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The Gerudo: The Mechanics of Life

Din Akera

Sniper
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Location
My own little world
Alright, so I originally posted this in the article section, but after reading it over again and making some picky changes from some very helpful feedback I thought that it was much more of a theory based piece. I hope you enjoy.


The Gerudo: Mechanics of life
General Description:
The Gerudo are a race of women that have been known to live in the desert portion of Hyrule. The race is known for the interesting fact of only one man being born every hundred years, in Ocarina of Time, this man was Ganondorf. The Gerudo appear as tall, lean and muscular women with red hair. Traditionally, the Gerudo are thieves by trade. They operate in what seems to be a ranking system. The guards wear purple and carry long pikes as their weapon of choice. On the child timeline, the second in command’s name is Nabooru and she dresses in pink in the official artwork. She is the Gerudo that we are the most introduced too, aside from Ganondorf of course. There also appears to be a rank of fighters presented in Ocarina of Time. They appear to defend Gerudo Fortress by engaging in battles with intruders. In Majora’s Mask we are further introduced to this rank of the Gerudo and are told her name, Avail. In both situations she is dressed in red. But in Majora’s Mask is she considered the leader. Commonly, the Gerudo women go to castle town to find boyfriends but otherwise do not leave the desert. This information is given throughout the game series.

Reproduction and Genetics:
All species are intended to procreate and continue on with existence. But, the Gerudo live in difficult circumstance for this to occur. For Gerudo's to not die out their genetic alleles must be dominate to that of other races due to the time span of 100 years between the births of the males. Therein, they could reproduce with Hylian males to make more Gerudo females if the Gerudo genes were dominate over the Hylian ones. This type of offspring/child would be heterozygous, but appear Gerudo. Meaning, the individual contains the genes of both races (both alleles), but only expresses the dominate one. Contrasting to a homozygous individual which contains two of the same alleles. If these offspring then mated with the dominant male Gerudo, the chance of the offspring to be homozygous dominate or heterozygous is 50%. All of which would still appear Gerudo. These two types of offspring would be able to continue this process, never creating a homozygous recessive child. This is how the race is sustained between the births of the Gerudo males every 100 years. The male would then have children with the females once he was biologically capable enough. This would be what is largely responsible for keeping the gene pool a strong dominant one. (This is assuming Gerudo’s have a Hylain/human lifespan. If their lifespan exceeds 120 years, the need for the dominate male is less important, but still required to continue creating offspring that would be homozygous dominate.) The assumption that the lifespan is shorter (about 80-90 years) creates the need for other males to help sustain the species until the Gerudo male was born and able to reproduce: Hylians from Castle Town market. This is how the race survived, and was intended to survive, before Ganondorf arrived and entered the sacred realm. As long as the dominate Gerudo genes were pasted from the male to many children during the time he produced viable cells, then there would be enough homozygous dominate offspring to filter out and genetically mask the number of recessive alleles (50% heterozygous). Thus, sustaining the race.

Sexual reproduction does introduce an interesting twist in that only females are produced from the mating described above. To explain this, it is possible that Gerudo women’s egg cells have a chemical messenger signal that could easily detect whether the male cell carried the Y allele or the X allele due to the distinct difference in genetic content between the female and male sex chromosomes. Y-chromosomes are significantly smaller than X chromosomes. Therefore, the female cell would be able to repel the Y containing cell due to it being physically lighter. This would then allow for the egg cell to only be fertilized by the X containing cell, producing only females.

