Star Trek: 10 Alien Species That Are Actually Related

The first appearance of a Dopterian was in the Deep Space Nine episode The Forsaken. In the episode, someone at Quark's bar stole Lwaxana Troi's latinum hair brooch. Because Lwaxana was telepathic, Odo realised that the thief must have been a species that was immune to mind-reading, such as the Ferengi, whose four-lobed brains could not be read by Betazoids like Lwaxana. However, he soon discovered that the thief was actually a Dopterian, who he explained were distantly related to the Ferengi, and shared their resistance to telepathy.

The Ferengi and the Dopterians share the same wrinkled noses, but otherwise look totally different, suggesting the two species split off from each other very long ago. It's likely that the Dopterians left Ferenginar long ago. This would explain why they don't show up often in the Ferengi societies we've seen.

There's also another species we've seen called the Kobheerians, who look just like Dopterians, but with elongated nostrils instead of the Ferengi-like noses. Maybe the Dopterians were created by Ferengi mating with Kobheerians, which could explain why they have characteristics of both species.