File: 1.png (204 KB, 461x502)

204 KB PNG

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 like seed worlds and speculative ecologies. Imagining how species interact and form novel ecosystems is fun.

>>5040573
why are people incapable of fixing the OP?

>>5040573

Ay, thanks for putting an image of my project

what about a bird but with bat wings?

File: 22JURASSIC-superJumbo.jpg (379 KB, 2048x1366)

379 KB JPG

>>5041366
It kinda happened already.

>>5041366

The problem is that bird wing fingers are locked tightly together, the opposite of a bat wing.

>>5041368

This, but apparently they weren't good fliers/gliders

>>5041155
it's a tradition at this point

>>5041464

They're not as efficient though. One feather too less and they're flightless, while bats can operate with 20% of their wing membranes gone.

Further, bird wings are mostly dead tissue, while bat wings are living tissue all the way and can flex and bend, adding more agility

>>5041464
They didn't evolve in that direction. Scansoriopterygids are well outside of Avialae and represent a totally independent evolution of flight in dinosaurs. And they're a lineage that was probably outcompeted by birds given that there's no evidence of them outside of the Jurassic

>>5041464
no, bird wings are really inefficient, theyre only good at soaring, not so much with tight turns, also bird are kinda badly "designed" at flying, because you have legs, which do nothing to aid with flying, only landing.
and think about the amount things that a species to go through to achieve feathers, its like intelligence, theres a much easier path that have existed and worked, pterosaurs were extremely successful, lizards and squirrels have developed skin flaps, by all accounts feathers are a fluke that really shouldnt exist

>>5042244
I don't think anyone has scanned it. It's not on Zlibrary either and it seems to only be available in hardcopy. I haven't found any digital copies for sale.

>>5040573

bumpu

>>5042231
Pterosaurs were even worse at tight turns and such than birds, there's a reason birds outcompeted pterosaurs at every small niche

>>5043396

Not true, there were small pterosaurs in the Late Cretaceous like Piksi. There simply are not enough sites with high degree of preservation.

Pterosaur wings were pretty efficient, more so than bird wings but perhaps not as much as bat wings

>>5043396
yes, but pterosaurs got fucking hueg, 10 meters across and as heavy as 500 lbs, the heaviest bird was 7 meters across at 270lbs, and wasnt some bitchass scavenger, it was a predator through and through because it didnt waste its time on legs, it put all its effort into wings
the only reason why birds are successful is because pterosaurs arent around, and even then, the moment they suffer a setback, bats are waiting to take over the diurnal timeslot

>>5043588
there were some small ones remaining but given that pterosaurs went extinct while multiple separate bird lineages made it through, that's a fairly good indicator that the smaller niches were dominated by birds

birds absolutely had several advantages in several niches over pterosaurs, as evidenced by them managing to establish themselves while pterosaurs were already widespread, same thing with bats having advantages in several niches over birds

>>5043591
Bats can't soar, so any aerial niche that requires it is pretty safe for birds, now that does leave them possibly vulnerable to getting pterosaur'd but bats have been around for a while and haven't really managed to intrude on the passerines in any way

>>5043628
>multiple separate bird lineages made it through
not multiple, only three and barely

>>5043628
bruh, soaring is literally just holding your arms out, its not rocket science
and again, moving into a niche while its occupants are still there is extremely difficult, and bats have only existed for 50 million years and have taken over the entire nocturnal timeslot, birds have been around for 140 million and all they got is owls

>>5043689
three is multiple, the fact three made it through and 0 pterosaurs is not just purely through luck, birds were represented significantly better in niches that would let them survive the K-Pg event

>>5043690
And bats can't do it, their specific form of flight and their wing structure simply can't give them controlled soaring unless it is completely restructured, and none of the niches bats occupy really give them evolutionary pressure to evolving it, since it would likely come at a cost of their maneuverability which leads to momentary fitness decrease

And I already mentioned that bats are better at several niches, just a couple in particular that they're unsuited to taking from birds

there's also nightingales, nightjars both of which have large distribution

>>5043628
>that's a fairly good indicator that the smaller niches were dominated by birds
no it isn't
the three lineages of birds that survived were all ground nesting semi-terrestrial animals, the more arboreal enantiornithes which were the dominant clade of birds at the time that you'd be arguing out competed pterosaurs all died out as well.

