🧌Orcs: Asexual Reproduction?

[Zahin Hasan]

There are difficult questions which we should ask about Orcs.
Where are the orc kids?
Can orc kids be raised be adopted by humans or elves and raised with our values?
Who is looking after orc babies?

I propose that Orcs reproduce asexually, and are spawned (or hatched) in adult form. Perhaps by cloning adult orcs.

If orc babies exist, they would presumably be innocent (not evil), like all babies.
At the end of the First and Third Ages, orcs were almost exterminated.

Do you think that the Valar would have mass-murdered innocent baby orcs? No chance. The Valar are literally angels. Therefore, innocent baby orcs cannot have existed.

If innocent baby orcs had existed at the end of the first and third ages, the Valar would have liberated them and raised them with human/elvish ethics & values

(ie raised them to know the difference between right and wrong.)

in all of Tolkien’s works, there is not a single orc who does a single good (selfless) deed. This implies that orcs are soul-less, evil, violent creatures, incapable to choosing to do good.

With that in mind, we should not expect orcs to feel parental love for baby orcs. Orcs are monsters; we should expect them to eat (rather than nurture) their own babies. So it is unlikely that orc babies would survive to adulthood. Therefore it seems likely that Morgoth must have figured out how to produce adult orcs.

If orcs are

(a) cloned asexually from adult orcs, and

(b) hatched/spawned as adults,

they obviously have no need for parents or for parental love.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Tolkien said that orcs reproduce in the same way as other races. I don't recall his saying more, but there may be something in NoME, which I don't have.

 

[Vorondil]

Didn't Treebeard say something about Saruman having mixed goblins and men to make the Uruk-hai? If that is the case, then orcs would have to reproduce the same as the other races.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

He was speculating: "That would be a black evil!". But I always considered it likely.

 

[Vorondil]

I do also remember someone in LOTR (Frodo maybe?) saying something along the lines of: "All the orcs ever spawned". Not born, but spawned. Maybe they lay eggs!

 

[Elthir]

For me, there's no question that Orcs reproduced sexually, like God's children.

"For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar. . ."
The Silmarillion, Of The Coming Of The Elves

And thus, we must have Orc-women. "There must have been orc-women. But in stories that seldom if ever see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of the evil lords we naturally would not learn much about their lives. Not much was known." Tolkien, 1963,
letter to Mrs. Munby

Include the Maiar-orcs practicing (when embodied) ". . . procreation (c.f. Melian)" Orcs VIII
Also (at least in this "Orcs were mostly beasts" text, anyway) a possible Elvish strain in the orcs may have even been "mated with beasts (sterile!) -- and later Men." Orcs VIII, Morgoth's Ring, Myths Transformed

And in another "orc-text" from Morgoth's Ring, we are told that Saruman "rediscovered this" or "learned of this in lore", with Tolkien's "this" meaning the practice of interbreeding Orcs and Men (which produced the Half-orcs in my opinion, not the Uruk-hai) Orcs X

As I say, I'm convinced. . . or perhaps betterly worded, I've convinced me

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Yet another demonstration that, despite his protests otherwise, Elthir is much less lazy than I am! 😁

 

[Tar-Elenion]

Orc-kids?
Ask Gollum:
"Only a few hours ago he had worn it, and caught a small goblin-imp. How it squeaked! He still had a bone or two left to gnaw, but he wanted something softer."
Riddles in the Dark

 

[Elthir]

Yet another demonstration that, despite his protests otherwise, Elthir is much less lazy than I am! 😁

I'd respond, but I've been up for almost three full hours and already posted twice; thus nap time.

Wait! I am responding!

note to self: have a yegg and go to bed

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Catch!

 

[Olorgando]

...
If orc babies exist, they would presumably be innocent (not evil), like all babies.
...
If innocent baby orcs had existed at the end of the first and third ages, the Valar would have liberated them and raised them with human/elvish ethics & values

JRRT once said (wrote) that in his early writing (I paraphrase) "the Orcs were the infantry of the old war, about whom one needed not feel any compunction about slaughtering them wholesale {on the battlefield, at any rate}." He only found it necessary, is my impression, to think "philosophically" about the Orcs after the overwhelming success of LotR. Mainly doing so in the period after his retirement from Oxford in 1959, perhaps mostly in the second half of the 14 years up to his death in 1973. And, I think I've posted this before, he had no interest in going into details of the horrific goings-on Angband, Barad-dûr or Minas Morgul. As he was writing, in-world, from an Elven perspective in the "Silmarillion" period of M-e, then from a human, more specifically Hobbit perspective in TH and LotR, the pretended authors had no "first-hand" experiences of these various variants of hell. The Valar might have had them, after their two wars on Morgoth, but that is an entirely different rabbit hole ...
... in which in both cases the Valar did an extremely sloppy and incomplete job of ridding M-e of Melkor / Morgoth's monstrous creations. At the end of the First Age, they left Sauron, at least one Balrog, and probably several dragons, and never minds Trolls, Orcs, Wargs ... to roam and terrorize M-e.

