Specbio - Tumblr Posts - Page 3
The Kadez is a medium-sized river chelicerate, living in particularly pure, well-oxygenated streams. It tolerates very cold temperatures and as such is often found in mountain streams. They turn over pebbles with their legs in search of small invertebrates, roe, and other small prey to eat. It is quite an active creature, and in areas where they are abundant, they'll often come up onto land for other food sources. That said, they are quite skittish, and surprisingly fast -especially underwater-, so it isn't always easy to approach them.
The bibby is one of the largest species in the nudel family. Adaptable and resourceful, they can be found in a variety of environments, provided enough humidity. Primarily a grazing animal, they also have a fondness for fallen fruits. Their large fangs are mostly used for defense or to pierce the tough skin of some of the fruits found in their natural habitat.
Here’s my personal recommendation of a YouTube channel to check out:
My elves might be unconventional, but I made them long-nosed/horned bugs. They look mostly human, but are pale, have long noses and ear cannals instead of ears.
Anatomically they have an exoskeleton instead of what we have, so on close inspection you might notice splits on joints of their limbs. They breath through pores on their chest where they also keep their vestigial middle pair of limbs.
I also gave them a culture based in unique identities and their expression. Like many insect species they often communicate in gestures and dances, creating famous elven circles in open fields.
Must also add that my elves are a bit more mythology/folklore based rather then classical fantasy.
Elves (Speculative Biology)
If elves were real, what do you think they’d descend from? Personally I find them being a subspecies to be a little bit boring. Please lmk!! I’m considering for my fantasy world
Snowy is a specbio god change my mind
Doodles of randomly generated aliens https://zarkonnen.itch.io/planet-generator
In the speculative evolution community, there are three generally accepted top picks for the prospective evolution of nonhuman sapience: dolphins, crows/ravens, and –you guessed it– cephalopods. These little dudes are fucking incredible, and the ONLY thing holding them back from racing to civilizational sapience is their lifespans. Typically they have little to no generational overlap, preventing learned behaviors from being passed down and advanced. Fix that up and sprinkle in a little bit of communalism (which the gloomy octopus already has significant traces of) and they’d be well on their way to a technological civilization comparable to that of humans.
(fun fact: my world Sphaera has all three of these nonhuman people and more! merfolk are dolphins, gryndulos are octopi, and kenku are ravens!)
Oh I can probably answer this!! I love spec-evo!
the simple answer (i.e. columnar vertical bipedal build) is that our spines would probably be much more straight vertical and likely a bit more rigid. I’d imagine our pelvis and lower legs would be considerably more reinforced, and the arches of our feet would probably be nonexistent.
however, a more interesting route would be a convergent bauplan to theropods (i.e. balanced-fulcrum horizontal bipedal build)... imagine a human but with the spine aligned roughly parallel to the ground and a long, stiff tail like coelurian theropods. freaky, right? but hey, much less stress on the spine!
hey yknow how the human lower back sucks caus it hasnt had time to adapt yet to walking on two feet rather than all fours? how would our back look if it was made for walking on two legs would it be shorter, taller, wider, would we have more supportive bones between the ribcage and pelvis, how the fuck would we look
The idea of the kraken as an immense nektonic barnacle is one of the best takes on any mythical creature I’ve ever seen. I may even borrow this idea.
The Kraken could be an enormous lobster that has very long spindly legs and whiskers. Their claws have become extremely shortened giving the appearance of jets like an Octopus.
The kraken is quite and interesting one, not only is it one of the few legendary creatures closer to my home region, having grown up at the North Sea coast, but also because its name is used for any regular octopus over here, due to which it is usually thought to simply be an octopus or other cephalopod of monstrous dimensions.
And after all it is not far-fetched, as sightings of the kraken might have been caused by giant squids which can be found all over the ocean, while colossal squids usually reside in Antarctic waters. These cephalopods reach with tentacles the length of a Tyrannosaurus and are among the largest living animals.
Inthe Encyclopædia Perthensis of 1816 however the kraken has been describedto be a crab-like creature with tentacles akin to a polyp which does not matchup with later depictions.
Now the crab-like part could be attributed to a shell,the polyp-like tentacles to simply a higher number of tentacles without suctioncups which as a whole resembles a nautilus, a cephalopod that has split off farearlier on the family tree.
A shell partly surfacing might have resembled anisland as has been described in a number of kraken encounters and thereforewould make a giant nautilus a possible candidate; however a nautilus of suchenormous size is not yet known.
Ammonites, another subclass of shelled cephalopodshave developed some enormous forms, such as the Parapuzosia shown above, thelargest known ammonite with a diameter of 1.8m (5.9 ft) in this specimen whichisn’t even the complete shell and would have additional 75cm if complete.