>>5043725
>>5043690
>>5043628
>>5043628

Fruit bats are known to soar

File: SCIENCE.png (74 KB, 585x475)

74 KB PNG

>>5040574
I highly recommend this book: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324061748

Out of everything I've read on evolution, I'd say that no book does a better job of conveying fundamental principles of evolution in a very intuitive way. Not only that, but it goes on to bridge the gap between evolutionary theory, mathematical/physical aspects of lifeform morphology, animal behaviour and human species-typical behaviour.

It's an amazing introductory read, but even for those already involved in the evolutionary sciences it has the potential to provide new insights on material that most would consider rudimentary.

This is the 9th edition but the document formatting is kind of shitty: https://oceanofpdf.com/authors/robert-boyd/pdf-epub-how-humans-evolved-download/

This is the 8th edition and contains the original textbook formatting: https://dokumen.pub/how-humans-evolved-8nbsped-9780393603453-9780393630114.html

>>5043917
is pic saying that as animals get bigger their strength does not scale accordingly because their internals does not keep up, because i dont understand what its ratio to fixed area volume matters unless thats what it means and this is jargon

New Kaimere Video
https://youtu.be/kfrVXc9j0f4

>>5045485
more like gaymere amirite

>>5045485
Why is the Serradens video no longer up? I watched the Sauropod video and it made me want to watch the Carcharodontosaur video, and it doesn't seem to be there.

Anyways, here are some other new-ish videos from other projects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=475Cun9fqaE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYZnTBLix4M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8FZcdfWvDY

My parents offered me the "After Man" book by Dougal Dixon for my 13th birthday. I was madly in love with this book at the time and I still have it !

File: image_2025-09-12_163149916.png (55 KB, 154x178)

55 KB PNG

>>5045635
picrel

>>5045485
>my favorite tranny self-insert D&D campaign journal uploaded another video guys!!!!
Not spec evo, kill yourself, lmao.

Random thought I had recently. Aren't there some horses that live right next to the ocean, like the sable island horses? Horses are notoriously chunky and can get hurt from laying down too long, like a lot of marine mammals. I wonder if they could eventually adapt to be semiaquatic or fully aquatic eventually? What do you think?

>>5045733

Problem is that only have one digit, so the transition from a columnar leg to a paddle would be hard.

File: 1744531182222833.png (202 KB, 620x492)

202 KB PNG

>>5045915
could go with a penguin or ichtyosaur arrangement, maybe (penguin: widening the bone and adding structure using soft materials, icthyosaur: duplicating bone)

File: 1674444829677463.jpg (72 KB, 622x617)

72 KB JPG

>>5043690
>and all they got is owls
and all bats got are bats. what's your point?

>>5043690
>and all they got is owls
wait was this a serious post? there's at least dozens of nocturnal bird lineages. nightjars and potoos, night parrots, kiwi, etc

File: snaiad_trannies.jpg (25 KB, 607x582)

25 KB JPG

Snaiads be like

>>5047173
don't remind me koseman is so disgusting

File: G0_j1NQWEAAr_Vj.jpg (116 KB, 968x1044)

116 KB JPG

>>5047173
>>5047438
Now teasing the chinese with a creature they will never be able to each or turn into pills for erectile dysfunction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSGdsqLgRYk

>>5049559
rolling
(I'm working on assumption that post ending in 0 = 10, and dubs = 11)

New Kaimere video
https://youtu.be/A99eaBdmjfg

>>5050582
Sick, my favorite trans-affirming dnd campaign lore channel uploaded! but why did you post it in the spec evo thread?

>>5050582
did this fag do Livyatan or is he a mega faggot?

I was watching the DS9 episode where Quark goes visit his mother on the Ferengi homeplanet, ferenginar, and it rains all the time there, just constant rain.
Did anyone ever made a spec evo project about life in a planet with non-stop rain?
What adaptations would evolve in a planet like that?

File: carboniferous_chart_by_ma(...).jpg (143 KB, 1920x480)

143 KB JPG

>>5051444
amphibious animals and probably those can can breath both in and above water and those can have adapted to be waterproof and the ability to not be affected by extreme humidity and temperature swings. So crocs and a lot of amphibians. Imagine carboniferous period of earth.

>>5049559
They deserve it

>>5051444
complete non-stop rain would require some rather specific atmospheric circumstances, could definitely be interesting to theorize what it would be like but I have the feeling that dealing with those necessary conditions might be harder than dealing with constant rain

>>5051444
>>5051512

Earth did undergo a non-stop rain in the late Triassic. Killed off most reptiles and allowed dinosaurs and pterosaurs to flourish

File: fll3.png (1.02 MB, 2377x2385)

1.02 MB PNG

>>5040573
Plummobaatar diathagoia, a new submission for Multituberculate Earth: https://multituberculateearth.wordpress.com/2024/07/30/example-site-messel-pit/

Any opinions on Runaway to the Stars? I've read some of it online but the author is, once AGAIN, a fucking tranny who has to force trans species and whatnot into the story with some of the ugliest designs I've ever seen, particularly the spacers.

