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RECOMMENDED READING LIST ON EVOLUTION:
> The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
> The Extended Phenotype - Richard Dawkins
> The Revolutionary Phenotype - J.F. Gariepy
> Evolution and the Theory of Games - John Maynard Smith
> Animal Signals - John Maynard Smith
> The Red Queen - Matt Ridley
> Mendel's Principles of Heredity - Bateson & Mendel
> Population Genetics: A Concise Guide - John H. Guillespie
> The Largest Avian Radiation: The Evolution of Perching Birds, or the Order Passeriformes by Jon Fjeldså, Les Christidis, and Per G. P. Ericson
>The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity by Douglas Erwin
>Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction: The Late Paleozoic Ice Age World by George McGhee Jr.
>Triassic Life on Land: The Great Transition by Hans-Dieter Sues
>On the Prowl: In Search of Big Cat Origins by Mark Hallett and John Harris

I’m making a spec eco project where I take different phylums and expand them. I expanded Placozoa into its own huge group with a dozen or so phyla each with their own takes on bilateral symmetry and cephalization and such. They went extinct from an oxygen drop because their circulatory systems were too simple. The last extant species are strange reef-building plates of flesh and flatworm-like scavengers. I made a group branching off from Cnidaria, the Pseudobilateria, which is basically just “what if cnidarians evolved an anus?” They still show a lot of the radial symmetry of jellyfish and corals, but are now as complex and sophisticated as fish and octopuses. One class, the Cassidophora (also known as sea saucers) are successful predators in many environments, and their gill-like circulatory system enables them to grow as big as 3 feet long. I’m currently playing with Gnathifera and ediacaran biota.

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Worm reefs that grow like plants. Has a central peduncle with roots to anchor them in the mud, calcium tube for the stem. Mostly filterfeeds but can be stinging tentacles or host to algae and photosynthesize. Reproduces through epitoky but can also send out mobile soldiers to attack other organisms that threaten the main worm.

>>4794456
What the hell is that supposed to be?

>>4794732
spider-anakin meeting the younglings

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>no Diyu updates since 2018

>>4794732
a tranny lover's wet dream

>>4795122
The projects finished.

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New Isla Project video! This one is different...better see it so you get it (Headphones are recommended)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNzj8Cur7_Y

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Aside from water like we see on Earth and methane like we see on Titan, what kind of hydrospheres (oceans) could we expect to see on exoplanets?

I'm betting that these could be fairly common:

>ammonia
>carbon dioxide
>chlorine
>sulfur dioxide

Is it reasonable to expect that the average intelligence of vertebrates (or even invertebrates) would continue to get higher and higher ignoring human interference? Considering that the smartest dinosaur to ever live was probably about as intelligent as a possum (unless they had hyper efficient brains like birds do, which I think is possible), and then suddenly not long after they go extinct we have corvids, parrots, cetaceans, and primates with most mammals being smarter than the smartest dinosaurs ever, it seems reasonable to assume that life will continue to get ever more intelligent here on out unless selection pressures change enormously.

>>4795724
Well most ice moons in our own solar system have oceans of water AND ammonia, so we know there's at least a possibility of ammonia-borne life appearing.

Also can we talk about titan for a second? If I was God I would have 100% put some azotosome utilizing prokaryotes on Titan some time around earth, I wanna see competing biospheres where they see each other as lava and ice monsters respectively damn it.

>>4796233
> Considering that the smartest dinosaur to ever live was probably about as intelligent as a possum
Thinking about it, I’m really not sure this is accurate. Seems impossible to prove (and just really unlikely - and animal that big and dumb would get itself killed in a ditch in no time).

>>4796239
The only thing we know for sure is that they never reached human level intelligence. Or at least couldn't pass on learning or talk or utilize tools and fire efficiently or one of the many other hurdles there are to civilization building. It's not out of the ballpark that certain theropods had intelligence adjacent to at least doves or maybe even corvids. I personally think that it was just a matter of basically everything going right for us, which is why dinosaurs couldn't reach apparent sapience in the couple hundred million years they have while we have in the couple dozen million years since the start of the cenozoic, pure luck.

