Miqo’te Mating Strategies Explored: a biologist’s point of view

[FreelanceWizard]

The rule is one nunh per territory, and a tribe can have multiple territories. A tia can become nunh by defeating the nunh of an existing territory in battle, or he can acquire new territory for the tribe and be granted the title of nunh of that territory. That's different from the tia just striking out on his own and creating a new tribe, which per lore is extremely rare.

 

By the by, the mixed naming convention thing on that wiki is a "fanon" construct and hasn't been confirmed by any official lore source. The devs haven't said anything about mixed clan naming conventions, at least that I've seen.

[Olofantur]

By the by, the mixed naming convention thing on that wiki is a "fanon" construct and hasn't been confirmed by any official lore source. The devs haven't said anything about mixed clan naming conventions, at least that I've seen.

 

To back that up, the few cases we have of cross tribe [KeeperxSeeker] Characters in game side with one or the other [naming convention.] F'lhaminn being arguably the best example [signs of keeper genetics, but raised with a Seeker name]

 

Side note, anyone else thing the ARR Goobbue bit a nice tie in with the 1.0 one? or rather, nod to it?

[Xenedra]

As for the the specifics, I won't even get into the breeding process among feline species here, but Hyur males are absolutely not built correctly to "get that process going". All humor aside, speaking strictly from a scientific standpoint, the donor-recipient genetic puzzle pieces simply would not fit, and no amount of rumored lore, wishful thinking or magic could make them.

 

I enjoyed your standpoint, but it's not rumored lore, it's actual lore. Half-breeds are a canon thing.

 

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/32685-Questions-related-to-Lore?p=490835&viewfull=1#post490835

Q: Can different races crossbreed?

 

A: Yes, but it is rare...and often difficult due to cultural differences, etc. which is why you don't see it often. The lore team has informed me that there will be future quests/events that touch on this and other issues, such as love and marriage.

 

Your info on miscarriages due to odd compatibility though, could explain some of the rarity. I find that preeetty interesting!

[Darien Cadell]

Wow. Big thread from long ago. I read several pages but not the whole thing. My immediate first thoughts were things I thought I'd read but have no references for anymore.

 

1.) I thought I read somewhere that "humanity" or "mankind" within FFXIV's context actually referred to all the sentient races as a collective whole, never to just hyur. That would encourage looking at the different races less biologically and more culturally. Of course, I don't know of a human culture that has restricted access between genders due to a very real numbers disparity (as opposed to restricted access imposed by the culture), but in my case, that's where the interest lies. What would a human culture do in such a situation (insert examples of colony development here)?

 

and 2.) I thought I read somewhere that crossbreeds had a sort of Lady & the Tramp effect, where the resultant offspring is not a phenotypic mix but externally takes after one or the other of the parents, not both, which in the sense of what we see walking around the game makes it a lot more viable to play one. Yeah, my mother was a roegadyn and my father was a lalafell, but I take after my dad. Them's the breaks.

 

Woo, thoughts without references or reading the entire massive thread.

[TheShii]

This is a great read, but frankly I'm a bit disappointed in those that find this 'going too far' or have called it useless/pointless or what have you.

 

It doesn't hurt anyone for the writer to have taken their time to conjure up a nice spread of information that covers some very basic social structures/behaviors and equated them to the miqo'te in a fun and entertaining way. While everything might not be word for word from lore (which was admitted throughout the writing), it's still a fascinating post to give some food for thought as well as offer potential muse fuel for those that want to get a bit creative.

 

The lore is a guideline after all, nothing wrong with taking something from this little biology lesson and adapting it to how you'd like that's appropriate to the theme of the game

 

I would thoroughly enjoy reading some more biology themed food for thought rambles in the future!

[ArmachiA]

As for the the specifics, I won't even get into the breeding process among feline species here, but Hyur males are absolutely not built correctly to "get that process going". All humor aside, speaking strictly from a scientific standpoint, the donor-recipient genetic puzzle pieces simply would not fit, and no amount of rumored lore, wishful thinking or magic could make them.

