12.4 - Xenogamy

Xenology: An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization

First Edition

Robert A. Freitas Jr., Xenology: An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization, First Edition, Xenology Research Institute, Sacramento, CA, 1979; http://www.xenology.info/Xeno.htm

One last important issue must now be addressed: Are interspecies sexual relations possible?

Many science fiction authors have tried sensibly to deal with this touchy question, such as Philip José Farmer in The Lovers, in Flesh, and in Strange Relations, Walter Tevis in his The Man Who Fell to Earth, and a host of others. There have been reports of sexual molestations of humans by the occupants of UFOs.¹⁶⁷² And Star Trek’s own Mr. Spock is a prime example of xenogamy -- the product of a marriage between a human female and a male alien from the fictional planet Vulcan.

It is not at all implausible that interspecies copulation can occur. Given the prevalence of the penis and the complementary female organ, such activity may indeed be possible even between creatures of "gross morphologic disparity." Kinsey’s researchers turned up accounts of attempted copulations between a female eland and an ostrich, a male dog and a chicken, a female chimpanzee and a tomcat, and a stallion and a human female.²⁴⁸⁶ Obviously, relations between humans and other beings even roughly humanoid in shape are possible in theory.

If such activity is possible, is it likely? Or to rephrase it in a slightly different way, could two alien races derive sexual pleasure from a mutual encounter? This is a very difficult question, mainly because the ET is such an unknown quantity. Extraterrestrials may have organs, sensitivities and responses wholly incompatible with any conceivable human style of lovemaking.

And yet -- in 1948, Kinsey reported that some 17% of all rural farmboys had experienced sexual congress with various barnyard animals, and had achieved orgasmic satisfaction in this way.²⁴⁸⁶ (Less than a tenth of a percent of all females interviewed admitted such coition, although 1.5% of the sample reported some form of sexual contact with animals.)

What does this mean? If bestiality occurs so regularly among human populations, can we state with any assurance that "xeniality" will not also occur when humans mingle socially with biological alien races? This author thinks not. The evidence, scanty though it may be, definitely indicates that interspecies sexual contacts, between humans and sentient extraterrestrial lifeforms, is not only possible but probable.

One last question remains. When humans and aliens join, will anything result from the union? Again, this is a difficult question because an unknown physiology is involved.¹³⁸⁸ Different species on Earth have been mated successfully -- the hybrid offspring of a mallard and a pintail duck are fertile -- and even interkingdom clones (combining plants and animals) have been attempted in this decade.¹⁶¹⁷ But in the first analysis, we suspect that inter-species fertilization, as a general proposition, is unlikely in the extreme.

We know that slight changes in the environment can cause enormous variations in planetary biochemistry. Nucleic acids, genes and codons may not be needed by ETs, or they may be essential but in permuted forms. For an alien/human mating to prove viable, many complicated and highly unlikely coincidences must occur. The two species must have identical amino acid sequences for proteins, the same optical rotation in their molecules, matching numbers of chromosomes with identical size and shape, the same kinds of genes located on the same chromosomes at the same locations, etc., etc.^{1387,1391,1870} Humans cannot even produce viable interspecies offspring with their own immediate ancestors -- apes, chimps, and other primates.

We conclude that an interspecies mating involving humans is unlikely to result in pregnancy.

If pregnancy does occur somehow, the hybrid offspring probably won’t be viable. After all, it is estimated that 50% of all normal human pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion.²⁴⁴⁰

If somehow viable and carried to term, the offspring will most likely be sterile or maladapted, like the mule and the liger. Hybrid vigor is improbable among lifeforms of such widely varying genetic constitution.