The most pressing issue in this theory is then how the male is produced. The male in the environment would be required to maintain some level of gene diversity so that the species could survive (as described above for sexual reproduction). So why is a male produced every hundred years and the rest of the time the offspring are only female? An inducer would be required to cause the need for a male to produce the gene diversity. Further, due to the timeline of 100 years, this must be a regular inducer. The inducer for the production of a Gerudo male from a reproduction standpoint is the shift in the gene pool to the weaker side and the mechanism is the Hylian male. Conception with a homozygous Gerudo female and a Hylain male would allow for the production of a dominant Gerudo male. The inducer plays it’s role in the conception of the male in that the chemical messenger that prevents the conception of a male would have to be discontinued. The weakness of the gene pool and the genetic code the homozygous dominate female receives upon her conception could cause the messenger to not be produced within the body and therefore allow a Y containing cell to fertilize an egg. This does not, however, prevent an X containing cell from fertilizing the female cell. But, if a lethal gene were fixed in the X chromosome of the Hylain male and that allele was absent on the chromosome of the female Gerudo’s, this would cause the lethal gene to be expressed, thus a female could never be born between them, due to a failure to complement between the two different X chromosomes. The Y however would not possess this gene and thus allow for the females to conceive a male. This combination of parents would not allow for the production of a female, thus creating the male Gerudo for the race. The low point of this theory is that 50% of the females produced would be heterozygous, and so only one of them would have to find a Hylian male to mate with. This could be controlled not by a biological factor, but by a social factor. Due to the ranking system of the Gerudo, it is possible that not all the Gerudo are allowed to leave the desert and go to castle town. It is characteristic in species that operate under a ranked system that only certain individuals are allowed to mate. This social factor could and most likely does, play a larger role in the production of the male than the biological requirement. Therefore, if only one female were socially allowed to reproduce with a Hylian male, this would greatly reduce the amount of possibility for the conception of a male. Possibly limiting it to one. Due to the extremely regulatory nature of the timeline, it is most likely that this social factor plays a major role in this portion of the species’ survival. But this production of the Gerudo male would revitalize the population and cause the gene pool to become a strong dominant one once again. The heterozygous females will always produce males. The offspring from these dominant males will be homozygous dominant females. These females when they reproduce with the Hylain males will produce only female offspring, of which will all be heterozygous. Those females will then mate with Hylain males and produce only males. Thus, the race could survive through sexual reproduction and posses the traits that are known to be true of the Gerudo.

The other possibility of reproduction is asexual reproduction. The Gerudo women would be the ones to reproduce asexually due to their abundance. Due to anatomical shape, the women would have go through the same cycle of reproduction as sexual reproduction (growing a child in the womb) as the body structure would not allow for binary fission or budding of any kind. The women would produce a cell that would undergo asexual reproduction at the single cell stage. One of the cells would die out and the other would undergo mitotic divisions and produce a fetus and eventually an offspring. It is possible both products of the asexual reproduction division would grow into an offspring, but that would mean every time the females reproduced, they would have twins. The production of a male would then be caused through the same mechanism as described above for sexual reproduction. But the actual inducer would be the fact that the gene pool required additional diversity and the Gerudo women found Hylian males to mate with. This would have to happen twice, over two generations, to have the Gerudo female be heterozygous. Though, this would imply that the lifespan be shorter than the 80-90 years to keep up with the 100 year timeline of the production of the male Gerudo. The theory of asexual reproduction would also explain the fact that all Gerudo women appear identical. Although asexual reproduction is unlikely because any species that lives in a harsh environment, such as the desert, require as much genetic diversity as possible to survive in the environment. A small diversity or mutation could cause death of a large number of the population if there were any shift in the environment, which is frequent in the desert.

Due to the nature of the two theories, either one is quite likely and could be argued as the correct process of the species for survival and reproduction.

Evolution:
In a long-term look, it would appear that the Gerudo would continue to live well and the species would carry on as intended. But a significant event occurs that affects the Gerudo directly. Ganondorf is born as the single Gerudo male and becomes the king of evil. Once he is defeated by the hero of time the Gerudo race is left without a Gerudo male that did not create any offspring. From a biological standpoint, at first this is rather unimportant as the females are still able to reproduce with Hylian males to produce Gerudo females. The process would continue the same as described above. Therefore, biologically the system would continue.

The social factors may be the introduction of the problem. Only one female is allowed to go to Castle Town to find a male to mate with every hundred years and one had done so to create Ganondorf. But because Ganondorf did not conceive children (that are known of) the gene pool would become weaker much faster than in previous cycles. Because there were no completely dominate offspring created from the dominate male, homozygous dominate females genetically programmed to not produce the chemical messenger to block the Y chromosome containing cells would be created before the 100 year timeline was complete. Thus the time span where these females are fertile and the inducer is in place could be missed and the Gerudo’s many not be able to produce another male Gerudo, only females. If this social factor was truly strong enough to inhibit the Gerudo from creating another male to replace Ganondorf it is possible for them to ‘skip’ a male generation. Once again it is possible for the Gerudo to biologically continue on this way, except for the fact that this skip would weaken the gene pool even more than it would be sitting at. To produce only females for 200 years is extremely risky on genetic diversity and the species would be extremely vulnerable to any change in the environment in which they live.