However it should be noted that ammonites are notdirectly related to nautiloids. Instead ammonites are more closely related tocoleoids, the subclass which includes all other modern cephalopods.
Overallthat shrouds the identity of the kraken just in further mystery. And that wasonly the cephalopod section; crustaceans are a whole other brand of tea.
Crustaceans are simply amazing in their diversity.There are the ones that look “usual” and crab- or lobster-shaped and thenthere are the ones with a cyclops eye, the ones that look like worms and theones that look like some kind of vascular system and live as parasites insidesea stars.
And not to mention that insects are included on thefamily tree as well.
Oneinfraclass of crustaceans would make an absolutely weird and interestingversion of a kraken. Barnacles are practically everywhere as masters ofsurvival, while usually small they have a shell, “tentacles” and well… beinga crustacean somewhat counts as crab-like I guess.
Andthus I hereby presentthe mighty kraken, a ginormous nektonic barnacle that rules the North Sea,accompanied by an entourage of small fish, bringing either fortune to afisherman with a plentiful catch or demise as it rams the boat.
(All photos taken by me)
The Dragon myths actually came from dinosaur fossils that Europeans and Asians thought were fire-breathing beasts. So what dinosaurs do you think are the closest to resemble eastern and western Dragons?
There is actually more to that
Dinosaur bones have been interpreted as dragon bones in the past but they may not be the origin of dragon myths themselves
The 4th-century Chinese historian Chang Qu has written of dragon bones found in Wucheng over 2000 years ago
Wucheng is located in the province Sichuan which is famous for its fossils of Jurassic dinosaurs, mainly sauropods
This has simply reinforced “proof” in the existence of dragons for people of this time
In Europe however the likelihood of coming across dinosaur bones seems lower, while it is more likely to come across the bones of Pleistocene megafauna
People may come across the skull of a woolly rhinoceros and, not being familiar with these in modern European view exotic animals, interpret them as something monstrous
A fountain sculpture of the lindwurm of Klagenfurt has been inspired by one such skull
The rhinoceros skull which has been found in 1335 has been interpreted as the lindwurm which is slain in Klagenfurt’s founding tale and has served as base for the sculpture in 1583
Its true origin hasn’t been revealed until 1840
The true origin of dragons however may lie within human psychology
As anthropologist David E. Jones writes in his book “An Instinct for Dragons”, the belief in dragons is so widespread among cultures of ancient history that their origin may lie within our own evolution
An among monkeys deeply rooted common fear of animals such as snakes, big cats, elephants and birds of prey may be the origin of our image of dragons and in fact snakes especially seem to be the design base of dragons in most cultures
The instinctive fear of these animals which were regular threats in the daily life of our ancestors has morphed into the dragons of folklore
A powerful creature that may be feared or worshipped by mankind and to this day stays relevant in our culture from novels to games
All this may in the end explain why it’s actually rather difficult to pinpoint which dinosaurs resemble dragons the most
Popular picks are Pachycephalosaurus as the ontogenetical variant “Dracorex” or the scansoriopterygid Yi, although the status of its patagia is debatable
These however resemble more modern depictions of dragons which themselves have been inspired by modern depictions of dinosaurs as pointed out in this post by @suicunesrider: http://suicunesrider.tumblr.com/post/177332621980/i-appreciate-how-as-our-understanding-of-dinosaur
Dragons in classic depictions are usually blends of serpentine and mammalian features and thus barely resemble any dinosaur if at all
But as one group of animals which have blended into the dragon stew are birds of prey I may say the dinosaurs resembling dragons the most are the ones that aided in their creation
This is highly useful since I’ve had Sphaeran faeries pegged as trochilid sophonts for years now but could never find too much online about their palaeohistory.
Could fairies actually be a crafty species of Hummingbird that defends their nest using cleverness instead of aggression?
I have already done fairies
https://stolpergeist.tumblr.com/post/181978211964/a-fairy-is-an-omnivorous-shrew-whose-fingers-have
However they are such a waste basket group of magical beings you can go for multiple interpretations
Hummingbirds would however pose an issue as in this day and age they are native only to the Americas
Sometimes people may claim seeing hummingbirds in Europe but those sightings are usually hawk-moths of the species Macroglossum stellatarum
Hummingbirds do however have ancestral roots in Eurasia, splitting from the swift family tree during the Eocene, possibly evolving from a nocturnal ancestor after the split from Strisores, the order that also includes nightjars, frogmouths and the beloved potoos in case their nocturnal lifestyle didn’t evolve independently multiple times
Swifts and hummingbirds form the clade Apodiformes and are active at day unlike their relatives
Primitive hummingbirds diverged from a group called jungornithids by the end of the Eocene
One ancestral almost-hummingbird of this time is Parargornis messelensis with a size of around 5 cm
Parargornis has a swift-like beak, reduced humerus length, short and broad wings and long tail feathers
Along with Argornis it represents a very early stage of hummingbird evolution
These animals show us that a large part of hummingbird evolution took place in Eurasia
At the dawn of the Oligocene forms like Eurotrochilus emerged with elongated beaks to consume nectar
Eurotrochilus like its modern relatives is a relatively small bird, the skull having a length of 34 mm
While all extant hummingbird species are native the New World, the two species within the genus Eurotrochilus have been found in Germany, France and Poland which further suggests an Old World origin for hummingbirds
Why exactly hummingbirds went extinct in Europe afterwards is unknown
One possibility may be competition with specialized bees, another may be climate change making it more difficult to retain their body temperature due to their small size
Either way if fairies were to be interpreted as hummingbirds they would be prehistoric survivors with an origin that lies 30 million years ago
A bit of a little sketchs done in base of a creation done in Ganbreeder a while ago and then I tried to make something from these mixes of organisms.
