Female Jem'Hadar?

Err no that didn't come out right. I was refering to the fact that they are making clones of clones of clones of.. you get the idea. It's basically the same problem that a species like the Asguard had in SG1 - thyey were highly advanced but over milenia they lost their original blueprints and began suffering from DNA errors.

The Jem hadar as a species would need to refer back to their roots every now and again because they would become vunerable to specific things - if all the clones were identical then they could all be alergic too / susceptible too / suffer from EXACTLY the same thing. THat would be a huge tactical error on the part of the founders! WHile they sare skilled genetic manipulators - cutting and pruning and designing is one thing, but if you take cuttings from only one tree you'll just get the same tree, they would need a supply of fresh DNA of a living and evolving species. Perhaps they have actually bred true species of jem hadar they don't use for war, that can breed and that they can actually experiment on (testing them for disease resistance etc) - which in turn would lead for a very 'moral dilema' led issue - do you interfere or not, especially if you discover it AFTER peace has already been sued for!

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Originally posted by Tobian
Err no that didn't come out right. I was refering to the fact that they are making clones of clones of clones of.. you get the idea. It's basically the same problem that a species like the Asguard had in SG1 - thyey were highly advanced but over milenia they lost their original blueprints and began suffering from DNA errors.

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Nobody ever said that this is the way Jem'Hadar are created. I suppose that the Founders are capable of synthesizing exactly the genes/DNA sequences they want. So they won't have to worry about running out of original stem-cells, which would force them use cloned cells as a blueprint. They ould only have to make sure that nobody tampers with their computers.

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Originally posted by Tobian
The Jem hadar as a species would need to refer back to their roots every now and again because they would become vunerable to specific things - if all the clones were identical then they could all be allergic too / susceptible too / suffer from EXACTLY the same thing. THat would be a huge tactical error on the part of the founders!

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Since Michael Westmore used only about a dozen of different Jem'Hadar heads until season 5 or so it seems likely that there is relatively little genetic variance in the Jem'Hadar. Of course, diversity is good, but, looking at the death toll of most plagues, only a very small percentage of the population is resistant to the pathogen responsible. So, what use would there be if, say 1 of 1000 soldiers survived a B or C weapon strike. It would me much more efficient to develop a new variant of Jem'Hadar immune to the threat, getting closer and closer to the real super-soldier each time, than spending a lot of ressources on genetic variance, that might or might not pay off.

I thought about this some more and realized I couldn't remember whether they had spoken about the Jem'Hadars origins in the series. We're assuming that they had females, while maybe they reproduced asexually. If you took this route then you could have mutated Jem'Hadar warriors in labour...not something I'd like to envision but it could be possible.:p

It's hard to say one way or another exactly how the jem hadar are created - weather they just produce thousands of stem-cell clones at a massive production facility and bring them online as needed - or if they can literally design them on computers.

Experience today shows us that nature is the best kitchen for such things so it's hoighly probable that they would keep such a set of live REAL Jem Hadar going somewhere, but then equally their computer software might be so advanced they can do it without physical samples - adjusting DNA on the fly and computer modeling viruses and pathogens to calculate imune responses. I suspect both because I don't suspect the Founders would have any problems with making live test subsjects for their experiments!

The Jem Hadar were stated as all being male, so this implies sexual reproduction (but then equally what you said could be valid if they wrerte genetically mutated / tinkered with)

The actual possiblity of Jem Hadar motating at all must be very slim. They are grown in very controlled conditions very rapidly - which means that it would be very hard for one to slip through the loop as it were.

Just because the Jem Hadar all look physically similar doesn't mean their biology isn't all that different (and just saying Michael westomore only made so many masks doesn't really work as those masks would have to be trimmed and altered for different actors!) I suspect they have batches of different one's - trying out subtle alterations to see which one works out best - which in some ways explains why random mutations have occured - such as the one who managed to kick the ketracel white habit - his entire birth batch might have been imune, it's just that they might have not been actually stationed with him!

Given that they were produced in a lab (or what not) and that sexual reproduction would not me needed. . .why would they have sex organs at all? There is no need for them to reproduce. . .so off with their. . .well you get the idea. ;)

The only mutated Jem'Hadar I remember is the leader that no longer required the ketricel white. Bashir tried to find out if it was something in the environment that could be used to help other Jem'Hadar to "kick" the habit, but it turned out that he physically didn't need it to live.

I got the idea already - hence my 'ken and barbie' reference :)

In a medical sense the ketracel white provided everything that the Jem Hadar lacked - inlcuding water and nourishment as they didn't otherwise need to eat.