Troll Biology Discussion

i confused my troll biology with my irl bee knowledge this is so embarrassing help

trolls are born from a giant bug with wings. it's called the Mother Grub. not a huge surprise that some mutants among them would carry the same adaptation!

insect reproduction is actually a lot more complex than many people give it credit for, and a lot of our understanding of how it works has been historically shaped by the assumption that they're like us - a male and a female come together to make a baby. but really, a lot of these social insects have more than two biological sexes; is an infertile worker really somehow the same sex as a fertile queen? this is kind of the basis of my interpretation that troll castes are a lot more like genders than we give them credit for. the word "caste", when applied to insects, is really just another word for sex!

an example of insect gender weirdness: among the yellow crazy ants, which are invasive in places all across the world, the worker and queen ants are actually of two different genetic lineages (called W and R). but how can this be, if only the queen ants can reproduce?? surely only the R lineage could survive! that's where the "males" of the species come in - they're actually chimera, formed from both W and R cells. so when they mate with the queen, they have a chance to create RR or WW offspring, or another RW hybrid like themselves. isn't that fascinating!

https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/jbsc/049/0017

some years ago New Scientist published an article about bees that I thought was especially relevant to troll reproduction, because people make a lot of assumptions about how trolls and their relationship to the mother grub "must" work based on how they assume insects mate:

"[Q]ueens mate with at least 10 males to produce new colony members, and more than one sperm enters each egg. In a few rare instances, individual bees can end up with some tissue derived from the fertilised egg, which is female, and some from extra sperm, which is male.

...

Genetic tests revealed the gynandromorphs’ unusual family histories. Nine of them had two or three fathers and one mother. One had no mother and two fathers, resulting from the fusion of two sperm."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2186602-some-honeybees-have-four-parents-or-no-mother-and-we-dont-know-why/

in the wide and wacky insect world, trolls reproducing with more than one quadrant-mate - and across sexes - doesn't really seem to be that strange!

Ah, hymentoptera. Never change. Fascinating that some of them manage to make reproductive biology even odder than the trolls do!

The Mother Grub being a form of troll is the most sensible explanation. The only reason I raised the possibility of her not being a troll is that Kanaya's virgin mother grub is considered a "lusus", and is shown as blank white like other, more normal lusii. Maybe stylisation is lying to us, and the lusii aren't actually white?

I noticed that too, but I started thinking. It is pretty rare for Mother Grubs to renounce brooding, so maybe they aren't considered lusii, but the Virgin Mother Grub is referred to such because she is now fulfilling that societal role now? Maybe the word "lusus" for her is probably used as a title, the same way as "custodian" or "guardian?"

Also the wiki somewhere said lusii have white coats so they can reflect the harsh sunlight off their bodies, so it hurts them less. I think that was something said in Friendsim? Maybe the Mother Grub has a white body for that same reason? Though that now asks the question of why would the Mother Grub go out of the caves during the day, if its already rare for them to do so?

Then again cave creatures irl can be pretty pale, so maybe Mother Grubs are colored white for that reason

I've always personally believed that the matriorb is less an "egg" and more a royal jelly equivalent that makes a jadeblood wriggler pupate into a mother grub instead of a troll. Drones, Mothergrubs, and trolls are also all the same species, with drones coming from eggs that aren't fertilized by troll genetic material

Spider paw mention reminds me of my headcanons for gru8 scars. I draw them as like. Really tiny arms (pretty common I think) of whatever arthropod the troll most correl8s to. So Serkets get 3 gru8 scars (I consider the arms pedipalps) in a tarantula arm shape 8ecause that makes 4 legs, Vantases get 6 (cra8s have 10 legs which I'm pretty sure includes the claws), and everyone else more or less gets 1 pair (insects having 6 legs and 4 of them already accounted for.)

people get too caught up in the technicalities of what makes the mother grub a "lusus" imo. canonically a lusus is just any of the wide variety of subterranean monsters native to Alternia; just to look at them, they're clearly not all the same species, so I don't see why a mother grub can't be a lusus AND a big mama troll. whether they're literally white because they live underground or they're just stylistically white like the rest of the comic's white characters is all secondary to that.

I was gunna ask how they'd get a jade wiggler to even turn into a mother grub on Earth C if that's what's required but I guess they do have the ectobiology huh LOL. I agree that drones are also presumably another casts in the same species; I'll raise you, though, that the jadebloods themselves are also hatched from a kind of unfertilised egg, explaining how they keep getting born despite imperial decrees of virginity. 🙂‍↕️

Coming here to say that alongside my "trolls get bigger than humans when they're older" theory, I also posit that Trolls cannot become drunk or experience the high of caffeine like humans can, because their body reacts only to stimulants found in the sopor slime. I think Sopor and Faygo (at least the trolls' Faygo, it could be the same soda brand as on earth) have the same chemical properties, but that Faygo probably has a higher concentration of sugar than Sopor does, which is why it does "weird" things to them when they have too much of it. Much like how sometimes bees get "drunk" if they take too much nectar.

I also think that Trolls dislike "sweet" tasting things and that perhaps their aversion to sweet things in general is because they taste like things they aren't really supposed to eat. Like Sopor slime might taste sweet, and Faygo is obviously a sweet-tasting drink. I always assumed it was because it's similar to how some people don't like the taste of iron and thus can't eat steak bc it "tastes" like blood or whatever lol. My only other "proof" of this is circumstantial lol. On the meteor, all of the humans drink Coffee but it's bitter and none of them like it and they all comment on how it sucks, except for some of the trolls who seem to like it. And in the Epilogues, Karkat eats these chocolate beetle candies a few times and I assume it's like dark chocolate which is also bitter.

Anyways, these are just headcanons T_T there's no real proof but I like adding these details in my fics just bc

@jakemorph ohhhh thank you for sharing those articles!! blood caste possibly being linked to troll sex makes me think about the drones blood color? they seem really important to troll society (on alternia at least) but they aren't on earth C, but then again that might be because troll reproduction there has mostly been ectobiology, or possibly a conscious effort to prevent drones from hatching.

I guess I was thinking more that it's weird that SGRUB can just. alter the player's genetics like that outside of self-prototyping. god tier did heal all injuries, so maybe it is the reverse and they are born with wings? it would also be kind of funny if SGRUB just... decided that godtier trolls should have wings. as a treat.

@a1m3v that tracks with irl insect queens very rarely leaving their colony/hive/nest, the biggest instance of queens moving is usually when a young/virgin queen goes to start her own colony. I imagine the mother grub wouldn't have much reason to go outside if it is being taken care of workers/jades all the time.

that makes me wonder how many mother grubs there are? or were i guess before alternia exploded. and how long are their lifespans? would it be the same as a jadeblood lifespan?

@elegantSpinstress agree with your theory and also that would make so much sense as to how Tab Soda is so popular with trolls-- it's sweet, but it has no sugar. as the paradox space comic SummerTeen Romance puts it, it is essentially Drugs Branded Soda.

god tier can make humans fly. is that an alteration to their genetics? like, do they have Flying Genes now? when dreaming Jade gave herself all those extra arms, she probably wasn't altering her own Genes, either - just her Form. that's similarly what the god tiers are all about; attaining a mythological Higher Form.

wings being significant in troll mythology/spirituality only makes more sense if you remember that the mother grub, their legendary mother goddess, also has wings. 🙂‍↕️

there actually are drones on Earth C, but they belong to Jane. we could assume they're robots, but I think it would be interesting if she was actually claiming all of the newborn drones as her own, like the Condesce did!

iirc sollux is a mutant and thats why his psionics are like that, and aradias were boosted heavily post-death