Headscratchers / Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Biology

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Cross-breedin' Cardies

• How the heck does Dukat keep having half-breed children? If a Trill and a Klingon need medical interference to make a baby possible then shouldn't Bajoran/Cardassian offspring require even greater intervention? One is a mammal, the other a reptile!
  • It is never stated in canon that Cardassians are reptiles, though it is admittedly a sensible assumption (but then why do they have hair?). The trouble with species interbreeding has no beginning and end.
    • Reptile scales and hair are both made of keratin, so it isn't that unreasonable to hypothesize that Cardassian hair is just a modified set of scales (possibly evolved as some sort of sexual display characteristic). Dinosaurs had feathers too, which again is just a form of keratin.
    • For that matter, scaly mammals exist on Earth. Just take a close look at an armadillo's armor plating, or the tails of beavers and rats. Trace the Cardassians' evolutionary history back far enough, and you may find they're descended from their home world's version of pangolins.
  • Word of God is that Cardassians have both reptilian and mammalian characteristics. It's also implied that Ancient Bajorans visited Cardassia in lightships before Cardassians were warp-capable, so modern Cardassians might already have some Bajoran heritage they just don't know about or won't admit.
  • In Worf and Jadzia's case, the problem may be related to the symbiont, or rather, exacerbated by it. We know that Dax's previous female hosts have been mothers, so it's entirely possible that a symbiont and a Trill fetus can coexist. Perhaps it's simply more difficult for a symbiont and a Klingon/Trill hybrid fetus to coexist, and requires medical intervention. Maybe the hybrid fetus stimulates the Trill mother's immune response to the point where it begins to attack the symbiont.
    • But do we know whether Dax's previous female hosts became mothers before they were joined or after? If before, there'd obviously be no issue, but given that Jadzia only seemed concerned with the baby being a Klingon/Trill hybrid and not with Dax itself getting in the way, it doesn't seem like a problem (aside from the issue of having enough room in there).
    • Good theory, especially in light of the physical location of the symbiont (very close to the womb in female Trill). There could be all sorts of autoimmune side-effects in that area of the female Trill's body that wouldn't take kindly to Klingon DNA, or any non-Trill DNA in fact, designed/evolved entirely to prevent disruption to the symbiont/host link.
    • This raises another question about the Trill: How does a symbiotic relationship between two species evolve when one of those species must be surgically implanted into the other?
    • Maybe the surgery is a more modern procedure that replaced a less sanitary, natural method of implantation?
    • Possibly symbionts originally lived out their entire lives in their first host, which they entered as eggs/larvae, and died when the host did. Surgery to transfer the symbionts was developed later, allowing symbionts' lifespans to exceed that of their hosts for the first time.
    • According to the novels, Trill are marsupials, with both males and females having pouches. The first joined Trill simply stuffed a symbiont into his pouch. While the books aren't canon, onscreen Dax does seem to have a kangaroo-like pouch that the doctors insert or remove the symbiont into.
  • Bajorans and Cardassians, despite appearances, are more closely-related than Klingons and Trill, I guess. They do live within, like, a parsec of each other, if I recall correctly.
    • And the solar-sailer episode suggested that there's been interaction between Bajorans and Cardassians for millennia, as I recall. That's a lot longer than humans and Vulcans have been in contact. Maybe they've done some genetic retooling over the years or something along those lines. The Cardassians have certainly been known to do it within the canon of the series itself, albeit for rather more politically-motivated purposes.
    • As was discovered in 'The Chase', all humanoid life in the galaxy is at least nominally related thanks to genetic seeding by a primordial race (most likely the Preservers). In the billions of years since, evolution created more drift between certain species than others. While a lot of humanoid races in the Trek universe can interbreed, some can't or have great difficulty doing so (it was suggested for example in one episode that human mothers of Human/Klingon hybrids would have difficulties in childbirth due to Klingon bone structure). It's also known that some biologies are not compatible, for example in VOY the doctor makes an offhand remark that a blood transfusion from a Vulcan would kill a Bolian. In several episodes across the TNG-era series it was mentioned that it was important to have access to at least synthesized versions of a patient's blood. So certain things like blood transfusions or organ donations would be impossible or dangerous, whereas some species can mate successfully and produce viable offspring, just like - you guessed it, real life on our own planet.
    • If humans and life forms from a completely different planet can interbreed, a few reptile-like (I'm not sure if we should try to fit aliens into categories that sprung up on earth) features shouldn't make much of a difference. The humanoid precursors seeded DNA "destined" to bring forth life forms much like themselves, so much like them in fact that they could interbreed. Cardassians are just as much a result of that as the other humanoid species are.
    • This may be more of a WMG, but I've always taken the ease with which Cardassians and Bajorans can interbreed as an indication they're effectively the same species. The one unknown is if any of the mixed heritage children are themselves fertile. If so then they're the same species, by some definitions at least. Many other mixed-heritage children were later shown to require medical intervention to be viable, such as Spock or Naomi Wildman. The ease with which Klingon's interbreed with both Humans and Romulans may mostly as a result of Klingon genetic robustness, or having required after-conception intervention. Alternatively, we know for a fact that Dukat had no idea whatsoever that the child in the episode Covenant was his, which indicates that the pregnancy proceeded with no advanced medical attention at all. We also don't know what the conditions on Cardassia are really like, but we do know that Bajorans (theoretically) may have reached there millennia ago. Given the condition shown which indicate this possibility, it would certainly be a one-way trip. My belief is that Cardassians are actually an offshoot Bajoran species, adapted to the very harsh conditions of Cardassia after a trip through a whole lot of radiation with a small initial breeding pool.