 

I enjoyed your standpoint, but it's not rumored lore, it's actual lore. Half-breeds are a canon thing.

 

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/32685-Questions-related-to-Lore?p=490835&viewfull=1#post490835

Q: Can different races crossbreed?

 

A: Yes, but it is rare...and often difficult due to cultural differences, etc. which is why you don't see it often. The lore team has informed me that there will be future quests/events that touch on this and other issues, such as love and marriage.

 

Your info on miscarriages due to odd compatibility though, could explain some of the rarity. I find that preeetty interesting!

 

I was gonna come in here just to post this. We don't know the evolutionary backstory of any of these races, we can't even say with 100% certainty that Miqote and Hyur didn't evolve from the same thing. Saying with 100% certainty that they can't crossbreed is just as bad as saying they CAN if there was no official stance to back it up. But since their is an official stance of the subject (They can) we need to respect that.

You know what would be interesting? Trying to figure out why the races can all interbreed instead of railing against it and saying they can't. I wanna see that theory.

[Lost River]

Its because they are all genetic alterations from their superior core Roegadyn species; yes, yes. They were engineered to add diversity to the world.

 

 

 

I kid, I kid.

 

 

Buuut, the whole engineering thing brings a curious light though.

[Sail]

The rule is one nunh per territory, and a tribe can have multiple territories. A tia can become nunh by defeating the nunh of an existing territory in battle, or he can acquire new territory for the tribe and be granted the title of nunh of that territory. That's different from the tia just striking out on his own and creating a new tribe, which per lore is extremely rare.

 

By the by, the mixed naming convention thing on that wiki is a "fanon" construct and hasn't been confirmed by any official lore source. The devs haven't said anything about mixed clan naming conventions, at least that I've seen.

 

Thanks for reaffirming. I've actually been putting a whole lot of thought into why Renha is named the way he is since deciding on it. Identity crisis wooo.

 

Without getting too much into detail, what I came up with is that a child born to a Keeper mother and raised in a traditional Seeker setting would likely be fairly ostracized from the rest of his tribe. When he gets old enough to understand why, he casts off the title of "Tia" and all the responsibility that comes with it, and takes on his mother's family name instead - paying respect to his lineage and toward the woman who'd loved him most.

[synaesthetic]

Word of God states that all the races can interbreed. This means they are all the same species.

 

They don't go into enough detail to say for 100% sure, however, that half-breeds are "viable." So they don't say one way or another if any half-breed would be capable of having children of their own.

 

The idea that all the races are, in fact, the same species, or have all descended from a very recent common ancestor makes a lot of sense morphologically. Despite some minor differences, most of the races look very similar. The only major morphological difference is between miqo'te and lalafell and everyone else (the rest have the same shape, just different size and slight adjustments to their features between them). I would suggest, then, that the current miqo'te and lalafell population share a common ancestor with the rest of the "spoken," however, the common ancestor they all share is slightly further back than the most recent common ancestor shared by hyur, elezen and roegadyn.

 

Miqo'te and lalafell pose a problem because their morphology is not only different in major ways--the skull of a miqo'te would have to be considerably different than that of a hyur, elezen or roegadyn, and their spine and vertebrae would also have to be very different to account for the flexibility of their tails--but some of their physical features are extremely unlikely or impossible without some external influence. For that reason I would suggest that both miqo'te and lalafell were magically altered hyur or near-hyur ancestors, either intentionally or environmentally, by the presence of corrupted aether. It would not be very farfetched to imagine that the miqo'te were "genetically engineered" via the use of magic in order to create a "super hunter." I don't really know why anyone would intentionally create lalafell; perhaps their existence was an accident of magically-distorted evolution.

[Ildur]

Or maybe lalafells are the original race, and everyone else is just the results of their magical experiments. It explains why their architecture is so huge: they were expecting to become giants!

