Does this mean humans are the same species as vulcans, klingons, romulans, betazoids, trill, ocampa, and ktarians?
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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There was a TNG episode that said essentially that; there was a precursor species that 'seeded' humanoids across the Galaxy.
Of course, they supposedly did that when all life on Earth originated, so it doesn't make any more sense for us to be able to interbreed with species on other worlds than it does with any other living thing on Earth.
And the progenitors were expanded upon in discovery too
but why do they look like the founders?
Do you mean 'why do they look "humanoid?" '
their faces have similar make up to Odo's people.
yes. that's why star trek is bullshit in that regard. if we ever met extraterrestrials and they happen to look anything like humans at all, the biochemical differences will be so severe that there's absolutely no chance at all that they would be able to produce viable offspring with humans.
For a sec I confused trill with tribbles and thought I missed one hell of an episode
The original retro-futuristic furries.
Presumably yes.
But for a bigger picture question, are all of those others able to interbreed with each other, as well? If yes, they are basically like different races of human or breed of domestic animal. If not, it gets much more interesting in terms of classification.
Same with oaks. Down with the splitters! Lumpers are the chosen people who will inherit ~~the earth~~ botany.
10/10 more Keiko please
O'Brien seriously pulled that.
Well he is the most attractive man in the galaxy.
By this categorization llamas and camels are the same species as they can sometimes produce fertile offspring
Do they do that naturally?
No, but the criteria is 1. Interbreeding is possible and 2. Can produce fertile offspring
Disclaimer: not qualified to talk about this with any degree of authority.
I thought species were most commonly defined as naturally producing viable offspring. Animals that can produce fertile offspring but only in captivity were lumped in with mules and other hybrids.
I'm now reiterating the disclaimer that I shouldn't even be allowed to speak on a public forum about this subject. It's amazing I haven't been arrested.
Does that mean 3. Desire to do so?
There's multiple species definitions and none of them are very satisfying because it's trying to impose a clear distinction where one doesn't really exist.
species categorized by fertile offspring want to describe a situation like this with clear, distinct boundaries between populations:
But evolutionary groups tend to be more like gradients & gaps like this:
You can try adding specific boundaries to the 2nd, but there'll always be some weird edges that don't really fit, like asexual reproducers for example.
Honestly your first picture could also be a good example to demonstrate ring species, which are a great countertexample to the "reproduce to produce fertile offspring" definition of species.
As a visual learner this really helped me to understand. +1 good explaining. I would like to subscribe to you newsletter.
downvoting because it's not really true what you said. sure there's always exceptions in biology that don't fit into the species concept, but i dare say for lots of living beings, including practically all eukaryotic organisms, with very few exceptions, it's a good categorization scheme.
the exceptions you mentioned (asexual reproduction; edge cases where interbreeding is difficult but not impossible) are the exception, not the rule. that doesn't make the rule meaningless though.
Lol, have you not seen the OP or have ever looked at plant taxonomy before? There are many different groups where it is dubious if we can apply some sort of species concept.
And you talk about the species concept as if there was only just one?