>>5052430
>Runaway to the Stars

Was not aware of that, looks cool but the main species seems like Christian Cline's main race

>>5052430
The aliens are cool but man the way he draws humans is tumblr af, not in a good way either.

New Spec Bio Log video
https://youtu.be/1TvjJf3Ux60

>>5053577

Love when people work on plants

>>5040573
found this surprise gem/kino webseries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCBgJ8LHu8s

>>5054982

I've been following them for a while. This particular concept is kinda impossible, however, since cephalopods cannot adopt to freshwater

>>5049559
>DUUUD WHAT IF HUMANITY DID THE SAME THING AS QU DID TO THEMSELVES BECAUSE AFTER BILLIONS OF YEARS HUMANITY IS STILL FUCK YEAH
Embarrassing tribalist cope image.

>>5047173
>ahh yess, let me equate the spec evo sea cucumber creatures with uh trans legbutt and uhh adult swim cartoon image, that totally makes sense
least brainrotten /an/tard, holy fuck its embarrassing that you even made that post

>>5055260
>since cephalopods cannot adopt to freshwater
just because it'd take more steps for them doesn't mean it's impossible. Plenty of other mollusks live in fresh water.

>>5055270
retard lmao

>>5055337
problem I suppose is the matter of competition
if you can find a large body of fresh water which only cephalopods have access to, they could start adapting, but trying to introduce in freshwater habitats would likely see them just outcompeted before they could make the proper adaptations

freshwater mollusks generally start out far smaller than cephalopods are

>>5050657
both Livyatan and the normal sperm whales are in in Kaimere, though Livyatan isn't doing as well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YMNvticRlI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Om5gwg-Q0I

Does Kaimere really count as a spec-evo project?
It never gave off a true speculative fiction aspect to me, more that the author wanted a set of cool animals to exist then gives a few ad-hoc explanations for how the exists

it's more like a fantasy setting with a bit more explanation than usual for it's bestiary than anything truly speculative

>>5055410
it def still counts, given how life develops on the planet, & "magic" being a lifeform

>>5055446
I guess, though even if if is, it's definitely on the lighter side, compared to something like say Alien Biospheres which works from a starting point onwards and then sees where it ends up

too much magic to explain away issues in Kaimere even if it doesn't quite work like traditional magic, and again it is focused around reaching a certain point in time

>>5055410
he's admitted several times that he views it just as a setting for his dnd campaign and fantasy novels.

I have this vague notion bouncing around my head of lifeforms that are made out of plasma, constructed from patterns in the oscillations and fields in a plasma, rather than chemistry. They could have evolved in stars, but I'm imagining them as appearing in the early universe, when all of space was filled with plasma. If they evolved to sapience they could construct arcs to survive in during the period between recombination, when the temperature of the universe lowered to the point all the plasma went away, and the birth of the first stars, which they could then move into. This early period of the universe only lasted 370,000 years, which normally wouldn't be long enough to evolve sapience, but this is high-energy plasma we're talking about, with particles moving and interacting very quickly. I could imagine the fundamental processes underpinning their life happening so quickly, that they undergo a full generation in a matter of seconds, which would allow enough generations to pass in 370k years for them to reach sapience.

>>5056082
incredibly implausible, obviously, but highly kino. I've had somewhat similar musings about emergent generalized intelligence appearing in the conductive rock structures of a planet powered by the lightning storms of its atmosphere, as by technicality something like that could exist, but it would be insanely unlikely and we would hardly be able to notice anyway unless it somehow obtained a method of interfering with the outside world at a sufficient rate.

>>5056179
People talk about mycelium networks as being like neurons, and if one of those became intelligent, it could interact with the world by strategically throttling nutrient flow through the plants it exists around, inducing certain evolved behaviors in them. It could even selectively breed them into more useful appendages using that same nutrient flow mechanism. Some plants are able to replicate ant pheromones to make ants do certain things for them, so the mycelium may be able to take advantage of that to turn ants into tools for it to use.

File: GaPGaGkacAAIPWj.jpg (227 KB, 1252x2048)

227 KB JPG

What selective pressures would be require to get carnivore sauropods/sauropodamorphs that still retain long-ish necks ?

