Mind-boggling biological revelation!

[adaeze]

Wellinghall (browsing idly through a book about heraldry): Apparently male gryphons don't have wings.

I had absolutely no idea gryphons exhibited such extreme sexual dimorphism! The only other species I can think of that does that is the Vapourer Moth - we had one pupate attached to our front door a few years ago.

So people out there who know more biology than me - can we infer more about the life cycle of the gryphon from this startling fact? Presumably the males stay put (more or less) and the females leave their home territories and look for a new patch, thus avoiding inbreeding. Does it also follow that the males are going to be heavily involved with the raising of young? I'm wondering if they stay on the nest, keeping the eggs / cubs safe and warm, while the females can do more in the way of hunting?

Comments

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

I never knew that LOL.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Males don't need wings because the females eat them after mating?

[adaese.livejournal.com]

Alarming thought. We could test this - if true I'd expect more male gryphons to hatch than females, whereas if the females scatter but the males are territory-bound, presumably there'd be far more females hatching than males (rather like flying ants but in reverse). All we need is to find a gryphon nest before the eggs hatch.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I can see that more males need to hatch than females if each clutch/litter (not sure which gyphons produced) is small in number. However if a large number of offspring were produced, the issue might be less significant.

Either way, an expedition to find a nest is an excellent idea. Let's get fundraising.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Or they don't need wings because they've got jet packs? Awesome jet packs, exuding POWER! They talk about them at length, and try desperately to get a better jet pack than all their mates down at... whatever is the gryphon equivalent of a pub.

[adaese.livejournal.com]

And then the females grumble about how the males no longer pull their weight in the nest, as is Traditional and Right and Proper.

[lady_songsmith]

Oh, no, no, no, it GETS BETTER!!

First of all, this is purely the British subspecies, I should clarify. That said. A male gryffon is called a keythong and it has spikes, ranging from the discreet

to the WTF


The female griffin, however, has a distinct genital bulge, particularly apparent when rearing. Observe:

One wonders whether gryphons might not be more akin to hyenas in genitalia.

[adaese.livejournal.com]

Some of those spikes *really* don't look very practical. Perhaps they flatten?

The female's, erm, prominent lady-bits, do make a kind of sense given the spikiness of the male. She must be quite anxious to keep him at a safe distance.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Who knew?!!! FASCINATING.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

First battling butterflies from puddleshark, and now this! My mind is decisively boggled, and it's not even breakfast-time yet.

[adaese.livejournal.com]

When Wellinghall & I visited California a few years ago, we saw a butterfly chasing a hummingbird away from a bush. Now I grant you Monarch butterflies are pretty big, as butterflies go, and the hummingbird pretty small, but it still felt very odd to see an insect chasing off a bird.