It is known that the Gerudo fade from existence in the future years of Hyrule. It is likely that a shift in the environment caused too great of a strain on the weak and non-diverse nature of the gene pool. The most recent map of Hyrule indicated that there is a physical spilt between the desert and the main portions of Hyrule, including Castle Town. It is very possible this was caused by a natural disaster such as an earthquake. Therefore, the Gerudo species died out and are no longer seen. The physical separation would only increase the chances of die off in the species due to the inability to produce even females with Hylian males. Of course it is also possible that some may have survived and simply relocated to a more suitable location and many be lucky upon conception of a male to revitalize their race and repopulate the desert once again.

A major flaw in this entire theory is the fact that it is very unlikely that an individual Gerudo could know when there was a weakening the in gene pool. But, this theory, like all biology theories is not perfect in anyway. All of my above statements are purely theory from observation, and cannot be proved without genetic testing of the species.


Tell me what you think now ^^
 

athenian200

Circumspect
Joined
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a place of settlement, activity, or residence.
You have devoted considerable thought to this problem, and I commend you.

I personally think it's quite likely that the Gerudo did interbreed with the Hylians, and after a male wasn't produced for a while... eventually what was left of their genes was absorbed completely into the Hylian population. Even if there was a social factor, I'm sure there were those who disobeyed, or even abandoned their own race.

I don't quite know all the precise logistics of biology, but I do know sociology well enough to be certain that if Hylians and Gerudo women could breed, it WILL happen between a good number of them, given their proximity, and regardless of any social restrictions.
 

DuckNoises

Gone (Wind) Fishin'
Joined
Jul 16, 2010
Location
Montreal, QC, Canada
I've been making a lot of similar, but smaller and disconnected comments that are all very similar to this. It's wonderful to see that someone has been thinking the same way I have, and has taken the care and effort to finish it with such a better end product than I came up with. You've even come up with a pretty complex biological explanation that is actually plausible, and plausible often seems to be more than good enough for Zelda. :lol:

I've also been really expressing the fact that the Gerudo gradually die out (as the Gerudo people, but there are still descendants of Gerudo), and I think this is a good thing to look at as an offshoot concerning the multiple Ganondorf debate.

The only bit I disagree with you on is this:
Only one female is allowed to go to Castle Town to find a male to mate with every hundred years and one had done so to create Ganondorf.
I think that Ganondorf must have been of the same gene pool exclusively of Gerudo royalty, because that seems to fit in with a lot of their social factors, in addition to their genetic "planning."

Marvelous work! :)
 
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Majora's Cat

How about that
Joined
Sep 3, 2010
Location
NJ
@ Din Akera

Wow, your explanation was thorough and probably most brilliant thread I've ever read. I couldn't have said it any better. But then what about Gorons? Their species is made entirely of males. Gross.
 

LozzyKate

Ask Me Why I Love The Photoshops
Joined
Jan 30, 2010
:clap: Din, this is an excellent theory that you have here. It's very well-written and you definitely succeeded on elaborating all your points and it was a very intelligent post. Good job! Keep it up! ;)
 

Din Akera

Sniper
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Location
My own little world
Thank-you everyone fro your comments. ^^

@ Din Akera

Wow, your explanation was thorough and probably most brilliant thread I've ever read. I couldn't have said it any better. But then what about Gorons? Their species is made entirely of males. Gross.

It's funny you mention this because I have been working on a theory about the gorons as well. lol
 

Scythe-of-Chaos

I'm an assassin.... sshhh
Joined
Mar 13, 2010
Location
The shadows
this is possible for their weak survival. because in TP it is named 'gerudo vally' after the gerudos. so at some point in time their system eventually broke down and they died out
 

athenian200

Circumspect
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Location
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But then what about Gorons? Their species is made entirely of males. Gross.

