question about the goa'uld

[astroboy]

if each jaffa is host to a growing goa'uld, how come we never many fully grown? Most of the goauld on the show are system lords surrounded by hundreds of jaffa. Where is this goauld population?

 

[BlobVanDam]

I've pondered this question myself.
Every single Jaffa requires a Goa'uld symbiote to live, and they even go through several in their life, so the Goa'uld should outnumber the Jaffa, shouldn't they?

And even though they use the symbiotes to enslave the Jaffa, why would they want to grow more competition anyway? The Goa'uld are a greedy and selfish race.

If I had to guess, I'd say that either only a very small number get implanted as the Goa'uld please, with the rest being discarded somehow (we did see in Summit they were eating them!), or the competition among the Goa'uld is just so fierce that only a few are able to survive long once taking a host.
Or maybe they do survive, but we simply don't see them, because the only way they can survive is by hiding away from the more powerful Goa'uld and building their forces. We do only see a small number of the Goa'uld, but we did occasionally see there were plenty more of much lesser importance, so obviously they wouldn't get shown a lot.

But the ratio certainly does seem off for a race that works under the pretense of being invincible gods! :lol

 

[Riceball]

I'd imagine that the constant warfare between System Lords help keep the population down a bit since the Jaffa are really not much more than cannon fodder to them. Then you have to consider that Goa'uld does not automatically equate to System Lord, although we never see it much each System Lord does have any number of underlords and trusted lieutenants that are full grown Goa'uld but just not a System Lord. Simply put, all System Lords are Goa'uld but not all Goa'uld are System Lords.

 

[firesprite]

Well, in fairness, most of the Goa'uld we see in the show are the System Lords. I would imagine that they have subject Goa'uld which is probably where most of those symbiotes that survive to adulthood would go.

 

[Darth Lars]

The Jaffa's goa'uld could be likened to unborn children, and it is likely that the goa'uld from one parent would be pretty much identical to each other. I think they would live in tanks until their lord decides to have a child.

By the way, there have been quite a few goa'uld in Stargate SG1 that were just servants to system lords, but they have not always been very important characters.

 

[BlobVanDam]

The Jaffa's goa'uld could be likened to unborn children, and it is likely that the goa'uld from one parent would be pretty much identical to each other. I think they would live in tanks until their lord decides to have a child.

By the way, there have been quite a few goa'uld in Stargate SG1 that were just servants to system lords, but they have not always been very important characters.

Yep, they do show them from time to time. Often the Tok'ra were posing as minor Goa'uld who served under a system lord. And we've seen Anubis or whoever with generic Goa'uld serving under them as scientists, pilot etc.

And my personal favourite, Ba'al's servant Nerus from S9. :lol