Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: goom on December 14, 2008, 08:27:08 PM
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never understood why in the books they referred to certain yeerks as he's or she's, rather than just it's.
visser 3/1 was always a he, and aftran, for example, was always a she.
was it because of the gender of the host they inhibited? would aftran be considered male if she went in male host?
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Ok it's another problem for French people...
I thought Aftran was a He!
Actually i thought they were all "he" cause in french they decided the word yeerk would be a masculine one^^
But yeah, that's not the answer you're looking for in your thread ^^
S'ry
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That's what I always assumed, ether that or it is a really strange coincidence that the female yeerks always got female hosts and male yeerks always got male hosts...
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I always assumed that if the host was male, then the Yeerk was male. Same for females. Either because male and female Yeerks are paired with hosts according to gener, or because Yeerks don't really have a gender. Gender has to do with reproductive organs mostly, and because Yeerks reproduce by melding with two others and splitting off, then they may not be designed that way.
So Esplin was male, and Edriss and Aftran were females to me.
In Visser, edriss says she becomes male when infesting a male host. Which goes along with my previously statements.
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Well...
I just read an extract of "the sickness" in English. Illim's host is a male, Cassie call the yeerk "it" though : "Its body was..."
So... weird
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I agree that Yeerk gender comes from the host. Yeerks use their hosts to identify themselves in a lot of ways --ie assignment to a Taxxon is a demotion. However, the Aftran situation brings up another point (or variation.) Remember everything we know about Aftran is filtered through Cassie's perspective, and Cassie's initial impressions of Aftran are shaped by the fact that she only sees Karen. And even though Karen is (was) a controller, it doesn't change the fact that she picked up a Dracon beam, etc.
Side note, it's kinda funny to think that if Visser 3 had been successful in infesting Aldrea, he would would have been a girl.
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hahah, that is funny.
well, there's a definition difference between gender and sex. Gender is more culturally produced, so gender is what the culture defines it to be.
so gender wise, yeerks' genders are defined by the culture they live in. Whether that be Yeerk culture or their host culture, I'm not sure.
now sex is a whole different story tho.
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I always pondered about this, too. Does a Yeerk gender come from the host?
They call each others brothers and sisters, I think. So it implies two sexes. But there has been no mismix of a male Yeerk in the body of a female host, or vice versa, for us to confirm this. So in the end, it's kinda confusing, I agree.
Perhaps the Yeerks don't have sexes as we conceive, since they merge in threes and die in the process of reproduction.
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Perhaps the Yeerks don't have sexes as we conceive, since they merge in threes and die in the process of reproduction.
yeah, i figured that.
wonder how long a yeerk's lifespan would be if they didn't reproduce (and therefore die)?
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Dry out their pool and it would be three days. ;D
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well, yeah, but doesn't it seem like esplin has lived an awful long time?
they must have really long lifespans.
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Hmmm.... Good question. The aliens lifespans can be really confusing in comparison to one another.
It feels like they are hundreds years old, but when you do the maths, it's like they are only two or three decades old. Interesting.
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Yeerks themselves don't have conventional genders of male and female, as I believe three parent Yeerks are required in order for them to reproduce (where they parents die in the process of creating hundreds of Yeerk children).
However, as some of you have already pointed out, many Yeerks would adopt the gender of their host such as Visser 1, Visser 3, Aftran, etc.
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I also always supposed they didn't have gender, but sometimes act as female or male because of their host...
But... nobody think they also could be like snails, hermaphrodite, and change their sex. Or have 3 different genders we can't compare with Humans genders?
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Normally I'd agree that they could be hermaphrodites like snails are, but the fact that they require a third parent Yeerk makes me think that Yeerk reproduction and genders aren't like anything found on Earth.
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they just have one sex! physically and literally....
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Normally I'd agree that they could be hermaphrodites like snails are, but the fact that they require a third parent Yeerk makes me think that Yeerk reproduction and genders aren't like anything found on Earth.
yeah, I think so ^^' so we can't really compare...
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To be honest I have to disagree. I think that gender for yeerks is a personality triat they are born with resulting from evolution maybe to help understand hosts and live with advanced inteligence. Biologicaly they are I think somewhere along the lines of hermaphrodites.
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They might be physically similar to hermaphrodites, but since three parents are required it is clearly different.
