They would be like babies and mature in a similar way to humans (apart from the sexual features though, unless they are a specific King/queen). Termites only metamorphose because they are invertabrates, and their skeleton is on the outside of the body, meaning they have to shed it to grow in 'incomplete metamorphosis' where they are born as minituare adults almost. Butterflies etc. go through 'complete metamorphosis' and only grow their outside skeleton as an adult and do all the growing as a squishy larvae of some sort. An adult insect like a housefly or butterfly will never grow larger than that. The only growing is done as a larvae.
Vertabrates have an iternal skeleton and aren't resricted in the same way. Many vertabrates stop growing at a roug size or age, but some grow quickly to adulthood then slowly continue to larger until they die, as do reptiles.
As Mudokons are vertabrates with niternal skeleotns, metamorphosis is not necassary, so no larval stage is needed. They just grow from being a slightly less well formed version at birth.
The bit sticking out the top of the egg is the 'ponytail' of the Mudokon. Mudkon's have no tail, unless its a vestigial one like Humans do.
For the royal jelly idea, it may be possible then it may not. OI hasn't told us they do, but they haven't told us they don't. It seems that they are more like bee's or termites as opposed to ants, as ants yearly breed numerous queens and kings to breed and start new nests. With Mudokons, this probably does not happen. Otherwise, the Glukons would have used other queens to create more workers, and I presume we'd know about that.
The size of the eggs may be because so much nutrient rich yolk is in there to make the Mudokon grow quickly enough, even if not necassarily meaning that the egg will end up completely full up by the Mudokon.
The 'worker' class (as in referring to hive classes, not actual workers for the Glukkons) is waht we see most often, like Abe, Alf etc., and they are neutral sexually speaking. But they appear (by voice mainly) to be male. This makes sense. Ant workers are sexually neutral females, they can't breed but are still female. The same is with bee's, which is why the royal jelly works that way. Mudokons are similar except neutral males, which would mean a King could be grown when they queen needs to be fertilized again (depending on lifespan etc.). The queen may be able to create a sepecific female one deliberately in a special egg, but Kings may be needed more often, and either way, it's easier to use royal jelly to create Kings when necassary rather than making lots of seperate types of King egg and Worker egg. A Queen egg at the end of the lifespan after laying many worker eggs would make sense. Maybe two, and half the workers go off with the new egg, so that the species can icnrease in number rather than just stay pretty much the same. Presuming other the whole world of Oddworld, there's more than one queen.
Oh, and I welcome myself to the forum (how'd he get my name!?).
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