That's an unnecessary overspecialization, reproductively speaking. A female warrior can't bear children and fight at the same time, but she can do one or the other and switch between the two roles as needed. A male warrior can never bear children, and so he's reproductive dead weight when he isn't fighting. Sure, males can be used for insemination, but this takes a very small number of males and can be done entirely artificially in a high-tech environment. You can also go farther to the complete extreme: a hermaphroditic species like the Barsam in which 100% of the population can both fight and bear children (though even the Barsam can't out-reproduce the Loroi, because their greater size and physical complexity increases both gestation times and wear-and-tear on the "mother"). If you want to keep a percentage of your females safe behind lines and always bearing children, you can choose to do that -- but you're not forced to by biology.

This kind of explosive industrial-level reproductive capacity is usually unnecessary and undesirable in a naturally-evolved species (as it will result in catastrophic overpopulation) or even in the modern but comparatively "normal" society that the Loroi live in now -- in which a significant percentage of the population has to work in other jobs full time and you can never have 90% of them fighting. But imagine a hypothetical past (such as that hinted at in the Loroi sagas) in which the proto-Loroi were pure warriors -- having to make war or reproduce and literally nothing else.

But my whole point is that the Loroi are not a naturally evolved species. They are an engineered species that appears to be based on a naturally evolved species. The Soia, if designing the Loroi for war, probably wouldn't care if the result was something that couldn't sustain itself. If the Soia were no longer around to provide logistics to their genetically engineered army, why should they care what happens to it?

Having a 90% female population (and the ability to artificially inseminate) means you can have a pretty much exponentially expanding species, if you can provide supplies for it. That means even a 10% expendable male fighter population will grow exponentially too.

Or have I somehow managed to dramatically misread the entire situation, and the Loroi did evolve as a warrior race independently of humans, despite remarkable similarities?

[Arioch]

But my whole point is that the Loroi are not a naturally evolved species. They are an engineered species that appears to be based on a naturally evolved species. The Soia, if designing the Loroi for war, probably wouldn't care if the result was something that couldn't sustain itself. If the Soia were no longer around to provide logistics to their genetically engineered army, why should they care what happens to it?

Again, hypothetically speaking, the issue is flexibility and efficiency. Non-reproducing warriors can't help increase the population when they're idle, and can't even sustain their own numbers if their home base gets bombed and the "mothers" get taken out. Even the Umiak, who reproduce artificially, aren't sterile; they could reproduce "naturally" if the situation called for it (Hardtroops probably not so much.) Though you might have to draw a diagram for them.

Specialization in work force (warrior vs. worker) is less dangerous, as you can teach a soldier to work in a factory and vice-versa. But you can't reach a man to grow a womb.

Having a 90% female population (and the ability to artificially inseminate) means you can have a pretty much exponentially expanding species, if you can provide supplies for it. That means even a 10% expendable male fighter population will grow exponentially too.

Again, this is an unnecessary specialization -- there's nothing about being able to bear children that precludes you from being an effective warrior. If you want to maintain a 90% reproductive reserve, fine. But you don't gain anything by locking yourself biologically into being unable to change that ratio by making the 10% non-reproductive. What happens if you reach your desired population cap? You've got 90% of your population twiddling their thumbs.

[discord]

on female warriors why yes, there still is a 'reason' not to have them as fighters at least in a lower tech setting, same reason why females are not quite as wanted in the workforce in most of the jobs around here today, that being getting pregnant and being unavailable/less effective for quite a few months.

this problem can be addressed with technology, but it is a thing.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Loroi don't use parent groups to raise children. People take vacations that are longer than the time required to give birth and not raise the child one's self.

[Arioch]

on female warriors why yes, there still is a 'reason' not to have them as fighters at least in a lower tech setting, same reason why females are not quite as wanted in the workforce in most of the jobs around here today, that being getting pregnant and being unavailable/less effective for quite a few months.

The hypothetical setting in which a race of warriors is artificially created is not a lower tech setting, and it should be clear by this point that the Loroi females can't get pregnant whenever they feel like it.

[Dirty Yasuki]

What if in a plot twist, the Loroi males are the actual child bearers and ones who get pregnant of the species? That would make sense that access to them is "restricted". I know that's not really the case as Arioch has probably settled this but all this talk about males and females roles about who is the "breeder" of society just reminded me of this.

http://farscape.wikia.com/wiki/The_Flax

The last scene where Staanz the Zenatan professes "her" love for D'Argo was especially funny.

[Arioch]

Cute, but a male that gets pregnant can't really be called a male, since the definition of "female" is the gender that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes.

And don't say "seahorses." Seahorses don't give live birth and male seahorses don't produce eggs, they just carry them around for a while.

