Salarian Biology and Society
Going insane over salarians so I tried to make some headcanons on how to actually make salarians work as a species. Inspired by various amphibians mostly like salamanders and frogs but I just went with whatever idea was coolest.
Matt Rhodes describes the key features in designing salarians as "the big, giant eyes, the brows, the mouth, wide-set nostrils, and the upper nostrils on his forehead there with the hole through the head". Looking closely at the in game models some have 2 nostrils between the eyes and mouth (Mordin) and some have 4 (Anoleis). I like the upper nostrils as many semi aquatic air breathers have nostrils placed high on the head. Rhodes' "so called "hole" would make more sense as a pineal gland/parietal eye which occurs in many tetrapods and is for sensing light and circadian regulation, so I'm going to ignore everything else from Rhodes since he seems to hate salarians. Salarians head shape varies, not quite to the extent of the early concept art but close. Horn size exists along a spectrum from barely noticeable lumps to horns so long they have formed a closed loop. Historically certain geographic areas were known for different horn lengths but in the millennia since globalization the cross clan breeding has somewhat weakened the geographic link.
Salarians seem to have very pigmented irises and slit shaped pupils which restrict light and are very good in tracking movement. They are found in active ambush predators like cats, vipers, crocodilians. So this would suggest evolutionarily an active predatory lifestyle, however we're got enough predators in the Council races and the teeth don't match. Salarian teeth as best I can tell from the models look a lot like mammalian incisors which are for cutting mostly plant matter. And I don't know how seriously to take Javik's comments/insults but they at least sometimes eat insects (let's not get into insect evolving twice on different planets). Like an insect diet is more calorie rich than a plant one which is needed for the fast growth and metabolism of salarians but on the other hand how big are the insects of Surkesh that pre-civilization salarians were choosing to hunt them instead of like fish or other animals. So let's say they're omnivorous maybe even more predatory when they are young and aquatic and more herbivorous as adults. As tadpoles the diet is whatever they can catch (invertebrates, small fish, etc.) and algae. Even in modern times if the breeding pools are underfed the larger females will hunt the smaller male siblings. In the terrestrial phase they still eat invertebrates and whatever else they can catch but supplement this with plants, mostly fruits and tubers. Leaves or stems aren't very nutritionally dense and there's a lot of fiber (cellulose, hemicellulose) to chew through so to maintain a high metabolism and a large body size salarians would need to be constantly eating like sea otters and or eating something calorie dense like hummingbirds eating mostly sugar.
Real life giant salamanders get away with being big by having very low metabolisms, they just sit there all day, which makes sense since they live in cool water and water has high heat conductivity. Salarian tadpoles would be poikilothermic ectotherms like most aquatic species, it just wastes too much energy trying to be different than water temperature especially when small, it's only partially worth it for large active predators like tuna or if you have a ring of fat that's as big as the rest of you like marine mammals. Terrestrial adults are a harder question. Living amphibians often continue to breath through their skin which needs to be moist. That moisture would make it hard to raise internal body temperature above ambient with the constant evaporative cooling. On the other hand salarians don't have anything like fur, feathers, or fat to insulate against the more extreme terrestrial temperature fluctuations. (In real life few tetrapods don't have fat stores, having fat allows an animal to not constantly be on the brink of starvation.) This could imply that they evolved in temperate climates like coastal temperate rainforests or tropical/subtropical mountain cloud forests which are both high humidity/water potential and the most moderate terrestrial ecosystems temperature wise. However modern amphibians live everywhere except tundras and the dryest deserts using a mix of physical and behavioral adaptations. The codex says salarians are warmblooded and while that would not work well for aquatic larva it's plausible for the terrestrial phase if they lose their permeable moist skin.
Salarians would spawn externally like most aquatic breeding species. The breeding pools are a big thing culturally because salarians evolved with limited ranges needing large freshwater bodies to live in and smaller streams and pools to breed in. As the population increased breeding sites became the main limiter to population growth and thus political power. The small mountain streams needed to be cold and fast for maximum oxygen but also include pools so the eggs would not wash away. Salarians would partly dam streams to create pools with the exact flow needed. Water holds far less oxygen density than air, only like 1% or less in water to 21% in air. So there's a physical constraint to egg size as developing embryos only get oxygen through diffusion. Streams need to be cold as cold dense water holds oxygen better but then need to be warm enough to not freeze as even a layer of ice forming on the surface would stop gas exchange and suffocate everything. This limits breeding sites even more. The engineering of dams and streams is likely a contribution to modern salarian evolution as this allowed them to expand their breeding range.
