WHAT IS SPECULATIVE EVOLUTION?Speculative evolution is the exploration and imagining of how life might evolve in the future or could have evolved in alternate pasts. It's a multimedia sci-fi genre that harnesses scientific principles to create detailed and plausible hypothetical creatures, ecosystems, and evolutionary histories.RESOURCES:https://speculativeevolution.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Tutorial>One-stop shop for relevant background information for starting a projecthttp://planetfuraha.blogspot.com/>Fantastic blog covering all sorts of spec evo topics in-depthhttps://specevo.jcink.net/>The Speculative Evolution forums, full of resources and ongoing projectsRECOMMENDED PROJECTS:https://pastebin.com/zhBbaNTB>Link to a PDF of Wayne Barlowe’s “Expedition”, a seminal work of speculative evolution full of incredible paintings and illustrationshttps://youtu.be/Rbi8Jgx1CNE>”The Future is Wild”, a CGI documentary following the evolution of life on Earth in the far futurehttps://pastebin.com/esdFrSEZ>Dougal Dixon, arguably the father of speculative evolution. These are links to PDF’s of his books “After Man”, “The New Dinosaurs”, and “Man After Man”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egzZv8tqT_k&list=PL6xPxnYMQpquNuaEffJzjGjMsr6VktCYl&ab_channel=Biblaridionhttps://sites.google.com/site/worldofserina/https://sunriseonilion.wordpress.com/http://www.cmkosemen.com/snaiad_web/snduterus.htmlhttps://www.deviantart.com/sanrou/gallery/56844005/nauhttp://www.planetfuraha.nl/https://multituberculateearth.wordpress.com/https://sites.google.com/view/lokiworldofrats/homehttps://specevo.jcink.net/index.php?showtopic=4578&st=15https://www.deviantart.com/bicyclefroghttps://hardeshur.blogspot.com/p/main-page.htmlhttps://rylmadolisland.blogspot.com/p/main-page.html?zx=bba41f9d602b6b9a
>>4894711these look like the worms that crawl up in a milf's asshole to breed her in my fetish story
Offf to a great start I see.
>>4895293Can you post it
>>4894711Saw this pop up in my feed the other dayhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYTvdEwlkk8&t=10sSeems really fucking stupid, from the very idea to the designs
>>4894711>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egzZv8tqT_k&list=PL6xPxnYMQpquNuaEffJzjGjMsr6VktCYl&ab_channel=Biblaridion [Embed]just finished watching this whole seriespretty kinokinda annoyed that both lineages of land animals have 4 sets of walking limbs and 6 total eyes as an ancestral trait, though. does genetically engineering animals to live on human space colonies count as spec evobecause I've got some cool animal ideas but I'm thinking of them in context of my oneill cylinder fantasy world wherein they'd probably have been engineered.
Sapient Mixocete just dropped!
>>4895535This! All he needed to do was knock off a pair of eyes or add some to one group.
here's an idea Carnivorous Sauropods
>>4895661The only way it could work would be as an opportunistic omnivore scavenger
>>4895661>>4895713In theory it could work on an island environment. If Cold-Blooded Goats could evolve (Myotragus)... Neck should be shorter though and skull larger as a predator however.
we have a discord right, and its deadshould it be shilled here more
>>4895752Usually I would /pol/post but the new spam rule is overburdensome. I'm more of an /an/poster tbqh.
This is my imaginary island country of Regalia, located in the northwestern Atlantic.What kind of endemic wildlife would be feasible to exist there? The nearest landmass is Newfoundland in Canada.
>>4895422seems like he smoked the kaimere ganja
>>4895752yeah it's 100% dead last post was in like march
>>4895931based upon its location just southeast of newfoundland, it'd probably have mostly similar mammal fauna, but more limited. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mammals_of_Newfoundlandunique species might include minuscule subspecies of black bear and deer.
>>4895604The fucks a mixocete?captcha: S O Y M A N
I'll just leave this here: https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-observed-evidence-evolution-real-120000860.html
>>4895962QRD?
>>4896167I'm just saying the designs for those tyrannosauroids remidn me of kaimere's designs in their head ornamentation
>>4896049Well it's a descendant of Whales from the Early Oligocene if they hybridised at that date 32 mya on another world, giving them a mixture of features from Odontocetes and Mysticetes. This one is from a lineage that became amphibious.
https://youtu.be/q455668UgWc?si=Ck1Gox5uLnz-UR_qput on your baseball kaps, because this shit's a wild ride.
