in which a tonkuri reblogs fandom things it enjoys

Dear reader, I hope you can understand my words. My name is professor DNAlfalfa, and I have been stranded on this planet for a number of sweeps. This journal contains my writings on my observations of the planet and its inhabitants. I hope it finds you well dear reader.

Chapter 612: On the topic of Troll sexual dimorphism Sexual dimorphism is when a species displays different variations based on biological sex. Trolls however don't appear to have biological sex in the way humans do as they can reproduce with any troll, regardless of sex. And at birth trolls appear to be sexually monomorphic, meaning there is no factor that would allow you to identify the sex of a troll on sight. However trolls do appear to develop dimorphic traits as they become adults. So there is a mechanism by which these occur. But what would be the cause of this in a species where there is no reproductive difference between the different sexual dimorphisms? Could it be vestigial?

Dear reader, I'll summarise my findings, whilst leaving my suppositions and embellishments in italics:

As sexual dimorphism has no impact on who a troll is capable of reproducing with, the evolutionary pressure perpetuating its existence is unknown. It is possibly a vestigial trait. Further curiosity is if the trait is vestigial amongst this species, what triggers the sexual differentiation of a troll?

Through my astute observations on this dangerous planet, I have made great progress on the work of documenting troll biology.

The startling discovery I initially made was that the creatures whom trolls refer to as Lusii almost always have a congruence with the sex of the troll they live with.

As far as I could tell anyway. It was relatively easy to identify the sex of mammalian looking Lusii, but insectoid ones were impossible for me.

At first I considered that trolls merely adopt animals that match their own sex. However I later learned that these Lusii are the ones that adopt trolls. In fact they adopt trolls at an extremely young age, long before a troll would display any dimorphism.

This lead me to hypothesise that Lusii could smell whether a troll would grow to be male or female, and adopt a troll accordingly. However this too proved to be wrong when I observed a troll whose Lusus appeared to be a giant egg. I'm yet to ascertain how that adoption occurred, but it seems farfetched to assume an egg would be capable of smelling anything.

Through my travels, I once entered the brooding taverns where troll eggs hatch into multi-legged wriggling grubs. Unfortunately I have not been able to see how a troll goes from wriggler to bipedal.

It was curious that most jade-blooded trolls I observed appeared to be female. It may be possible that blood caste predisposes to one side of the coin of dimorphism. But that doesn't seem to be the case with other blood castes. This is most curious indeed.

In my time exploring the brooding caverns I encountered a case of troll with a very rare blood colour getting adopted by an adult female troll. It was most unusual.

Through astute observation I saw this troll did indeed develop dimorphic traits of the male kind. This made me question whether a Lusus was required at all for a troll to develop fully.

Sadly this curious troll met a cruel fate and was executed by others of its species, its hands bound in iron as it roared what I can only assume was a vast expletive.

I wandered for many more sweeps, learning to understand alternian vocabulary.

As my alternian improved, I overheard a conversation between two young trolls, where one was lamenting their adoption by a female lusus as they didn't want to be girl. It was a truly extraordinary conversation, as it lead me to the understanding that Lusii have some effect on their wards that triggers a troll's dimorphic differentiation. I do feel sorry for the fish-faced troll, and I hope they found a solution to their problem. But alas, I can only swim for so long, and I had to return to the land.

This still caused me some confusion though, as I had clearly observed a troll child develop into a male adult with no Lusus.

Then I discovered something remarkable, two olive-blooded trolls living with the same Lusus, one was missing an arm and an eye, and the other had a gruesome scar where their nose should be. I was shocked to find them alive, as injuries such as this often led to the injured troll being culled.

However this survivalist pair turned out to be my answer. After observing them for a few sweeps, it turned out that the one with the missing eye developed into male troll much like their lusus, however the one with no nose developed into a male troll. It was possible that something to do with the scent of a Lusus was the key.

