where did cluster lizards come from?
The question all parents on the 20,000 Planets dread: Where do Cluster lizards come from? [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] Okay, I’m getting serious, now…
quote:
Originally posted by Valdron:
With all due respect to Dalektek790, I’m
not sure that Xev’s statements in the third
season about Cluster Lizards are definitive.
Cluster Lizards are apparently very tolerant of heat, or at least Xev is. But where does she get her information on the planet where Cluster Lizards come from? She grew up in a box.
I should think she received some kind of education in her Skinner box. She knew about the Arch Traitor Stanley Tweedle. I think it’s reasonable to assume she was taught some facts about other planets and life forms.
Alternately, she may have filled in what little knowledge of Cluster lizards she has with speculation. She knows that she has remarkable heat resistance, for instance, and has inferred that the original home planet of the Cluster lizards was a hot one. I’d imagine Xev has done a lot of thinking on this subject. After all, she didn’t seem to have much to do on the Lexx besides file her nails and stare at Kai’s frozen body, and Cluster lizards are naturally curious (or so she says).
Xev does seem to have limited knowledge of her own form. She told Prince that she was half Cluster lizard, while in [i]Terminal[/i] it was established (if I recall correctly) that she was 17%.
Kai would really be the one to ask.
I doubt Cluster lizards were brought to the Cluster as parasites of the Insect. If they were than the people who brought them to the surface would have had to know that there was a big Insect in there, and suspicions would surround the creatures’ discovery. Plus there would be no ecosystem in which they could live in the Cluster, without acknowledging the existence of the Insect. It is possible that they were Insect parasites, but I find that unlikely (they seem more like a Brunnen-G instrument of Insect destruction). I also don’t think they are a subtype of Insects. I’m sorry, but I just can’t see insects no matter how hard I look at Cluster lizards. It is possible they are part of the same evolutionary lineage, but not the same phylum.
I think they were probably transported from a planet in the League of 20,000 Planets for use in executions. Their original home planet, which may have been destroyed, was a hot world (but not a desert planet, since Cluster lizard pseudopods are made for gripping hard surfaces, not sand). The pseudopods and rolling could be artefacts of a low-gravity environment. It may have been a Mercury-like world with a thin atmosphere and extreme temperature fluctuations, explaining the Cluster lizard tolerence for vacuum and cold. But it would have been very, very hot at least some of the time, and had very little foliage (at least in the regions Cluster lizards inhabited. Alternately, there could have been an impermeable, greenhouse-acting mist that made vision difficult, hence the Cluster lizards’ lack of eyes. Or maybe that is because of extreme darkness (they could have lived in caves or air pockets, or far away from their sun, the heat being generated geothermically). I have yet to formulate a sound theory as to why they have the “flowering” mouths.
quote:
Originally posted by Valdron:
The speculation that the Web/Net creature might well have been an Insect predator/parasite is actually a fairly good one. It’s hard to imagine another niche for such a massive hunter predator. What else would they go for.
There’s some speculation on the nature of the Net under Rockham’s “From what was Lexx bred?” topic.