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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the

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Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.

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Speaker 2: We cannot discuss the various creatures of the Star Trek

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Speaker 2: universe without of course considering the tribles of Iota geminorum,

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Speaker 2: For a world home to an abundance of carnivorous reptiles,

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Speaker 2: in addition to the vaguely mammalian Trible, which seems to

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Speaker 2: serve as a basic prey species for all the space lizards.

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Speaker 2: The Triple is, of course, a small, furry creature with

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Speaker 2: no discernible limbs or features. Really, its only means of

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Speaker 2: defending itself, at least against humanoids, is to basically tranquilize

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Speaker 2: the humanoid with a gentle cooing effect. The trouble with Triples,

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Speaker 2: of course, is their incredible rate of reproduction. They are

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Speaker 2: even reportedly born already pregnant, and can quickly overrun any

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Speaker 2: given ecosystem or starship that they are introduced into. In

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Speaker 2: their natural habitat, they eat and reproduce as quickly as possible,

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Speaker 2: but their numbers are kept in check, presumably by their

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Speaker 2: many voracious predators. But on a Federation starship, yes, this

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Speaker 2: is where the trouble occurs. With no predators, plentiful food,

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Speaker 2: and a crew overcome by their adorable cuteness, their population

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Speaker 2: very quickly spirals out of control. The creatures debuted in

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Speaker 2: a nineteen sixty seven episode of the original Star Trek series,

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Speaker 2: but the Grimlins franchise of the eighties and nineties treads

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Speaker 2: on similar ground. Adorable fur babies that get entirely out

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Speaker 2: of hand due to a mix of ineptitude, human vulnerability

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Speaker 2: to cuteness, and a reproductive system clearly evolve for different parameters.

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Speaker 2: I've speculated elsewhere that Magwai might depend on a a desert,

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Speaker 2: if not an extraterrestrial environment for their biology to make

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Speaker 2: sense and likewise unsuftible your mind. We've talked about the

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Speaker 2: role of cuteness, both among humans and cuteness between humans

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Speaker 2: and non human animals. It is a potent force that

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Speaker 2: manipulates us. For the Triple, the stabilizing factor is the

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Speaker 2: severity of its ecosystem. On the Triple home world, triples

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Speaker 2: presumably die in vast numbers and their prolific reproduction rate

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Speaker 2: merely allows them to keep up. We see variations of

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Speaker 2: this in the natural world here on Earth as well.

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Speaker 2: In general, we see the basic quality quantity tradeoff. In practice,

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Speaker 2: some organisms err on the side of producing few high

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Speaker 2: quality offspring, while others simply produce offspring in vast numbers.

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Speaker 2: The predators can't eat all of them, and a select

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Speaker 2: few survive to reproduce as adults. In sea turtles, for example,

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Speaker 2: somewhere on the order of two out of a thousand

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Speaker 2: eggs actually makes it to adult blihood, surviving the gamut

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Speaker 2: of consumers along the way. We can also think of

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Speaker 2: the triple in terms of predator satiation, by which prey

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Speaker 2: briefly and periodically occur at such high population densities that

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Speaker 2: the predators can't possibly eat them all. Periodical cicadas, which

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Speaker 2: many of you will be experiencing yet again this year,

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Speaker 2: are an example of this. So it would seem possible

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Speaker 2: that tribles might work in a similar manner, periodically reproducing

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Speaker 2: in such numbers that they simply overwhelm their many reptilian predators. Now,

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Speaker 2: given that triples are vaguely mammals, we might also compare

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Speaker 2: them to such prolific terrestrial warm bloods as the European rabbit,

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Speaker 2: infamous for its own rapid reproduction rate. According to the

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Speaker 2: Texas Invasive Species Institute, an eighteen fifty nine introduction of

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Speaker 2: a mere twenty four European rabbits into Australia led to

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Speaker 2: a population of more than six hundred million in less

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Speaker 2: than a century. The tribles ultimately are a fantastic commentary

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Speaker 2: on what can happen when a species is artificially transplanted

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Speaker 2: from one ecosystem into another. Now, how long would it

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Speaker 2: take triples to overrun the starship enterprise? Well, that is

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Speaker 2: a question that you have to throw some math at,

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Speaker 2: and in twenty twenty student researchers at the University of

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Speaker 2: Leicester made science headlines with a paper in the journal

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Speaker 2: Physics Special Topics. Their answer four point five days. Tune

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Speaker 2: in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The Artifact

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Speaker 2: or Anomalius to Pendium each week. But I'm going to

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Speaker 2: try and press on with more trek selections, so please

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Speaker 2: send in your recommendations. As always, you can email us

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Speaker 2: at contact. It's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot.

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Speaker 1: Com Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.

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