#ikthians

Hypothesizing about Ikthian lifespans now. According to Gary, he suspects the Ikthians are long lived due to their fishy nature. So, let’s look at some long lived fish!

Oreos, (Oreosomatidae) are fish that live on the continental shelf. And some of their species live for about 170 years. The Greenland shark was once estimated to live for 200 years, but researchers believe one of the healthy specimens that they studied was somewhere between 272 and 512. Some rockfish can also live to be just over 200. And on the fresh water end, many koi have been reported to live over 200 years with the oldest dying at 226.

So overall, “around 200 years” seems like a really good ball park for Ikthians to potentially live. But then comes “when do they reach adulthood?”

Most Ikthians found on Nexus were born on Nexus according to the lore. They are not a native species, but they can rapidly reproduce and adulthood is arrived to swiftly evidently. So they found it more convenient to grow their researchers and army on-site. When they did try to call in the big guns of their native armada, we annihilated it. Meanwhile, large/medium sharks tend to take decades to reach sexual maturity. Great whites take 26 years for males, and 33 for females. The Greenland shark listed earlier? It takes 150 years for them to become sexually mature. So definitely can’t base that part of Ikthian biology on shark examples.

It’s a big jump from the long lived species mentioned earlier, but mollies (A species of tropical, fresh water fish.) reach adulthood in about 3 to 4 months. We also know Ikthians commonly “incubate” other Ikthians who were already born. And wasn’t it once proposed that they use these incubation tanks to speed up the physical maturation progress? With Ikthian numbers, it feels like saying that they naturally take 3 to 4 months to reach adulthood but are incubated to cut that time in half seems pretty reasonable.

We know Ikthians hatch from eggs that need to be incubated submerged in water. And we know that they hatch and grow rapidly. This also cuts out estimations based on sharks, as salt water shark eggs pretty regularly take 7+ months to hatch. According to the Fish Information Service, most fish eggs hatch within 7 to 10 days, so I see no reason to question that number.