[RedDwarfIV]

Having a 90% female population (and the ability to artificially inseminate) means you can have a pretty much exponentially expanding species, if you can provide supplies for it. That means even a 10% expendable male fighter population will grow exponentially too.

Again, this is an unnecessary specialization -- there's nothing about being able to bear children that precludes you from being an effective warrior. If you want to maintain a 90% reproductive reserve, fine. But you don't gain anything by locking yourself biologically into being unable to change that ratio by making the 10% non-reproductive. What happens if you reach your desired population cap? You've got 90% of your population twiddling their thumbs.

I was going to argue that the stresses of combat and carrying heavy equipment severely affected human female reproductive capability, because it's something I'd heard before. However, I can't find any sources at the moment that actually prove it, so I'll accept that I was basing what I was saying on a flawed assumption.

I cede the point to you.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Definitions of male and female are really not that set in stone. It is hard to find a solid definition that doesn't get blown out of the water by some example or another. I am told that many biologists define male and female by which one has the longer chromosomes, but that doesn't always produce results that everyday people would agree on.

I might even suggest that the terms Male and Female are often trying to incorporate too many concepts into a single word. For the Loroi, I'm assuming that "child-bearer," is the working definition of Female here, but they're clearly different enough from humans that other definitions might not apply.

(I think for things like seahorses, I would want to break their functions up into more than one definition, like "child-bearer," and "newborn caregiver.")

[Absalom]

The "queen" model may superior if you lay eggs, but for live birth you need more bodies to get more babies. Some ant queens can lay tens of thousands of eggs per day, but it would take a seriously freaky body to birth that many live babies.

Yep, I said "grotesquely adapted" for a reason: wasn't helped by the knowledge that at least rat reproduction leaves a scar on the womb for each litter.

Again, this is an unnecessary specialization -- there's nothing about being able to bear children that precludes you from being an effective warrior. If you want to maintain a 90% reproductive reserve, fine. But you don't gain anything by locking yourself biologically into being unable to change that ratio by making the 10% non-reproductive. What happens if you reach your desired population cap? You've got 90% of your population twiddling their thumbs.

Sounds passingly similar to Loroi during peace time already.

hi hi

Definitions of male and female are really not that set in stone. It is hard to find a solid definition that doesn't get blown out of the water by some example or another. I am told that many biologists define male and female by which one has the longer chromosomes, but that doesn't always produce results that everyday people would agree on.

I might even suggest that the terms Male and Female are often trying to incorporate too many concepts into a single word. For the Loroi, I'm assuming that "child-bearer," is the working definition of Female here, but they're clearly different enough from humans that other definitions might not apply.

(I think for things like seahorses, I would want to break their functions up into more than one definition, like "child-bearer," and "newborn caregiver.")

Oh, too much is being shoe-horned into Male and Female alright, and that is demonstrated by the fact that apparently you're treating it as being based on anything other than reproductive function. We may generalize due to laziness, but any definition based on anything other than theoretical reproductive function is foundationally misdirected. Even the distinguishment of heterosexuality, homosexuality, and transsexuality are ultimately based on the reproductive differences, it's the one part of the whole system that can't be evaded. You can swap gender-roles, appearances, hormonal instabilities, and even pull a Spotted Hyena on their genitals, but the proper definitions of Male and Female always come down to reproduction.

[icekatze]

hi hi

So, would you suggest that someone who doesn't have children, or cannot have children cannot be male or female?

[Absalom]

hi hi

So, would you suggest that someone who doesn't have children, or cannot have children cannot be male or female?

The strictest definition would say as much. The more common, lazy definitions would extrapolate out from the strict definition: for example, loss of fertility and infertility due to defects are fairly easy to write off in colloquial definitions as details only. As I said:

any definition based on anything other than theoretical reproductive function is foundationally misdirected.

It doesn't necessarily need to be precisely followed, but if you don't use it as the true point of reference, your control-group-free definition dissolves into nonsensical blather instead of remaining a definition.

And I just described how I can say that, so don't even start. I am long-since tired of emotional objections to simple and logical definitions for these things. If you can't accept this straight-forward of a definition for something sexual-related, then don't even bother replying.


It requires serious birth defects to not be able to extrapolate an identity of Male or Female within e.g. humans, and if you're judging off of a species without such a clear-cut division then you should really ask yourself why you're trying to apply the Male/Female labels (in some cases I think it reasonable enough: it does make sense to apply Male and Female to sex-changing frogs according to their current gender; at the same time, it makes sense to use neither for simultaneous hermaphrodites, and also to use neither for sex-changing frogs while they are mid-transition).