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>>4794732
ok so you know how most of the animals on earth have 4 limbs because of an ancestral fish species? Apply that to the seaworm thing on the right and you suddenly have 8niggertillion limbs on most of your animals
one of these species eventually became smart enough to do tribal caveman early human history shit, spread across the planet, and are starting to war with each other

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>>4769217
i feel like ancient rome would have sauropods for use in war
it wouldent even have to be good in battle or anything just seeing a moving animal that big on the other side would be terrifying for the average enemy soldier

>>4796268
retvrn to paleo warfare

>>4796268
I feel like the sheer lack of intelligence on part of sauropods would make them impossible to properly train
it's less like training a horse or even an oxen and more like training a beetle

also they would require stupendous amounts of food and likely be prone to running through their own lines in fear, due to said lack of proper training

Now that I think about it, isn’t it entirely evolutionarily possible that sometime in the past there was a sentient oceanic species? Because we’d never be able to prove it given they’d never be able to properly develop civilisation due to the lack of fire (or perhaps lack of physical ability to manipulate the environment for some species) and we could never tell from their fossils (if they even managed to fossilise). It’s probably be a cetacean or possibly even cephalopod if it did happen

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>>4794456
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lylpnpNGA14
The true end stage of this beautiful artistic niche(heh) hobby is to do crossover events. I want to see some brazen third parties just up and fanfiction it up this joint and tear twenty to thirty rifts in the fabric of disparate canons and have a sprawling multi-planet prehistoric chronicle of clashing ecologies with Seranian birds riding Darwin 4 Raybacks and attacking villages of whatever these guys are and it's at minimum 4,000,000 wordss of exposition interspliced with splices of narrative and every blurb comes with a full splash page illustration and it all manages to fit together spectacularly good and I get a free pony along the way.

>>4796233
I think this is true in the tail of the distribution. While there are plenty of animals with a conservative brain size it is true that larger brains seem to provide an evolutionary benefit.

>>4796384
cyclical ice ages help a lot with that though
specialization doesn't quite work as well as an evolutionary strategy when the niche you're specializing for just up and vanishes or moves away a thousand miles
flexibility has significantly higher fitness than in many other eras of the world, and just happens to be that intelligence is a good way to increase flexibility

in a much more stable climate, large brain sizes are a waste of energy

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>>4796352
Someone did once propose this as an explanation for a bizarre assemblage of ichthyosaur fossils. Giant triassic cephalopod.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265510811_The_Kraken's_back_New_evidence_regarding_possible_cephalopod_arrangement_of_ichthyosaur_skeletons

>>4796397
Is this really the case? Most of the very intelligent animals today evolved in the more stable environment of africa, including us. Not to mention we outcompeted the other hominids from the more variable northern climates, which would be the opposite of what you'd predict if this was true.

>>4796403
Africa is not a stable continent, at least, not the parts where hominids lived
There's massive cyclical changes in the climate of north and east africa, with even the Sahara being on a cycle between productive grassland and desert, a cycle far too short for evolution to adapt to it

Monsoon systems similarly change the precipitation in east africa rather radically over fairly short timespans, elephants similarly live in these conditions and had to adapt to be intelligent generalists, which is an exceptionally unusual strategy for a large herbivore

as for northern hominids, I assume you're referring to neanderthal, since besides them there's not really a "northern" hominid, they had the misfortune that they simply weren't as fecund as sapiens

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>>4795724

Take a look at this.

>>4796462
What about methane solvent with a nitrogen atmosphere like on Titan hmmm???

>>4796268
Rome would definitely have the balls to at least attempt taming them

>>4796268
Rome would use the shit out of ceratopsians.

>Big, impressive, hits like a truck
>Too dumb to train and probably surly af
>Keep them blindfolded to calm them and match to the front lines
>Tie bundle of sticks to tail
>Set alight
>Whip off blindfold
>Let several tons of panicking angry beast with spears on its face run amok in enemy army

>>4794456
has anybody ever done "Herbivorous cat" for a spec ev thing?
very simple but I've never seen it

>>4796268
Okay first off the Romans didn't like using war elephants except for in very rare circumstances, you're thinking of the cartheginians. Second, the cartheginians couldn't even reliably tame the African Bush elephant and instead decided to use the forest elephants which are even smaller than Asian elephants. Yet you expect them to somehow manage to tame en masse animals that were generally far larger than the Bush elephant while simultaneously being far less intelligent whilst requiring far more food?

