Goa'uld biology

The biology of the Goa'uld is complex to describe. The symbiotic creatures are birthed from asexual mothers, Goa'uld Queens. In the process every newborn symbiote inherits the genetic memory of the one before it. It is some time after their creation before the Goa'uld are capable of being anything more than helpless, squealing snakes. They must be fed a steady electrical current in an aquatic container placed where the people who serve the species are able to come and worship. Immature symbiotes are also incubated in pouches created in the abdomens of Jaffa, slave warriors in the service of the Goa'uld. It takes several years for a symbiote to reach full maturity and be ready to take a host.

Physiologically, the Goa'uld differ somewhat from symbiote to symbiote. Younger Goa'uld tend to be far whiter with twin black eyes. The older and more mature, the more gray or green the serpents tend to be. The majority of the species has four bright red eyes and swimmerets to suit them in an aquatic environment.

More mature symbiotes are capable of jumping significant distances, despite their form. Utilizing their powerful, four-pronged jaws, they burrow through the back of the neck (or through the soft tissue at the back of the mouth), wrapping themselves around the victim's upper spinal column and into the brain. Instantaneously the Goa'uld has control of the physical body, suppressing the original individual's consciousness.

Goa'uld symbiotes have incredible regenerative abilities, and, with the aid of Sarcophagi, they are capable of living hundreds of thousands of years in the body of a human host. Once a Goa'uld is old enough to begin utilizing its healing abilities, it is implanted within the incubating pouch of a Jaffa in a ceremony known as the Prim'tah. (During the period the Goa'uld is within a Jaffa, the term "prim'tah" can also refer to the infant symbiote itself.) The Goa'uld and its Jaffa are unable to communicate by conventional means, unless the Jaffa is in a deep state of Kelnorim meditation. On this level of the subconscious, the Goa'uld receives vital information necessary to repair most illnesses.