4 genders make so evolutionary/developmental sense

[Ian Keldon]

^Yup. Evolution has no conscious direction behind it, so it doesn't go for absolute optimization, just for whatever works. Pandas have survived because their environment has been cushy and unthreatening enough that their low reproductive rate and other limitations don't preclude their survival.

Which is unequivcally NOT the case with Andorians. They evolved in an intensely harsh, low-survival environment.

There's another thread about this somewhere around, and I'll repeat here what I said there.

More than two sexes is unlikely to evolve, and if it does, it will likely disappear soon after. Here's why.

Let's use the Vissians, the race we saw in Congenitor. In that episode, we saw that the congenitor itself is a third gender, and adds some enzyme or something to the reproductive process. The husband and wife in that episode had one so they could conceive a child.

Now, let's say that a Vissian woman for whatever reason has the ability to produce that enzyme herself. All of a sudden, she doesn't need cogenitors. Instead of requiring three people, she only needs two. She has a reproductive advantage, and so is likely to produce more offspring than her contemporaries who require cogenitors.

So in times of hardship, women who can reproduce without cogenitors will produce more offspring, and the need for cogenitors will fade.

Inapplicable comparison to the Andorians. The process you're describing is one in which only two sexes are required to contribute actual genes and one of those sexes has the organ system necessary for gestation, with the third sex merely being required to provide an enzyme necessary for gestation to succeed.

With the Andorians, three separate sexes (chans, thaans, and shens) are needed to contribute genetic material, and only the fourth sex (the zhen) has the organ systems necessary to gestate the resulting fetus.

Requiring four times the amount of resources to sustain one "breeding unit" as a mono-sex animal, and twice that of a dual-sex animal.

Nature selects for overall efficiency when it comes to species survival. Four sexes represents an extremely INefficient use of those resources, and has an inherent increased probability of something going wrong that leads to reproductive failure.

To quote a wise engineer: "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain..."

Personally, I rather like the idea of having a Star Trek alien be actually, y'know, alien. So I quite like the Andorian four-sex paradigm.

Feel free to "like" it all you want, but it makes no sense biologically, and all the invocation of the "Rule of Cool" in the universe cannot change that fact.

 

[Sci]

^Yup. Evolution has no conscious direction behind it, so it doesn't go for absolute optimization, just for whatever works. Pandas have survived because their environment has been cushy and unthreatening enough that their low reproductive rate and other limitations don't preclude their survival.

Which is unequivcally NOT the case with Andorians. They evolved in an intensely harsh, low-survival environment.

We don't know that.

We don't know anything about the history of Andor's climate over the course of millions of years. Not canonically, and not in the novels.

 

[Ian Keldon]

^Yup. Evolution has no conscious direction behind it, so it doesn't go for absolute optimization, just for whatever works. Pandas have survived because their environment has been cushy and unthreatening enough that their low reproductive rate and other limitations don't preclude their survival.

Which is unequivcally NOT the case with Andorians. They evolved in an intensely harsh, low-survival environment.

We don't know that.

We don't know anything about the history of Andor's climate over the course of millions of years. Not canonically, and not in the novels.

Basic astronomical science tells us us all we need to know about Andoria's development. It's a moon of a gas giant, which occur in the outer reaches of solar systems, well clear of the "life zone". Life would only be possible due to some form of geo-thermal activity within the planet, which matches with what we have been shown canonically (under ground/under ice cities.

The development of additional non-visual sensory organs (the antennae) also supports the idea that Andoria is far from it's primary. Development of such senses would only make sense if light-dependent sensory organs (eyes) were either absent or relatively weak, which would be the case in a low-light environment like Andoria.

The problem with your argument, Tiberius, is that you're assuming only one factor is decisive. Reality doesn't work that way. Processes don't operate in isolation, but interact with each other in a complex, messy whole. There are plenty of cases in evolution where something that creates a disadvantage (like the gene for sickle-cell anemia) also creates an advantage that outweighs it (like resistance to malaria), so that it ends up being a survival trait despite its drawbacks.

So you can't just cite one factor in isolation and claim that constitutes final proof. Context is everything. You'd need to evaluate the entire environment and ecosystem under discussion and enumerate all the contributing factors and processes before you could decide the probabilities.

The environment and ecosystem under discussion is a harsh ice planet. How does requiring twice the number of reproductive inputs as a dual-sex animal with a three-fold increase in the chances of something going wrong or happening to at least one of the required individuals promote survivability?

