Elven hormones (catgirls beware)

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Forrest
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Elven hormones (catgirls beware)

Post by Forrest »

:catgirl:

A random thing just struck me: Sarine is the short, fat girl among Elven women, right? The rest are all mostly taller and less curvy and generally more... mannish... than Human women generally are, yeah? And Elven men, I gather, are less hairy and somewhat more feminine in other ways than Human men too, right?

What if the problem with Elven fertility is that their hormones aren't differentiated enough? They all got a more-or-less even mix of male and female hormones, so the women have too many androgens in their system, the men have too much estrogen, etc. This leaves them all rather androgynous in appearance... and gradually causes infertility. Also note that the Trolls have rather drastic sexual dimorphism going on there, so maybe that's what the "gods" were aiming to fix when they underwent spontaneous existence failure and fucked it all up.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of All Trades
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Bytemite
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Re: Elven hormones (catgirls beware)

Post by Bytemite »

This could be a symptom of the problem. Hormone imbalances can cause infertility, but it would tend to be infertility with everyone, not just between elves. I'm also not sure how hormonal imbalances would grow exponentially worse through generations, nor why female elves are more affected by it fertility-wise even when they seem to have human-female hormone levels. Remember, Sarine had a miscarriage, and that was with a male human to increase the chances of viability.

Could be sex-chromosome linked, could be a transcription and replication or meiosis problem. Maybe a combination thereof.

Very possibly related to inbreeding though. Like when plant breeders are working on cultivars, very few breeds of plant will end up viable when crossed with each other, despite the fact that the cultivars they're trying to cross would basically stem from the same original species. Anilis and Senilis worked very hard to refine the elf organism before they even fielded the experiment, perhaps too much. And then this could have been exacerbated by the elves creating racial differences among themselves through geography and separation.
Last edited by Bytemite on July 1st, 2013, 9:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
Bytemite
Resident Wormhole Lawyer
Posts: 170
Joined: May 19th, 2011, 12:32 pm

Re: Elven hormones (catgirls beware)

Post by Bytemite »

Thinking more about this. There are issues with the elf problem being inherited like any of the types of sex-linked genetic disorders we know about. Most of those tend to affect males more than females because females have an extra copy of a chromosome to cover for the bad copy.

Really the only way it could be a sex-linked genetic disorder, based on what we know about the inheritance mechanisms - and we have to consider this option - is that genetic gender determination in elves works differently relative to humans. One possible way is if the males elves have two of the same sex chromosomes while the female has one of each - therefore resulting in females being more affected by any genetic disorder. Theoretically these chromosomes are still compatible with human sex chromosomes. (side note: this could also be why female elves have more of a problem even with humans because both the female elves and the male humans would be heterogametic)

A transcription/replication problem would also explain the situation, especially if the problem was actually adding more unnecessary sex-related genes over time. Much like how extra sex-linked chromosomes can result in reduced fertility or sterility, extra genes from a transcription/replication error could cause the same problem. These extra genes would build up over generations, resulting in each generation being slightly less fertile than the last, until finally they're all sterile.

The best explanation I have combines the two concepts by having the problematic multiple-replication genes on the sex chromosomes - each generation gets worse/ has a higher frequency of fertility problems, and the problems would become more concentrated in female elves.

As a side note, I suspect the Rinkai discovered this problem first (or it originated with them), as it might explain their cultural tendency towards promiscuity. Either they became desperate to conceive, or they realized "hey, no consequences anymore. Horray!"

That or they picked up a weird STD from the dwarves or something. Even though dwarves supposedly don't have compatible anatomy. The Rinkai would find a way! (to doom the rest of the elven race)
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