Salarians are seasonal breeders and only able to produce under certain conditions. Traditionally the reproductive cycle is triggered by a mix of light, temperature, chemical signals, and weather conditions. This is so that eggs are ready to be laid in late autumn, incubate through winter, and then hatch in late winter into little tadpole larva with yolk sacks attached. Early spring is timed for food availability increases. If the the larva fail to sufficiently develop by summer they will not metamorphosis and leave the water until the next spring. Pre-industrialization it usually took 2 springs but by optimizing conditions they found it can be done within months of hatching. By the time of metamorphosis and leaving the water salarians aren't that big, less then 50cm long. They do most of their growing in the terrestrial stage A less mineralized skeleton means less resource needs for growth and faster growth than similarly sized species. So the lifecycle goes aquatic mating, eggs, and larva. The metamorphosis terrestrial juvenile and adult stages, adults return to water for breeding.
From the codex, "Once a year, a salarian female will lay a clutch of dozens of eggs. Social rules prevent all but a fraction from being fertilized. As a result, 90% of the species is male." It is social rules not any physical constraint that keeps the sex ratio at 9:1. The threat of overpopulation is a running theme in mass effect (quarians, krogan, drell, salarians) inherited from the scifi tropes of the 20th century which were ultimately based on fears at the time of exponential population growth and resource scarcity. One way to interpret the codex is that stricter breeding contracts and limitations on diploid children happened in response to threats of overpopulation. Although I don't see why hormonal/medical controls couldn't be used to prevent a female from laying eggs that year. We don't know if egg laying has conscious controls either (some species can control fertilization, stall, or abort pregnancies). Also if we do the math and conservatively say salarian females have about 15 reproductive years, and say 24 eggs per year and a 80% hatch rate, that's still 288 offspring and about 29 female offspring per salarian female. No way that's happening. There's a few plausible explanations. Bioware once again doesn't know what they're talking about. Next option is that the "dozens of eggs" per year is a maximum which in reality is never reached. Last option is that most of those eggs are never allowed to develop and are destroyed.
Modern salarians mostly use artificial breeding pools at clan controlled medical institutions which can be climate controlled, flow controlled, oxygenated, sanitary, free of predators, etc. This allowed global expansion of Surkesh and eventually planetary colonization. Reproductive cycles are generally medically induced as most salarians live away from the environments they evolved in and lack the environmental cues to induce the physiological changes needed for reproduction. Those that do live in those historic areas are on hormone controls that block that cycle outside of breeding contracts. The induction of a reproductive cycle then only happens under the terms of a breeding contract. Although accidents happen, producing eggs outside of a breeding contract is a social taboo and the eggs are destroyed before they can develop. Thus, most salarians go through life without ever thinking of sex let alone having it. Only a portion of males are needed for genetic diversity every generation to produce females.
I imagine salarians have a pretty asexual and aromantic normative society so most salarians going off world to like the Citadel reenact first contact and have a "oh its not a joke you all are actually horny" moment when they realize that a lot of other species are really sex/romance focused like wow it's such a big part of your lives. Of course salarians can have sex and some do either reproductively or recreationally. But beside the general disinterest, salarians aren't really built for any part of penetrative sex (especially humaan style) and most women are too busy politicking and scheming power grabs to go off world. Salarian allos are probably seen as weird deviants. While canonically on a societal level they are acearo, on an individual level things are ambiguous. In Mass Effect most in general didn't seem interested in sex. Attraction at least to asari seems possible. It could also be that the way they experience emotions makes them incompatible with other species. In the series there is the possibility that the lack of sex and romance is a societal norm to prevent overpopulation and salarians are actually mostly allo (like Christian repression but with less religious guilt), but that would make most species in the galaxy similar to Canadian societal norms and making everyone the same is boring. So in this version salarians are evolved for an seasonal mating season and only then do they have reproductive function or any urge to release gametes. This usually never happens because for most the environmental triggers are absent or because of hormonal controls. So outside of breeding contracts salarians usually aren't capable of physiological sexual function. (They can still participate in sex, most just don't want to.)
I wonder what childhood looks. The main authority figure would be the clan dalatrass to instill clan loyalty, likely the mother has some sort of involvement as this would be her part of the clan and a position of political significance. However if the clan is big enough there must be some sort of system to raise children like professional childcare workers for the clan that do the actual parenting and these would likely be men. For the rare diploid children, things are a little different as both parents' clans are involved in imprinting. I wonder how much the father's clan is involved in the child's life overall, is there like mixed custody or is the mother's clan dominant? And the on an individual level I wonder how much fathers are involved in their children's lives I suppose it depends on the individual and situation. Some people don't care about kids and just their duty to their clan, returning to their lives and only rarely seeing their child. Other are enthusiastic parents and move in to help raise the child.