>>4796911
triceratops would be easy to tame because shamanism works on non-avian dinosaurs while it does not work on mammals.

>>4796912
kill yourself

>>4794456
I'm interested in making another Panthera species.
COMMON NAME: Hazo ("Fog" in Hausa)
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Panthera Oculus
SIZE: 200 - 400 lbs
APPEARANCE: Similar to a heavily built cougar, possessing greyish fur, with a relatively larger head. Markings similar to that of an African wild cat.
UNIQUE TRAITS: 1) Stronger ciliary eye muscles and a stronger more flexible lens, allowing the hazo to better control how much light enters its retinas. This allows it superior focusing ability on both near and far objects as well as better movement tracking ability and overall superior eyesight compared to any feline living or extinct. 2) More developed visual processing area in the brain. 3) Noted to have increased problem-solving abilities similar to that of the spotted hyena. Is capable of recognizing itself in a mirror.
SOCIAL STRUCTURE: Solitary except during mating periods. Males will typically mate with one to two females at a time and then patrol their territories, occasionally providing food for pregnant females it has mated with. Occasionally brothers will share a territory and its females.
REPRODUCTION: Females will give birth to 2-4 cubs at a time. The maturation rate of hazo cubs is 1.5-2 times as long as leopard and lion cubs due to their increased brain density. Male hazos that have sired the cubs will occasionally hunt for the express purpose of providing food for his cubs and mates, though the amount of food gained from this process can vary from 5 - 15% of a female and cub's diet.

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New Kaimere Video
https://youtu.be/8rKUCKbAOyw

>>4797015
What do you dislike about it? I hate that big cats get cucked, but the concept of megaraptorans is pretty badass.

>>4797015
>It's bad "spec evo"
why is it bad ?

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What is your favorite speculative post-human species ?

>>4797292
Was it actually? Or was it tranny sperging?

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>>4797292
Gee I fucking wonder you moron.
Anyways back to my proarticulid spec. I'm wondering how to handle mouths. I'm going off the idea that vendozoans were covered in feeding pores somewhat similar to a sponge. Developing these into mouths/lungs seems easy enough but how far can I go here? Would teeth be possible? What about jaws? If them being diploblasts is correct then the latter seems hard...

>>4796911
> Second, the cartheginians couldn't even reliably tame the African Bush elephant and instead decided to use the forest elephants which are even smaller than Asian elephants.
Carthaginians did reliably tame them. It’s just that they did stupid shit like giving them red wine to make them more aggressive and failed to properly acclimate the younger inexperienced ones to warfare, something that would cuck them hard in the Battle of Zama because Romans just made a bunch of loud noises with their shields and swords and sent them trampling through their own lines lmao
Romans did seize their elephants after but I’m not sure how much use they got out of them

>>4797306
considering that you would have up to 550 million year time span for evolution to do it things, you can justify them evolving piratically anything
I think teeth are likely if they start going after hardier prey than bacteria and algae growing in the substrate; jaws I think would be less likely and would go with circular array of teeth like in other worms and basal panarthropods, but again jaws wouldn't completely out of question given that gnathifera exists

> If them being diploblasts is correct
i see very little reason for them to be consider dipoblast giving how advanced and mobile they were and that they were likely stem bilaterians and likely not close related to petalonamae, vendozoa being paraphiletic

Did more posts get deleted?

>>4797475
>considering that you would have up to 550 million year time span
Who said I'm taking this to modern day? I'm just doing this until I lose interest.
>circular array of teeth
This is the main idea I had in mind but just wondering of I could go further.
>gnathifera exists
Good point, might make a multi-jawed clade then.
>i see very little reason for them to be consider dipoblast
Theres quite a few reasons to think they were diploblasts. The slide symmetry and the lack of a mouth would put them very basal to all non-sponge animals. Not to mention their guts had a very strange shape as shown in my first post, unlike any other animal and hard to reconcile with a bilaterian affinity. I don't know in what way they were advanced but their mobility seems to be entirely convergent with bilaterians and probably done in way unlike any animal alive today.
>stem bilaterians and likely not close related to petalonamae, vendozoa being paraphiletic
I find this idea basically impossible to square with them not having a mouth. Even comb jellies have mouths and they're the closest living animals to sponges besides placozoans. The similarities to the petalonamae are also too great for me to overlook, I simply cannot believe something without a mouth and with the slide symmetry of other vendozoans isn't related to them.

