#yea................

[ratcandy]

speculating nosk biology things with my now minimal understanding of basic entomology because. I dunno. I can (aka I started thinking about it late a few nights ago and now can't stop thinking about it)

This is HEAVILY based on preconceived headcanons of mine so if you're wondering "where did that idea come from" it came from that time I wrote a zote fanfiction about it. Anyway

A LOT of this is just me rambling and throwing out ideas to see what sticks. And explaining entomology concepts. 'Cause this is also doubling as me studying for my prin. of entomology exam on Monday. So if anything I'm saying here is blatantly wrong,,,, I am running off of what I have been told in class and mixing it altogether in a pot, so I mean. I dunno!!! I am jus saying shit. There's a LOT I'm left to learn and I'm jus running with what little i know so far </3

what I'm saying is. more experienced entomologists pleas be nice to me if u see this sdhgKSJDGH I AM a baby .

anyway REALLY long post below, be warned; as well as REAL BUG PICTURES

So Basically. In my already established nosk headcanons, I had considered nosks as sexually dimorphic (males and females are physically very different from one another). I had it that males were wingless and developed raptorial front limbs whereas females developed wings in place of those limbs.

And this type of dimorphism - where one sex has wings and the other doesn't - does occur in actual insects (which we're assuming nosks are for this, since they're hexapods at the very least). It's just not too common, and usually the other way around. The only example I can think of rn are embioptera/embiidina, or webspinners; females stay wingless and live in expansive web galleries while males are winged for the purposes of going out to find mates.

(image link)

And that's Usually how it goes if one sex has wings. Usually it's the male that develops wings (or both do, but the female can shed them, such as with termites), and that's due to how different sexes have contrasting optimal reproductive strategies (Females produce less gametes and they take more energy to produce, whereas males have a lot more and therefore can have a low investment in individual gametes. Male insects then - for the most part - want to reproduce as much as possible, whereas females are more "choosy" and go after quality males)

Now the thing about biology as a whole is that there's always exceptions to the rule. Nothing is the end-all-be-all and especially not with Bugs. Some insects do it the other way around, where the males are "choosy" while the females compete for them (see: Mormon crickets). There are ALWAYS exceptions!!! So with nosks, let's say the female develops wings and the males do not. What does that suggest for them?

It's kinda suggesting that the females are going to have to be the ones in charge of dispersal. She'll probably have to leave her nest, find a mate elsewhere, before starting her own colony - sorta like queen bumblebees do. Kinda. A little bit. It would make sense if the male nosks are like drones, anyway; usually unable to care for themselves that well and existing to reproduce and then die.

The thing is, and this is my own oopsie since I was young and didn't know all that much, in my previously established lore, all the mate selection is pretty much going on within one nest. It functioned a lot like a pack of mammals as opposed to a nest/hive of bugs. Because if it was functioning like a bug hive, erm. Well everyone in there would be related. So. I can Make Shit Up/Mesh Stuff Together to avoid that, though - there are Things that happen with bugs that can be messed with to better explain some of this. Potentially.

Firstly I gotta talk about a type of polygyny. Specifically resource defense polygyny. This is where a male insect finds a resource that females will need, be it food, shelter, or whatever, and will sit and guard it for when females come around. That male will mate with any female that comes for "his" resource. And there's another called female defense polygyny, wherein a male will gather up a bunch of females and defend the whole lot of them for himself.

SO. What if we (sort of) combined these with sociality in insects, as well as the idea of sexual role reversal? What if for nosks, the nest is the resource? A female will find the resource and guard it, perhaps having her own daughters to begin the inklings of a colony, and then just grabbing any male that comes by and dragging him into the colony. If she can get males to mate with her or her daughters, it potentially could help inclusive fitness (wherein cooperating with relatives increases one's own genetics being passed down, therefore increasing fitness). This would then explain why females are still considered somewhat matriarchal in nosk structures; the female starts the colony, allows the males to have shelter in her nest, and it's up to her/her daughters who gets mates. Eventually, then, one, a few, or all of the females of a given nest would leave to start their own colonies elsewhere, while some of the males would scatter to hopefully find their own mates.

Because I'm assuming it would work like bumblebees, where once the new queen leaves, the old hive dies off. Or maybe not. Maybe some females stay behind with some males, and it just keeps perpetuating as more males stumble across it and the females drag them in.

