Race's Mating Season

The mating season is the period during which members of the normally sexually inactive Race reproduce. Females of the Race become fertile once a year (as measured on Home; twice a year by Earth standards) and emit pheromones which create overwhelming degrees of arousal in males. In the absence of these pheromones males cannot be aroused. Males attempt to mate with females wherever they find them, in public places or even in the middle of the street. Sometimes males engage in (occasionally fatal) combat over females, but often males are willing to take turns. There is no desire for exclusivity on the part of either gender, just that the female be coupled with and the male get his fair chance to do the coupling (although the Emperor maintains a private harem to ensure the purity of the Ssumaz dynasty's line). It is a very chaotic period in the Race's life.

Females who become gravid allow their eggs to gestate within their bodies for several weeks, then find a suitable nesting area, lay their eggs, and abandon them. Any hatchling who emerges from its egg will receive no more parental care from either parent.

When the Colonization Fleet brought females to Tosev 3, it was found that ginger caused females to become fertile and emit pheromones (thus arousing males) at all times. Constant sexual arousal was a distraction with which the Race was not biologically equipped to deal, and in some cases social patterns were profoundly altered. Some Lizards defected to the Tosevites and entered into "exclusive mating arrangements" modeled on human marriage. The mainstreatm culture of the Race considered these individuals perverts and ostracized them.

Similar mating behaviors are seen among the Rabotevs, the Hallessi, and most animals native to all three of the Empire's planets.