 

[rfmcdpei]

[M]ultiple sexes would be a safeguard against harmful mutation in, say, an environment with higher levels of radiation or mutagenic toxins than Earth has. With four copies of each gene, a harmful mutation on one copy would probably be "outvoted" most of the time and its potential harm would be nullified. You'd need two or three mates with the same mutation for it to be expressed, and the odds of that would be low.

It's worth noting that Andoria is the moon of a gas giant, and that it's shown as orbiting a Procyon that's a white sub-giant which produces quite a lot of UV radiation. Presuming there's a higher level of radiation on Andoria than on Earth seems plausible.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Which is unequivcally NOT the case with Andorians. They evolved in an intensely harsh, low-survival environment.

We don't know that.

We don't know anything about the history of Andor's climate over the course of millions of years. Not canonically, and not in the novels.

Basic astronomical science tells us us all we need to know about Andoria's development. It's a moon of a gas giant, which occur in the outer reaches of solar systems, well clear of the "life zone".

With the singular exception of gas giants which appear closer to the stars they orbit, like the "hot Jupiters" that were the first non-pulsar exoplanets ever discovered. Microlensing studies have indicated that our solar system might be unique in having its gas giants--especially Jupiter--orbit so distantly from their stars.

Life would only be possible due to some form of geo-thermal activity within the planet, which matches with what we have been shown canonically (under ground/under ice cities.

Not necessarily. Andorian civilizaton in the modern era has been marked by an engagement with ice, but what about the pre-modern era?

The development of additional non-visual sensory organs (the antennae) also supports the idea that Andoria is far from it's primary. Development of such senses would only make sense if light-dependent sensory organs (eyes) were either absent or relatively weak, which would be the case in a low-light environment like Andoria.

... Or, when organisms could benefit from the sensory data that would be provided.

The environment and ecosystem under discussion is a harsh ice planet. How does requiring twice the number of reproductive inputs as a dual-sex animal with a three-fold increase in the chances of something going wrong or happening to at least one of the required individuals promote survivability?

For one thing, Andoria is plausibly a fairly hostile world at least insofar as radiation goes, orbiting a gas giant with dense radiation belts that in turn white sub-giant with heavy UV output. Between particle and electromagnetic radiation, there's a case that the four-gender paradigm could be useful in protecting against mutations.

This analysis assumes that the Andorian species arose naturally, without external intervention. This may not be the case: one sub-theme in Heather Jarman's Andor: Paradigm was the unlikeliness of the problematic four-gender paradigm evolving naturally, the lack of any close relatives to the Andorian species on their homeworld apparently suggesting to some that the ancient Andorians were originally colonists form some other world. Shar's discovery of a flowering plant that made use of the four-gender paradigm was a pleasant surprise suggesting that maybe the four-gender paradigm was indigenous to Andoria.

Maybe it wasn't; maybe that plant also came with the proto-Andorians to their homeworld. A four-gender reproductive paradigm that made a species resistant to mutation might be useful if it came to considering who'd be sent to colonize a world filled with mutagenic radiation.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Requiring four times the amount of resources to sustain one "breeding unit" as a mono-sex animal, and twice that of a dual-sex animal.

Going by your line of reasoning, wouldn't that mean two-gender species like the ones that predominate on Earth would be doomed when faced with superior hermaphroditic species?

 

[Sci]

This analysis assumes that the Andorian species arose naturally, without external intervention. This may not be the case: one sub-theme in Heather Jarman's Andor: Paradigm was the unlikeliness of the problematic four-gender paradigm evolving naturally, the lack of any close relatives to the Andorian species on their homeworld apparently suggesting to some that the ancient Andorians were originally colonists form some other world. Shar's discovery of a flowering plant that made use of the four-gender paradigm was a pleasant surprise suggesting that maybe the four-gender paradigm was indigenous to Andoria.

Or perhaps the proto-Andorians weren't colonists -- maybe they were genetically engineered by some other species, but never placed on any other planet than Andor. Or perhaps the proto-Andorians -- or the proto-proto-Andorians -- were native to another planet, but forcibly relocated to Andor by another species before they ever achieved sentience.

There's a lot we don't know about Andor and its premodern history, bottom line.

