Once per year, they enter a mass hibernation for two months. When they come out of this state, there are young 'Dinis among them. It is not until midway in the second to last book of the series, Lyon's Pride, that human scientists (and the readers) are allowed inside a Hibernatorium to discover how Mrdini reproduction works. Essentially, pheromones released during hibernation cause them to split genetic material and even memories, allowing their young to be born with some knowledge already in place. This unique quirk of their biology even allows individual Mrdini to be "recreated" if they die; just find the original parent, isolate them during hibernation, and the same combination of genes and memories takes place. The "re-made" Mrdini will lack the recent life experience of the original, but will have essentially the same personality. The fact that Mrdini reproduce with every hibernation, however, has posed tremendous problems for them in the past. Their starships, for instance, could not support an expanding population; so excess births had to go "on the line", a Mrdini euphemism for cannibalism. It was not until humans, with their system of teleportation, appeared to them, that the Mrdini were able to give these unwanted children the chance to live. Eventually, humans are able to work out a means of limiting Mrdini conception through manipulating their pheromones, allowing them to control their population growth for the first time in Mrdini history. References Fictional extraterrestrial life forms To Ride Pegasus