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I am going to make a saltwater frog but the problem is that they have no tail so they will need a different way to swim. I've looked at sea turtles, seals, aquatic frogs, etc. Some anon last thread also posted a gif of a plesiosaur which was helpful. What do you think would work best.

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This is the body plan I am working with. I don't think normal frog swimming would be likely because I had their body changed to no longer be able to jump like a normal frog.

>>4797613
Maybe it could suck water into a sack in its throat/back/somewhere else, then propel the water back out of an orifice? Like an amphibian version of what cephalopods do.
Or maybe it can suck air into said orifices and use that - would necessitate often resurfacing for more, but that could make things interesting

>>4797613
Why does them going to fresh water mean they need to swim a different way?
Anyways seems like your best bet is something like how seal do.

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Everyone shut up and watch this, it's really good.
https://youtu.be/zHz_rQZ-7Es?si=SqY8yVXR1J0G3iLx

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>>4796983
A hazo looks similar to a Panthera version of an African Wildcat.

>>4797622
Makes a bit of sense when you consider that frogs already have giant sacks they suck air into for vocalisation. An adjusted version of that could be used for propulsion. Maybe they could mostly swim around like normal frogs but when ambushing prey or fleeing from a predator they could use the sack

>>4797638
Long story short, in order to adapt to drier environments they had to get better lungs which meant losing their ability to jump so they could regain their ribs.They now have thicker skin as they don't need to breathe through it which means they won't lose water/absorb salt, but they also don't have the anatomy of their ancestral frogs.

>>4797605
>I find this idea basically impossible to square with them not having a mouth.
I don't think it is that hard to square if you consider that mouths in bilatereans as an inovation of the crown clade and not an ancestral trait
And about the comb jellies the only ediacaran group that is possibly linked with them are the petalonamids, due to the cambrian stromatoveris, and those aren't considered to be close related to the proarticulates.
You seen to be running with the outdated idea that vendozoa is a monophyletic clade.

>>4797712
>I don't think it is that hard to square if you consider that mouths in bilaterians as an innovation of the crown clade and not an ancestral trait
The problem with this is that it seems likely mouths are ancestral to everything living more advanced than a placozoan. Thus why it's hard to square with a bilaterian affinity. Hell, it's even hard for a cnidarian or ctenophoran affinity.
>And about the comb jellies the only ediacaran group that is possibly linked with them are the petalonamids, due to the cambrian stromatoveris
I have no idea where you're getting this from, this is the first time I've heard of a connection from stromatoveris to ctenophores specifically. I have heard of a vendozoan to ctenophore connection and I even have a colleague who believes it but I find his arguments as unconvincing as yours.
>those aren't considered to be close related to the proarticulates.
By who? I actually work in the field and the consensus here is that proarticulids descend from a petalonamid-like ancestor.
>You seen to be running with the outdated idea that vendozoa is a monophyletic clade.
I think you're the one with the outdated view. The idea that the animals exhibiting slide symmetry are actually apart of extant clades has been out of favor since the 90's. The only argument anyone can ever bring up in favor of a bilaterian classification is that they're kinda bilaterally symmetrical (even though they aren't) and the terminal addition thing (which would also make petalonamae bilaterians) and I have never found any of those arguments convincing (mostly because one of them is just wrong and the other is just dumb)

>>4797641
self promotion? ;)

>>4796238
>excerpt from ‘Grimoire de Terra’ translated from High Xanadu Regio into Terran standard
>’It was known since the glaring of the (Great Red Spot) first began that the worlds closer to the sun must have a variety of ecologies utterly alien to our own. Yet to think there is a world whose people’s blood is molten (water ice) tainted crimson with iron compounds was a concept beyond all but the writers of fiction. A people whose simple touch was lethal as was even their respiration.’