 

But in seriousness, yes, all of the 'races' are part of the same species. It makes perfect sense to me, as they all are basically humans. Additionally, Titan calls the player character and his allies "Sons of Man" (or maybe he was talking about how the "sons of man" were hurting the kobolds. I forgot). Considering the one saying it is an ancient monster as ancient as the world, it's a sure bet that they all share the same ancestor.

[Naeva'to]

Wow this was a great read.  You put a lot of thought into that.  Really awesome.

[Ildur]

I mentioned this before when the thread was still 'fresh', but I feel like I should point it out again: The original post, while well written and put, presents the matter as a study of animals and not of a human culture, rellying only on biology to make sense of Miqo'te. It ignore ethics, morality and abstract thought. Three things that a sentient, intelligent species would have besides their instinct. I find this to be a fundamental flaw on it that results in Miqo'te coming out as simple animals instead of as humans.

[allgivenover]

Real life Humans have been capable of ethics/morality and abstract thought for a long while now, but even a cursory study of history will quickly reveal that it's done little to curb our inherent savagery - though it may be very difficult to see that given our privileged western lifestyle, a lifestyle that is mostly absent of the desperation that encourages that latent savagery. It is in the lore that the losing male in a Seeker duel for Nunh status may not survive the event, such a thing would widely be considered extremely barbaric and cruel to a real world modern mind, but not so much to a race like the Miqo'te.

 

However, we do have to realize that this is a fantasy setting, and what SE wants to portray may not necessarily 100% align with well thought out biology based extrapolation. The U' tribe we see in game seems to sit well with most of what OP wrote, though I'd be very surprised if SE ever touched the idea that a fresh Nunh might enact a culling of the old Nunh's cubs.

 

And again, none of this is a hard guideline for how you should play /your/ Miqo'te character. OP stated this as well, and it seems this is reflected in game. The Valentione quests portrayed a Keeper of the Moon female who was at one point willing to marry a Hyur male. So no one is wrong for playing a Miqo'te that doesn't follow tribal habits of promiscuity (unverified but likely given that it's the only model we have that makes sense) or harem keeping.

 

Now if only SE would show us a Keeper tribe in game so that we could do more than speculate and consider tiny tidbits like the fact that Keepers also have breeding males or at least show us a single Keeper male other than the CoeurlClaw King from that fate in the South Shroud...

[Ildur]

My problems with the biology-centric exploration of Miqo'te culture has nothing to do with a 'privileged' western or modern mindset and all with how it disregards the effects of morals, ethics and reasoning as if they did not exist. Probably because it wasn't the intention of the post to do so, but then it dwells in places where those things would have something to say about the matter. It's an interesting read but mostly useless because of that.

 

I said it once before, but I'll say it again: studying Miqo'te culture based only on the biology of cats is like studying any real human culture based on the biology of apes. It may be an interesting exercise but that's all it is.

 

I wish Squee would have spent more time stablishing Miqo'te cultures instead of going for "Oh, yeah! Harem catgirls!".

[Mimiko]

Well that explains my question why so many people name their characters Nunh or Tia. I think I'll have to be nicer to the "Tia's" of the world now. And to all the "Nuhn's" out there you'll get Nuhn from me.

[allgivenover]

Well that explains my question why so many people name their characters Nunh or Tia. I think I'll have to be nicer to the "Tia's" of the world now. And to all the "Nuhn's" out there you'll get Nuhn from me.

 

This right here, the inability to separate the modern mindset from roleplay. It's the number one reason that Miqo'te lore discussions are always such a hot issue for debate.

 

Killing? Fine. Rogue characters committing theft? Also fine. "Evil" type characters committing terrible acts such as kidnapping or torture? You see it all the time and no one bats an eyelash, it's even considered great fun by many.

 

But sexual habits that defy political correctness or established norms? Cause for great offense and righteous indignation.

 

Read again, focus on the wording. "I think I'll be nicer to the "Tia's" of the world now. And to all the "Nuhn's" out there you'll get Nuhn from me."

 

You are not your character, this is not your world. Try to remove /your/ viewpoint when you consider how your character thinks. If you don't at least consider this then in my opinion you're not really roleplaying, you're just putting on a costume so you can feel cool.

