Did Cardassians evolve from reptiles?

[Arpy]

No, it doesn't suggest that Cardassians will EVER be like humans, nor that they will ever become mammalian as we understand the term. Their traits fit their world, presumably, and have continued to do so for many eons. It simply suggests that evolution took a different track and that types of life cannot be divided in the same way on Cardassia Prime as they can be on Earth, that different terminology is required. (If anything, without the Permian-Triassic extinction, we would have stood a chance to be more like them.)

At least, if it's my particular theory you're talking about, I don't know why you chose to read some sort of hidden racism into it.

The reason Cardassians look like we do is because they evolved from an animal that had a higher probability of looking like a human than an Earth reptile.

Humans evolved from earlier primates and that's the reason we look the way we do. If we evolved from Earth reptiles, we would not (I don't think) look like Cardassians - lizard men.

It's pretty unrealistic for the aliens on Trek to look so much like humans as they do. It's budget and little else. If in 1966 they had CG tech from 2066, we'd never have seen any humanoid aliens on Trek. They'd just be voiced by human actors.

It would be unrealistic if we thought that on other planets, life evolved into animal groups like the ones that did on Earth. Green scaly reptiles and warm-blooded hairy mammals and hollow-boned feathery birds are only Earth life-forms. Would you call this a bird?

...Come to think of it, maybe you should. If there's a different taxonomic term for flying creature on every planet then that's a lot of terms...bird, pouli, toka, kgi, wuluwulu, x!pop, etc, etc, times a million...they all mean "flying creature" regardless of what they look like or reproduce or anything else biologists look at.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

With so many MILLIONS of years for things to happen between the Permian and now, it's not out of the question that we could have had the same general form that we do, yet still have traits that in our universe we call reptilian. But of course it could have just as easily gone in other directions as well. If the human form proved adaptive, though, in a world without the P-T extinction, I wouldn't rule it out.

Within Trekiverse lore, of course, we have the panspermia theory established as canon, at least as far as the humanoid races are concerned, so presumably something alien grafted onto Earth's mammals, and Cardassia's therapsids, as well as a number of different types of (at the time) nonsentient creatures on other canworlds.

 

[Destructor]

It's not canon, but in Andrew Robinson's excellent A Stitch in Time, he states how Cardassians are evolved from reptiles, a not unfair implication given how much the show referenced their reptile-like tendencies.

Although presumably they are not cold-blooded, as that would make them incredibly lazy, which they didn't seem to be.

 

[Myasishchev]

...Come to think of it, maybe you should. If there's a different taxonomic term for flying creature on every planet then that's a lot of terms...bird, pouli, toka, kgi, wuluwulu, x!pop, etc, etc, times a million...they all mean "flying creature" regardless of what they look like or reproduce or anything else biologists look at.

"Crypto-bird." Although flight, of course, is not one of the essential characteristics of a bird. To paraphrase Franklin Sherman, utahraptor can't fly!

In any event, I don't know why the Cardassian appearance would even really suggest crypto-reptilian--scales? I mean, go look at an pangolin--or the skin over your knuckles. The scaly stuff protecting the neck doesn't scream reptilian to me.

The references to poikithermia--that is, permitting their body temperature to vary with their surroundings, e.g. Garak's whining about the station being cold* and that bit that I think is in the series about the hot rocks**--however, do.

*Turn up the heat, dummy. It's your shop. I'm also slightly bugged by the "too bright" line. We've seen Cardassia--place is pretty bright.
**Might've been in a novel.

If the human form proved adaptive, though, in a world without the P-T extinction, I wouldn't rule it out.

In a terrestrial environment, I suspect the human body plan always would. I would imagine that any planet that could provide an arboreal environment to get the ball rolling, the first intelligent tool-users would be humaniform. Or elephantine. Can't rule the Sloni out.

That said, I'm amazed so many species in Trek have airways that cross their foodway. That's just really bad luck. Thanks a lot, Salome Jens.

 

[Timo]

Within Trekiverse lore, of course, we have the panspermia theory established as canon, at least as far as the humanoid races are concerned

...With the twist that the people ejaculating into space had a farsighted plan where the seed material itself was impregnated with coded instructions for further development. The generic panspermia theory doesn't involve planning or intent.

It seems the Ancients wanted to populate the empty galaxy with peoples of their ilk, with sapient humanoids; not just any random form of life or sapient life would do. And they had the means. Boy, they had the means. If they could insert into the seed material bits of code that would, billions of years later, combine into a virtual machine/lifeform and hijack any suitable piece of nearby technology to project a holo-message, it would be a breeze for them to insert code that ensured that any suitable piece of nearby fauna or flora would be turned into a sapient humanoid capable of having offspring with all other such products!

It's a bit unlikely that any of the Trek species are really the result of evolution as we know it; too many coincidences there. Rather, evolution creates an ecosystem (possibly including sapient lifeforms roughly recognizable as such by us, although probably usually not), after which the Ancient program kicks in, hijacks something, and turns it into a sapient humanoid. If this doesn't pan out, or if the humanoids subsequently leave the planet and it goes fallow again, it hijacks something else and repeats the process.