As to Orc babies, Melkor / Morgoth's realm was totalitarian surpassing even our history's most horrendous examples, Hitler's and Stalin's regimes. And what both of those did was get control over children at as early an age as possible. The absolutely earliest time is when babies are weaned, something around two years of age. As has been shown time and again even in human history, if you brutalize people, they themselves become brutal in turn. As Thingol's realm was surrounded to a degree by Orcs even before the Noldor exiles returned, Melkor / Morgoth (or Sauron during Melkor's captivity in Valinor) had ages to "perfect" this hideous conditioning. As Sauron had during the entire Second Age. As perhaps the Nazgûl had during the Third Age while Sauron was rebuilding his incarnate form, which had become increasingly more difficult. And even absent Morgoth, Sauron or the Nazgûl, we have Azog, Bolg, the Great Goblin of TH, or the orc that took over command of the forces attacking Minas Tirith after the destruction of the Witch-king. Plenty of "folks" interested in keeping a brutalizing system going for their own ends.

 

[Ent]

If orc babies exist, they would presumably be innocent (not evil), like all babies.
At the end of the First and Third Ages, orcs were almost exterminated.

Do you think that the Valar would have mass-murdered innocent baby orcs? No chance. The Valar are literally angels. Therefore, innocent baby orcs cannot have existed.

This piece brings many thoughts of its own.
The presumption 'babies are innocent' is contested in many quarters. And, many cultures train their youth to evil from the beginning.

In addition, if the Valar would have acted on behalf of 'innocent' babies, would they not also have acted on behalf of 'innocent' young teens, or slightly older young adults?

There is a great deal about 'good and evil' being assumed here... it is a far more complex issue than implied.

But clearly, Orc children did exist, raising the question for us all: 'to what extent are we products of our environment, and can we really, easily, 'make the right decisions' in any given circumstance given that environment?'

Oh, my.. what a deep hole this crawls us into.
Ent recommends avoidance due to the many tentacles attached to the body of the octopus.

 

[d4rk3lf]

A very good question.

If orc babies exist, they would presumably be innocent (not evil), like all babies.

That's correct.
But then again, in Silmarillion, we only know that Morgoth "twisted the elves".
That sparks another question: "In what way he twisted them"?
Only by physics, or mentally, or even spirit (soul)?
It was never explained.
If it's only by physics and brain chemistry, then we can agreed that orcs are born innocent.

Do you think that the Valar would have mass-murdered innocent baby orcs?.

Why would they do that?
For sure - No.

If innocent baby orcs had existed at the end of the first and third ages, the Valar would have liberated them and raised them with human/elvish ethics & values
(ie raised them to know the difference between right and wrong.)

Again, why would they do that?
I think this is the crucial part where you miss the point.

Ok.. let's think it this way:
God (or Iluvatar) crates angels (Valars), and weak living beings (let's call them sheep's), and then sends all kind of perils to the sheep's only so the sheep's are saved by Valars? Ok, he could do that, but why would he do that at all? Sheep will stay a sheep after liberation, and nothing would change, even if the perils never existed, right? Sheep will be a sheep.
You ask now: Why then creating a sheep at all?
Well, because he didn't created sheep's, but self conscious beings that should take RESPONSIBILITY of their own actions, and not wait to be saved from Valar's.. right? They need to EARN their eventual immortality (after their death), by taking responsibility, and shielding from all the perils world throws on them.
That makes more sense? No?
Now you might ask: But what if Orc's baby (or any baby) get killed by accident (baby that hadn't had any opportunity to choose), and will it be automatically saved?
On which I will answer shortly: Sure bro.

 

[herlig9]

Unless Orcs are Komodo Dragons, then i doubt it. Since Orcs are Elves fallen to the darkness. Or thats the origins of the first corruption of evil monsters.

 

[Vic246801]

Didn't Treebeard say something about Saruman having mixed goblins and men to make the Uruk-hai? If that is the case, then orcs would have to reproduce the same as the other races.

I believe so, but Uruk-hai and Orcs are different, so the orcs may have asexual reproduction.

 

[Tar-Elenion]

I believe so, but Uruk-hai and Orcs are different, so the orcs may have asexual reproduction.

Uruk-hai are Orcs.
Uruk-hai means Orc-folk.
Uruk means Orc.