[C'kayah Polaali]

I've never really taken it as canon that Tias get no sex while Nunhs get it all, to be honest. You don't see anything like that in human cultures, nor do you see it among mammals.

 

There's an interesting thing that crops up when you look at the genetics of the kids of animals in a Seeker-style group (where one male mates with the females and the other males don't mate at all): There's a sizable fraction of the kids who are not actually the children of the breeding male. One of the prevailing theories to explain that, amusingly called the "Sneaky Fucker Theory" says basically that these other males are mating with the females while the breeding male is off doing something else.

 

I can easily see something similar happening with Seekers.

 

I think, in Seeker culture, there's probably a lot of symbolism attached to the titles Tia and Nunh that don't necessarily bear out in practice. 

 

There are a few people RPing Seekers named "blah blah Nunh" who are running around being adventurers. Where's their breeding group? Certainly not adventuring with them. I doubt that their group is somehow just waiting for them to return in the desert while they go on adventures. Yet they keep the title, probably because of its symbolic importance.

 

As another example, C'kayah left his tribe a decade and a half ago, yet still keeps the title Tia, despite having quite a bit of sex over the years and currently being in a Seeker-style relationship. He enjoys how the title leads to assumptions about him - in his mind, it's far better to be underestimated.

[Jana]

Well that explains my question why so many people name their characters Nunh or Tia. I think I'll have to be nicer to the "Tia's" of the world now. And to all the "Nuhn's" out there you'll get Nuhn from me.

 

You should keep in mind when you're in the game at large that "Nunh" and "Tia" are the only surnames the random name generator will give to male seekers. If they're not a roleplayer, there's a good chance the player hasn't read up on what those titles even mean.

[allgivenover]

That's actually seen a lot in species that arn't mammals too, crafty males mating without the alpha's knowledge. It's something that doesn't seem unlikely in Seeker culture as well.

 

It also goes without saying that it's possible many city Miqo'te don't care about the Tia/Nunh dynamic at all.

[Aya]

Interesting :-X

[TheShii]

Real life Humans have been capable of ethics/morality and abstract thought for a long while now, but even a cursory study of history will quickly reveal that it's done little to curb our inherent savagery

 

I think that's basically what I'm thinking when I read the first post. Sure, there are a ton of actual rl studies out there that don't even cover the basis of morality and sentience. This is of course all just theories and speculations all an all, that's why lore will always just be a guideline in the end.

 

 

 

It's an interesting read but mostly useless because of that.

 

see though its not even that. I'm not going to quote the post like a bible, so I might have missed a specific phrase, but from what I recalled it was covered time and time again in the post that this was not everything or exactly as lore. There are going to be missing elements. That does not make something that can make the average person; ignorant to a variety of things, think outside their box of norm; as useless.

 

 

 

I'm no biology major; social interactions, even amongst animals are known minimally to myself at best. While rl, we as humans are 'not' actually apes... there will always be some sort of basic knowledge someone could walk away with in any sort of comparison study from any animal species. People can get defiant and offended, but there are so many instances where perfectly decent human beings act more on their instincts or basic desires. Sure you're not going to know why Stacy left their husband by watching Bubba the monkey play with a tree, but it's more a matter of environment I think. When it comes down to basics, there's bound to be some similarities now and then.

 

 

Far as seeker harems or typical mating/breeding social norms go, I think it's just a matter of the territory and the traditions of the tribe itself. Miqo'te seem to be very tribe loyal and hold to their inner traditions more or less from the various things I've read while playing. I don't see what would be so wrong with one area of territories of the same clan holding a similar likeness, while another does something differently. While I'm no expert, even I know that there's a socially accepted norm, but there will always be a key of evolution and deviation in sentient environments. Lesser common, but still present I'm sure.

[Ildur]

There are going to be missing elements.