>>4896448I'm gonna put my thinking kap on instead
>saw a vid where scientist prefer humanity not going the tech/singularity route and let us evolve naturally. fuck bots that may put us in a matrix
>>4896447I can barely see anything
>>4896520Sorry I have a shitty camera.
>>4896574Apology accepted, don't let it happen again.
>>4896580Going to charge up the ol' tablet. Has a good camera.
>>4896586Good, can't wait to see what you got.
>>4896588Soon now...
>>4896588How's this?
>>4896597
>>4896597>>4896599Why's it so humanoid? Where'd the back legs come from?
>>4896600Came from several Atavisms quite early on. No land predators on the planet's since only else is Brown Algae, Krill, Fish and Squid so became quite advantageous.
>>4896601Do you have land fish and land squid and land krill?
>>4896599It probably shouldn't have a tail fluke or such an expandable throat if it's so adapted to land.Also nitpick but most cetaceans only have 4 fingers in their fins, not 5.
>>4896603What forced them onto land facultatively was actually giant predatory Fish. The land became somewhat of a retreat. There is Sand Hoppers and Land Kelp however of which take the niche of Insects and Land Plants respectively.
>>4896605Delphinids have 5 phalanges, the Mixocetes retained 10 on the front and 8 on the back since they come from earlier Oligocene stock.
>>4896607>forced them onto land facultatively was actually giant predatory FishI find this unlikely, airbreathers just have far more potential to get bigger than water breathers. Megalodon was probably pushing the upper limit of what size animals with gills can reach.
>>4896610The difference was Mixocetes were toothless with baleen not long after the hybridisation event of their early Oligocene Ancestors, limiting their future niches. I could see Xiphactinus-like descendants of Ray-Finned Fish popping up.
>>4896612But also eating small oily Fish and Squid as well as Krill as echolocators oddly enough, the Mixocetes could power their yuge brains.
>>4896612>The difference was Mixocetes were toothless with baleen not long after the hybridisation event of their early Oligocene Ancestors, limiting their future nichesI could easily see them adapt their baleen into quills that function like teeth.
>>4896605It's truly barely adapted to land, only going there to retreat and collect stuff, they even burned flotsam to keep warm in winter in their pre-civilisation state.
>>4896615Some Macropredatory Mixocetes do, just not this one. One could argue the filter-feeders became safer on land with all those big Teleosts and Macropredatory Mixocetes. Like somewhere between a Shorebird and a Flamingo with traits of Otter and Beaver in there.
Can you have a insect a bit like eevee where what it can metamorphize into multiple different things?Instead of two sets of DNA where one dies and the other is activated, it has three sets, two potential things that it could turn into, but which one it does turn into, is influenced by the environment. So it could have one form being of a butterfly sort, and another form being of a beetle sort.
>>4896621Would be quite cumbersome, but sexual dimorphism could be a thing with this.
>>4896448The giant crocodile turtle is probably one of the most plausible spec designs i've seen in a while since it's just a giant snapper, bear turtle is also cool
>>4896621epigenetics can go a long ass way if need be towards generating different morphologies most plausible might be an aquatic nymph form insect that either morphs into an aquatic adult or a terrestrial adult depending on environmental factors?
https://youtu.be/Be_W5rPSXKI?si=ui1SiLmYSdB-mpxPsome type of coastal parrot adapting to durophagy, eating various crustaceans, perhaps molluscs. Bonus: using their legs and beaks to pull them along coral and/or seaweed/kelp instead of swimming. Mite b kul.
>>4896621I think ants do this? as in some become a queen or worker or something. not exactly sure if that's true or how it works though
>>4895931To determine that, you would have to answer the following questions:>how much of Regalia was covered by ice during the ice age?>if Regalia was completely covered up by ice, then has Regalia had a land connection to North America since the ice melted?>if not, then when did Regalia last have a land connection to another landmass, or has it always been isolated?
>>4898221other important question is how long ago did human got in the island Because if the Europeans were the first ones he could justify even pygmy mammoths
>>4895293We need spec takes on hentai tentacle monsters/parasites fr!
