Anatomy and Culture in Babylon 5
I was watching a video on crocodiles and thinking about the aliens I need to build for Free As Dust so now it's your problem.
By necessity, culture must arise after anatomy and is therefore immensely influential in its construction, human beings are reliant on our hands and voice boxes and thus you can get by generally with hand gestures and grunting noises.
With that in mind, lets look at the Narn and the Centauri in Babylon 5, the best science fiction show, go watch it.
This post is only going to focus on two traits and how they influence the aliens we're dealing with because JMS did some amazing work but I don't have access to a full anatomical write up of the angry lizard men and then 'what if imperial rome looked like versailles' aliens.
Male Centauri Reproductive Organs
Thanks to the episode where Londo uses his wang to cheat at poker (go watch Babylon 5) we're introduced at an early point to the fact that Centauri dicks are external, prehensile, and long. In the same episode it's implied that they're hexaphilic. Later confirmed by Vir.
Having six reproductive organs just out and about where they can cheat at cards would make them omnipresent in the mind. And the cultural ramifications are a people who make an emphasis of the pursuit of pleasure and the awareness of pain (after all, anyone could just set the pitcher on your dick while it's moving cards around).
The Narn have been pretty ground down before the series, but what endured is a protective and community based group. They are family oriented, and the Shan'kar is shown a couple of times, bringing to the forefront the idea that a Narn is an extension of their family.
It's no particularly surprising that the proud warrior race would be reptilian, reptiles are the best, but the anatomical feature I want to bring up is the pouch.
It seems like the Narn are often born as twins and share their parent's pouch. We can assume twins because Vir's fiance recognizes that two Narn are related based on their features and we know those two dudes are pouch brothers.
So that emphasis on community and family would have grown from every or almost every Narn having at least one person they are ride or die for right off the bat.
Given that the only thing we know about Narn sex is that G'kar has it and the Narn aren't really seen pursuing it, we can assume that it's likely a private matter (kept between you and Ambassador Mollari's wife).