 

The post is a lot of biological extrapolations that start from lore and cannot be supported by it. I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is that it ignores that Miqo'te are humans. They are not lions, or any other type of cat. As far as the game world is concerned, they are people. And if we judge them by real life human standards, then they are still not lions; they are humans. But the post pretends that they are only lions anyway. It is not speaking of Miqo'te, really: it's speaking of hypotetical animals that share the Miqo'te societal norms without any of the thinking that would be involved. And that's why I call it useless: by ignoring everything that forms a culture besides the animal side, it is not talking about Miqo'te. It's a very interesting and well put strawman. But those aren't Miqo'te.

 

People can get defiant and offended, but there are so many instances where perfectly decent human beings act more on their instincts or basic desires.

 

This has nothing to do with it. You can't study Chinesse culture and societal norms only by studying their biology. Even more, you can't study them by picking a random individual and concluding that, because an individual took no ethical, moral or rational considerations in some of his decisions, then the culture they are part of won't either. You have to study what makes that culture like it is. What reasoning leads them to be like they are, their history, their morality. Human culture is much more complex than the social norms animals have. Studying a cultural group as if they were just animals makes no sense and leads nowhere.

[TheShii]

There are going to be missing elements.

 

What I'm not fine with is that it ignores that Miqo'te are humans. They are not lions, or any other type of cat. As far as the game world is concerned, they are people. And if we judge them by real life human standards, then they are still not lions; they are humans.

 

People can get defiant and offended, but there are so many instances where perfectly decent human beings act more on their instincts or basic desires.

 

This has nothing to do with it. You can't study Chinesse culture and societal norms only by studying their biology. Even more, you can't study them by picking a random individual and concluding that, because an individual took no ethical, moral or rational considerations in some of his decisions, then the culture they are part of won't either. You have to study what makes that culture like. What reasoning leads them to be like they are, their history, their morality. Human culture is much more complex than the social norms animals have. Studying a cultural group as if they were just animals makes no sense and leads nowhere.

 

 

To the first part, in that same argument then we really can't say any of what we're saying can conclude what sort of environment or social cultural history the races have. It's very true that yes, the Miqo'Te aren't lions, nor are they strictly animals either. They obviously have sentience, morals, principles, guidelines in which they live. That goes the same for the other races. But there are also pieces of history in a rl sense where tribes or clans have taken after the animals ways of life in less than a literal sense (but that makes it less about human morality and more about their traditions) . They still have that factor of intelligence and difference of course, not downing that, really I'd love to see the original writer incorporate a second phase of their original writing that included the missing points.

[Ildur]

Quick question: why can't we judge Miqo'te by real human standards? And by 'real human standards' I mean what philosophically means to be a human being, not the specific morals we may or may not have.

 

It's very true that yes, the Miqo'Te aren't lions, nor are they strictly animals either. They obviously have sentience, morals, principles, guidelines in which they live.

 

An animal is a being that can move by itself. All humans can move by themselves, so they are animals. However, humans have a property that no other animal has: reason. Humans are rational animals, because they can use reason and move by themselves. Miqo'te have reason and can move by themselves. Therefore, they are humans.

Or, add "animals have instinct, movibility" and the other things Aristotle told us they have that I forgot, if you want. But details.

 

Deciding that their morality must be similar to certain animals is not only purely speculative fiction, but also arbitrary. It's based only on two facts: that Miqo'te have three animal traits (tails, ears, fangs/eyes) and that we happen to know that they are based on the catgirl/boy archetype. This is somehow more important that they are humans. The original post categorically ignores the human aspect of Miqo'te to concentrate on the biology, and then dares to make categoric statements about Sun Seeker morality, even though if you even run a cursory study of history of civilization you'll see there's always much more involved in the morality of a nation during a specific period.

 

Simply put: there is no lore evidence, as the post rightfully says, to support any of this conclusions. But the conclusions drawn are terrible by pretending to study what is a human culture in animal terms. Interesting, yes. Useful, no.

[synaesthetic]

Actually, strictly speaking an animal is defined by being an organism that must ingest other organisms in order to survive.

 

Miqo'te fit that definition, too.