Orcs and gooseberry bushes?

[lexin]

You know what I've been wondering about lately? The science behind orc creation. The difficulty is that I never took biology; when I was young I was deeply squeamish and having realised that biology involved dissections, I took physics. That out physics master was a looker while the biology master was a complete creep only helped my decision

Comments

[phyloxena]

The canon-consistent (I believe) version is that orks are distorted (morally and physically) elves, they can mate and breed with humans, they (at least early non-crossbred generations) are potentially immortal (but die in batches in acts of violence), and the "extinguishing of their light" (presumably performed by Morgoth) resulted in drastic changes of ecology/etology, from extreme R-strategy (stable monogamous families, low numbers of expensive offsprings e.g. gorillas, elephants, ruling or upper-class families) to extreme K-strategy (no love to speak of and tons of disposable babies, e.g. herring, mice.) As a trained bilogist, I venture to suggest that ork-babies have lower birth-weight than Elv-babies, pregnancies and infancy are shorter and development is accelerated. Ork females fight alongside ork males (as high Elves did, or could) and non-orks cannot tell them apart. Grywnak could be a 2000-year old girl, for all we know.

[azdak]

Ork females fight alongside ork males (as high Elves did, or could) and non-orks cannot tell them apart

This sounds more like Pratchett than Tolkien...

[the rest of this is really adressed more to the original post than to your comment, for which I apologise]

I don't know how well up Tokien was on evolutionary biology. "Twisted" elves sounds vaguely Lamarkian, as if Morgoth captured some Elves, did something unspeakable to them that warped them horribly, and those characteristics were then passed on to their children. But I suppose it could have been some kind of yucky breeding programme.

[phyloxena]

Why Pratchett? Dwarfs? 1st Age Elves are pretty androgynous in appearance and social roles.

[azdak]

Yes - because he pretty much invented the "Dwarf women look exactly like dawrf men right down to the beard and helmet, which is why you never realise there are any female dwarfs in fantasy stories" idea. It goes way beyond a little superficial androgyny into the realms of the seriously funny.

[legionseagle]

He didn't invent it - it's straight out of the Appendices to LOTR ; Appendix A p445 in the 1999 Harper Collins ROTK:It was said by Gimli that there are few dwarf=women, probably no more than a third of the entire people. Tjeumseldom walk abroad except at great need. They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart."

Admittedly, he took the idea places Tolkien hadn't thought of, but it's undoubtedly canon.

[azdak]

Thank you for the correction! Ignorance is so unbecoming, especially when displayed in public.

Hmmm, this quote does make it rather hard to avoid the impression that Tolkien thought the Creator had boobed somewhat in making a completely unnecessary 50% of the human race female.