Ktuvok reproduction

Posted by Irgend Jemand on 18:22 4/11/02

In reply to: (none)

It is said that ktuvoki females mate only with those ktuvoki males who have the most slaves, disdaining up to half of the ktuvoki males. But how do they all find mates to get kids from that way?

In many human cultures, this problem was/is solved in the way that the powerful and/or rich men keep harems while the less succesful can call themselves fortunate if they're able to found a family at all. But this wouldn't automatically work for ktuvoki because it takes so long for their males to produce their sperm packet. A human man may be theoretically able to get hundreds of women pregnant until the child of the first one of them is born, but a ktuvok male isn't.

Or does a ktuvok pregnancy take even much longer than the males need for a package? It could also be that female ktuvoki don't get pregnant for a while when they're raising their offspring, so that at any given moment a lot of the females are out of the mating game. Or is it perhaps that there are a lot more males than females among adult ktuvoki?

Mark responds:
A male ktuvok doesn't begin to develop a sperm packet until he feels rich and secure. Thus, we might divide the male ktuvoki into four quartiles:

Very successful ones; these will be courted by females, and can be fairly picky about who they choose. Over their lifetimes they will mate with several females, but since they don't live together and they mate at rare intervals, this isn't exactly a harem.
Moderately successful ones; these will have to approach females themselves, but are likely to find one in the period while the packet is still usable.
Ktuvoki who overestimate their desirability; they will produce a packet that no one wants.
Unsuccessful but realistic ktuvoki; these don't even waste time producing a packet.

Females have an easier time of it, in that if they have an estate, they can always find someone to mate with. They will seek out the richest males, but if they're not available they'll settle for someone else.
Mathematically, we find that to maintain the population, each male who mates should mate with 2 females and produce 4 adult offspring-- that is, enough to replace himself, the two females, and another male who will never reproduce. In practice it'll be more, since quite a few ktuvoki don't survive till adulthood.

Ooh, this is giving me the idea for a game-- SimKtuvok. :)

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