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I just got back from doing a quick skim on Wikipedia regarding "Male pregnancy", and it turns out that human male pregnancy is not unheard of, but there are many catches. Ecotopic implantation (using an organ other than the placenta to incubate the fetus) is too dangerous, uterus transplantation is guaranteed to be safer, though it's still artificial (not what I am looking for), intersexuality would be cheating in this question and fetus-in-fetu is not a real pregnancy.

Lately, I've been exploring the idea of a human male having a child from his girlfriend, who just so happened to be a female dragon in the form of a human female (while retaining her superhuman strength, her superhuman senses and her simultaneously hermaphroditic sex organs). But to avoid the overdone cliche of character death, the human must survive his pregnancy. So how would he survive his half-dragon pregnancy and birth without the need of a placenta?

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  • $\begingroup$ "overdone cliche of character death"? $\endgroup$ – Daron Oct 25 '20 at 16:31
  • $\begingroup$ @Daron Real-life is more than cynical enough. We don't need that dumped into our fiction. $\endgroup$ – JohnWDailey Oct 25 '20 at 17:08
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    $\begingroup$ Males do nor bear children. Males beget children. This is the definition of the male sex. Whatever the female dragon did to the male protagonist, she did not impregnate him. At best, she deposited some larva / egg / whatever which parasitized him. $\endgroup$ – AlexP Oct 25 '20 at 17:46
  • $\begingroup$ @AlexP If I am aiming at a parasitic relationship, I would have just said so. $\endgroup$ – JohnWDailey Oct 25 '20 at 17:49
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    $\begingroup$ If you are not aiming at a parasitic relationship you must clarify what exactly the dragon did to the poor man, because given the mechanics of sexual congress it is hard to see immediately how the man could get pregnant. (That is, how come something got transfered from the dragon to the man so that it could fuse with one of the man's spermatozoa inside the man? Sperm moves the other way around...) $\endgroup$ – AlexP Oct 25 '20 at 17:53
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Dragons Lay Their Eggs inside Living Creatures

enter image description here

Dragons are similar to those wasps that lay their eggs inside other insects. Usually without consent.

It doesn't matter if the host is male or female. Heck it doesn't even matter what the host's species is. The foetus does most of the work keeping itself alive. When it is strong enough it makes its own placenta by punching into a major artery and starts feeding.

Edit: Sounds nasty doesn't it? If you want the pregnancy period to be less traumatic, you are free to keep this biological explanation for why it works in the first place, and scale back the foetus so it is no more invasive than a normal baby. It would still influence the body, just in a slower and gentler manner. Perhaps dragons traditionally lay their eggs inside each other, and it is beneficial that the mother is not completely debilitated by their young?

The foetus releases hormones into the "mother" that makes sure the mother does not reject it, and sends it food, and metabolises a not-womb around it. It also makes sure not to draw too much that the mother dies before the foetus is ready to be born.

Usually this would result in the host dying when the young bursts out. But in the modern world this can be overcome by closely monitoring the young and extracting it manually when the time is right.

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  • $\begingroup$ I'm not talking about parasitism. Surely, there is another way. $\endgroup$ – JohnWDailey Oct 25 '20 at 17:10
  • $\begingroup$ I got a gun loading click no girls, girls gotta die gunshots mix with drums $\endgroup$ – Daron Oct 25 '20 at 20:15
  • $\begingroup$ @JohnWDailey Perhaps the answer makes the process seem overly unpleasant. You are free to keep the biological explanation for why this works, but at the same time make the dragon foetus a much nicer thing to carry around. $\endgroup$ – Daron Oct 25 '20 at 20:17
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    $\begingroup$ The only significant differences between a parasite and a baby are: a baby has some genes from the host/mom; a baby attaches in a place that the mom has evolved to best handle it growing. $\endgroup$ – Dewi Morgan Oct 26 '20 at 5:59
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He can carry the fetus like a tumor, then have it surgically delivered at term.

He can carry the fetus like a tumor.

A 67-year-old male was hospitalized on 26 September 2007 because of a large, paucisymptomatic retroperitoneal tumour. The patient had been presenting progressive abdominal swelling, weight loss and asthenia for three months.

Multiplanar reformations (MPR) show the whole tumour extension, measuring 25 x 13 cm in the transverse plane (a) and 36 cm in the coronal plane (b).

https://ecancer.org/en/journal/article/77-surgical-damage-control-treatment-of-a-large-retroperitoneal-liposarcoma-encasing-a-horseshoe-kidney

Tumors can get very big in men and women both. Tumors are supplied directly from systemic arteries and drained by veins. Successful tumors use tricks to prevent attack by the immune system, which is a risk for fetuses too and a large part of the reason for the placenta. Your dragon baby has built in tricks of this sort.

The depicted tumor is comparable in size to a term fetus; probably smaller than fetus + uterus but we are doing without the uterus. It pushed internal organs aside as it grew; this is what the growing uterus does too during pregnancy. It grew there (behind the kidney) without causing him a lot of trouble except for a big belly. It was removed surgically. I think your character would need the dragon baby surgically removed as well. Surgically removing live fetuses thru the abdominal wall of the mother is called cesarian section and is not uncommon.

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  • $\begingroup$ "It's not a tumor!" - Arnold $\endgroup$ – SirTain Mar 12 at 18:11
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Through the awesome powers of Evolution.

All the men who didn't survive died. Those who did progressively became more successful at it overtime.

As to why a Dragon wants to impregnate a man, perhaps its the particular hormonal cocktail that men just have. Maybe its that Women simply die. Pretty gruesome stuff really. Maybe dragons just happen to be very open minded individuals that just tried everything too slow to escape - it being the simple law of numbers that male humans happen to work.

Now fast forward several tens of thousands of years. Dragons have been using male humans for so long now that they are co-dependent on them. On the other side of the stick it really helps to have a Dragon around particularly when there a so many predators that think slow humans are a great afternoon bite.

Then the Humans just had to upset the apple-cart by getting smarter, much smarter. Now Humans and Dragons are in an Arms race for intelligence. Eventually this arms race settles down into a cold stalemate with both Humans, and Dragons being intelligent enough to create societies.

Now here is where we get into the weeds. We want a society that places Dragons on an equal enough footing with Humans. If after copulating the human re-enacts the scene from Alien where it bursts out of them in a bloody killing spree this society will never exist. The process can be bloody, but it needs to be "natural" as these people would put it.

This could be achieved intellectually. If there happens to be a plethora of species on this planet practicing a similar reproductive strategy. Perhaps Big Cats, like to get it on with male badgers? Unfortunately you are already playing the odds game as it is. This world would be the 1 in a billion worlds that even have this reproductive strategy.

More likely, somewhere in those tens of thousands of years Men must have developed a less messy, and less lethal method of delivery. In all likelyhood Men are in the process of developing a distinct "Womb-like" organ. It wouldn't necessarily be a placenta, it could simply be an Egg carrying sack. Perhaps it has a controllable level of blood flooding. Or it might be more advanced with a placentalike organ. These have evolved several times over the millennia, so not completely out there but really do need deep time to get right.

Of course the "development" might not be on the human end, it might be on the "Dragon" end with the egg producing hormones for manipulating the male body in just the right way.

Now there are two larger problems with this scenario:

  1. Hybridisation. Unless its two dragons getting it on, and the human male is a nurse maid. Human genetic material is intermixed with Dragon genetic material. Hybrids are rarely capable of pro-creation, and often have numerous genetic diseases. Deep time would eventually iron these out, but tens of thousands of years is not enough. And there is already a highly effective strategy for reproduction: getting it on within your own species.

  2. Male looses its definition in this context. They may call themselves male, but these people have essentially become hermaphrodites. They are male in one context, and female in the other. This is a problem because you have stated clearly that this is a "cheap shot". Unfortunately the alternative is inline with the other answers, and his reaction wouldn't be "come here darling!", but "get away from me you predator!".

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The 'female' dragon is a transfemale who has not fully transitioned yet and therefore has all the parts needed to father a child.

The 'male' human is a transmale who has not fully transitioned and therefore has all the parts needed to get pregnant.

It's a real thing today pregnant trans couple. So definitely 'science based.'

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  • $\begingroup$ That is a cheap cheat. $\endgroup$ – JohnWDailey Oct 25 '20 at 22:18
  • $\begingroup$ I agree, and think the 'science' behind gender theory is suspect. But unless the child was evolved to absorb nutrients from a host that doesn't have a placenta, than the baby and host will share blood. Which is problematic as I doubt a dragon human hybrid has the same blood type as a normal human. $\endgroup$ – Garret Gang Oct 26 '20 at 0:40
  • $\begingroup$ @GarretGang Vampire Dragon, the host just needs a good nine month lie down, and someone to sit them in the sun long enough to keep the colour up. $\endgroup$ – Kain0_0 Oct 26 '20 at 22:26

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