Later in the Third Age, the word uruk came to be applied more specifically to the soldier-orcs that came from Mordor and Isengard.
"Orcs and the Black Speech. Orc is the form of the name that other races had for this foul people as it was in the language of Rohan. In Sindarin it was orch. Related, no doubt, was the word uruk of the Black Speech, though this was applied as a rule only to the great soldier-orcs that at this time issued from Mordor and Isengard. The lesser kinds were called, especially by the Uruk-hai, snaga ‘slave’."
LotR, App F,

 

[Eldacar]

If it's only by physics and brain chemistry, then we can agreed that orcs are born innocent.

This is becoming very philosophical. 😅

My take on where these proposed orc-children are: Elves take much longer to grow up than men, who in turn take much longer to mature than most if not all beasts. Maybe the twisting of the elves that became the orcs also shortened these time frames to maybe as little as a few weeks or days. So compared to the overall life span of orcs, there simply aren't any children to speak of.

 

[Radaghast]

There are difficult questions which we should ask about Orcs.
Where are the orc kids?
Can orc kids be raised be adopted by humans or elves and raised with our values?
Who is looking after orc babies?

I propose that Orcs reproduce asexually, and are spawned (or hatched) in adult form. Perhaps by cloning adult orcs.

If orc babies exist, they would presumably be innocent (not evil), like all babies.
At the end of the First and Third Ages, orcs were almost exterminated.

Do you think that the Valar would have mass-murdered innocent baby orcs? No chance. The Valar are literally angels. Therefore, innocent baby orcs cannot have existed.

If innocent baby orcs had existed at the end of the first and third ages, the Valar would have liberated them and raised them with human/elvish ethics & values

(ie raised them to know the difference between right and wrong.)

in all of Tolkien’s works, there is not a single orc who does a single good (selfless) deed. This implies that orcs are soul-less, evil, violent creatures, incapable to choosing to do good.

With that in mind, we should not expect orcs to feel parental love for baby orcs. Orcs are monsters; we should expect them to eat (rather than nurture) their own babies. So it is unlikely that orc babies would survive to adulthood. Therefore it seems likely that Morgoth must have figured out how to produce adult orcs.

If orcs are

(a) cloned asexually from adult orcs, and

(b) hatched/spawned as adults,

they obviously have no need for parents or for parental love.

Good questions all, though, as others have pointed out, Tolkien has said they reproduce as other mammals do. I personally think orcs are a bit problematic and are more of a basic plot device than a serious literary concept. I think Tolkien simply lacked the time to do more than cursorily explore orc society.

 

[Olorgando]

So compared to the overall life span of orcs, there simply aren't any children to speak of.

That reminds me of insects. Though with flying insects like butterflies, the time scale is reversed. They spend much more time as caterpillars (whose unbelievably voracious appetite drives people involved in agriculture and gardening nuts), while the time they spend after metamorphosis to finished adults - bent on reproduction - is often extremely short. With bees, that relative time span seems to be reversed, but they still have a larval stage. Their relatives wasps and ants seem to follow a similar development pattern.
That appears to be the basis for Peter Jackson's take on how Saruman bred the Uruk-hai in the film (TT). So in that sense "baby Orcs" would not resemble adult Orcs. And it might imply the existence of an Orc "Queen" similar to that shown in some of the "Alien" films.
Contrary to this is JRRT's statement quoted by Elthir here:

"For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar. . ."
The Silmarillion, Of The Coming Of The Elves

Even JRRT's musings of there being a strain of "beasts" in Orc ancestry would have to make these mammals without a doubt, and humanoid with hardly less doubt (no, the Orcs chased by Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli didn't outdistance them by having cheetah hind legs; cheetahs are pure sprinters anyway, and would be useless in a chase of 135 miles until the three hunters met Éomer's Rohirrim). The Pan troglodytes chimpanzee might fit Saruman's bill best for aggressiveness - though not remotely enough. And chimps, though far stronger than humans pound-for-pound, are deficient in poundage. Hmm. Maybe Saruman had also discovered steroids (JRRT is very unlikely to have known of them for numerous reasons). That would help in bulking up, and also in serious increases in levels of aggression. But that is current knowledge projected back into the time JRRT was writing LotR, when what little had been discovered of these substances was known to hardly more than handfuls of medical researchers.

 

[Þráinn Þórhallsson]

Not directly related but am I the only one who thinks that the concept of pure evil species is kind a strange given that there is no pure good species that is at least not perceptible to corruption?

Goblins probably have the compassion to love and care for their own and just because they have high tendency for sadism does not change that. Also they might procreate purely so that their higher ranks can cause more harm to others.

In the end Tolkien said that they were not irredeemable and I always like to think of them as a creature with an immense need to kill and cause pain to other living beings in order to find any real fulfilment. It is really no different then how elf's have a strong inclination to live among trees or dragons and dwarfs have a tendency to hoard wealth.