On Cardassia, the program apparently hijacked something scaly, and the scales remained despite providing no discernible advantage to the eventual humanoid form. Might have been something similar to our reptiles (beyond being scaly), might have been something completely dissimilar.

I'm also slightly bugged by the "too bright" line. We've seen Cardassia--place is pretty bright.

All places would be, once the eye adjusts. In absolute terms, Cardassia might be dimmer than Bajor or Earth.

However, it's also possible that Cardassians dwell in dark places on their homeworld, even though the world itself is not particularly dim. We've seen the interiors of their buildings, with subdued lighting (at least "The Wire", "Tribunal" and the Cardassia Prime locations of the final season). We humans like our surroundings reasonably bright, yet we can survive the nights of our planet. Cardassians might be a tad more nocturnal, and in fact shirk away from bright light exactly because their planet is so brightly lit during the unbearable daytime.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

*Turn up the heat, dummy. It's your shop. I'm also slightly bugged by the "too bright" line. We've seen Cardassia--place is pretty bright.

I think the type of light may be different. Aside from WYLB, we've seen Cardassia as having a twilightish quality to its light. It could just be sunrise/sunset, or it could be that the Cardassian sun is redder, and that the kind of light that comes from Sol and B'hava'el is extra-harsh on Cardassian eyes.

I do have the suspicion that Cardassians are a bit more crepuscular than totally diurnal, too, and that lower light might have the function, in addition to avoiding headaches, of encouraging alertness. Now, I also think it's POSSIBLE (though the effects department certainly never gave us any evidence, and it probably would've looked stupid with 1996 effects) that they MIGHT have a tapetum lucidum or something similar. Which would fit a crepuscular being (or one that was recently so, in its evolutionary history), AND would give a purpose to the eye ridges...to try and keep the brightest, most direct light out of their eyes, since it would be painful. Now as we know from cats and dogs, such creatures CAN function during the day, but bright lights would hurt. Now this part I am totally making up and believing it, but it at least could fit.

As for the heat--two arguments against that. Customers would be a) uncomfortable and b) sweat all over the place while you're trying to work on their clothes. People wouldn't want to come in if it became a wet T-shirt contest just by stepping through the door. (Well, men would gather to WATCH until Odo broke up the crowd, but customers wouldn't like it.)

That said, I'm amazed so many species in Trek have airways that cross their foodway. That's just really bad luck. Thanks a lot, Salome Jens.

Maybe not all of them do. But it would be funny if that was a programming bug.

 

[Myasishchev]

^I could actually totally buy that Cards are more susceptible to, say, UV.

I even sort of take back the fluorescent lighting assumption--although they're really fluorescent lights (with, presumably, low final UV output). It's possible that they are supposed to be LED lamps or "future lamps" of some unknowable description. And it would make very good sense that there would some lamps with blacklight emissions given how unlikely it is that every species from every planet is a trichromatic dweeb like humans (but not, for example, like birds--maybe even utahraptor ) who don't utilize at all the ultraviolet information available to us.

He could still wear his blue blockers.

The tapetum lucidum thing would have been very cool, almost to the point that I'd accept it, but we never see it. I'd presume that over seven years some lighting conditions would have made the shining effect visible...

As for the heat--two arguments against that. Customers would be a) uncomfortable and b) sweat all over the place while you're trying to work on their clothes. People wouldn't want to come in if it became a wet T-shirt contest just by stepping through the door. (Well, men would gather to WATCH until Odo broke up the crowd, but customers wouldn't like it.)

Self-heating clothing would seem like a pretty good buy for a poikitherm.

I suppose I'm missing the forest for the trees in Garak's rant, which was basically about being stuck on a space station with Bajorans and us, which I will freely concede could easily suck, and not about any particular indignity involved.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

The tapetum lucidum thing would have been very cool, almost to the point that I'd accept it, but we never see it. I'd presume that over seven years some lighting conditions would have made the shining effect visible...

Which is, of course, why I made mention of the fact that we never saw anything of the sort onscreen. I suspect the budget of the show wouldn't have allowed them to go back and CGI something like that, anyway.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

Here's a rare shot of Dukat laying eggs. Maybe they are reptiles.

Cardassians are born from Trix cold cereal?

That's not Trix. Trix is for kids.

Those were the balls that Miles and Keiko were tossing to Molly on that episode "Time's Orphan".

 

[Myasishchev]

The tapetum lucidum thing would have been very cool, almost to the point that I'd accept it, but we never see it. I'd presume that over seven years some lighting conditions would have made the shining effect visible...

Which is, of course, why I made mention of the fact that we never saw anything of the sort onscreen.

I have a confession: I can't read or write. Everything I say is random keyboard mashing except for the space and return keys which I use to approximate the appearance of flowing text. So far I think it's working okjnfjd fklgk lfgkl

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

It's OK...we all have our moments.