 

[Tiberius]

There are plenty of cases in evolution where something that creates a disadvantage (like the gene for sickle-cell anemia) also creates an advantage that outweighs it (like resistance to malaria), so that it ends up being a survival trait despite its drawbacks.

First of all, what I proposed was an example of the kind of thing that I am talking about.

Secondly, if any one individual has the ability to carry out the functions of any of the other genders, then that individual will have a reproductive advantage.

For example, the example that Sci gave, with three of the genders providing genetic samples and the fourth incubating it, illustrates another example. Let's say one of the contributing genders is able to contribute the genetic material for itself as well as the genetic material that would normally be contributed by one of the other genders. Then IT will have a reproductive advantage, and any matings that it is involved in will produce more offspring, simply by virtue of the fact that fewer individuals are required for it.

 

[Tiberius]

Requiring four times the amount of resources to sustain one "breeding unit" as a mono-sex animal, and twice that of a dual-sex animal.

Going by your line of reasoning, wouldn't that mean two-gender species like the ones that predominate on Earth would be doomed when faced with superior hermaphroditic species?

However, having two parents has significant advantages. It creates a greater variation in the gene pool. A single sex species that has five offspring, all those offspring are going to be very similar. And if one of them has a vulnerability to a certain disease, then all are likely to. In a two gendered species, then each of the five could be quite different, so a vulnerability of one may not be shared by the others.

Yes, a four gendered species will have that advantage to a greater degree, but it would also halve the number of total offspring, as only a quarter of all individuals could bear young instead of the half that dual gendered species could.

 

[Christopher]

Basic astronomical science tells us us all we need to know about Andoria's development. It's a moon of a gas giant, which occur in the outer reaches of solar systems, well clear of the "life zone".

As rfmcdpei pointed out, that's a completely outdated assumption, a relic of a time when our planetary system was the only one known. We've since discovered an abundance of systems with giant planets at all possible distances from their stars, and the prospect of Earthlike moons orbiting giant planets in stellar habitable zones is a major topic in astrobiology these days. (Although it has been determined that in order to be large enough, the "moon" would probably have to be a captured terrestrial planet.) Here's some reading on the subject:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/resources/seti/3304591.html?page=1&c=y
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?s=exomoons

The development of additional non-visual sensory organs (the antennae) also supports the idea that Andoria is far from it's primary. Development of such senses would only make sense if light-dependent sensory organs (eyes) were either absent or relatively weak, which would be the case in a low-light environment like Andoria.

Which ignores the fact that all Andorians we've seen (except the Aenar) have functional eyes, see the same color spectrum that we do (at least having the same concept of "pink"), and have Earth-normal lighting inside their ships and facilities. And perhaps you've also forgotten that humans have plenty of non-visual sensory organs, like ears and noses and skin. Insects have antennae but they also have eyes. So your assertion here makes no sense.

The environment and ecosystem under discussion is a harsh ice planet.

We don't know that's always been the case. Planetary climate is not a perpetual constant. Earth has been largely or mostly glaciated at some parts of its history and completely free of ice at other times, and many of those fluctuations in the amount of glaciation on the planet have occurred during the evolutionary history of the genus Homo. Just because Andoria's in an ice age in the infinitesimal sliver of geological time that is Enterprise's fourth season, that doesn't mean it always has been or always will be (and indeed, the books portray it as having a warmer climate by the 24th century).

Besides, it's pretty silly to talk about an entire planet as a single environment. Any world capable of supporting complex life is going to be dynamic enough to have multiple climates; indeed, given that life itself affects climate and atmospheric composition, its very presence would make the planet even more environmentally dynamic and diverse.

How does requiring twice the number of reproductive inputs as a dual-sex animal with a three-fold increase in the chances of something going wrong or happening to at least one of the required individuals promote survivability?

As I said, answering that question would require knowing a full range of specifics about the particular environment in question. And all we know for sure is that your assumptions about that environment are invalid. You might as well say -- and in fact you have -- that having two sexes would be a comparable "disadvantage" over having only one, but obviously bisexual life has thrived anyway. So clearly it would be absurd to treat that numerical or statistical drawback as the only thing that mattered.

Yes, a four gendered species will have that advantage to a greater degree, but it would also halve the number of total offspring, as only a quarter of all individuals could bear young instead of the half that dual gendered species could.

Unless it's normal for Andorians to have twin or multiple births, which would compensate for that. You're making too many unexamined assumptions and that's leading you astray. You need to question your own position as avidly as you're questioning everyone else's.