>>4896621I guess something like locusts having differences depending on how the environment and abundance of food is. Its called phase polyphenism
Alright, here we go>holocene extinction occurs>most birds and rodents, and some monkeys, felines and canines survive>birds end up dominating due to generally superior eyesight and moderate sense of smell, versatile beak for scavenging, generally higher average intelligence, social behavior>also, they have lower body weight due to pneumatic bones and thus require less food to survive, have generalist diets, more efficient respiration than mammals, and can fly and leave environments easily>birds end up diversifying rapidly while mammals are relegated to rodents, monkeys and the odd small carnivore>millions of years later>birds on land evolve analogs of elephant birds, terror birds, oviraptors, utahraptors, neimengosaurus and paraxenisaurus, before figuring out to extend their tails by making the fused bone large>in the sea gigantic penguins fill the niches left by whales, dolphins and seals, and gigantic storks and flamingos abandon wings and become plesiosaur analogs>the mesozoic dinosaur dominance never ended, it merely took a short break during the late cenozoic
>>4898514to be fair, synapsids and sauropsids have sort of been alternating dominance, there's nothing inherent to either that would suggest they naturally belong on top also might be the issue that rodents like rats are just about the most effective predators of small birds imaginable
>>4895293Are you that politics guy that got caught looking at hentai?
>>4898534... you realize how little that narrows it down?
anyone know of whoever artist cooked this amphibian Champ, and that squid Ningen?
>>4898514>birds end up dominating due to generally superior eyesight and moderate sense of smell, versatile beak for scavenging, generally higher average intelligence, social behaviorWhy didn't this lead to them dominating after the K-Pg?
>>4899504because many more mammal lineages survived the Kpg extinction then bird lineages
>>4899614Even if thats true why would it matter? many more lineages of dicynodonts survived the permian yet it's not them who eventually dominated.
>>4899617because it means that are more variation and niches that can be explored right way enabling them to diversify and take over quicker >many more lineages of dicynodonts survived the permian yet it's not them who eventually dominated.No, only three lineages of dicynodonts survived the great dying less than the number of Archosauromorphs lineages that survived the great dying and the number of avian lineages that survived the K-pg extinction
>>4899614Issue I guess is trying to think of an extinction event that would leave significantly more avians alive than mammals especially given the "bat" factor, its exceedingly difficult to dream up any scenario that would hardly kill bird lineages while simultaneously wiping out most if not all bats I'm also not quite sold on birds winning out an evolutionary race against rodents in an extinction level event, the latter are far more adaptive due to lower generational time
New Kaimere video https://youtu.be/g9Xbvp_FBF8
>>4899954stop posting this tranny projectalso it's so strange that I almost always happen to check this thread soon after you shill it here, I only check it like twice a week maybe. I wonder why it always syncs up like this.but yeah not a fan, as always.
>>4900069Lemme guess... it's "tranny" cuz one of the mermaid homunculi are spliced with a fish that can change sex, like how ya freaks proclaimed Serina had that too just cuz of the tripodal deer fish having the same biological quirk? Or mayhaps it was just a brief passing mention of a human character being one? "oooh NOOO, the bare minimum example of a sample of the human condition included, oh the horror!" stfu no one cares for you, die alone and in the dark, forgotten and unseen, unloved, anon.
>>4900113Alien Biospheres also had itReally none of that ever struck me as "tranny" But rather because spec-evo tends to try and use things that are less common in our world but still interesting
>>4900113https://youtu.be/5SIo4sq1Kc8?si=pFebzQ9crut-faAythe entire project is an excuse to write fanfiction (multiple books) about his particular tranny butch lesbian black waifus. Disingenuous retard.
Serina went to shit the second they added sentient species
>>4900291and unfortunately once you add them you sort of have to focus on them because most of your audience is now fixated on them
Seems like europa is being discussed again. What sort of life can exist here? Most life will probably stick to the ocean floor since that's where the energy is but also the pressure is so high, even tardigrades from earth wouldn't survive. Does that write off the possibility of large multicellular life?
>>4900290Waow based!
