Strange and Random Biological Questions (About WoW Races)

[Rimewynd]

Hey everyone.

In playing WoW and warcraft in general a lot of often odd and otherwise curious biological questions have come up for me - now, I have some theories of my own, which I'll be happy to toss up here along with other people's - but given that I renounced my lore-hound status a while back I wanted to ask people who are probably a lot more in the know.

After reading through what I was about to post, I decided to come back and add this bit so that I sounded slightly less creepy.

In my spare time, I enjoy many subjects like biology and anatomy - as well as zoology and related science - particularly the speculative branches of these (things like Xenobiology, Cryptozoology, etc,) and make up creatures in my spare time to amuse myself. Because of this, I have often toyed around with different ideas about the race of Azeroth, and while I have come up with some things, in other areas I remain at a loss. So, I thought I might post with the dual purpose of sharing some thoughts and ideas and asking people if they might have any knowledge of the thing I simply have no clue about.

/End addtion

Most of these question deal with the fundamental biology of a number of different races, but shouldn't contain anything near a graphic-quality to them, so no worries. I've organized them by race so that people can get at the a little bit easier, although you still might want do a search function if you're just trying to look at one race in particular.

As a last word of warning, I know the topic says "biological", but it really ought to read "Biological and Genetic". I ran out of room. :P Forsaken aren't discussed for obvious reasons.

Please keep in mind that this is all highly speculative, and shouldn't be taken factually. I just thought it might spark some interesting ideas and bring some answers (or at least potential answers) to light in the end.

::Alliance Races::

Humans

Humans I don't have many questions about except for their ability to cross-breed with other races. I've heard it talked about that all races can cross breed with each other. How much veracity is there in this?

Orcs and Humans obviously can, which directly leads to dreanei and humans. From my perspective, either dreanei and humans can mate successfully (And I have *no idea* what that would look like) or (and this seems more likely to me) dreanei and human pregnancies lead to non-viable offspring who are unable to pass on their genetic material - much like ligers.

I tend to think of it this way due to a personal hunch that orc genetics are close enough to both human and dreanei to allow for successful cross-breeding, but in that they act as an unintentional bridge-species.

And what about humans and other races? Night elves are of particular interest to me, not because I see it as a likely pairing, but academically they're the ancestors for the High Elves, which could produce viable offspring with humans just fine. I'd love to hear peoples thoughts on all of this.

Dwarves

My major question for dwarves is whether or not alcohol has an adverse effect on their systems or if instead they have an altered process for metabolizing liquor. Alcohol seems to be an important part of their culture, and appears to have been for some time. While it can easily be argued that this is the case for humans as well, the dwarves do not share the normal traits of having evolved as a carbon-based amino-acid/DNA using life form, and instead were changed into their current condition over time through the curse of flesh.

Dwarven breeding is related to this, as - even though they are now obviously flesh - do the dwarves maintain a closes enough genetic similarity that they can breed with other species? Gnomes seem the most likely candidate, but even then...

Gnomes

Gnome weight and density has always concerned me. Due to their disproportionate head size, I have come to the conclusion that the gnome bone structure and musculature of the neck and spine must be more dense and proportionately heavier than that of, say, a human's. This would be to prevent unnecessary fatigue, but would render gnome surprisingly heavy for their size.

Night Elves

My big theory on NElfs surrounded the issue of their immortality.

I came up with the idea that NE's were effectively immortal due to the fact that their DNA never unraveled, a side-effect of some property of the moon wells and Nordrassil's energies. Without these influences, their lifespans would get progressively shorter on an exponential curve through the generations.

I've honestly never come up with much else that made sense, so I'm not about to post it up. :P

Draenei

Draenei confuse the living daylights out of me.

That's about it, really - I'm certain their DNA doesn't degenerate, but that's about were it ends.

A friend of mine once proposed that draenei males, like seahorses, carried the young to term - citing the size and bulk of the males compared to the thin and rather shorter form of the females as the source of his initial suspicions. I have to wonder if it doesn't hold any merit, as I've always felt that draenei looked rather like two different races, even by WoW's standards of male/female ratios.

::Horde Races::

Orcs

Orcs. Orcs orcs orcs. Where to start.

One of my initial theories was that the sun/atmosphere on draenor let in a type of solar radiation that as reflected in the green spectrum, but given the draenei and the ogre's existence that didn't make too much sense. A second theory is that their bodies do not acquire nutrients from that section of the visible spectrum via solar absorption and thusly developed accordingly.

Given all the book' I've read descriptions of orcs I'm surprised that the male and female models are so unbalanced, but there you have it. I can't imagine that orcish pregnancies slow the females down much until later on, closer to term, but again that's based out of what I've read.