 

[rfmcdpei]

For example, the example that Sci gave, with three of the genders providing genetic samples and the fourth incubating it, illustrates another example. Let's say one of the contributing genders is able to contribute the genetic material for itself as well as the genetic material that would normally be contributed by one of the other genders. Then IT will have a reproductive advantage, and any matings that it is involved in will produce more offspring, simply by virtue of the fact that fewer individuals are required for it.

Human reproduction involves the fusion of a male reproductive cell possessing 23 chromosomes with a female reproductive cell possessing 23 chromosomes into a single organism with a total of 46 chromosomes. If anything goes wrong--if additional chromosomes are brought into the mixture--then the resulting chromosomal abnormalities are quite serious, at best resulting in an organism unable to reproduce, at worst resulting in spontaneous abortion.

In the case of Andorian/Aenar reproduction, where the male chan and thaan each contribute a quarter of the needed chromosomes while the female shen contributes half, it's difficult for me to imagine mutations which could lead to an individual belonging to one of the male sexes being able to provide all of the chromosomes needed without some sort of external intervention. Having such a complex mutation emerge successfully is a low-probability event, akin to having parthenogenesis emerge among human women.

 

[rfmcdpei]

This analysis assumes that the Andorian species arose naturally, without external intervention. This may not be the case: one sub-theme in Heather Jarman's Andor: Paradigm was the unlikeliness of the problematic four-gender paradigm evolving naturally, the lack of any close relatives to the Andorian species on their homeworld apparently suggesting to some that the ancient Andorians were originally colonists form some other world. Shar's discovery of a flowering plant that made use of the four-gender paradigm was a pleasant surprise suggesting that maybe the four-gender paradigm was indigenous to Andoria.

Or perhaps the proto-Andorians weren't colonists -- maybe they were genetically engineered by some other species, but never placed on any other planet than Andor. Or perhaps the proto-Andorians -- or the proto-proto-Andorians -- were native to another planet, but forcibly relocated to Andor by another species before they ever achieved sentience.

There's a lot we don't know about Andor and its premodern history, bottom line.

Certainly the prevalence of ancient species which engaged in the genetic engineering and/or transplantation of sentient species to different planets suggests any number of possibilities.

Yes, a four gendered species will have that advantage to a greater degree, but it would also halve the number of total offspring, as only a quarter of all individuals could bear young instead of the half that dual gendered species could.

Unless it's normal for Andorians to have twin or multiple births, which would compensate for that. You're making too many unexamined assumptions and that's leading you astray. You need to question your own position as avidly as you're questioning everyone else's.

The Star Trek novels do establish that the four-gender paradigm worked reasonably well until some point prior to the 22nd century, when a "biological holocaust" hit the zhens and resulted in high levels of chromosomal abnormalities, resulting in a narrowing of fertility windows and increased difficulties carrying healthy fetuses to term generally.

What caused this? We don't know; a trigger was never described.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Basic astronomical science tells us us all we need to know about Andoria's development. It's a moon of a gas giant, which occur in the outer reaches of solar systems, well clear of the "life zone".

As rfmcdpei pointed out, that's a completely outdated assumption, a relic of a time when our planetary system was the only one known. We've since discovered an abundance of systems with giant planets at all possible distances from their stars, and the prospect of Earthlike moons orbiting giant planets in stellar habitable zones is a major topic in astrobiology these days. (Although it has been determined that in order to be large enough, the "moon" would probably have to be a captured terrestrial planet.) Here's some reading on the subject:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/resources/seti/3304591.html?page=1&c=y
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?s=exomoons

I'd add

http://phl.upr.edu/library/notes/themassandradiusofpotentialexomoons

This picture of the Enterprise approaching Andoria suggests that Andoria's parent world, Andor, is a blue-green world. The colour might imply that Andor orbits its sun within the life zone. that it's warm enough to support a water-filled atmosphere; see below.

http://www.extrasolar.net/speculations.html

I don't know whether or not we could use the picture to speculate about the relative sizes of Andoria and Andor.

There does seem to be a fairly standard 10 000:1 ratio between the mass of a gas/ice giant and its moons, at least if the moons are natural. A gas giant would probably need to amount to several Jovian masses before it could support a Earth-like world formed in its own orbit, verging on brown dwarf status. If Andor is such a large world, then Andoria could have formed in orbit. Alternatively, if Andor is a smaller world, then Andoria probably was captured.