>>4797641
I watched it just now. I think he'll be successfull but I wish he didn't jump to major events in a sentence's span. I guess I don't mind seeing a ball-to-the-wall spec evo project but he's already made nuarchosaurs, numeganeura, and nuanomalocaris.

Also he should have kept trees from the beginning, snapping turtles are good climbers, lmao.

>>4797844
Nah, I just like turtles.
>>4798049
Yeah true, it did go a bit fast. But to be fair the beginning of spec evo projects are always bound to go by pretty fast as it just has all the life go into its expected niches pretty fast, not much room for creativity.

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Have you guys checked out clambrian yet?
https://specevo.jcink.net/index.php?showtopic=3675

>>4797721
>mouths are ancestral to everything living more advanced than a placozoan
highly doubt of that given the existence of extremely simple basal bilatereans like the xenacoelomorpha and given that genetic data points to placozoans not being as primitive as once thought, but more dirived animals with cnidarian affinity

>Thus why it's hard to square with a bilaterian affinity
not really given that the most phylogenetic studies to date points to them having a bilaterian affinity and that the mouth and body cavities in bilaterians being an innovation not even of the crown bilaterian clade, but of the nephrozoa clade

>this is the first time I've heard of a connection from stromatoveris to ctenophores specifically
this is how I can know you barely made any research as stromatoveris was initially classify as a cnetophore due the similarities of it's branch structure with the comb structures of cnetophores and only later a petalonamid affinity was proposed and it is still considered Incertae sedis

>By who?
by most studies

> I actually work in the field
highly doubt it

>he consensus here is that proarticulids descend from a petalonamid-like ancestor
it isn't, there is no consensus on the ancestry of proarticulates and the link to petalonamids is ridiculous giving their fractal body plan
also vendozoa is considered paraphyletic

> The idea that the animals exhibiting slide symmetry are actually apart of extant clades has been out of favor since the 90's.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26492825/

>the terminal addition thing
much more convincing than anything you proposed and

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>>4798393
>xenacoelomorpha
Xenocoelomorpha have mouth, hell they still have almost all the genes for an anus. This is pretty solid evidence that not only are mouths ancestral to bilaterians but anuses are too. Which pretty much impossible to reconcile with proarticulids who have neither.
>given that the most phylogenetic studies to date points to them having a bilaterian affinity
Not even remotely true.
>stromatoveris was initially classify as a cnetophore
I have never heard of this, looking into it more thats because it's not true. What actually happened is that stromativeris was initially placed in the petalonamae like you'd expect but a later team proposed a ctenophore classification. However the latest phylogentic analysis show a petalonamae classification as originally proposed. Looks like the ctenophore thing was a proposal that was never widely accepted. Funny you should accuse me of not doing my research when your claims about the history of stromatoveris classification were wrong.
>by most studies
Not true
>highly doubt it
I'm a student at mun and I've gotten to go to mistaken point several times. Hell I've even got to see haootia personally at the rooms.
>there is no consensus on the ancestry of proarticulates
Funny how you go from "most studies" to "no consensus"
>link to petalonamids is ridiculous giving their fractal body plan
lol you don't know anything about petalomanids, pic related but if you need a explanation, not all petalonamae exhibit fractal patterns, in fact the earliest don't and only exhibit slide symmetry like charnia. The fractal ones get their symmetry either by clonal growth like siphonophores or by interating their entire bauplan. Ironically for your point also in side symmetry as shown in pic related.
>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26492825/
oh my god you actually cited the terminal addition guy! This paper is so stupid, it's like claiming bats, pterosaurs and birds must share a flighted common ancestor because wings with bones.

>>4798421
Ran out of room but you should take everything the terminal addition guy says with a grain of salt. Terminal addition is his thing, if you look at the lead authors other papers a good chunk of them are about terminal addition. He's got the whole hammer and nail problem.
I remember reading a paper that did a good takedown of this one. I'll post it here when I rediscover it but the jist of it is that their conclusion is unsupported because proarticulids do terminal addition in a totally different way to bilaterians thus the similarity is only superficial.
>>4798393
>much more convincing than anything you proposed and
and what anon? AND WHAT? Oh god did retallack get you too?!

>>4797863
Peak worldbuilding. Can't believe nobody's wrote a book like this before.

