Sunday, February 15, 2015

Let's Get Scientifical #15: Half-Human + Half-Alien = ?


Welcome to Unwritten's February blog event! Of course, this is the month of love, so I wanted to celebrate that theme as I've done in year's past. But this year, I've decided to add a scientific spin to it. All month long, talented authors from several genres will write about some aspect of love from their books as it relates to science. It could be social, psychological, biological, or anything in between. Our blog event is sponsored by "HMC by Kate", a fabulous independent jewelry crafter. Kate's giving away one of her very beautiful necklaces that I think fits our theme perfectly. She's also offering everyone who stops in a 10% discount on any item from her Etsy store. Be sure to enter the giveaway at the end of this post and check out her lovely offerings! Without further ado, please welcome our guest author:

Half-Human/Half-Alien Reproduction by Jane Novotny, MD 

Transcribed by P. E. Sibley

Mark Praed is the product of interspecies breeding between a human male and an alien female from the planet Kyree in the Steglos System. Kyreens are a humanoid race with DNA similar to that of homo sapiens. To understand if Mr. Praed would be able to father children, one must first understand the reproductive processes of Kyreens.
Unlike human women who, during every twenty-eight day cycle are fertile five to six days (ovulation), Kyreen females are fertile every day of the Kyreen solar year (which is four hundred forty-eight days long) unless pregnant. Females reach puberty at the average age of fifteen, and fertility begins to taper off at the age of sixty, although there are records of the occasional female giving birth into their early seventies. It should also be noted the average life span of Kyreen females is one hundred twenty Kyreen years (roughly one hundred sixty Earth years).
Eggs are stored in the tolaren, a single organ similar in function to human ovaries. When the female is completely sexually aroused, an egg is released from the tolaren into the insolen or uterus. There it waits for spermatozoon from a male.
Given the length of time a female is fertile, one would presume the planet of Kyree has a population problem. However, Kyreen males are fertile only three times within their long solar year, and only for three days at each occurrence. In the past, the males had no idea when those days of fertility would happen, although some reported an increase in libido just before. Only in the last one hundred Kyreen years has testing been possible.
If the egg is not fertilized, it will pass through the uterus within three days, in the equivalent of human menses. Kyreen females do not have regularly monthly menstrual cycles as do human females.
The question of fertility was raised in the case of my patient, Mark Praed. With parents of differing species, he wondered if he might be sterile like a mule born of a donkey and a horse.
Fertility tests confirmed that he would be able to father children year round as do human males; sperm counts were consistent throughout the Earth solar year. However, higher counts were observed three times during the four hundred forty-eight days of the Kyreen year (even though testing was performed on Earth). Odds of conception would be higher if coitus occurred with a Kyreen female at any point in time. Procreation with a human female by traditional intercourse would be possible during the three Kyreen periods of higher fertility. To guarantee conception, in vitro fertilization would be the most efficient course of action.

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Bio:
For P. E. Sibley (a.k.a. Pat Sibley) writing is a passion, or perhaps a compulsion.
She was born, raised, and educated mostly in Orange County, California. A voracious reader as a child, she became interested in writing early on. She wrote her first short story in second grade about an ant. It ended rather abruptly when the ant was smashed by a foot.
By the time she reached her mid-twenties, she was living a near-gypsy existence, moving from one city to another. She traveled to Europe several times (Scotland is the preferred destination) and to the Middle East, and tried numerous occupations including climbing telephone poles, picking oranges on a kibbutz in Israel, and managing a bookstore.
She went back to school for a Teaching Credential from Cal State University, Long Beach, doing her student teaching in Hampshire, England.
She moved numerous times more—mostly eastward and northward—to San Francisco and then Sierra Nevada Mountains and now resides in rural Eastern Washington State with her husband, a wolf-canine mix, a cattle dog, and a cat that believes she’s a dog.



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2 comments:

  1. I thought it was an interesting article. I don't think I could survive a Kyreen Solar Year. It is interesting to think out of the box about reproduction.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Katherine. I did give it a lot of thought, especially as the 4th novel in the series (on which I am in the processing of editing) deals in part with Kyreen culture.

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