>>4900291>sapient*
I'm building a honeybee seed world, it's got no vertebrates. Three arachnids, one oceanic crustacean and mainly Apis melifera and (eight species of) plants.I've got one spec evo video, and I'm working on the second quite feverishly. https://youtu.be/0_HwP-ePjdU
>>4900747just bee urself
What would be a fun way for giant flightless birds to lose heatOne idea is thermoregulation through the beak. This works on some species like the big-beaked predators but there's herbivores too which have much smaller heads and beaks, where this wouldnt be an option.Another would be a wide variety of vasculated crests on the beak and head that function kind of like the ears of an elephant.Another would be to make them bald or at least very sparsely feathered above certain sizes. Another would be to have a series of wattles and all sorts of fleshy bits dangling down from their head and neck, however if these birds would fight I imagine they would get all ripped up.Another would be that they evolve some rudimentary sweat glands. However I'm not sure how necessary sweating is. Despite it having a huge advantage in dumping heat it also means that they would need to drink an ungodly amount of water. Also, elephants despite also being enormous and warm-blooded, hardly sweat at all.Last thing I can come up with is they coat their legs in moisture from their mouth or something, the way kangaroos lick their forearms to cool down.
>>4900778I'm also considering the shapes of the bill. For something that big, it can't dance around on one foot to kick things, and so it has no other way to capture and kill prey besides the beak. As such the feet have no talons and are purely concerned with weight distribution and locomotion, while the beak has to be a highly versatile tool thats extremely specialized. Yet I've mostly just used the general terror bird or eagle-type beak with a single hook at the end, which were all used in conjunction with talons on the feet. Imagining it taking down something the size of an elephant, I don't know if that kind of a beak would be enough. Should there be some serration involved? Maybe multiple tomia? Or should the beak instead be shorter and more macaw-like, a pincer shape used to exert more force.
>>4900784pseudoteeth might work
>>4900778I think ostriches have stretches of bare skin under their wings that they can beat their wings over to cool their core a bit, that might work on a larger scale. You could also have them use their neck and the muscles that controls their ability to fluff feathers so they could raise a bunch of sparse feathers arranged in like rings or something to cool off their neck, maybe.>Another would be to have a series of wattles and all sorts of fleshy bits dangling down from their head and neck, however if these birds would fight I imagine they would get all ripped up.Or it could serve as thick, fleshy armor like a badger or bear has. Might work.>>4900784Shorter crushing beak makes more sense to me. Could also develop spurs on their legs so that they can us it to hold an animal down after making a first bite; that could let them use their weight to their advantage without dealing with fast kicks.
>>4899102fr tho, did some legendary drawfag just... randomly popped in and cooked such kino shit in that old spec thread on /x/ b4 fading into the abyss??
>>4900747Nice work anon! Don't forget that most of the bees are solitary
>>4901364Thank you, the purple lineage has already reached a solitary niche, so it's gonna blow up soon.
>>4901316would you the beakussy?
>>4901474
>>4900747>That one clam world project with dog sized bees
Anyone knows what will happen to an ecosystem if the insects are the size of dogs?
>>4902942what kind of insect, thats pretty important
>>4902942Carboniferous 2.0: Hymenoptera Boogaloo
>>4902961Every insect.From bees to ants to bugs to flies to maggots.What i want to know is can dog-sized insects still participate on decomposition process?
>>4903262>bees, butterflies, and other general pollinatorsno more fruit bats or hummingbirds, giant flowers get bigger>ants, termites, and other colony insecttheres a problem now, where they basically strip the land clean around the nest for underground farms>fliesnot much changes really, i guess birds would get fucked up or get more food>beetles and other detrivoresprobably going to be rarer because theyre going to strip the land clean, at a certain point theyll stop eating shit and eat normal things>predatory insectsvery dangerous, predatory beetles will fuck up a lot; parasitic wasps, cazadores;
>>4903262A dog sized bee would not be able to fly to begin with unless it's wings changed completely
>>4903265>not much changes really, i guess birds would get fucked up or get more food>falcons and other agile predatory birds getting in an arms race with giant flies to become agile enough to catch them>birds and giant flies darting and weaving through forests at break neck speeds and making turns that would normally obliterate something of similar sizeSounds kino actually
>>4901316still wondering, btw...
>>4898542I mean he is famous for being caught and lying about it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWg6z5ODZBYAlso he was just a /lit/fag sorry.
