This is the comment perk from the December Giraffe Call, a setting piece on Dragons next Door.
A Survey of Reproduction Methods
When humanity lived apart from the other sentient races of earth, and spent most of its time encountering creatures only on its particular branch of the evolutionary tree, the study of reproduction was a much simpler, more limited thing.
As the magical races, the hidden peoples, and the Secret Ones came out from the shadows and began interacting more and more frequently with humanity, in some situations living next door to them, shopping in the same places, and going to the same schools, human scientists became, as humans are wont to do, curious. Working with the scholars of many of the older races (once they discovered that many of these races had scholars, which took some time), the human leads at Johns Talbot University have begun this Survey of Reproduction Methods.
Part One: Dragons
Possibly the most interesting of the non-human reproduction methods, the dragons, dracon sapiens, have developed a system depending entirely on a second species.
This symbiotic relationship took a great deal of time to explain to scientists of Johns Talbot, who at first believed that the dragons they were speaking with were talking in euphemism – “the stork does it,” is, after all, too close to the human myth we tell our children.
Dragons are, it appears, mono-sexual; all dragons have the same reproductive equipment, both having the ability to lay an egg and the ability to lay the smaller fertilizing seed. It appears that, according to some fossil record recently found, there may have been a time when these two could combine on their own.
The dragons do not speak of such a time, nor do they know how it came to be that their seed and egg would not join on their own. However, the process of fertilization is very well known to them, and that, they are willing to speak of.
A bonded pair of dragons will agree to have a child. One of them will lay an egg, placing it in a specially-prepared bed of gravel (in nesting places outside of their ancestral lands, they will have this particular type and color (coral-red) gravel trucked in for their egg beds). The egg is about the size and shape of an emu egg, although the shell is very thin. The other will place a much smaller seed-egg in the same bed.
Left to their own devices, neither will ripen or join. But with the assistance of a creature they call a stork, which is about one and a half times the size of the storks normally known to humankind and only nominally similar in appearance, the two become one and ripen. The stork places both egg and seed in its brood pouch (similar to a seahorse’s), along with its own eggs. An enzyme in the eggshell reacts with an enzyme in the pouch, and both the stork’s eggs and the dragon’s come to maturity.
Needless to say, the dragons protect the storks fiercely, sheltering them and treating them as sacred animals. Woe to the predator who attacks one!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/239954.html. You can comment here or there.
Okay, no matter what they eat, they are not pests. Definitely not pests.
😀 Not these ones, no.
O_o Can “stork” eggs mature without a dragon egg? Are the “storks” as long-lived as dragons are? (If they can only reproduce on the same cycle, I suppose they’d better be, or perhaps many stork eggs mature with one dragon egg?) Does the “stork” hold the egg all the way to hatching, or is it at some point released/returned/put down by the stork and reclaimed by the dragons? Do dragons far from home import storks as well as proper nesting gravel?
Can “stork” eggs mature without a dragon egg? Not anymore. Are the “storks” as long-lived as dragons are? (If they can only reproduce on the same cycle, I suppose they’d better be, or perhaps many stork eggs mature with one dragon egg?) I don’t know. Many eggs, or perhaps they hoard eggshells. Does the “stork” hold the egg all the way to hatching, or is it at some point released/returned/put down by the stork and reclaimed by the dragons? Released at ~ 1st trimester Do dragons far from home import storks as well as proper nesting gravel? yep!
Are storks treated as wild creatures, pets, or domesticated livestock by the dragons? I don’t have a model for symbiont … If storks hoard dragon eggshells, that’s going to make them a target for other beings that use dragon eggshells for one thing or another. (Not that they probably aren’t already a target for people trying to wipe out dragons.)
Hrrm. Sacred creatures. Not pets, closer to cats-in-Egypt or (would have to research) possibly cows in India. And yes, it does make them a target. I hope you realize I make most of this up when asked.
Imagine realising you had dragons because you have storks… Or dragons in a consrvation group…
*giggle* love it!
Stealth dragons? A conservation group might be a fine way to make friends with other races.
I’m not sure anything that big can be stealthy…
I hope you realize I make most of this up when asked. Yup! I mean, you might’ve thought of some of these things already, but mostly I poke at things I’m curious about. (And that’s totally how I world-build.)
(*grin* Yay! Not the only one!) I think this is at the point where it needs a wiki… with *cough* all my free time.
Ask them? 🙂
Them?
The dragons! “Got any ninjas or infiltration experts?”
Ah-ha!
Oh, I missed that first bit. Disregard the latter part of my comment on DW, then!
This is terribly awesome. I like it a lot. I mean’ it’s dragons and all, but I love the combination of science and myth.
*grin* if i recall correctly, you helped me figure out where dragon babies come from..