Life mating

[Raiden]

Originally Posted by Clarke

Since humans (and presumably Na'vi) are mostly-K, or even entirely K*, then that means any given reproduction cycle produces few children. What I meant was that having males permanently bond to single females means less reproductive cycles, compared to one male having more than one partner on aveage. (e.g. a group of men reproduce with a group of women "all at once". If there are fewer men then women, this produces more children per male then the Na'vi model.)

*The pressure for R-type strategies that existed from disease before industrial medicine doesn't seem to exist for the Na'vi. That in turn might be an explanation for why Na'vi tribes so stay small enough to be sustainable on hunting-gathering alone.


That would imply that Eywa is not only approximately as intelligent as a human, but also has "advanced" (compard to anything else bar humans) scientific knowledge. That's a scary idea.

Well, that's not the only reason R-strategists are so successful; if you're an arthropod that produces 347 offspring in a given season, it doesn't matter if 30 are eaten before they reach their first molt. Another advantage is that you can get natural selection going right out of the box; when I sent my male A. versicolor tarantula out on a breeding date, I asked the person who owns the female how many babies would result. She said 700; I wasn't surprised, because in nature, the young of many spiders cannibalize their weaker, deformed, or less fit siblings, which boosts their fat stores and gives them a "starter pack" of protein to help them grow faster.

But yeah, the Na'vi would never be able to live at peace with Pandora's ecosystem if they just kept reproducing. I think that "Eywa" is capable of such things, but has formed a mutualistic relationship with the Na'vi; they guard it, and it helps them survive in discrete ways. I don't think that "Eywa" would give the Na'vi knowledge of science, because of how dangerous that is from a preservation perspective and because it would probably break the mutualistic relationship (i.e. they find out that Eywa isn't a deity and lose interest or something).