I don't believe the orcs are meant to eat a lot of green veggies. I think that their diets are probably cloer to that of dogs (no offense meant to any orcs, just talking biology here,) than that of humans, who need quite a lot of them. My suspicions for this come twofold, the first being their mouths and teeth, and the second being their societal insistence that everyone needs to eat meat. I can't imagine that the orcs would simply abandon their pig farms for the sake of added efficiency in agricultural production.

Trolls

I'm somewhat surprised that a troll runs when not using tools - the male trolls, really.

This is a great example of when I'm thrown for a loop not because I don't have ideas, but because looking at the male and female models I get confused as to how such discrepancies crept in. I really, really want to know why female troll stand almost perfectly upright whereas male troll are hunched so far over I'm suspicious of them using their arms as temporary forelimb when running/loping.

If anyone has any ideas here, please say, as I'm stumped - I've got things for male troll, and female troll, but I can't bring them together as a species.

Tauren

Tauren I've wondered about a number of different things.

I'm not exactly sure if they really ought to be eating meat or not. My internal prejudice has 'no', but then again that might not be right, given that I think I remember seeing/reading somewhere that they were hunters. Which would seem to indicate a largely meat-based diet. Which their teeth don't seem to agree with.

My current theory is that tauren are opportunistic hunters that rely on long digestion times to correctly process their food. I think that meat - although their main food source - takes a good chunk of time for them to digest, probably within a dual-stomach system with the primary stomach as a substitute for chewing. They probably don't have problems with digesting on the move like we do.

Their teeth shape is accounted for by their opportunistic-ness. Although their teeth aren't the most idea for meat, even with the nubs on each tooth sharper than a normal bovine, they allow the tauren to easily break down and digest plant matter to supplement their diet whenever game runs scare. The fact that their teeth can also chew plants properly means that they only need a bi-stomach system as opposed to a quad-stomach, which allows them more space for a long and very absorption efficient (if slow) intestinal tract. By this reasoning, they'd also probably be more susceptible to poisons, given that they're going to have better absorption rates than your average species.

Blood Elves

I actually don't have too much to say here. I've got some questions about their ability to inter-breed, however, largely with orcs. (again, I never see this happening, I'm just wondering) Since they can interbreed successfully with humans, and humans can with orcs, would Blood/High elves be able to breed with orcs? I think that, like the dreanei/human question, you'd at least get a non-viable hybrid - although in this case I'm slightly more optimistic about viable offspring.

::Overarching Questions::

One big, huge, overarching question I've often wondered about is how reproduction works among the different races (outside of humans, obviously). I'm not interested in the mechanics of it, but rather in the circumstances of it. How often can the females *become* pregnant? How long would a pregnancy last in X race? Do they give birth to one offspring, or multiples as a general rule? And, in the cases of draenei - is it a live birth, even?

I don't really have many ideas here, as I haven't been able to figure out to a personally satisfactory degree how complex all the races are. As a general rule of thumb, bigger animals have longer pregnancies (with goblin, and possibly gnomes and dwarves having shorter than human standard), as do more complex animals - so I'd tend to suspect draenei, tauren, night-elf, and troll pregnancies to be the longest - but again, I'm not sure. I don't know what the official size difference between the draenei genders is, but if it's the same as it's shown in game then a long draenei pregnancy might be impractical, especially given the size which most fetus grow over the duration. They might have a somewhat foreshorten pregnancy instead, with the young born at the earliest possible time that they can survive on their own outside the womb.

...Well, I think I've probably rambled on long enough. Feel free to lemme know your thoughts on any of this and please toss up any information (official or non-official, either way I'm curious,) you might have!

Go nuts! XD

[Sol]

Well, Orcs are green due to Fel corruption. Originally, they were brown (see the Mag'har), which isn't too outlandish in my opinion. That's all I can think of to answer about individual races, really.

On the subject of pregnancies, though, I agree that length of the pregnancy depends on the size of the creature, with the exception of Trolls maybe having much shorter pregnancies due to their regeneration.

[Rimewynd]

Drat, I knew I forgot something about trolls...

I'll go back and talk about their regeneration when I'm more coherent. >.>;;

[Kaghuros]

I think that male Trolls are genetically predisposed to be larger. They have a societal role of hunters and general dominance that's lasted a very long time, so I'd assume a majority of the genetics for being huge and useful are what's left for males.

Longer-lived races like Elves and Draenei would seem to conceive very little. Consider also that Goblins breed like rats and live extremely short lives, and Orcs seem to reproduce slightly faster than Humans and mature sooner.