Has anyone ever tried some kino shit like pondering the ecology of Hell/Inferno and/or Heaven/Paradiso? Think that could be an interesting gem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el97A8PMqbQ
>>4904458Midwit core channel
>>4904376Wayne barlowe did hell
>>4904547Shame the demons are often literally just humans, sure i'd be fine if they're still humanoid, but literally got human/simian features, especially the face
>>4904376>Has anyone ever tried some kino shit like pondering the ecology of HellThis was my original project when I was like 15 years oldNothing remains of that except shitty pencil drawings and terrible writing
>>4903265giant ants would probably adapt to live in far smaller colonies, like dozens or hundreds individuals at most.
Anyone know any good spec evo games?
>>4896448
>>4906223There aren't any besides spore, is there?
>>4896621Epigenetics are a hell of a drugI'm fairly sure Ants do thisMaybe you could work that into a non-colony arthropod
Parasitic Isopod that replaces your dick but is otherwise fully functional and benign. It even replicates sensation and becomes completely enslaved to the host's nervous system.It is also quite largewould you, /an/?
>>4906298>>>/d/
>>4894711I think a pantherine with high visual acuity would absolutely dominate as an apex predator and eventually have a longer rein than that of the sabertooth cats.Also, is the fact that the Ndagong Tiger was able to drive a sabertooth cat and a giant hyena species to extinction and mesopredator status respectively mean that the pantherines are overall superior as predators to machairodonts?
>>4906849it means that in that specific instance it was better. It really could have gone a different way had the populations had only a few changes, like a behavioral quirk or something.
>>4901316>>4899102you guys remember me?
>>4906223Adapt if its finished alreadyThrive if it ever comes out
>>4906916We do, whom are thou, oh great and mysterious drawfag?
>>4907007Thrive has really nice roots, but I highly doubt it's going anywhere, sadly.
Bird-bugs
>>4906906The Ndagong Tiger grew in size specifically to compete against the hyena add sabertooth cats, that's pretty impressive.
>>4895293You should ask for your brain to be preserved post-mortem for studying.
>>4906849>the Ngandong Tiger was able to drive a sabertooth and a giant hyena to extinctionCitation fucking needed, otherwise, this is nothing more than a personal headcanon
>>4907888Again, source or gtfo.
>>4907898>>4907899https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283496418_Niche_overlap_and_competition_potential_among_tigers_Panthera_tigris_sabertoothed_cats_Homotherium_ultimum_Hemimachairodus_zwierzyckii_and_Merriam's_Dog_Megacyon_merriami_in_the_Pleistocene_of_Java>On Java during the Pleistocene, tigers of more than 300 kg occurred, but these are restricted to a single Late Pleistocene faunal unit, while Early and Middle Pleistocene tigers possessed body masses comparable to those of historic Javanese and extant Sumatran tigers. However, former studies have excluded carnivores from the Middle Pleistocene site of Sangiran where tigers co-occurred with machairodonts (Hemimachairodus zwierzyckii and Homotherium ultimum) and the large Merriam's Dog (Megacyon merriami). The aim of this study is to test if large tiger individuals occurred already in Early and/or Middle Pleistocene sites in Java and evaluate competition potential among carnivores from Sangiran and its consequences.>We calculated body masses and prey mass spectrum for tigers and potential competitors using linear regressions. Niche overlap was then estimated based on the prey mass spectrum after which niche-overlaps were used as indicators for competition potentials. Reconstructed body mass for H. ultimum, H. zwierzyckii, M. merriami are154 kg (comparable to Homotherium from Untermassfeld), 130 kg and 52 kg, respectively. The niche overlap be-tween tigers and Merriam's Dog is highest (100%) while it is comparatively low (60%) between tigers and H. ultimum.>Tigers have not increased body mass before Ngandong faunal level, but competitors like Merriam's Dog seem to have decreased body mass to avoid competition with tigers. The sabertoothed cats on the other hand seem to have been unable to adapt to competition and went extinct.
>>4894711Can you reupload the Dougal Dixon books? I'd really like to see those.Im pretty sure libgen doesnt exist anymore or something.
>>4907842seeing shit like this just makes me mad. This is clearly an example of some soulless ESL retard who grinds fundies 24/7 but has absolutely no imagination. "what if x... but really y?" is the absolute worst trope in spec evo. This is awful.
>>4908317Go to sivatherium
