So Humans and Twi'leks Can Interbreed

I'm not entirely positive that this is news, but it was news to me. I had not before this seen a confirmation of breeding between humans and non-humans.

Flipping through the latest Star Wars Insider I then noticed an interview in the "Ask Lobot" section of the magazine. Leeland Chee's exact words are:

"Some older images from the EU depicted female Twi'leks with human-like ears. We originally considered this as non-continuity, but there is a possibility that they are part human.(Yes, you heard right. Twi'leks and humans can interbreed)." - Leeland Chee from the Star Wars Insider #115, page 57.

This opens up a slew of possibilities does it not? Talon could be carrying Cade's lust child with this revelation?

 

Season 2, Episode 10 "The Deserter" seemed to strongly imply that the clone's children were his, biologically, by his own words and their appearance. They were a mottled blend between human coloring and their mother's coloring.

However, it does generally take several... erm... attempts... to conceive. While it is technically possible to do it with only one attempt or a series of attempts all on the same night, usually it takes more than that.

While Darth Talon could have potentially conceived, I'm tending to think that she wouldn't unless she wanted to, and she wouldn't bear it to term unless the Sith decided it would be advantageous. Pregnancy would tend to interfere with her duties as a Hand.

Personally, I think canon allows for a few too many blends that shouldn't be possible without a petri dish and some bio-engineering.

 

Yeah, but as has been pointed out in LACWAC, those kids in Deserter seem aweful grown up for a Clone to have fathered them at the start of the war.

Now why wouldn't Talon want to have a child of the Skywalker bloodline? Wouldn't that be a longterm coup for the Sith?

 

Well, the clones were tinkered with for accelerated aging and we really don't know how much of that was genetic and therefore inheritable.

A Cade/Talon child would take several years to have any real use to the Sith. These Sith did seem to take the long view under Krayt. However, with Krayt dead, what use do they now have for Cade and Cade's abilities, much less waiting for almost two decades for them to develop fully in a child? The only point I could see would be counting coup for being defeated so often at the hands of Skywalkers.

They seem to be pretty powerful without Skywalker blood in them, and Cade's a few generations removed from The Chosen One.

 

Oh Leland. What will you think of next?

 

The episode guide for that TCW episode explicitly states that the kids are not Cut's; he adopted them.

 

And the mottled color has been seen before, on other Twi'leks (in the Ryloth episode, IIRC.)

Plus, the kids are four and five---too old to be his.

EDIT: Seriously, Leland? Human-like ears? Really?

Bib Fortuna had Human-ish ears in RotJ. This is a well-established Twi'lek species trait (for males, at least.) Which has been followed in TCW and the PT.

So I guess all male Twi'leks are human-Twi'lek hybrids, now?

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the man in charge of canon. Behold. Behold and despair.

 

Well, didn't the Dark Jedi exiles and the Sith species interbreed? Or was that accomplished by using Sith Alchemy?

 

Leland's probably just softening the impact of another "Lucas" idea appearing in a future episode.

 

To be fair, its been noted by many that male Twi'leks have always had human-like ears while females almost always have ear cones barring a few sources here and there. Leland points out that it is these rare females with human-like ears that may be potential hybrids, not that males with human-like ears are hybrids.

So, males with "human" ears = baseline Twi'lek, females with cones = baseline Twi'lek, females with "human" ears = not baseline Twi'lek/potential hybrid

Yeah, its a bit complex, perhaps needlessly so, but no more so than three or four different types of Aqualish or magically morphing Mon Cal feet...

 

Leland Chee...what the hell, man?

 

Ooksy then Leland. Have fun with that.

 

That would still not explain why they seem to be 6-9 years old. The war is in it's 1st or 2nd year, so if he had deserted during the start of the war it still wouldn't be enough time. If they had been born with the accelerated ageing, they wouldn't be older than 2 years. Unless the tinkering mutates, but that wouldn't be very good because the parents would both outlive them.

 

Well, obviously! Clearly true Twi'leks are like the Asari: they only come female. The males must all be hybrids.

As for the kids in The Deserter, like Plaristes said: they're adopted, not the clone's kids. See the Episode Guide on the OS:

 

then what the hell is Orn Free Taa? who did his partent Twilek breed with? a Nautolan?

 

ps: female twileks have ear cones, males have ears. yet Orn Free Taa has his ear cones as long as a second pair of lekku. weird

 

Lealand Chee, YOUFAILBIOLOGYFOREVER.

 

Don't give them ideas...

Yeah, seriously. This is either convergent evolution to the max, or they're almost the same species. If their children can have children, then they ARE the same species technically. Anyone know of any human-eared Twi'lek with kids? Because then the species guides all lied to us and Humans and Twi'leks are both subspecies of Homo sapiens.

 

Oh, come on people, don't be too harsh on Leeland for that. In fact, I find the idea incredibly amusing. Thinking of all the possibilities...

 

Yes, normal rules of biology must apply to the Star Wars universe. Thats a reason to slam Leeland [Insert Sarcasm Icon Here]

 

And if we're going to be pedantic about our biology, Humans and Twi'leks share too many parochial characteristics (i.e. characteristics that are unlikely to arise as the result of convergent evolution, and thus are likely to indicate evolutionary relationships) for them to NOT share a recent common ancestor.

 

I. AM. A. HUMAN. TWI'LEK. I. AM. YOUR. FUTURE!
[image=http://nous.name/files/human_dalek.jpg]

Lol.

Glad to have GTKO.

 

That's not strictly true. I've heard the theory that the "humanoid" body plan (two arms, with digits and opposable thumbs, two legs, all the sensory organs concentrated at the top/front, a centralized nervous system protected by a skull and spinal cord, etc.) is among the most efficient body plans available evolutionarily. And as a result, the humanoid form is more likely to arise than more alien plans. So Ryloth, with its relative similarities to Earth (especially now that it rotates), then it's possible that a humanoid form evolved there too, despite few to no relations to the Humans of Notron/Coruscant (According to this theory).