However it could have also been that the male troll was initially picked out and raised by a male Lusus. I still had no observation that would help to determine the trigger for troll dimorphism.

I spent many more sweeps observing trolls, time after time the observation that a troll would grow to match its Lusus' sex carried on being true. But these observations were merely proving a correlation, excepting the two exceptions I had seen. I needed to see more unusual troll upbringings to have a real answer.

After months of pondering how I would prove my hypothesis, I witnessed a brutal scene. A small cluster of bronze-blood hives were attacked by marauders. Lusii and troll children were slaughtered indiscriminately. The survivors were a small bronze-blooded child weeping for their lost bull Lusus, and a cow Lusus.

In an act of compassion I had not yet seen between a Lusus and a troll that was not their ward, this cow Lusus seemed to adopt the bronze-blood child. This was something I had to observe. I had never seen a Lusus take in another's abandoned ward before. Truly curious.

But what made this more interesting was a troll child initially adopted by a male Lusus had now been adopted by a female Lusus. This was the observation that would make or break my scent hypothesis.

After checking in on the pair numerous times over the sweeps, the bronze troll had grown to be dimorphically female.

My hypothesis had a chance of being right. Extended proximity to a Lusus of a given sex would affect the sexually dimorphic traits a troll developed. And it was likely driven by scent.

The sweeps went by, and I observed a few such more cases.

I am now fairly confident in my hypothesis, but truly it can not be proven unless someone with no scruples experiments on thousands of troll wrigglers. I sincerely hope no such abhorrent act occurs, it would be a stain on the pursuit of science.

Addendum:

It has been sweeps since I wrote this chapter and I have countless observations to support my hypothesis, however, I recently observed a troll with no obvious nasal deformity who did not develop in congruence with their Lusus' sex, with this troll appearing to be female. Given the immense number of observations I have recorded, I believe there must be another reason for it.

I hypothesise that this troll may have had a non-visible olfactory defect. I will try to test this by sneaking some lusus dung into their hive.

I was correct, she didn't seem to able to smell it at all.

This further proves my hypothesis that Lusus scent is a trigger in troll sexual differentiation, and without the scent of a Lusus, a troll will develop at random (however there may be some intrinsic disposition unique to each troll).

I will summarise my findings thusly:

Trolls are capable of gendered puberty without a lusus, however lusus pheromones will typically override the biological pathways of the young troll hence the troll-lusus congruency.

In rare cases, a troll may not end up undergoing sexual dimorphic differentiation in congruence with their Lusus.

I believe this is due to issues of olfaction in the troll, I will dub these issues Syndrome of Lusus Pheromone Insensitivity (SLPI), which is effectively like not having a lusus to gender their puberty whether or not they do have a lusus.

I also surmise the reason fuchsia-blooded trolls are always female is because of the single fuchsia Lusus that exists. This does make me weep for the young fish-faced troll I observed sweeps ago.

This was written as an excerpt of the journal of a person who got stranded on Alternia and decided to make a book of troll observations, the information about troll sexual dimorphism was adapted from multiple posts made on the Seedflap/Jerann-Mussel blog, and also adapted from a submission I made on @homesmutconfessions. The journal excerpt was written around the time period of The Sufferer. The section about a troll wanting to get away from their lusus for gender reasons was a creative writing exercise to allow my character to come to the conclusion that Lusii can effect trolls and how they develop, and is not based on any sources I've read. But I think it's an interesting concept nonetheless. The bit about two olive blooded trolls was also me writing for fun, as was the bronze blood bit. If it's not in the tl;dr and it sounds like creative writing/theory crafting, it is.

The Tl;dr of the seedflap/jerann posts is the non-italic bits of my character's summary, repeated below because I know some people won't read all this:

Trolls are capable of gendered puberty without a lusus, however lusus pheromones will typically override the biological pathways of the young troll hence the troll-lusus congruency.

In rare cases, a troll may not end up undergoing sexual dimorphic differentiation in congruence with their Lusus.