>>4798477
HFY-type writing is great. Shame everyone became contrarian about it because it got popular

>>4794456
I just saw this weird little video in my recommendations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09P7pkucebk

>>4798480
it's not that, it's mostly that HFY went from celebrating humanity and giving us a proper place in a scifi universe rather than just "curious weak newbies"
to self-fellating superiority

"And then humans killed all the weak and cowardly xenos because they are inherently better" does not a good story make

>>4798428
Found the paper https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201600120
>Gold et al. 15 presented evidence that they interpret as showing that Dickinsonia grew by terminal addition, and argued, based on character state reconstruction, that this mode of growth is a synapomorphy of Bilateria. However, there are differences between terminal addition in most extant bilaterians and that seen in Dickinsonia. In bilaterians, somites are usually added at a subterminal position (ahead of, for example, the telson in arthropods). If the smallest units in Dickinsonia were added last (as assumed in 15), then they are added in a genuinely terminal position, and Dickinsonia development would thus be inconsistent with that seen most frequently in extant bilaterians.

>>4797641
>Kappa
i better see some anal fisting or i get my money back

>>4798654
Fair enough, those ones always left my mind. The only ones that stuck were the ones that were those that went "wow, what the fuck why do they walk for so long?" "They eat WHAT? FOR FUN?!"

>>4798780
even those though, it sort of depends if in turn humans are amazed by other species' capabilities and if it's not too dumb

like, our endurance, yes that's probably going to be a defining feature of our species
but for the love of fuck all those "we breathe rocket fuel" texts are beyond stupid
Yes we breathe oxygen, so does probably 90% of all other species

>>4798862
I always figured it was a given that humans would be amazed by the traits of an alien species. It's always rare in Sci fi for aliens to regard humans as anything other than "average" which of course doesn't make sense, because obviously too them, we're aliens, and should be just as interesting.

>>4796462

How is it hard to get a CO2 ocean?

>>4800956
Boiling and freezing point are close together
CO2 ice sinks, CO2 is also a greenhouse gas

Due to the range in which a CO2 ocean can exist being so narrow even fairly minor perturbations would cause either the entire ocean to boil away in a runaway greenhouse effect or else a fairly swift freezing over

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>>4800956
>>4801302
You're only taking into account at earth pressure. At higher pressures CO2 has a much wider range of a liquid state.

>>4801424
Doesn't that higher pressure mess a lot with the required carbon-monoxide atmosphere?

>>4801428
Why would it?

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where to go from here ?

>>4802090
Obviously I see an opportunity for ambush predation, much like a praying mantis, perhaps over time they begin leaning against trees, and adapting a more cryptic camouflage to blend in and mimic the foliage itself, snagging birds and other small animals as they come to roost.

>>4802090
Ignoring NPC-chan, probably something like chalicotheres. Chalicotheres, ground sloths, therizinosaurs, palorchestes, pandas, and gorillas, to name a few, all converged on this same body plan to some degree. It would be incredibly based.

>>4802497
It's NPC-san, you disrespectful shit.

>>4802742
NPC-kuso

>>4794456
Does anyone remember what the website that had a lot of the spec Evo books is called?
It was sivarium or something

>>4803349
It's sivatherium dot narod dot ru

>>4803357
Thank you anon

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>>4798147
Some great designs here. Interested to see where it goes.

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>>4804362
It went to crap.

>>4805342
I should mention it goes from scallops to reef fish mimics in only 20 million years.

>>4801424

So about 60 atmospheres ranging from -70 to -20 degrees.

>>4802090

Powered flight obviously

>Human keep on the evolutionary trend of giving birth more and more prematurely so the brain can grow even more, leading to almost fetal infants and the species in almost pseudo marsupials (pouch evolution is optional)

>>4798654
its not like the opposite is good either, the main one i can think of is avatar, theres a lot of nonsense in that movie that helped spawn a lot the hfy when you just think through

>>4809353
neither of them makes a good story that's the entire point, doesn't have to be either-or
that said, frankly, most HFY these days is more aggravating than the thing that spawned it in the first place (Avatar)
At least there humans weren't automatically the worst at everything, while HFY actually does make humans best at everything

>>4794456
what a great fucking picture damn

>>4809394
ironically the humans were the best in that movie, because it took a human to catch the biggest thing and unite tribes, and to fight off the humans
humans being the best at everything is usually the result of someone being kinda racist with ideas of manifest destiny and white mans burden, and opposing side the noble savage, which ironically is rooted in racism and post war fatigue. ultimately the fate of species is decided by whoever has the technological advantage, if you can travel the stars, youve ultimately broken the laws of physics with technology and your physiology has no real bearing on anything anymore, because youve invented technology to break the laws of physics, and thats when you need to invent space magic

>>4809431
Traveling the stars does not require breaking the laws of physics.