And/or maybe nosks have their own royal jelly type thing that dictates who the next colony-founding nosks will be. Not necessarily queens, as the daughters are also having mates, but Nest Founders.

The sociality would come in with overlapping generations (the Nest Founder, her daughters, her daughters' offspring) and kiiiind of reproductive division of labor? Not really though. Both sexes contribute to hunting/providing for the den, at least according to my old headcanons, so. Erm. Well honestly even that is weird. Maybe the males have to prove they're worthy enough to stay in the nest offered by the females by bringing in food? Or maybe that's how they prove quality? Uncertain. My train of thought fell off with this one shdgKJDHG

(For COGR purposes, That would explain why Mama chose zot's dad tho. If he's bringing in food consistently, he's proving quality of some kind, even if he's otherwise Just Some Guy)

Definitely no cooperative brood care, though. These guys are still awful to each other. Which is a whole other thing. I don't know if any social insect species are openly hostile with their nestmates unless something is wrong with said nestmate (such as disease/parasitism)?? Maybe nosks are just way too into that whole 'quality' thing to the point of ruthlessness. Maybe female nosk gametes are even more expensive/limited than most, and that's why they're Like That. More cost, more to lose. I dunno. (Though that would be another thing pretty fitting with cogr stuff,,, weak baby = wasted gamete, and if those are super limited, that's a huge yikes)

Ok now I'm really losing track of what I was talking about. I dunno how much of this is even making sense at this point. I should study for ento exam like a normal person and yet here I am . just saying shit about a fictional insect that can morph its entire appearance at will. Which is decidedly not a thing irl bugs can do . that I know of.

Like mimicry yes of course. But this is Advanced mimicry. I can literally only think of those spiders that mimic ants rn and. well it's not like the spider puts on an ant costume while hunting and then looks like any other spider normally. no they just look like this

(image link)

At the same time as all this we gotta remember that nosks, at least in my headcanons, are like. At least a little bit sapient, be that the Pale King's influence or not; so there's that added element. Societal structure is a thing they have, as well as empathy (something they deny/often do not show) and maybe some loose culture. So like. There are complications here, obviously, but again I Am Just Saying Shit.

anyway. um. Yeah. If I think of more things maybe I will make another post like this. I don't know I'm just saying shit

[kidrat]

U can watch Star Wars so many times and it doesn’t prepare u for how dumb Star Wars is. For one thing I think we gloss over how kenobi (who has definitely been at the club. Please.) describes the mos eisley cantina as the worst most villainous place ever and then u get inside and it’s a pack of muppets vaping

[canineentity]

“Why’d you do that?” Please remember that I am using what I’ve seen in humans to mimic them

[charhounds]

[brown-little-robin]

it's kinda comforting to me when my friends are a little annoying or longwinded or abrasive or tired and inarticulate, or they don't do the exact politest thing in every interaction, and stuff, because I know I'm sometimes annoying, or take up a more than my share of conversational space, or forget to ask them questions, etc etc, and... like, I'm always working to be nice to my friends and to get better and better at friend-ing, but it just makes me feel more human about it :}

anyway I love you friends plz know I'm not counting, in fact I feel great affection toward you even (especially) when conversations go less than Perfectly Ideal

[cyberpunkboytoy]

So there's the idea of "kitchen table poly," AKA "everyone in the polycule needs to be able to sit at a kitchen table together and get along like friends."

One of my roommates just came up with a counter idea, which is "poker table poly." Everyone in the polycule must be enemies. No one is allowed to get too chummy or they're kicked out. They all also likely owe eachother money.

[catchymemes]

[quei]

The ultimate lifeform vs shadow

[moncuries]

guess what i watched on new years (a redraw kind of)

[rosaform]

[mattmonss]

zoomies

some frames

[rachelfc-art]

By Your Side

[mellosghosts]

in my heart this joke is in the movie, but unfortunately im afraid only we, hughjackmaniacs, would get it 🥀

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i would say that, mentally speaking, i'm in a good place right now! physically of course, the crows continue their chanting,

[joker-ace]

my current top 3 favs in one piece and me forcing them to interact bc that's super unlikely to happen in canon right now