Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: We cannot discuss the various creatures of the Star Trek
Speaker 2: universe without of course considering the tribles of Iota geminorum,
Speaker 2: For a world home to an abundance of carnivorous reptiles,
Speaker 2: in addition to the vaguely mammalian Trible, which seems to
Speaker 2: serve as a basic prey species for all the space lizards.
Speaker 2: The Triple is, of course, a small, furry creature with
Speaker 2: no discernible limbs or features. Really, its only means of
Speaker 2: defending itself, at least against humanoids, is to basically tranquilize
Speaker 2: the humanoid with a gentle cooing effect. The trouble with Triples,
Speaker 2: of course, is their incredible rate of reproduction. They are
Speaker 2: even reportedly born already pregnant, and can quickly overrun any
Speaker 2: given ecosystem or starship that they are introduced into. In
Speaker 2: their natural habitat, they eat and reproduce as quickly as possible,
Speaker 2: but their numbers are kept in check, presumably by their
Speaker 2: many voracious predators. But on a Federation starship, yes, this
Speaker 2: is where the trouble occurs. With no predators, plentiful food,
Speaker 2: and a crew overcome by their adorable cuteness, their population
Speaker 2: very quickly spirals out of control. The creatures debuted in
Speaker 2: a nineteen sixty seven episode of the original Star Trek series,
Speaker 2: but the Grimlins franchise of the eighties and nineties treads
Speaker 2: on similar ground. Adorable fur babies that get entirely out
Speaker 2: of hand due to a mix of ineptitude, human vulnerability
Speaker 2: to cuteness, and a reproductive system clearly evolve for different parameters.
Speaker 2: I've speculated elsewhere that Magwai might depend on a a desert,
Speaker 2: if not an extraterrestrial environment for their biology to make
Speaker 2: sense and likewise unsuftible your mind. We've talked about the
Speaker 2: role of cuteness, both among humans and cuteness between humans
Speaker 2: and non human animals. It is a potent force that
Speaker 2: manipulates us. For the Triple, the stabilizing factor is the
Speaker 2: severity of its ecosystem. On the Triple home world, triples
Speaker 2: presumably die in vast numbers and their prolific reproduction rate
Speaker 2: merely allows them to keep up. We see variations of
Speaker 2: this in the natural world here on Earth as well.
Speaker 2: In general, we see the basic quality quantity tradeoff. In practice,
Speaker 2: some organisms err on the side of producing few high
Speaker 2: quality offspring, while others simply produce offspring in vast numbers.
Speaker 2: The predators can't eat all of them, and a select
Speaker 2: few survive to reproduce as adults. In sea turtles, for example,
Speaker 2: somewhere on the order of two out of a thousand
Speaker 2: eggs actually makes it to adult blihood, surviving the gamut
Speaker 2: of consumers along the way. We can also think of
Speaker 2: the triple in terms of predator satiation, by which prey
Speaker 2: briefly and periodically occur at such high population densities that
Speaker 2: the predators can't possibly eat them all. Periodical cicadas, which
Speaker 2: many of you will be experiencing yet again this year,
Speaker 2: are an example of this. So it would seem possible
Speaker 2: that tribles might work in a similar manner, periodically reproducing
Speaker 2: in such numbers that they simply overwhelm their many reptilian predators. Now,
Speaker 2: given that triples are vaguely mammals, we might also compare
Speaker 2: them to such prolific terrestrial warm bloods as the European rabbit,
Speaker 2: infamous for its own rapid reproduction rate. According to the
Speaker 2: Texas Invasive Species Institute, an eighteen fifty nine introduction of
Speaker 2: a mere twenty four European rabbits into Australia led to
Speaker 2: a population of more than six hundred million in less
Speaker 2: than a century. The tribles ultimately are a fantastic commentary
Speaker 2: on what can happen when a species is artificially transplanted
Speaker 2: from one ecosystem into another. Now, how long would it
Speaker 2: take triples to overrun the starship enterprise? Well, that is
Speaker 2: a question that you have to throw some math at,
Speaker 2: and in twenty twenty student researchers at the University of
Speaker 2: Leicester made science headlines with a paper in the journal
Speaker 2: Physics Special Topics. Their answer four point five days. Tune
Speaker 2: in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The Artifact
Speaker 2: or Anomalius to Pendium each week. But I'm going to
Speaker 2: try and press on with more trek selections, so please
Speaker 2: send in your recommendations. As always, you can email us
Speaker 2: at contact. It's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot.
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