On Sun, 29 Jun 2003, David Silberstein wrote: > On Sun, 29 Jun 2003, Philip Hart wrote: > >It's interesting how unfecund the Dragaerans are I should note that I don't have as much solid evidence for this assertion as I'd like - e.g., some. > Some very rough calculations: [wild guesses snipped] > that means that they ovulate about once every 5 years. > Now, for how long does each part of the menstrual cycle last? How > long do they remain fertile within that 5-year period? A year? Half > a year? I would suspect that, given the danger of ectopic pregnancy, Dragaerans are fertile for more or less the same amount of time as humans are per cycle. If as you conjecture the cycle is five years, I would suspect there is greater variability - it's easier to count to thirty than 1500 - so without the aid of sorcery to know the days in question, begetting children would require months of dedicated work... Another interesting question is how long pregnancies are. The only bit of evidence I can cite is that Vernoi says his wife may be giving birth any day now, which seems more consistent than not with a (relatively) short and predictable length of time. Some wild speculation - Dragaerans heal at a rate similar to humans (or Vlad would have bitched or bragged), and other cellular processes (cell division in particular, relevant above) occur at similar rates as well. We haven't heard any reference to Dragaeran twins, have we? Maybe Verra's a triplet, of course...