The Monstrefact: The Tribbles of Star Trek

The Triple is, of course, a small, furry creature with no discernible limbs or features. Really, its only means of defending itself, at least against humanoids, is to basically tranquilize the humanoid with a gentle cooing effect. The trouble with Triples, of course, is their incredible rate of reproduction. They are even reportedly born already pregnant, and can quickly overrun any

given ecosystem or starship that they are introduced into. In their natural habitat, they eat and reproduce as quickly as possible, but their numbers are kept in check, presumably by their many voracious predators. But on a Federation starship, yes, this is where the trouble occurs. With no predators, plentiful food, and a crew overcome by their adorable cuteness, their population

very quickly spirals out of control. The creatures debuted in a nineteen sixty seven episode of the original Star Trek series, but the Grimlins franchise of the eighties and nineties treads on similar ground. Adorable fur babies that get entirely out of hand due to a mix of ineptitude, human vulnerability to cuteness, and a reproductive system clearly evolve for different parameters.

I've speculated elsewhere that Magwai might depend on a a desert, if not an extraterrestrial environment for their biology to make sense and likewise unsuftible your mind. We've talked about the role of cuteness, both among humans and cuteness between humans and non human animals. It is a potent force that manipulates us. For the Triple, the stabilizing factor is the severity of its ecosystem. On the Triple home world, triples presumably die in vast numbers and their prolific reproduction rate

merely allows them to keep up. We see variations of this in the natural world here on Earth as well. In general, we see the basic quality quantity tradeoff. In practice, some organisms err on the side of producing few high quality offspring, while others simply produce offspring in vast numbers. The predators can't eat all of them, and a select

few survive to reproduce as adults. In sea turtles, for example, somewhere on the order of two out of a thousand eggs actually makes it to adult blihood, surviving the gamut of consumers along the way. We can also think of the triple in terms of predator satiation, by which prey briefly and periodically occur at such high population densities that the predators can't possibly eat them all. Periodical cicadas, which many of you will be experiencing yet again this year,

are an example of this. So it would seem possible that tribles might work in a similar manner, periodically reproducing in such numbers that they simply overwhelm their many reptilian predators. Now, given that triples are vaguely mammals, we might also compare them to such prolific terrestrial warm bloods as the European rabbit,

infamous for its own rapid reproduction rate. According to the Texas Invasive Species Institute, an eighteen fifty nine introduction of a mere twenty four European rabbits into Australia led to a population of more than six hundred million in less than a century. The tribles ultimately are a fantastic commentary on what can happen when a species is artificially transplanted from one ecosystem into another. Now, how long would it

take triples to overrun the starship enterprise? Well, that is a question that you have to throw some math at, and in twenty twenty student researchers at the University of Leicester made science headlines with a paper in the journal Physics Special Topics. Their answer four point five days. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The Artifact or Anomalius to Pendium each week. But I'm going to try and press on with more trek selections, so please

send in your recommendations. As always, you can email us at contact. It's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot.