I’m disturbed by the trivial way in which tribbles are treated within the Star Trek universe.
The Tribble Handbook describes these creatures as “the most fabulous furballs in the galaxy!” (p. 1). Further, Star Trek supposedly represents a futuristic society that has solved many of the ethical, social, and political challenges we face today. Despite these points, Star Trek’s treatment of tribbles tends to parallel contemporary problems with how we human animals conceptualize and treat nonhuman animals.
For non-trekkies, tribbles are a cute, fuzzy, chirping, hermaphroditic, fecund species. Tribbles debuted in Star Trek: The Original Series’ “The Trouble with Tribbles.” As the image on this post indicates, tribbles have an exceedingly short gestation period. Their careers also advanced quickly, as they appeared in four films and three television episodes across the franchise.
Weaponizing tribbles
Last month I read Mind Meld, a Star Trek novel which takes place in 2293 (For context, the original Enterprise’s five year mission took place from 2265-2270). I won’t get into the plot of the novel. It’s not relevant to tribbles, who are fairly incidental to the main story arc. They appear in about 300 words across two chapters.
The first mention finds the Enterprise crew planning to sabotage a shuttlecraft that must be surrendered to their enemies.
“I ordered them for a recent study I was working on.” [ . . .]
“Tribbles?” Asked Kirk, horrified. “Bones, you’ve been keeping tribbles on this ship?”
“Just a couple of embryos,” said McCoy. “As long as they were kept in stasis, they weren’t going to do anything. Anyway, it would take two minutes to hide a few embryos and a little grain for food. If the kidnappers come to get the shuttlecraft quickly, a life-form scan will show up negative. But you know what the craft will be like in forty-eight hours–complete chaos.” (pp. 192-193)
The result of sabotage-via-tribble? In the final chapter of the novel, which jumps forward to 2314, the Romulans were managing the ongoing tribble infestation, and had lost several colonies to the tribbles.
Tribbles were also weaponzied in the Animated Series episode,”More Trouble, More Tribbles,” which takes place during the five year mission. In many ways, they are synonymous with “invasion” and “danger.” The Tribble Handbook affirms Spock’s statement in “More Trouble, More Tribbles” that “a ‘safe tribble’ is a contradiction in terms” (p. 19).
Relational harms
As you know from previous posts, I find feminist relational theory a helpful lens for animal ethics. Relational approaches begin with the idea that we are constituted by and through relationships.
Did you know that tribbles are born pregnant? From a relational perspective, I find that fairly intriguing. And yet, tribbles are often denied relationality. Here are some discussions I find helpful in framing relational harms.
In a recent interview on the UnMute Podcast, feminist philosopher Lori Gruen describes carceral logics that ground systems of incarceration. Carceral logics, which we find not only in prisons but also in locations such as zoos, do more than dominate. They ignore meaningful relationships. Carceral logics promote commodification, fungibility, restrictions on movement, and isolation. For those subjected to carceral logics, social relationships are not interpreted as a constitutive feature of their lives.
Part of the badness of carceral logics are how they deny relationality. Social relations are an important aspect of our personal identities. Françoise Baylis describes a relational identity as the co-construction and constitution of identity through self-and-other narratives, contextually based on one’s private and public performances. Though self-narratives are important, they are not equally available in all contexts.
Relational identities
In writing about her mother, Gloria, who has Alzheimer’s, Baylis notes that while her mother’s ability to co-author a narrative identity diminishes, she retains a relational identity. Although Gloria cannot mother Baylis in ways we typically associate with mothering, Baylis and her siblings contribute to the continuation of Gloria’s relational identity as mother.
Gloria has diminished capacities for co-authoring her narrative identity as her Alzheimer’s advances. Some creatures may never have robust capacities for co-authoring a narrative identity, but that doesn’t mean they have no abilities. And, they can still have an identity that humans help co-author.
At best, in Star Trek, tribbles have an impoverished relational identity. They have not been approached as subjects. Tribbles are weaponized. They are used in scientific research. They are commodified as a food source and as pets. Cyrano Jones, in “More Trouble, More Tribbles,” genetically alters tribble reproductive capacities so he can gain greater profits from selling tribbles as pets.
Cyrano Jones is a particular problem. The Tribble Handbook lists 22 things we know about tribbles. Of these 22, only five statements ascribe positive attribute to tribbles. Four of those statements are undermined as being subjective or manipulative — especially the statements which came from Jones, whose testimony is suspect as he profits from selling tribbles.
We have not approached tribbles as beings with whom we are in relations. Perhaps the closest tribbles come to having a relational identity is when their “coos” are recognized produce a calming effect on humans (and Ferengi). Even with this recognition, tribbles are more like pets than animals who are taken to be able to form meaningful relationships with humans, such as service or therapy animals are often described. (Here I am drawing a distinction between the connotation of “pet” and “companion animal”).
Tribble minds
According to Star Trek canon, tribbles are non-intelligent life forms. In the twenty-second century, intelligence is connected with sentience and personhood: “The concepts of perception and intelligence had been combined such that the word now meant an intelligent, self-aware, conscious entity deserving of rights, respect, and freedom” (Memory Alpha, “Sentience”).
In the twenty-third century (TOS), intelligence is more closely associated with “the ability to feel or perceive” (Memory Alpha, “Sentience”). By the twenty-fourth century (TNG), intelligence is defined more cognitively: the ability to learn, the ability to be self-aware, consciousness.
I don’t know enough about tribble physiology to comment much about whether they are non-intelligent. But I think we have enough evidence to say that tribbles feel. Indeed, Spock describes tribbles as “very perceptive,” although the Tribble Handbook dismisses this assessment as subjective. Tribbles have some kind of reaction to Klingons that suggests distress. Although tribbles are often described as objects, Captain Kirk describes their hostile reaction to Klingons as suggesting experiences of emotions.
I’m not sure the treatment of tribbles would have stood out to me if it were not for the work of a Waterloo PhD student, Ashley Keefner, who researches animal prejudice in the study of animal minds. Negative stereotypes about animal minds might lead to researcher’s being closed off from certain kinds of questioning.
Is this happening with tribbles? Do we see them as non-intelligent because they’re fuzzballs without faces? Unlike the animals Ashley discusses, we don’t have much information about tribbles’ biology and cognition. But I cannot help but ask about whether prejudice is at work here. Do we treat tribbles trivially because they are so annoying?
Tribble prejudice
I’ve ranted for over a thousand words about the way scientists and others in a fictional universe conceptualize and treat tribbles. These characterizations exhibit a troubling imagining of the future.
The Federation is a place of social equality. Animals need not be killed for food because we have replicators. The callousness with which tribbles are treated exemplifies to me that we have a hard time conceiving of a possible future for animal justice.
Critics have noted that Star Trek fails to present a socially just future with respect to its characterizations of gender, sexuality, and indigeneity (Explore, for example, the Women at Warp and Métis in Space podcasts). While I haven’t argued that Star Trek fails to represent justice for animals, I hope to have raised some questions that lead to further investigations.
How tribbles have been conceptualized tracks ways in which we currently conceptualize animals. Often, we characterize them in a non-relational way. Indeed, David Gerrold, writer of “The Trouble with Tribbles,” based some of the plot on rabbit overpopulation in Australia. So if you aren’t concerned for tribbles as such, perhaps we should care about how they represent nonhuman animals with whom we do, non-fictionally, share our world.
Tribble futurisms
Tribbles are so much more than annoying, quickly-reproducing fuzzballs. They truly are the “most fabulous furballs in the galaxy”! I’ll let the The Black Tribbles podcast, which analyzes science fiction through the lens of black culture, close out this post.
The crew regularly invites their guests and fans to find their own ‘Tribble Designation’ and take the Tribbles’ whimsical oath of allegiance into the Tribble Nation, where everyone is ‘Too Cool to be Geeks, Too Cute to be Nerds; we are all Black Tribbles.
I’m a fairly new listener to the Black Tribbles, and I’m not sure why they chose this name for their show. What I love is that they center tribbles in a positive light. Tribbles are cool, they’re cute, and they’re subversive! The Black Tribbles offer an example of how to approach tribbles positively.
Photo source
This week’s photo is from StarTrek.com.