Twi'leks Anatomy

It could be a cultural thing, like some Muslim chicks with burqas.

 

The head coverings or the cones? Or the cones being part of the head or something?

 

Wookieepedia says they have ears, but there's no guarantee it's right.

 

^ As stated above, SWG would seem to disagree. Silly Wook.

 

Mmmmm. Interesting. Could be like foot-binding or something.

 

In Darklighter, Doc appears in a couple panels sans headdress and appears to have cones instead of ears.

 

yeah and she doesnt look to have a specific haeaddress their...

 

Exactly!

 

I think it was explained, Oola had cones instead of ears because the actress had to wear a headdress with the tentacles, and it was very heavy so she couldn't show her own ears. They had to put factice ears ON the headress, and maybe it was easier to make cones than real ears-looking things.

Since then, all the female twi'leks have cones instead of human-ears. And the men have human-ears.


I'd like too see those ugly twi'leks on Ryloth, it would be original. Because even in the comics where Quinlan Vos goes to Ryloth, you can only see nice female twi'leks.

 

My 2 cents:

Likely, when initially designing the Oola character, the affect of having the lekku gracefully come over the top of the head an into the shape of the face was a desired effect. It makes the lekku obviously alien, and yet adds an elegant shape that didn't make you go "awe gross", as with most alien designs. at the same time, this "grace" was not wanted in the character of Bib Fortuna...and thus the ears are seen, which distrupts the lines (as well as the bumpy forhead, and makes a creature with similar "alien" characteristics "gross".

that's the real world version...now the in-universe reasoning may be similar.

Characteristically, twilek females with small ears were considered desireable because it drew more attention to the lekku. To both Twi'leks and non Twi'leks this was seen as a sign of beauty and social breeding. As a result of that, many Twi'lek girls spent their lives hiding their ears, especially if they were larger then desired. Perhaps it was done with headresses...perhaps with makeups...perhaps, in not the best of circumstances, surgery was performed to "seal" the ears...which may or maynot have been done ceremonially or simply as a cosmetic operation at some stage of life.

The "cone" look is the result...sometimes entirely fake, sometimes a surgical construction on the eardrum, the "cones" while being obvious, are not as obtrusive to the silhouette of a female twi'leks face. Even still, the smaller the and less obvious the cones, the better.

Cones are not genetic...but could make a great short story.

 

Makes sense to me. A gold star for you, my good man.

 

Interesting theory. I'm just wondering how female Twi'leks are supposed to hear, since there doesn't seem to be any visible opening to the auditory canal.

 

But then what about Darth Talon? I doubt she would care much to be attractive, yet it looks like she has the cones...

 

Some of the cone could be a tympanic membrane.

 

You don't think Talon has any vanity to her? I think the wardrobe may prove this out.

And depending on Talon's backstory...it may have been done to her by her parents...the Sith don't bar all alien customs in their training...I would think that particularly true of Krayt's sith.

Something tells me that if physical mutilation that spans eons and generations is taking place...very little personal input into "getting" it done is required. More likely, a Twi'lek girl may have to work hard to "prevent" it from happening to her.

 

We could also have male Twi'leks with ears and female Twi'leks with cones and hermaphrodite Twi'leks with ears and cones.

 

Sounds reasonable. Intersexed Twi'leks.

 

Fair enough

 

I still think it's genetic, but Twi'lek's may try to ensure that their daughters are born with them. Marriages and pregnancies may be planned to try and ensure beautiful, cone-eared daughters.

Perhaps, like with any other physical feature we humans find beautiful, Twi'leks born with ears get surgery to get them made into cones, or wear headdresses with cones on them to give the appearance of cones.

 

From everything we've seen, males do have regular ears (Orn Free Ta and Bib Fortuna in both Ep I and VI). Star Wars Galaxies does seem to confirm the "cone" ears for females as canonical (albeit in varying sizes), as well as characters like Aayla Secura, Sebulba's massagers, and others in the films all appear to have cones. However, they could just be colored caps attached to the costume-necessitated headdresses, as Lyn Me and Ayy Vida's headdresses might seem to indicate. If either of them don't have really tiny cones or just plain old regular ears, those headdresses look like they'd be mighty painful to wear. In RotJ, we never see Oola's ears/cones, just the white bone protrusions on her headdress (One can even get that headdress in Star Wars Galaxies.) What we really need, is an official Lucasfilm CGI of a Twi'lek female without a headdress. Until then, IMO, the jury's still somewhat out.

In the meantime, mine (moderately NSFW but cleared by TF.n Fan Art Boards) have ears.

 

And lovely they are, too!

 

Speaking of Orn, what's up with four lekked Twi'leks?

 

(Thanks Twin_Suns_One! )

Dude, I don't even know lol! Orn is just a freak. He only has 3 fingers (and a thumb) as well. He's probably some terribly deformed spoiled rich kid who inherited his role into politics. He's definitely an anomaly compared to everything we've ween about male and female Twi'leks alike.

 

Well, there's one other Twi'lek that looks like him: Chom Frey Kaa.

Retcon/Theory: Obesity causes deformities in Twi'leks, such as the growth of additional lekku and the fusing of digits.

 

I was going to blame it on impeccable breeding. That is to say, inbreeding.