De Advenae Vitae

Latin, "On Alien Life". Play on Humanae Vitae, which you've probably never read, yet you think you get opinions about bioethics. Latin wasn't the first language I thought of, by the bye—the Hebrew would've been "Al haKhayim haZar". Did you know Hebrew puts the definite article in front of abstracts (at least, I think "haKhayim" is the "ha-" that means "the"), just like French does ("Sur la Vie d'Étranger")?

• Know what? Aliens are not only likely to use sexual reproduction, with only two sexes, they're likely to have the females be the ones males compete over, rather than the other way around. Why? Bateman's principle: since the female nearly always invests more in the young than the male does, females are a limiting factor in the ecosystem, a resource males compete over.
  
  You know that feminist thing that women aren't a prize to be won? Bateman's principle says otherwise. They just happen to be a really weird prize, that bestows itself—and sets its own terms for how it's won.


• An average male of my felinoids' species stands 193 cm (with his "heels", or rather the top end of his elongated ankle-bones, flat—if he's not walking "flatfooted", he's 208 cm) and weighs 116 kg. That's a BMI of 31.1—mostly muscle—but the other interesting thing? Yeah, he's also got a basal metabolic rate 48% higher than a human male. Why?
  
  Kleiber's law:

  Metabolic rate scales to the 3/4 power of mass.

  And 116 divided by the average human male's mass of 69 kg, is about 1.68. 1.68^3/4 is 1.48.
  
  The felinoid females have a slightly lower mass, relatively speaking—their average height is 188 cm (175 "flatfooted") and weight is 99 kg, which (remember, we take the "flatfooted" height) is a BMI of 28. Assuming an average human female has a height of 163 cm and weighs 56 kg, that means her felinoid counterpart has a metabolic rate (1.77^3/4=) 53% higher. I almost wanna write "she can eat whatever she wants and not get fat" jokes, you know?
  
  Incidentally, since a male felinoid weighs as much as an average tigress, the Peacekeeper rifle round has the same muzzle energy as a .30-06 (though it's still 6.8 mm and classed as an assault rifle). Yeah, you don't have as much leeway, ammo selection-wise, when the other side is big game.


• It occurred to me, you can't necessarily tell what numerical base a species uses just based on the number of their fingers. For instance, Elites: do they use base-8? Or base-12?
  
  Why 12? Because they don't wear shoes, and they have 2 toes per foot. The numerical system of several major Native American languages (Classical Maya, for one) are vigesimal (base-20) rather than decimal, and it's almost certainly because they also count on their toes. Now, I doubt anyone who does usually wear shoes uses vigesimal, but you can't assume people who don't, will—Polynesian languages use base-10, I believe, and they traditionally dressed a lot like Mayans.


• Speaking of, I had my aliens' place-value system invented for monasteries' inventories, but it struck me as strange, since all their units of measurement are duodecimal—I wasn't sure I could justify them coming up with a decimal positional notation.
  
  But then I thought, d'oh. A lot of the things these guys would be inventorying, being carnivorous, would be indivisible, conceptually—if you bring in 8 critters you caught, the fact there's eight of 'em is a lot more important than their weight or volume. So (though base-12 still has its advantages, when you're apportioning shares), since you're basically dealing with "unit, unit, unit", you can use any base you like—and since both anatomically and linguistically, they think in terms of tens, that's gonna be the most natural.


• Speaking of aliens and guns, the felinoids don't, as such, have "tanks". I mean, they basically do, tanks being a vital component of a modern military, but they don't conceptualize them as cavalry (because they aren't, air units are). Basically, they just up-armor their self-propelled artillery and give it the ability to fight comparable targets up close and personal.
  
  Anyway. It's funny, go look up "what's the difference between tanks and self-propelled artillery", and, along with those two, you'll get the idea that tanks are direct fire and artillery is indirect. But what about howitzer tanks and tank-destroyer artillery, indirect-fire tanks and direct-fire artillery, respectively?
  
  Late Addendum: I guess the term would be "armored gun system"—that's the term our guys used, when they'd abolished the light tank designation, but needed a light tank. Groovy.


• I realized, the reason they never developed the distinction we have between tanks and self-propelled artillery, is because a military develops during intra-species wars. Their intra-species wars involved fighting bipedal tiger-margays who can leap three times their own height up and seven times their height forward, and can climb like squirrels. Thus, their military always makes close-in defensibility a higher priority than we necessarily do—their designers have to assume "an enemy soldier will be on the side of the vehicle, if he gets within 14 meters".
  
  Which, huh, I just got a cool idea for a scene. Let's just say safe distance for a helicopter, against humans, and safe distance against said terrifying death-machines, are two very different things. Also, dude, I actually have a logical reason to cover all their vehicle-armor in spikes: it's to keep the enemy from hopping onto the hull from 14 meters away and getting his Audie Murphy on.
  
  Also, ooh, 'nother idea: their martial arts have pounce-counters, where you dodge the other guy's pounce, catch him as he goes by, and redirect his momentum into a throw.


• Aliens' mythologies are an interesting idea to explore—not just for the cultural-setting development, but also 'cause it gives ideas for things like symbols. E.g., my felinoids' Empire still uses its "pagan" symbol (they call them simply 'the tribal religions'), a dragon type thing. In the mythology, it perches on the Cosmic Tree (if Aztecs and Hungarians both have a World Tree, we may conclude it is universal), except it's more like a cosmic century plant, with an iridescent cuticle similar to some seaweeds. Anyway, the dragon-thing (its feathers are actually leaves) perches on the Cosmic Tree, looking for prey.
  
  In the original myths, its prey were a race of giants that disregarded cosmic order, à la the Rakshasas in Hinduism, but (since it's currently the symbol of a popular-sovereignty state), it's said that its prey is those who abuse their power ("evil giants", see?). Its modern form also has two heads, each looking in a different direction—like the double-headed eagle, except their ancient empire never had two capitals simultaneously, just one that got moved once (its single head turned to look the other way, when the capital moved). The two-headedness only goes back to their modern, unified empire. I'd considered using a four- or five-headed dragon, since they have five tribes/nations/races (but two of them are usually counted together), but, y' know, frickin' D&D Tiamat. When they want to symbolize the five tribes/nations, by the way, they use a pentafoil knot (one "leaf" for each nation).