Layin' Eggs

• During the episode To The Death Jadzia responds to a comment made by the Jem'Hadar Virak'Kara saying that there are no Jem'Hadar women by crossing her arms and saying so what do you do? lay eggs? in the most condescending and disbelieving manner possible. This attitude is later replicated in the mess hall between her, O'Brien and Worf and once again they all seem absolutely incredulous at this information. Question: Why? In real life countless mammals and reptiles (which, lets remind ourselves, Jem'Hadar look like a cross between the two) reproduce by laying eggs as well as the fact that there are thousands of smaller creatures that do not have two sexes. As such logically either she or one of her two centuries worth of hosts should have met at least a few sapient species by now who either don't have gender or lay eggs. In fact when you factor in species like the Ocampa or the Xyrillians in the Trekverse who have mating practices that literally border on proving Darwin wrong; the revelation that the Jem'Hadar lay eggs or don't have females shouldn't even bat an eyelid - especially since you would imagine that by the latter half of season 4 they really ought to have been curious why they hadn't even heard about women yet... did they just assume Jem'Hadar had the least sexual dimorphism of absolutely every other species we have ever seen in Star Trek? There also seems to be some very uncomfortable prejudice being shown here from Worf who had previously also shown this hatred toward the J'Naii - I'm fairly certain that in real life such an attitude would be considered racist.
  • Well there seems to be some dispute as to whether Trill in general is a member of the Federation. I've always been in the pro-membership camp, but if they weren't, that might explain why Jadzia isn't as enlightened as she could be on the subject.
  • She's trying to be insulting. The exact scientific accuracy of her statement doesn't enter into it.
    • She's making a specific slur to a race that is very much the self-professed enemy of the Federation, she's not saying it's a bad thing to lay eggs. By that point, it was probably very obvious to Starfleet that Jem'Hadar were not your typical warrior race (very short lifespans, no females, intentional narcotic addiction). At the very least, by that point they probably had a good idea that they were an engineered race. A more murky one is at what point the Vorta crossed the line from 'loyal servants of the Dominion and Founders' to 'intentionally engineered diplomatic caste of the Dominion' in the minds of the writers.
    • Why would she be being so intentionally mean?
    • In context it's a kind of dominance play against these uncertain allies.
  • She was trying to be either sarcastic or offensive. With some Fridge Logic it should be noted that the egg-laying gender would be usually identified as female, anyway - so equating egg-laying with "no women" is presumably either a mistake or rather sloppy use of commonly used terminology.
  • The Federation is rather prejudiced towards outsiders in general though no matter how much they try and claim otherwise. That is pretty much Quark's whole argument to Sisko in the episode The Jem'Hadar (and the less said about season 1 Picard and Riker the better). The Federation loves people who remind them of themselves - communist, largely atheist, would rather make peace not war, non-materialistic etc. and are dismissive of anyone who doesn't share their views. I agree that in real life Worf would have been thrown in front of HR pretty damn quickly if he started to say such things about the biology and gender of another race, but Starfleet really does not seem to care. How many casual jokes about pointed ears were thrown at Spock, Tuvok and T'Pol over the years? What seriously is the difference between that and cracking a couple of lines about the eyes of someone from the Far East? In summary, yeah, I could see them treating an egg-laying or non-gendered species like that, but as previously pointed out, the Jem'Hadar are their enemy and thus it does change the context of the situation slightly.

