beatrice_otter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beatrice_otter) wrote2015-07-19 08:17 pm
beatrice_otter) wrote2015-07-19 08:17 pm
The birds and the bees are not Vulcans, Captain
So, I have a question about Vulcan biology.
I have long been puzzled by the inherent illogic of a heat that can kill you. Heats are supposed to grow the species, not reduce it.
But the thing is, terrestrial animals that have a heat, usually it's one heat cycle per year or so. Because that gives you time for the babies to be born and grow a little bit before winter sets in and obviously you don't want to be pregnant during winter scarcity, and then by the time a year has gone by the babies are old enough/mature enough that they don't need Mama and another heat cycle begins in the spring.
Vulcan heats are seven years apart.
My first thought, as I began contemplating this, was ... how long are Vulcan pregnancies?!? Because Vulcan children seem to grow at about the same rate as Human children (7 year old Spock in the animated series episode Yesteryear looked and acted about like one would expect a 7 year old to, and there was never any hint that he was developmentally advanced or delayed for a Vulcan), and so if you think time between heats=pregnancy+time for baby to no longer be an infant, well, you start to wonder if Vulcan pregnancies are like three years long or something.
But then I realized that I was overlooking part of the nature of a terrestrial heat cycle. Part of it is also to time things such that no one is pregnant during winter, the time when resources are scarcest.
Which leads me to wonder: does the planet have a year that is seven Earth-years long? It seems like that would be pretty far from Vulcan's sun--Mars has a year that's two of our years long, Jupiter's years are 12 years long, would a planet even be habitable in that range? (And if this is the case, does that mean that all Vulcans go into Pon Farr at about the same time every seven years? Eeep! Talk about a disruption to the society! Of course, if this is the case, how do they keep it secret? Just kick every non-Vulcan offplanet for six months every seven years?)
Is there some other reason for a seven year cycle that I'm not thinking about?
But this brings me back to the first question, that’s bugged me for years. And perhaps provides an answer. If resources are (or were, when the species was evolving) so scarce that they can only afford to have a kid once every seven years, maybe it is designed to clear out deadwood. Maybe part of the reason for such a deadly heat is to reduce competition for resources which the species can’t afford to waste on non-reproducing members.
I wish fic spent less time on teh sex and more time on the biological, social, and cultural aspects of it.
I have long been puzzled by the inherent illogic of a heat that can kill you. Heats are supposed to grow the species, not reduce it.
But the thing is, terrestrial animals that have a heat, usually it's one heat cycle per year or so. Because that gives you time for the babies to be born and grow a little bit before winter sets in and obviously you don't want to be pregnant during winter scarcity, and then by the time a year has gone by the babies are old enough/mature enough that they don't need Mama and another heat cycle begins in the spring.
Vulcan heats are seven years apart.
My first thought, as I began contemplating this, was ... how long are Vulcan pregnancies?!? Because Vulcan children seem to grow at about the same rate as Human children (7 year old Spock in the animated series episode Yesteryear looked and acted about like one would expect a 7 year old to, and there was never any hint that he was developmentally advanced or delayed for a Vulcan), and so if you think time between heats=pregnancy+time for baby to no longer be an infant, well, you start to wonder if Vulcan pregnancies are like three years long or something.
But then I realized that I was overlooking part of the nature of a terrestrial heat cycle. Part of it is also to time things such that no one is pregnant during winter, the time when resources are scarcest.
Which leads me to wonder: does the planet have a year that is seven Earth-years long? It seems like that would be pretty far from Vulcan's sun--Mars has a year that's two of our years long, Jupiter's years are 12 years long, would a planet even be habitable in that range? (And if this is the case, does that mean that all Vulcans go into Pon Farr at about the same time every seven years? Eeep! Talk about a disruption to the society! Of course, if this is the case, how do they keep it secret? Just kick every non-Vulcan offplanet for six months every seven years?)
Is there some other reason for a seven year cycle that I'm not thinking about?
But this brings me back to the first question, that’s bugged me for years. And perhaps provides an answer. If resources are (or were, when the species was evolving) so scarce that they can only afford to have a kid once every seven years, maybe it is designed to clear out deadwood. Maybe part of the reason for such a deadly heat is to reduce competition for resources which the species can’t afford to waste on non-reproducing members.
I wish fic spent less time on teh sex and more time on the biological, social, and cultural aspects of it.
no subject
Technically, a human woman can have about one baby per year but in reality, that rarely happens because breastfeeding works as a contraceptive unless you have enough good-quality food to both feed one infant and grow another, which is historically rare on a population-wide level. Beyond that, there's natural genetic variation like PCOS - women with PCOS find it easy to gain weight and difficult to conceive, but when they lose weight (current studies are saying 10% of their bodyweight or more, but this varies) the condition often recedes and conception is more likely. When does this happen? During famines, when most women are at a low bodyweight and unable to conceive. So even when most women can't conceive, a sub-group are having babies to carry on the species; while when conditions are good, that sub-group isn't conceiving. So maybe Vulcan went through something so catastrophic, or cycles that are so catastrophic, that children younger than seven and children without at least two intensely dedicated parents die, so over time the slow reproducers beat out the fast reproducers, and the closely-bonded pairs were more successful than the more widely procreating individuals.
no subject