in orden starting from up:
The Caridocoyotl of the length of a coyote is a piscivorous inhabitants of estuaries of an Alternative Earth where the dominant animals are an unusual group of Panarthropods that have adopted tetrapod features which this species belongs, including internal skeleton but which still have characteristics of arthropods. It is bipedal, with only two long legs protruding from the lower part of the body, although it has 3 other pairs under its fuzzy coat; most of its body is quite shaggy, except for its upper part that is protected by a plate armor made of osteoderms. Its cephalothorax is mostly elongated, being a part of the front just occupied by the jaw, with eyes on the tip of it, while a second pair are in the middle. What appears to be a second tail protruding below this is actually an oviduct which grows in the females during laying time.
The Strigipugs are small mammal-like two-legged creatures of about 20 cm long, inhabitants of a temperate planet that has gone through a mass extinction event only a couple of hundred thousand years before humans developed civilization. It is one of the few creatures that has begun to thrive in its post-mass extinction world, being active omnivores that feed on small caterpillar-like creatures, these are able to move underground easily using their long protuberances on the sides of its legs. The body is rhomboid and entirety covered by a fibrous fur similar to spines on the back and adopting a smoothed texture in the front. Its owl looking face posses 2 enormous eyes, of which in front of these are what appear to be termoreceptor structures similar to the pit vipers, and in front of this are the nostrils; Its mouth hidden by the fur is divided into 5 parts, 3 divisions in the upper part and 2 in the lower part.
Minotetras are an 50 cm long extraterrestrial lifeforms inhabitant of a tropical world convergent to a terrestrial tetrapod reptile, although unlike these they did not arise from a type of lobed finned fish but from a group of creatures similar to gastropod mollusks, and besides not having the same anatomical arrangement of a vertebrate; their legs were not derived from some sort of limbs or fins but from some suckers that developed from a pair of tentacles, its tail is actually part of its respiratory system, with a membrane that acts as a type of lungbook, while the head posses most of of the digestive system, being in the middle brain located alongside other important organs.
Hoplogallis turns out to be a visually bizarre creature, being inhabitant of a planet of gravity 40% higher than the Earth of quite low temperature, is an omnivorous that feeds on dead matter, small creatures and carrion, It presents a varied intelligence capable able to recognize and remember places and individuals, as well able to produce different varieties of sounds and chirps thanks to its capacity for echolocation, it has several tiny eyes around what can be called its frill, which mix with the color patterns of its scales armor around its body, these form a some sort of large compound eye that help it to visualize objects.
it’s killing for sport!
What if corvids convergently evolved with tyrannosaur's?
Just because we’re the first technologically advanced species on this planet doesn’t mean we’ll be the last.
literally cannot stop thinking about that article talking about how crows are starting to use tools and pass down that knowledge and someone said they were entering the stone age. the stone age. bro. imagine when we entered the stone age there was just some other species already having built their shit looking at us going like “oh fuck humans are using sticks for stuff and teaching their kids how to do that haha cool”. this is the premise of a sci-fi novel. i can’t even think about it without feeling like personally responsible for the development of crows on a species level over the next several thousand years
THIIIIIISSSSS THIS THIS THIS. The centralized hive fallacy is seen prominently in Ender’s Game, where the queen is the unifying force. I don’t think most writers quite understand how much cooler it is to work with an emergent-sapient swarm or colony, especially if the component organisms are specialized. what it comes down to is that fundamentally, sapience isn’t limited to humanlike psychology or sociology. the intelligence that octopi, dolphins, corvids, etc display are all different, both from each other and from human intelligence, as products of their own specialized evolutionary lineages and niches.
The idea that hive minds in sci-fi have queens or some other central apparatus like a mother ship makes no sense at all. That completely defeats the purpose of a hive mind, which is decentralization.