48 people build a society? "Children of Time"

• That is in no way enough genetic diversity to build a community of 8,000. There's no mention of hooking up with the natives, or even that there are any.
  • Considering the amount of times the doctors on the star trek vessels mess around with DNA, it wouldn't surprise me if star trek humans had been genetically edited to remove some, or even almost all, problematic genes. With less of those, the minimum genetic diversity requirement could have fallen by the way side entirely.
    • Except you're not allowed to genetically edit. It's kind of taboo.
    • Creating super people like Khan is taboo. Editing someone's genes to remove a genetic disorder doesn't seem to be. Chakotay had his genes for sensory tremens suppressed before he was born ("The Fight") and The Doctor also suppressed a harmful gene in B'ellana and Paris' kid ("Lineage")
    • That's spot treatment. The ^^^ post is proposing that a whole society of humans, or maybe all of humanity, was systematically treated genetically to remove any and all genes that could possibly cause a problem with a population bottleneck. It's at least a different kind of thing, if not the same as what happened with Khan.
    • The entire population being 'systematically treated' is not that improbable over hundreds of years. We can assume the Federation removes any expressed genetic issues. The question is, does the Federation allow the removal of un-expressed genetic issues, where there is a bad gene but it currently does nothing because is recessive. If it does allow that, even if just 10% of women did that, then that, combined with the removal when the genes do cause problems, would start diminishing the total amount of such genes in the population at large. Assuming this has been going on for centuries, it seems entirely possible there are very few problematic genes left and no need to worry about the 'gene pool'.
    • Genetic conditions are caused by random mutation. Given enough generations of breeding errors appear in the genome which lead to health problems. Erasing every known potentially problematic mutation doesn't stop the creation of new ones. It's possible that seven generations isn't enough to be a problem, but the potential still exists.
• It also raises the question. Since inter-species reproduction seems to be of the "split the difference" type on Trek, shouldn't Yedrin, being the sixth or seventh generation of Jadzia's issue, be only 1/64 or 1/128 Trill? Would that be enough Trill genetics to express the structures needed to support Dax?
  • That presupposes that his ancestors hadn't bred back into the Jadzia line (some form of cousin marriage, which is permitted in most societies on Earth), which given the small number of colonists seems unlikely that he'd be as low as 1/64 Trill.
    • What may be even weirder is that the episode confirms Dax married Worf and they were happy together. Yet all the Trill and all the Klingon descendants we see are one or the other, implying their marriage failed before they had any children and they both found a human lover after that. If they had been faithful, all of their descendants would be equal parts Trill and Klingon, even after inbreeding. Potentially solved by "Tears of the Prophets", though. Apparently it was going to take medical intervention for Jadzia and Worf to conceive.
    • Worf and Jadzia may have been married and happy, but may have also had children with other people to help bolster the colony's genetic diversity. (Worf wouldn't have liked it but we've seen that he can be pragmatic when the situation is dire enough.) Thus while all Trill and Klingons in the colony would be related to Jadzia or Worf respectively, they might not be related to both.
  • Given the technological level that the colony exists at, it is unlikely that the equipment needed for genetic engineering survived the crash. The most likely explanation is that the survivors had large families in order to bolster their numbers (it is implied that the O'Brien lineage was especially prodigious, as there were lots of Molly's running around) and inbreeding was, at most, another couple of generations away from becoming a problem. When facing the issue of being erased from existence, concerns about your great-grandson marrying his niece become less immediate.

Bajorian Women and Childbirth

• As Chuck at SF Debris points out in his review of the episode "The Begotten," Bajorian women apparently have a "teflon-coated vagina," as Kira birthed the O'Briens' baby without any pain, just annoyance with Miles.
  • One of main reasons why human childbirth is so painful is because we evolved the walk upright which distorted the pelvis and thus made the birth canal a whole lot narrower (don't feel too put out by this ladies, as this is also one of the reasons why the testicles are so vulnerable to injury as they are a awful lot more protected from attack on a creature that walks on all-fours than two). If you've ever watched a dog give birth you'll note just how relatively quick and painless it is compared to humans. If the Bajoran's evolved from a creature that was already walking on two legs then this whole problem would not have arisen. Then there is the obvious fact that we really don't know if she is designed anything like we are downstairs, all that we know is that she has a womb and an opening.
  • Several of the episodes that discuss Bajoran childbirth specifically address this. Bajorans, as long as they're relaxed, do not feel pain in childbirth because their bodies release a natural euphoric to counteract it. There are probably a few other anatomical differences as well, considering that their wombs apparently operate differently too.

Kira and the Aphasia Virus

• In "Babel", when most people get the aphasia virus, they feel and appear sleepy and feverish before developing the lexical symptoms, and once those come on, they gradually become sleepier and more feverish. Not so Kira: when Kira developed the virus, she was just normal, normal, normal-boom! Aphasic! And once she became aphasic, she didn't become sleepy. Why is this?
  • Chalk this one up to Reality Is Unrealistic here, but yeah we'd expect a range of responses and severity of symptoms when it comes to any disease outbreak. Some people will succumb quicker than others, and some people will only show some symptoms but not all, and some in different sequences. Kira's response would be unusual, but not unexpected.
    • With Kira, it may be that she's got a combination of good natural immune system, combined with higher natural immune responses because of her time in the Resistance. It's likely she's had to deal with a LOT of infections, so her body naturally reacts better. Plus, Kira is stubbornly dogged about being "fine" (ESPECIALLY when she isn't), so she may have been feeling those symptoms and just pushing past them.