Here's an Orc question that's been in my head for awhile... Are there female Orcs? There's at least one documented father/son pair (Azog and Bolg) so there must be, right?

You know, that's a rather valid question. Of which I have no answer, but I would assume that since Orcs are technically Elves, and Elves reproduce in the same way Men do, then there would undoubtedly be Orcish Women. Though, I would never want to meet one...

What if the father somehow adds his...DNA let's call it, into a process in which the new orcsy is spawned in the ground....In the case of Azog and Bolg...maybe the "son" was adopted? ^_^

I think that they probably formed families in some strange orcish way, personally I don't think there are any orc females. Lol what about Uruk Hai, dont they just pop out of huge piles of mud and such? wonder how they reproduce.... :lol:

Well then again maybe Uruk's aren't the only orcs that pop out of the ground... I have a strong hunch they all do. :lol:

Maybe there are female orcs sorta like Dwarf females... You can hardly tell them apart.

wasn't Uruk-Hai some kind of crossbreed between orcs and men? I think it's mentioned in "The Two Towers".

I'm not sure though, but I must say that my standpoint is that the Uruk-Hai are definitevely(sp?) not made of some kind of slimy clay soil like in the movies.

Yeah, Uruk-Hai were a crossbread of Orcs and Men, so that the Uruks could walk under the Sun unafraid of it. Orcs would shun the Sun and weaken considerably under it's glare. Thus all the Darkness and Shadow that Orodruin and Thangorodrim belched forth, so their Armies would have an advantage.

Rynos: Maybe there are female orcs sorta like Dwarf females... You can hardly tell them apart.

That's what I was thinking, I suppose they even fight next to male-orks

As I understand it, Orcs are Elves that are twisted and corrupted by Sauron (correct me if I'm wrong here), so maybe Sauron has a colony of captive Elves and uses their women? Is that possible?

By Morgoth, originally. Sauron has a lesser means of building up his orc armies.

-- D

Which is..? I am interested to know...

you would rather not meet any orcs B)
i heard from someone that one of the dark lords used dark magic or something to spawn them (anything is better then falling out of a mudpit fully grown, that would mean orcs are apart of earth wouldnt it? even the male-female thing, ugh, atleast it would make more sense imo :\ )

Like massive spawning pools? Those are so cool

^_^

-val

Look at the Klingon's from star trek. There are female klingons but you can barely tell them apart, they live, fight, die and do the same duties as males. I think orc's as portrayed in the movies are much the same.

The books however, I don't know. I don't believe Tolkien ever comments about "female orcs" as such...

Tolkien never made any comments about female DWARVES for that matter. Let alone Elves...well, no I'm incorrect there.

You know, I always just kind of pictured the female orcs to be living in a separate "breeding pit" or whatever. They would just serve the purpose of creating more orcs, more or less. I would think that they would be given food and such, impregnated by whatever orc chieftain was ruling the tribe this week, and give birth 9 months later (or however long their gestation period is). Or perhaps the chieftain's thugs were rewarded by being allowed into the harem. This would be a fittingly brutish scenario.

Of course, this is for pure-blood orcs only. It's well known that Uruk-Hai are bred from both human and orcish stock.

Since I'm not allowed as per terms of board agreement, to give false information , consider this merely fanciful, and non-canonical...Sex, where sentient beings were involved, was sacred in Tolkien's Universe, since beings act in consort with their Creator (i.e., Eru-Illuvatar) as sorts of "sub-creators", which fits well with Tolkien's views on the crafting of fantasy itself. Now Tolkien might have let Melkor breed Orcs in mockery of Elves, but he might have used other genetic material to get the job done, kidnapping and torturing Elves, the first of the "Erusen" he encounters, simply to figure out how to get the job done (besides the obvious urge to Sadism). But I probably trip over myself on that point, because, the only other theory other characters give in Tolkien's world, other than your basic "They were Elves once..." story, is one Elf in the Unfinished Tales, who thinks they were bred from Druedain ("Woses"), supposedly endowed with elf-like qualities...(you end up thinking, yeah, sure, no one wants to be thought of as the Bad Seed's kin!). The upshot is that any likely suspect would still have a Tolkiensque soul. Orcs don't. Also, Orcs have got to be close enough to Humans genetically to create viable offspring (our Uruk-Hai). So Melkor, who can never truly create, certainly couldn't have given Orcs a "normal" means of reproduction, which would mock the communion that other intelligent beings would have with Eru, in the creation of a soul-endowed lifeform. Even more so for Elves, Men, and by adoption Dwarves, who are the Offspring of Illuvatar.
I know everyone has read somewhere where orcs are said to spawn, in the manner of frogs, perhaps Tolkien said so. I'm not trying to say now that they are dolled-up frog meat, I'm trying to think about how frogs spawn. The males, who have driven off or eaten all the other rivals in their territory, deposit their genetic material on clutches of extruded eggs. The eggs develop independent of the parents, and in most cases, with little care or concern on the part of the parents.
So here's the completely fanciful part. Orcs are neither female OR male (in Arda, I mean), they are just ORCS. They are Hermaphrodites. When one larger or more powerful orc takes control of its band, "it" might, after a certain cycle of time, put on a display or release a scent, and the others go in estrus and go to a safe place in the territory, and release their eggs, and the (for the moment, "he") first orc fertilizes them. Orcs develop together from these fish/frog-like eggs, the outer membrance drawing substance from the mud and loam surrounding it. Each young in is trained in their clutch-group, cultural norms, skills, violence (even against other species!), the most promising chosen out for learning important skills like making medicines ("harsh, but effective"), explosive making, smithying, or any number of things a potential several thousand year old orc could teach. They too, were immortal.
We know that most orcs of the Misty Mountains started out small enough for Gollum to choke. We know from the "Scouring of the Shire", that Saruman had half-orcs (or at least half-orc looking men), who were not Uruk-Hai. Orcs may have outpaced their kindred Elves in breeding speed, but they may not have been as prolific as Men, given their probable stock of origin (the Elves' largest group of siblings, the Sons of Feanor, were only seven strong). Uruk-Hai were evidently bred for reproductive speed and quick maturation, as well as viciousness, daylight resistance, and speed. It took Saruman some doing to get the Uruks right, like Edison at the lightbulb. There were cast-offs.
Some orcs were bred for specific tasks, like "tracking orcs", or maybe even the Wolf Riders. How this could be done, I don't know. Azog could have easily have been the "Father" of Bolg, under this scenario above, 'though how inbreeding was avoided is difficult to fathom, and a weakness of this solution. But then again, look at the orcs--could inbreeding have been considered harming them? I mean they're already ORCS, for crying out loud! :nazgul:
Thanks for reading, and putting up with misspellings.
PS--The only Dwarf-woman mentioned in Tolkien's writing, to my knowledge, was Dis, the mother of Fili & Kili, two members of Thorin & Co.. She fought valiantly in the last battle of The War of Dwarves and Orcs (or was it Orcs and Dwarves? Ach...only the winners get to write the Histories, or is it the whiners? I can never keep it straight). Anyway, Dis wasn't the kind of chick to tie ribbons in her beard...