Why do you think that? Just because you can't TELL which ones are female doesn't mean there aren't any. Perhaps Goron women just don't look very feminine?

Sometimes the word brother is used without a masculine connotation, and just to denote membership/togetherness. If there are baby Gorons, as we see in MM, there are likely to be female Gorons. Some people have suspected that the Goron that gives you Don Gero's mask is female.

It's somewhat possible for an all-female species to exist, but all-male would never work, because offspring could never be produced.

...

Wait, this should be it's own topic, shouldn't it?
 

PhantomTriforce

I am a Person of Interest
Joined
Jul 12, 2010
Location
Ganon's Tower
I think that, like normal biology, there is a 50-50 chance of a girl or boy begin born. But if there isn't a 100 year gap between males being born, they will kill the other baby boys. Ganondorf was the lucky one.
 

DuckNoises

Gone (Wind) Fishin'
Joined
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Location
Montreal, QC, Canada
I think that, like normal biology, there is a 50-50 chance of a girl or boy begin born. But if there isn't a 100 year gap between males being born, they will kill the other baby boys. Ganondorf was the lucky one.
This is also something I had considered a while back, which could be another logical explanation. I don't think it's quite a case of luck, but rather one of destiny, since that is such a prominent theme in Ocarina of Time. However, Nabooru does specifically mention the word "born":
Nabooru said:
A kid like you may not know this, but the Gerudo race consists only of women. Only one man is born every hundred years...
This implies that a male's birth may be due to a biological abnormality or the fulfillment of a prophecy of sorts, rather than the Gerudo merely killing off all male infants, because Nabooru does specifically mention that only one is born every hundred years.

Also, while I was looking, I stumbled upon another interesting tidbit from a Gossip Stone:
Gossip Stone said:
They say that Gerudos worship Ganondorf almost like a god.
This makes me bring up my point of destiny and divine right again that goes along with a monarch; it seems to imply that Ganondorf is of a higher status, of royal, "divine" blood. I think it is not dissimilar to how the ancient Egyptians perceived the Pharaoh, much like a demigod of sorts. I think this adds to the emphasis of his uniqueness, and puts emphasis on the unlikeliness of him having a successor (i.e., another Ganondorf) without having been of the same bloodline. Since all male Gerudos have been elevated to the status of King and used to procreate, it can be established that all male Gerudos belong to the same bloodline as the King of the Gerudos, because they would have to be direct descendants (however, this would also mean that, if part of the King's role is one of procreation, then all the females would also have to be of the same royal bloodline :P). However, if the male Gerudo genotype is recessive (as Din had suggested), this would explain why no male Gerudo-like individuals have existed in the games since Ganondorf. This would mean that, in order for another Gerudo male to exist, they would have to be of 100% Gerudo lineage (a Gerudo male, automatically of Gerudo royalty, and a Gerudo female, of Gerudo royalty), hence why we have not seen a male Gerudo other than Ganondorf.
 
Joined
Sep 17, 2010
Location
Edmonton
...wow din i feel completly ********....
i remember reading this when you first posted it and i just posted a similar albet 50X shorter thread. my explination instead is the ZW sex determination system and Parthenogenisis, which may or may not be a stronger possibility than gene lethality but idk...
 

startimer

Resident Cartographer
Joined
Jul 18, 2009
Location
Cloud 9
As interesting as this topic is, I really can't sort through all that text right now. I got to the part about the dominant genes before my eyes got tired... can someone kindly summarize?
 

penguinboy82

Nature's troll
Joined
Mar 17, 2010
Location
Pacific Northwest
The Gerudo Men

I was thinking about this the other day, and I was wondering something about the Gerudo. You know how they say that a man is only born every 100 years, and he must become the King of the Gerudo? Well, if that man is destined to become King, and as we all know, Kings are royalty, and royalty is very exclusive about the people they like and date, then how do they get more members of the Gerudo family? Also, have you noticed the extreme lack of children being "trained" to be Gerudos? Your thoughts would really be great with this one, it just boggles my mind o_O.
 

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