>>4809433
Yeah it actually does
>inb4 muh warp bubbles powered by dark fluid
speculation that came out after star trek surprise. fuckin nerds.

>>4809433
it does
>>4809441
dark matter fundamentally breaks the laws of physics, because we cannot really explain it with conventional physics, a bunch of exceptions and modifications have to be made and even then, they dont work

>>4809441
It doesn't require alcubierre drives.
>>4809445
It doesn't.
You can do interstellar travel reasonably with nuclear fission engines.

>>4809447
>200 years til proxima centauri strap in boys
>*hits pebble*
>*ship explodes*
There’s a reason scifi always has “energy shields”

>>4809447
yeah, in like 100,000 years
ftl is physically impossible, because its takes a lot of energy to move that fast, it also takes a lot of energy to move that much mass, also energy has mass as does the fuel you have, which means you need energy2 to move energy

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>>4809451
We could do proxima centauri in 12 years with a reasonable nuclear engine. Debris is only an issue at very high fractions of the speed of the light. Would be doable with a simple ablative shield. Sci-fi uses energy shields not because it's the only way to do it but because they're typically doing 99%+ c or higher. Because thats what makes an interesting story.
>>4809453
You don't need FTL to travel between stars.

>>4809462
>proxima centauri in 12 years with a reasonable nuclear engine
we are not inventing a spaceship that can travel 300 trilllion km/hr anytime soon

>>4809465
The US government did that in the 60's. Sadly environmentalist bumkins had a problem with exploding 40 nukes in earths atmosphere to get the ship into orbit.
Imagine, we could be a multi-stellar species by now...

>>4809468
>its revealed to me in a dream

>>4809469
Actually it was revealed to an undeserving humanity by this paper from general dynamics published in 1964
https://web.archive.org/web/20100511090218/https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19760065935_1976065935.pdf

>>4809465
Lol where are you getting your numbers? 300 trillion is way faster than the speed of light, if you were going that speed you'd get to proxima in 12 hours, not 12 years.

>>4809431
Why do you have to bring your schizophrenia into a fun discussion

>>4809468
>in the 60s
>largely before money started being sank into useless projects like “”””human aid””””
yeah, that makes sense

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>>4809431
the way they travel in Avatar is 100% conform the laws of physics and in fact, one of the most impressive parts of the movie is just how realistic their space ship is

humans in Avatar explicitly do not got FTL

>>4809462
the way they travel in Avatar is pretty neat, the ship accelerates using a massive solar-energy powered laser station allow it to reach relativistic velocities

It only needs fuel + reaction matter to slow down on approach of pandora and to accelerate when leaving it

>>4809471
they've actually continues to research nuclear propulsion and solved the pusher plate ablation issue
also daedalus-type drives are very promising

>>4809613
>>4809614
That’s pretty cool actually. Something about that doesn’t really seem scientifically feasible, like finding materials durable enough to construct a ship out of and travel at relativistic speeds, but it’s a neat take on space travel regardless. (40K still takes it for the coolest form imo.)

>>4809675
it has an ablative plate at the front and ontop of it a magnetic deflector which is pretty damn powerful because they have room temperature superconductors
also has active laser-deflectors

It also travels at only 0.7c so it doesn't quite need the same level of protection as 0.9c ships need

it's also pretty neat in design, someone who had a hardon for hard scifi designed it, only the small part where the shuttles dock is the habitation module, the one in front of it is supplies and cargo, and everything else to the back is engines, radiators and fuel storage

the fact alone it has fuckhuge radiators is such a fun detail

fuel storage seems small but that's because it can farm out the launch to the photon-beam from the sun, which in turn also catches the ship on the return voyage
they also do use anti-hydrogen as fuel, again fact they have room temperature superconductors allowing containment and generation, the Sol system is supposed to have rather extensive space infrastructure

really it all makes sense, and unobtainium is (dumb name aside) both what makes it possible and what incentivizes the trip
the only unrealistic part is that with the technology needed to make the ship function, the humans "should" be capable of reversing whatever is fucking up earth

>>4809424
Alien biospheres had some great art made for it. I wish there was a way to access it all without joining a discord.