It speaks to kind of society we live in where it’s generally assumed that unity is achieved through domination only.
ahh, it’s that time of year again.
Season’s Greasons from me and my timeless homemade Dougal Dixon meme
wheres seasons greasons
What do you mean by "elves are a fungus"? Gnomes as terrestrial cephalopods makes more sense (clever and dexterous), but not seeing your reasoning on the elves.
So a couple days back @mazarinedrake was helpfully infodumping about Pathfinder for me, becuase I’m 2 years into a game and know dick fuck about the Lore, and APPARENTLY the elves in pathfinder??? are literally Aliens???
So that resulted in a late-night insomniac discussion of “If you were gonna design a fantasy RPG where none of the other races are Primates, what would you make them be? and I think we came up with:
Elves are a Fungus, but specifically, Elves are the fruiting bodies of a Vast Underground Superorganism, which is why there’s that bit in LOTR where the elves sometimes find other ‘adult’ elves down by the lake. They feel a deep connection to thier surrundings, not because of some spiritual thing, but because they’re all small organs of a body that spans continents and thusly reccive cellular signals. At the end of an Elf’s natural lifespan, they burst into a cloud of glittering spores.
Dwarves are chemotrophic plants, like the algae that live at the bottom of the ocean at the thermal vents or alkaline lakes. They never see the sunlight, but don’t need to becuase their metabolic process is based on exothermic chemical reactions that power thier cells. they mine not as a traditional industry, but as a means of agriculture- they literally crave that mineral.
Gnomes are terrestrial cephlapods that started as something much like a Mimic octopus that took it Way Too Far (out of the ocean). they’re dextrous, clever, obsessed with color, and have a society whose values are pretty much unfathomable to a bunch of pretentious monkeys.
Halflings are tiny, really ugly Birds. Maybe they originally started like crows, with thier fondness for good foods and shiny objects, but over time, they developed a coukoo-like habit of leaving thier newly-hatched babies in human homes becuase if you can fool a human family? that’s an amazing start in life for a chick. Over time, they began to look more and more like humans as a means of camoflacge, then retained more and more neotenic features to keep humans feeding them for longer.
Humanity’s closest relative is Orcs, because they’re also mammals! they’re terrestrial whales! Orcish tusks are simmilar to the tusks of beaked whales, and the roving bands of orcs are very similar to dolphin Pods.
astute of you to pick up of the hurdle that firestarting presents! but I promise you, fire is not a universal keystone for tool-using sapience. let’s look at it this way: what did early hominids use fire for?
cooking food - octopi don’t necessarily need to do that. if they really felt like it, they could strategically sun-dry and store fish onshore (octopi can survive out of water for significant periods of time!)
providing light and warmth - octopi have much better low-light vision than we do, so again, they don’t need fire for that.
fending off predators - octopi have the most advanced biological camouflage in the world and lack bones. they can hide extremely effectively, and if worst comes to worst they have ink to provide cover during an escape.
metallurgy - this one is more of an issue, as fire is necessary to produce the vast temperatures that smelting and forging common metals (iron, nickel, copper, etc) require. however, there’s more than one way around this! of course they could just come onto land to do their metallurgy, but there are a few metals/metalloids that are malleable at relatively low temperatures (i.e. underwater); notably, aluminum, zinc, and lead. but who says metals are the only way to make advanced tools...?
two words for you: artificial selection. due to the fact that metallurgy (and, later on, electricity) is a technology that isn’t feasible underwater, it would make much more sense to selectively breed other organisms to be living tools. they might start by carefully cultivating a few generations of clams to produce hatchet-shaped shells, but given time, resources, and the right base stock, the possibilities are virtually endless, especially once they unlock the secrets of direct genetic engineering. as far as we can tell, the psychology of octopi is extremely alien to that of humans, and from what I’ve read they show a remarkable amount of patience, which is needed to achieve significant progress in this toolmaking method. can you imagine it? vast biopunk metropoli sprawling across the ocean floor...!
Octopus filmed changing colours while sleeping.
Wayne Douglas Barlowe
okay since the monoxide post seemed to be reasonably popular, here’s another take:
bones (and biology in general, but particularly bones) are frequent subjects of humor. every species has a unique approach to a skeletal system: humans and rimor have calcium phosphate + collagen bones, shyxaure have hollow cobalt carbonate + collagen bones augmented with carbon fiber, skae have chitin bones on the inside and the outside, and ziirpu just have a springy tube-shaped cartilage lattice. so even after hundreds of years of regular contact and cultural integration it’s still funny to have conversations like
“did you know humans have five bones in their EARS?”
“damn I wish I had bones in my ears”
“damn I wish I had bones”
“you do have bones and they’re bright pink you idiot, I don’t have bones”
“haha yeah boneless ziivor”