 

[captcalhoun]

i think Andorians having blue skin, white hair and antennae made them unique and alien enough, thanks.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Better to do something more conventional than to do something "unique" that makes no logical sense. Given the major disadvantages previously stated, the Andorians would have long died out from lack of ability to reproduce successfully.

What if, thousands of years ago, the fertilized egg routinely split into four, perhaps six, separate fetuses? As in the Leslie Fish fanfic from the 70s, one multiple-birth pregnancy per bond group would work fine. Even too well. Her Andorians were warriors due to overpopulation.

Something weird started to evolve on Andor and the eggs became less likely to split after conception. Here on Earth, multiple births have become more commonplace due to IVF and advances in natal care. The reverse could just as easily happen.

The Star Trek novels do establish that the four-gender paradigm worked reasonably well until some point prior to the 22nd century, when a "biological holocaust" hit the zhens and resulted in high levels of chromosomal abnormalities, resulting in a narrowing of fertility windows and increased difficulties carrying healthy fetuses to term generally.

Yep.

I don't consider it canon within onscreen Trek, but that's only because it was never established onscreen. Like I said, if it had been introduced onscreen, I wouldn't think "Well that's stupid, I'll ignore it."

What made "The Andorian Incident" (ENT) so much fun for me was working out what genders Shran's comrades were. Tholos was quite androgynous, seemingly making eyes at both T'Pol and Trip. Keval and Shran were more masculine. In "Cease Fire" we meet Tarah, who towers over the males. Later, Tallas seems to be more feminine. Plenty of leeway to embrace the four-gender paradigm from the novels.

In Leslie Fish's other fanfics about the assumed-male Thelin ("Yesteryear", TAS), he/she is romantically involved with a human male, and their is also reference to "Journey to Babel"'s Andorian ambassador as "Aunt Shras."

 

[Christopher]

^I think you meant "The Andorian Incident" there.

 

[Therin of Andor]

^I think you meant "The Andorian Incident" there.

Hehe. I was originally going to write "Enterprise: The Andorian Incident" and it looked clumsy. Of course, then I clumsily changed it.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

What made "The Andorian Incident" (ENT) so much fun for me was working out what genders Shran's comrades were.

Male and female. The 4 genders were not established then (or at any other time in canon).
If you think the scenarists actually intended to establish them in that - or any other episode - oookay...

The 4 genders brought the andorians briefly to the forefront of trek lit.
But they became really over-used. You'd think trek lit could focus on other aspects of the andorian culture instead of rehashing same old, same old.
Apparently not - the andorians are one-trick poneys, at this point.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The 4 genders were not established then (or at any other time in canon).

The novel duology "DS9: Avatar", which kicked off the non canonical four-sex Andorian paradigm, was launched in May 2001, the same month the series "Enterprise" began production. "The Andorian Incident" episode filmed about eight weeks later, and aired in October 2001.

If you think the scenarists actually intended to establish them in that - or any other episode - oookay...

I didn't say they intended to follow TrekLit, but it is definitely possible some writers were influenced. Andre Bormanis and Manny Coto, when they worked on "The Aenar", were influenced by the Last Unicorn Games' manual, "Amongst the Clans", taking the icy world depicted on the cover, and factoids about the ushaan and traditional weaponry, into canon.

The 4 genders brought the andorians briefly to the forefront of trek lit.
But they became really over-used. You'd think trek lit could focus on other aspects of the andorian culture instead...

There have been plenty of Andorian cultural aspects introduced in the TrekLit. I have a website that catalogs them.

the andorians are one-trick poneys, at this point.

Say that again and I'll... hold my breath until I turn blue.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

There is a lot of talk about the "if" and "why" but what about the "how"? it seems like a lot of people, while talking about how alien and strange the four genders are still what to hold Andorian sex and reproduction to conventional humanoid standards. Do we know that one of the female genders carries their young like humans do? Perhaps an egg cache is laid like fish and amphibians do. What is the role of each gender in the reproduction process? I don't the act of mating is carried out like a "4-some." Their process of reproduction may even be a form unlike anything seen on Earth.

I would speculate that a mating process involving 4 individuals probably typically produces more than one offspring per reproductive act.

I would also speculate that forming a union of 4 spouses makes for a really difficult courting process. Imagine Andorian singles bars!