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Spiders [Merged]

Thank you, Gothmog! I have to get myself copy of Silmarillion in English...
 
Good job Gothmog. I looked over the Sil and Unfinished Tales, but couldn't find that quote. Good thing you could.
 
re: mating at least with Shelob:

"Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen..."

TTT Shelob's Lair

So at least in her case, if I read this correctly, she mated with her own offspring (chicken and egg problem)?
 
Originally posted by Eonwe

(chicken and egg problem)?
Click to expand...

I finaly solved -that- one. It's the egg! See I figure two different animals cross bred and they got a new egg which hatched into...a chicken!
 
Originally posted by elenya


I finaly solved -that- one. It's the egg! See I figure two different animals cross bred and they got a new egg which hatched into...a chicken!
Click to expand...

Good theory eleyna, but usually if two different breeds bred, their offspring are hybrids that are sterile. Like a horse and a donkey make a mule, but the mule is then unable to breed.
 
Originally posted by Thorondor


Good theory eleyna, but usually if two different breeds bred, their offspring are hybrids that are sterile. Like a horse and a donkey make a mule, but the mule is then unable to breed.
Click to expand...

...which raises the whole question of the Half-Elven. What's up with that? Are Elves and Men just different races of the same species? If so, why are the Elves immortal and Men aren't? (makes you more sympathetic to the Numenoreans, doesn't it?)

If they're different species, how do they interbreed and produce non-sterile offspring?

As Larry Niven said about Lois Lane: she'd have more luck trying to mate with an ear of corn than that alien Superman.
 
'Coz they are 'people'.
It's like, for example, if your dad is american, and your mom is mexican, you'll be half-american, half-mexican, but you'll be able to have kids...
 
All interspecies sex is problemmatic.

As Jack Lemmon in "The Great Race" responded when told:

"She ran off with a little friar."

"With a chicken?"
 
ha! And Carl Sagan said something about Spock having a human mother, equating to a human mating with a petunia.
 
Maybe not -all- cross breds are sterile. Maybe the chicken was an exception! OK it's not two completely different species. Maybe the species that made the chicken were related!

Maybe they're from animals that we know of...I mean we evolved from apes but they're still alive.
 
yes there are still the ancestors are still around. Two birds of Southern Asia called the Red Jungle Fowl and the Saipan Jungle Fowl are still around, but I am not sure exactly how they are related.
 


Yes but does this prove what was said earlier???
 
Shelob is the last child of Ungoliant, if I remember correctly, and the only one still alive. The monster spiders in Mirkwood are probably also descendents of Ungoliant, or perhaps of Shelob. I do not remember that exactly.
 
I would be inclined to believe that they were descendants of Shelob also. It is an interesting concept however.
 
I think you're right Ulairi, but if you want to see more opinions on this, then check out the previous thread about this very same topic:

Spiders
 
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