How fast do Vulcan and El-Aurian children grow compared to human children?

[Vanyel]

We know that Vulcans and El-Aurians out live Humans. A Vulcan of 100 would appear to look like a human in their 40s. An El-Aurian of about 500 - if I have Guinan's age right assuming she was young (double digits) in Time's Arrow - also appear to look like a middle aged human. Of course she could have just aged herself to fit in knowing that eventually the crew of Enterprise would meet her 500 years in the past. For all we know her life span could be thousands of years, which could explain why the Borg assimilated them. But what about their children?

Do Vulcan and El-Aurian children up to when human brains are fully developed at approximately age 25 look the same as Human children of the same age;or would Vulcan and El-Aurian gestation, childhood, teen years, and full brain development take longer then humans? If Vulcans and El-Aurian bodies and brains develop the same as a Humans do Vulcans and even El-Aurian childrens aging begin to slow after full brain development, or before? Would a 12 year old Human look older than Vulcan or El-Aurians of the same age?

What do you think? Yes these are the questions that come to me at 3 in the morning.

 

[Tosk]

Star Trek 2009 at least seems to show that Kirk and Spock aged at roughly the same rate.

 

[Vanyel]

Star Trek 2009 at least seems to show that Kirk and Spock aged at roughly the same rate.

Spock being half Human may be the exception. If he's not the exception, when does his aging slow down?

 

[Avro Arrow]

Since this is a Star Trek discussion, I am moving it to GenTrek.

 

[The Wormhole]

Even full Vulcans likely do age through childhood and teenage years at the same rate as humans. At the very least, Tuvok seemed to, given he was pressured by his parents to enter Starfleet Academy when he "came of age." And while they don't specifically pinpoint when he came of age, he was stated to be twenty-nine during the events of TUC, so it would seem likely he entered the Academy when he was in his late teens or early twenties.

 

[Christopher]

There’s no reason to expect an alien species’ life cycle to map directly onto humans’, or to be proportional to humans’ at a faster or slower rate. In different species, the various stages of life constitute different percentages of their lifespans. For instance, elephants gestate more than twice as long as humans and their “baby” stage (before being weaned) can last 5-10 years, far longer than ours, but they reach maturity around the same age as us, c. 18., and have about the same overall life expectancy as us, 60-80 years. Parrots reach sexual maturity in just 1-4 years but can live 80-90 years or more. So it’s pointless to even try to make analogies between species’ life cycles.

Indeed, we see this with various Trek species, such as Klingons, who (if Alexander is any indication) grow up 2-3 times as fast as humans but can live twice as long. Which makes sense, actually, since aging is not a single process, it’s a balance between two opposing processes, cell growth and cell decay. In youth, growth dominates; in maturity, they’re about even; in senescence, decay wins out. So it stands to reason that if the balance were shifted more toward growth, you’d have both a shorter childhood and a longer healthy adulthood.

Then we've got Yoda and Grogu's unnamed species in Star Wars. Grogu is apparently still a toddler at age 50, the equivalent of maybe 2 years old, but if the species's aging were proportional to humans, that would make the elderly 900-year-old Yoda the equivalent of age 36 or so. So that species seems to have a proportionally prolonged infancy like elephants.


On the other hand, there's recent scientific research suggesting that both maturation rate and longevity are proportional to the complexity of the brain, because it takes longer to grow a more complex brain to maturity, and because a brain with more cortical neurons can remain viable longer as they gradually wear out. But that seems to suggest that maturation and longevity are proportional to each other, so clearly it's not the whole story.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

What somebody is able to process intellectually and what they are ready to engage in physically and emotionally need not line up. Even Human children are shown to have an accelerated curriculum as of the 24th century (calculus at a young age), something which, depending on where you go to school, might even be possible for children today.

Being able to handle the demands of Starfleet Academy and a high-tech world from a brainpower standpoint doesn't mean that you'll be able to serve in all ways possible, or deal with adult issues like relationships well.

An intelligent but emotionally immature species/individual might be assigned a safer posting, or one with more supervision, if their development is less than someone of a similar age/stage. On the other hand, those who are more mature may be given responsibilities beyond their apparent age/stage.

 

[Finn]

El-Aurian?

SNW ought have a "Baby Guinan", who's fifty years old, next season. but looks eight months old.

 

[Avro Arrow]

What somebody is able to process intellectually and what they are ready to engage in physically and emotionally need not line up. Even Human children are shown to have an accelerated curriculum as of the 24th century (calculus at a young age), something which, depending on where you go to school, might even be possible for children today.

Being able to handle the demands of Starfleet Academy and a high-tech world from a brainpower standpoint doesn't mean that you'll be able to serve in all ways possible, or deal with adult issues like relationships well.

An intelligent but emotionally immature species/individual might be assigned a safer posting, or one with more supervision, if their development is less than someone of a similar age/stage. On the other hand, those who are more mature may be given responsibilities beyond their apparent age/stage.

 

[Finn]

Grand idea for an episode. Tom Paris comes across an ancient TV show about a young doctor, while looking for new holodeck programs, and reprograms the Doc so he looks just like a young Neil Patrick Harris...

 

[C.E. Evans]

I always felt that Vulcans and Humans develop at the same rate, but Vulcans just live longer. Maybe at some point after puberty, the aging process for Vulcans begins to gradually slow down to the point where reaching 200+ years isn't that uncommon among them...

 

[1001001]

How bad would that suck to have your baby in diapers for 20 years?!



Like @C.E. Evans said, I imagine they grow “normally” through puberty, then have extended adulthoods. Like the Baku.

 

[Oddish]

How bad would that suck to have your baby in diapers for 20 years?!

I thought the exact same thing. And another 4-5 years spent working on potty training would try any parent's patience.

 

[F. King Daniel]

In "The Counter Clock Incident" Spock's age regressed slower than anyone else. I kind of take that as them saying cos he ages slower, it works like that in reverse even though the original implication was that Spock was much older.