lexxx length; II
I’ve worked out some more sizes to add-
Moth length: 6m
Moth height: 3.8 m
Moth wingspan: 20 m
Larva width: 2.1 m
Larva height enrolled: 5.2 m
Larva length unrolled: 7.9 m
I also have some basic observations made from the Giga Shadow larva-
-Outer carapace purplish brown
-Underbelly red
-14 segments altogether
-Head: 2 segments
-Thorax: 11 segments
-Abdomen: 1 segments
-22 legs
-14 eyes
-3 scolices
-2 mandibles
-1 maxilla
-12 dorsal spines
Compare that to the adult-
-Outer carapace gun metal grey streaked with silver
-Underbelly dark grey
-7 segments altogether
-Head: 1 segment
-Thorax: 5 segments?
-Abdomen: 1 segment?
-Hundreds of silvery bumps in 8 major clumps (eyes?)
-1 aperture (mouth?)
-2 large orifices
-2 medium orifices
-12 small orifices
-12 facial spines
-About 130 silvery-white spheroids attached to thorax; 14 are exposed when enrolled
-A couple hundred smaller purplish-brown spheroids attached to abdomen (larvae?)
-At least 1 tendril, possibly as many as 10
-Spinal cord on ventral surface
Now, it is plausible that the Insect civilization consisted of a number of castes specialized for different jobs within the society. It is even possible that the essences of a single Insect could reside in more than one body based on the task at hand. On Earth, I believe insect hives can have as many as 6 different castes. Now, my theory is that the genetic code for all the castes resides in the D.N.A. of each and every Insect, like all the junk D.N.A. we have that codes for traits our ancestors discarded millions of years ago. All of this is in each larva, they are stimulated to grow into a certain type but the D.N.A. remains. Now, this would also mean that if you had a sample of the D.N.A. of any Insect, or possibly even Insect-based constructs, you would have the genetic material to create any caste, or even a new type of organism with different characteristics of different castes that do not normally exist together in one being. In other words, with just a tissue sample from the Giga Shadow or a stinger you could grow things as dimorphous as moths and the Lexx.
Now, [i]if[/i] the caste theory is correct and [i]if[/i] the synthetic constructs used are based directly on a single caste, then we can assign Insect(oid)s we’ve seen to a certain caste. Stingers would be warriors (well, duh) and moths would be workers. The Lexx’s nature is less clear. It is bigger than most craft, which would imply a royal caste. But size may not matter, since the builders of Insect craft could suppress growth so their ships didn’t get so big it required major resources to keep them alive. The Lexx has been identified as male, which would imply that it is based on a male/king/drone. In insect societies on Earth all of the non-royal castes are infertile females. But Insects may not be the same as insects. Now, warrior is also implied, by the fact that [b]the Lexx can blow up planets.[/b] Maybe there are different subcastes of warriors, common “light” warriors like stingers and “heavy” warriors like the Lexx that have a special limited function, like to protect the queen. Now, what was the Giga Shadow? It had a bunch of larvae attached to it, so that would imply that it was a queen. But that was at the end of its life. In Earth insects, sometimes a normally infertile worker can develop into a queen if the colony’s queen has died. So the Giga Shadow would’ve been a pseudo-queen or quasi-queen, something different earlier in its life. I find it most likely that the last surviving Insect was just a minor work unit, something relatively insignificant to the Insect civilization and the human forces that exterminated them. Queens would’ve been the first priority for things to destroy. But if the Shadow (the young Giga Shadow) was a worker, we run into problems since we (I) have already assigned moths to the worker caste. But perhaps moths were a specific subcaste employed for work requiring long-range travel, so they would be “scouts” instead of plain “workers.” All of this is speculative, the idea of a caste hierarchy itself is merely theoretical.
We don’t know if the craft like moths, stingers, and the Lexx were even based directly on a specific type of Insect. Their D.N.A. could have active parts from several different castes. Moths seem to be grown by grafting a number of tissues onto a metal frame. The different [i]tissues[/i] may come from different castes and have different genetic codes.
Finally, I do not believe the Net in the episodes [i]The Net[/i] and [i]The Web[/i] was an Insect (just to clarify my half-sane semantics, Nets are the species, Webs and Spiders are the components). I think it was a completely different species. The Net body plan was radially symmetrical, based on 8. The Insect body plan seems to be based on 3 and 7 and always bilateral. It does have similar characteristics, like an exoskeleton, enormous size, the capability of interstellar travel, and the ability to pass part of its intelligence to hosts of other species. So it’s possible that the Nets originally came from the same planet as the Insects, that they share the same evolutionary ancestry and may belong to the same phylum. Or this could all be the result of convergent evolution and the Nets and Insects could have arisen in different star systems entirely. Now, Insects could not have existed in vacuum (speaking metaphorically, of course). They must have been part of an ecosystem, with standard prey to sustain them and predators to keep them in check. The Nets may have been just such a predator. The Lexx is programmed to be afraid of the Web he sees. He also knows that where there’s a Web there’s likely to be a Spider. His instincts told him to turn but Stan told him not to, with disastrous results. This implies that the Insects and the Nets had previous contact, and, as with this situation, the Insect was the victim.
And so the rant comes to an anticlimactic conclusion.