Women were seen as the main body of society, jokes include that men are half a woman. This has persisted even after gender equality laws were universally passed. Most political, and the most respected positions in society are women dominated. This has conversely put less pressure on men to have respectable positions and frees them to go off world. Relatively less pressure, I imagine salarian society generally is pretty competitive. Like can you imagine the cut throat academia drama, it's be a bloodbath. Schooling and higher education are probably the fastest paced in the galaxy with an insane workload. I don't remember exactly but Mordin's nephew is like 16 and getting tenure, Mordin treats it as average. Aliens definitely can't keep up. Actually given salarian's main export and species advantage is their technological edge they might not even let aliens in (like how they formally don't have an army or military).
As weird technologically advanced amphibians I assume salarians have come up with a number of ways to deal with living globally and beyond Surkesh. Products like lotions to keep their skin from drying out, or sun protection. They definitely came up with something that let's they swim in otherwise deadly saltwater bare-skinned not just a diving suit. They have a science solution to everything. The amphibian environmental sensitivity probably meant in the past they suffered worse health problems from pollution and industrialization than humans have.
I wonder what a salarian day looks like. Since they only need to sleep an hour, labor laws might be different allowing for like a 16 hour work day. For the workaholics I imagine at some salarian companies or institutions there are on site dorms so that the workers don't have to waste time commuting. I mean irl labs/offices often have a crash couch, I imagine that's almost standard for salarians. I think Mordin lives in the SR2 lab.
Edit: The cold water thing is from all species of giant salamanders (the ones that get human sized). It's really labor intensive actually since high flow has to be maintained or the eggs die the male fans the eggs constantly for months. Octopuses have a similar thing and it's so stressful the parents die which is why octopuses only live 1-2 years. Was Surkesh tropical? I don't remember maybe I got it wrong. I just remember it was wet and I mean temperate rainforests are a thing. But I mean irl Earth is a wet planet and we have plenty of deserts too. Decaying plant matter is actually a major source of CO2 is aquatic ecosystems. Every time you see news headlines about hypoxia or mass fish die offs it's because (usually an algal bloom happens) and then all of that biomass is eaten by decomposers which depletes oxygen. Development being so sensitive to environmental conditions is probably why almost everyone uses artificial breeding pools. To be clear for anyone who reads this developmental problems from environmental conditions wouldn't be heritable unless they changed the genetics or gametes somehow (interesting discussion of epigenetics here). Much like a lot of people using fertility testing I can totally see salarians standardizing genetic screenings for diseases and it's just a normal expected thing. There might not be many excess eggs in modern society just because it's taxing enough on the body that most people would rather avoid having them grow in the first place rather than have to take time out of their day to lay and then dispose of them. But then again I assume society is post hunger so maybe it isn't a big deal same has how many people irl opt out of menstruation because it's annoying to shed and regrow an organ every month.
I went and checked. According to the Mass Effect wiki Earth is 23°C, Surkesh 25°C, and for perspective Palaven 31°C. Earth's current temperature in 15°C and rising. We are already seeing more extreme weather, extinction, species distribution changes, and life cycle desynchronization at fractions of a degree of change. An 8°C jump in under 200 years is catastrophic like mass extinction worse than what killed the dinosaurs. I can't tell if the devs just don't understand temperatures since that spike in temperature would destroy agricultural systems and destabilize civilization. I guess miraculously humans got their shit together didn't tear each other limb from limb and farmed algae.
This is solely because I think crested newts are cute but I am fond of the idea of males metamorphosing for breeding season (a lot of aquatic species have radical changes for breeding season like color, genital morphology, or even whole body changes). Like their colors brighten or they turn red or they get darker markings or they grow a frill. It would be terribly publicly humiliating then if someone's hormone cycle gets messed up.
Organized crime is probably a big thing given how feudal salarian society is, like 1800s-1900s Italian peninsula and Mediterranean islands. I can easily see some salarians seeing rules as guidelines to bend as long as you don't get caught, sort of the opposite of turians. Some clans are basically mafia, it's a sliding scale.
In real life, it's relatively common in strong patriarchies that favor sons that a third gender emerges where a daughter will take on the societal role of a son. Examples of this include the burrnesha/Balkan sworn virgin or the bacha posh of Central Asia/Middle East. This is done for various reasons but often in these societies women are basically property so taking on a male role can open opportunities for work or property ownership for the family. Some Salarian cultures also used to have this gender transversive class where families without daughters would have a son act out the role of a daughter. Just like how the burrnesha tradition is slowly falling out of favor because it is less necessary with increasing female social status and gender equality legislation, the Salarian traditions died out centuries or even millennia ago with the rise of gender equality and non-discrimination laws.