New future is wild fan species
https://youtu.be/_6uWmMGxRXE

>>4809613
>>4809727
I appreciate that it uses light sails, interstellar travel without saving that high amount of mass for the outbound acceleration phase just doesn't make sense.
>>4802090
Bipedal being with arms that bend the other way is pretty cool. Imagine the bows it could wield, if it had any fingers

>>4794456
/v/ refugee here, reverse image search just brought me back here
where is the pic from?

>>4811064
the Alien Biospheres project by Biblaridion on Youtube. Not sure if it's directly from it or if it's fanart as I stopped watching like 2 years ago because the author is a bong cuck fag trannylover (all of the above)

>>4811064
>>4811114
Ignore this anon
It's from the last episode of Alien Biospheres
and some people got their panties in a twist that the aliens can actively change sex under certain pressures, which is treated as a unique biological quirk rather than any "tranny" thing

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>>4794456
What's a plausible way to make felines, particularly pantherines more dangerous/successful as predators?

I was playing with the idea that an Africa-dwelling pantherine about the size of the Sumatran tiger evolves denser sharper claws as a way to better compete against social animals like lions, hyenas, and wild dogs, along with slightly but noticeably higher intelligence. I'm inspired by the sabertooth cats who invested in long deadly fangs that could quickly kill the prey; I'm thinking that improved claws would help in grappling prey and foes to the ground.
What do guys think?

>>4811171
am i misremembering or didn’t he say something about it (presumably to save his ass)

>>4811256
Sequential hermaphroditism always was treated in the series as a biological quirk, it also does not work in both directions, only male to female, and they can't actively control it consciously

it's also not treated like their society is some perfect wonderland, females of the sapient species are a highly conservative ruler class that violently protects it's hierarchy

>>4811212
stupid
tigers are really successful predators, else they wouldnt exist
the only real way solitary hunters can compete with pack hunters is to be significantly bigger than them, which is not a good thing for mammals, but it works because you bully other predators and they dont want to poke the bear
sabertooths evolved saberteeth because theyre fucking gigantic compared to other felines and they were hunting gigantic prey, so you need some larger teeth to actually kill it, but you also need to be large to be not be manhandled by prey
if youre that big to be able grapple prey to the ground, you dont need super hard claws, they just need to be able to grab it enough without slipping and breaking, because size and momentum is going to do all the work, so the claws are going to be stronger but thats relative to a smaller animal, where this isnt abnormally strong relative to its size
higher intelligence isnt a good thing, more brain power requires more energy, it just needs to be smart enough, and you dont need to be that smart to be an ambush predator, a tiger is smart enough for whatever it is trying to do, which is still pretty smart
and then they wouldnt need to compete with other species because theyre going after different prey, like if theyre gigantic like sabertooths, they could hunt elephants and hippos regularly rather than zebra and gazelle and can coexist in the same ecosystem because theyre now occupying different ecological niches
also the sumatran tiger is tiny as fuck and just gets bodied by lions, so it doesnt matter its got longer fangs or sharper claws, size matters and theyll just get bullied a lone lion, let alone a pride

>>4811171
>answers accurately
>ignore this anon
???

>>4811358
>is to be significantly bigger than them, which is not a good thing for mammals
Thanks for the feedback, what do you mean being bigger isn't a good thing for mammals?

>>4811531
mammals have a hard time being big because we are endotherms, you retain a fuck load of heat and energy spend an even bigger fuck load of energy to stay warm and cool off constantly, especially in a warm region like africa, its a lot easier for reptiles to get bigger there because they can spend more energy on growing rather than heating themselves constantly

>>4811559
Biggest animal ever is a mammal thoughbeit.

>>4811618
because they live in the ocean where the water can support their mass, and is very cold