Kiros as an ecological community is fucking INSANE. It has a planetary population of 50,000 which is only a little less than Greenland. It has way too little people for inbreeding not to have occurred (and thus would not have contributed to the variety of skin colour and patterns we saw), so luckily, the actual canon episodes erased the description ‘centuries ago’ from the comic so we can safely assume the Togruta on Kiros are mostly unrelated and only moved from Shili within one to two generations at most.
Kiros!Togruta being an extended clan of Shili!Togurta gave me so much convenience because it 1) explains the crew reusing the same three models but drastically random colours 2) avoids geographical speciation
3) a reliable source of comparison with our Shili-native Ahsoka and Shaak Ti.
Montral Shapes
Again because of budget, there are only THREE Toguta model for both sexes, of which I’ve categorized above. Comparing them and incorporating the idea that montrals and lekku develop as secondary sex characteristics, montrals are the dominant male appeal and lekku the female. Montrals being analogous to animal horns, which only males of most species have, would suggest its function of defense and/or mate selection in the species’s predatory evolution history.
Stripe Patterns
There is some commonality in the patterns on the montrals and the lekku. The X has fang-like stripes, Butterfly has wider block-like bands and Heart has neat straight-edge stripes. Arrow-esque or (tri)angular patterns seem more common on males.
Colour-wise, Blue/white is still the most popular combo. Males also seem to be more monochrome in this scheme than females, varying only in the saturation of the blue pigment. Besides the most common blue; red, purple, grey, on white schemes have been observed in the Kiros women.
Lekku Length
Female Togruta have much longer lekku than males. Following that lekku became vestigial as civilization develops, its function would remain merely a sexual appeal. Since males have montrals, females have lekku. A preliminary comparison shows that Kiros women seem to have much longer lekku than our resident Shili Togrutas. Their lekku reach well past the knees while Shaak Ti’s just past her hips. Rebelsoka’s barely reaches her waist. It could’ve been a local genetic and age variation, or has an elusive correlation to their pacifist society, versus Shili which has an active warrior culture. Or, a more straightforward solution offers from the analogy to animal horns, lekku grow continuously throughout a Togruta’s life (albeit at a decelerating rate).
Comparing Shilli women to Kiros women
Fitting Shaak and Ahsoka into the Kiros women montral model, they would both fit into the X, since they both diverges outwards instead of inwards like the Heart. While Shaak’s model is a textbook fit, Ahsoka suffers from a variation, probably largely due to being in a completely different show(’s art style). Rebelsoka’s montral arch diverges wider than the textbook X. Curiously, Future!Ahsoka’s arch doesn’t seem to fit into any of the three models, or is still growing that last outward curl. But her lekku did reach just above her knees.
Although/Since both Shaak Ti’s and Future!Ahsoka’s model is from season 3 and stem from even earlier concepts of Ashla the youngling from 2002, we can nitpick the difference between Shilli women and Kiros women to be local genetic + societal (i.e. epigenetic) differences between the two planets. Or following my opening assumption, from two distinct cities of Shili. There’s something curious about them retaining arrow-like marks and blue-white scheme associated with males when presumably, both sexes share hunting duties in the speculative Togrutan past, even though female’s longer lekku (i.e. for picking up pulses off the ground) would be advantageous in the hunt.
This study omits skin colours and facial markings due to me too tired to run a thorough survey for the population. Knowing it’s just the artists randomly colouring them with no cosmic pattern is not helping.
Since I made this post, I found a concept art to better summarize the nine models of Kiros women. can’t find one for the men :(
and to clarify:
@fake-geek-girl-616 said: Montrals aren’t exactly analogous to animal horns, since they’re actually how Togruta hear.
I drew the montral-bone analogy here more on its function, instead of structure. I’ve discussed in the first lekku post here how I headcanon montrals and lekku’s physiology, of which I briefly discussed their hearing system being bone conduction.
@wellloveagain‘s anatomy post has a better-developed montral-skull physiology theory whose influence I’m drawing heavily from.