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If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you'll find K.A.'s official canon final awesome answer...of doom.
http://hirac-delest.issamshahid.com/database/articles/according/2000/accord_jan00.htm
Neither male nor female, they're their own special...Yeerky... gender. Thing. They probably only act male or female depending on their host, and how intuned they are to their host's behavior or society. Some, like Taylor's Yeerk, seemed to really not mind acting their host's gender.
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ah, okay.
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Canon, makes sense but for the record I was close. Alright I was off but I just thought the way they refered to their relationships as 'Brother' and 'sister' in book nineteen made me think that their was more to it and the controller relationship in Visser is also evidence.
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I can't believe it was on issam's website...did issam know about this?
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former visser one was a female
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former visser one was a female
you sure about that?
as soon as they leave the host i think they lose their gender (and are thus referred to as 'it').
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they just have one sex! physically and literally....
::)
K.A.'s official canon final awesome answer...of doom.
(Side note: Aww. KA doesn't like guns? Maybe she's never been shooting. I was hooked after my first five rounds. ;D)
OK. Gather 'round for a biology lesson. Sex is weird, even on familiar old Mater Terra. Here's how some different forms of life shuffle genes among terran species:
Plants alternate generations: half the generations have twice as many chromosomes as the other half. The plants fewer chromosomes are called gametophytes; the ones with more, sporophytes. Both generations are multicellular. One of the generations is dependent on the other for development (and is physically much smaller). In most plants, the sporophyte is the larger, longer-lived, dominant generation. However, the opposite is true of mosses and ferns, where the gametophyte hosts the sporophyte. Gametophytes always have an inherent sex (mating type), but sporophytes often do not: they'll produce both sexes of gametophytes, or they'll change from producing one to the other with age. And many plants ignore sex most of the time and just clone themselves all over the place: clover, strawberries, grass (the kind that grows in steppes and meadows, silly), etc.
Fungi are similar to plants, except that the haploid generation is dominant, "sex" is called "mating type," many haploid fungi can change mating type (gametophytes can't do this), and sexual reproduction usually only occurs in response to environmental stress. (why do I get the feeling that will be taken out of context?)
Protists are just strange. Unicellular. Multicellular. Sexual. Asexual. They confuse the professional biologist, so, I'm going to move right along.
Animals alternate between multicellular diploid generations, and unicellular haploid generations. Except for social insects (ants, bees, etc), which have multicellular haploid generations. The haploid cells (gametes) are always sexed (like plant gametophytes--except unicellular). The diploid animals, though, have a wide variety of sex determination systems.
Genetic determination
XY: (Mammals, except platypus): female, unless the male-marking Y chromosome is present.
ZW: (Birds, some insects, some fish): male, unless the female-marking W chromosome is present.
X0: (grasshoppers, crickets, ****roaches): Females have two X chromosomes; males, one.
Haplodiploid: (bees, ants, termites, bark beetles): A variant of X0 in which males are haploid (having one of each chromosome, not just X) and females are diploid.
Environmental determination
Incubation temperature: (alligators, turtles): sex is somewhat random, but influenced by temperature. Yes, that's right. Weird hunh?
Wolbachia: (some insects): sex is determined by a parasitic bacterium. And I thought the last one was strange!
Social variables: (many fish): sex changes to match behavior.
And so, with all this strangeness, on our own planet, aren't you glad KA took the easy way out?
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You want a real problem. For me Visser 1 is a she sometimes and a he somethimes
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Visser One is a politician. Politicians aren't "he" or "she", they're politicians ;) Don't expect a politician being too feminine!
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Visser One is a politician. Politicians aren't "he" or "she", they're politicians ;) Don't expect a politician being too feminine!
I am a politician...
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i always thought that yeerks adopted their first's host gender as their "identity"
or the one they spent the most time it.
it's really up to the yeerk in question.
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yeah...gender must be weird to them. its like the human version of rankings to them.
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Mira? a politician? a Yeerk politician?? lol
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Not at that level. I'm quite invisible, I come up with ideas and irritate people in the top, I am politically active in a party that's why people call me a politician, but still I only agree in a half, but I'm first and foremost an astrophysics student.
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So you aren't a true politician! It's different. You're still human ^^
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I hope soo!