>>5058389
>preying on arboreal creatures that other predators can't access so easily
>something like male giraffes necking, where their neck is used as a less lethal weapon to fight one another without (generally) resulting in injury
That's all I've got, anyway

>>5058389
>>5058438

Heat regulation. Mesozoic temperatures were high after all, and long necks help provide more surface area

File: 34d93a03-616e-4a1a-b722-c(...).png (1.43 MB, 1206x1755)

1.43 MB PNG

I cried.

>>5058511
How did Dixon get so huge in Japan anyway?

>>5055337

They had 500 million years tp accomplish that. Their osmosis system is clearly inept for such a task

>>5040573
animals who still walk on all fours evolve to walk on their two hind legs, but it takes long to adapt to doing that because most of the animals who tried to do so get crushed under their own weight (cows, horses, donkeys, pigs, giraffes, etc.)

>>5052111
How did feathers evolve in mammals?

>>5059359
>most of the animals who tried to do so get crushed under their own weight (cows, horses, donkeys, pigs, giraffes, etc.)

When did they try this, exactly?

>>5059388
i'd say somewhere in the future after being domesticated by humans for so long, maybe in the 2030s or 2040s.

>>5059183
how different is the cephalopods osmosis system from other marine mollusks to preclude them to even adapt to fresh water ?

>>5059183
>they haven't done it yet, so they can't do it.
Nothing ever did anything until they did those things though

>>5059450
This is such a frustrating topic. I can find no good reasons anywhere. The anon you're replying to is referring to the fact that no cephalopod has evolved a sodium which is what is necessary for tolerating freshwater. Problem being that this is equivalent to saying theres no freshwater cephalopods since theres really no other way to do it. So the question becomes why haven't cephalopods evolved a sodium pump? This I have not even seen an attempt at answering.

>>5059533
if a group of animals spends a long time specializing for a certain lifestyle it's hard to suddenly go another direction
like, it's pretty unlikely insects will ever start intruding on megafaunal niches

>>5059687
It's actually almost a certainty if tetrapods go extinct.

>>5059690
crustaceans would handily beat them to any megafaunal niche on land, since at least we have evidence of them developing lungs multiple times and just in general they're far better pre-adapted to larger sizes

insects would need to backtrack on hundreds of millions of years of specializing for small sizes

>>5059696
>crustaceans would handily beat them to any megafaunal niche on land
Any? No clearly not. At least insects can breed on land.

>>5059701
insects would need to develop an entirely new method of respiration before they can even think of growing larger, which is not a guarantee they could even achieve anymore

and even for terrestrial species, insects would still more than likely get outcompeted in the megafaunal race by arachnids since at least they have book lungs to work with

hell even gastropods are better adapted to growing larger than insects

>>5059716
>insects would need to develop an entirely new method of respiration before they can even think of growing larger
If so how did they get large in the carboniferous?

>>5059717
massive abundance of atmospheric oxygen
also all the large insect lineages have been extinct for 300 million years and with it any remnants of their adaptations for larger sizes have long since been destroyed by background noise mutations

>>5059718
>massive abundance of atmospheric oxygen
Thats already been long debunked. Arthopleura survived into the permian when oxygen levels were lower than today. Oxygen was not the cause of carboniferous insects large size.

>>5059720
Arthopleura isn't an insect

>>5059721
They have the same respiration system you claim limits insects.

>>5059722
millipede respiration even to this day involves internal air sacks and tracheae and we have no direct evidence of how this relates to arthopleura respiration, doubly so because it was semi-aquatic

>>5059725
>it was semi-aquatic
You say this with substantially more confidence than is warranted.
I don't see this argument going anywhere from here. Arguing over speculative science papers isn't any fun.

>>5059687
>if a group of animals spends a long time specializing for a certain lifestyle it's hard to suddenly go another direction
except for all the times that's happened

>>5059920
depends on what you consider another direction, it's relatively easy to repurpose an existing feature for something else, it's exceedingly hard to regain a feature that was lost entirely

See for example birds and hands or true teeth
terrorbirds would have been helped a fair bit with teeth and hands, but never managed, hell birds can't even seem to get true tails back

>>5059716
insects shrunk because of predation, its the birds and bats keeping the insects down
however, in pure oxygen environments, it mostly caused them to mature faster and get a little bigger in dragonflies and some roaches
>>5059701
it just requires them to have water which is most animals, if crabs can live in the austrialian outback, anything is possible

>>5060003
plenty of birds have pseudo-teeth and plenty of birds have pseudo-tails. Just because it's not identical to your expectation of it doesn't mean it's suited for the function.

File: NFD_Logo_Oval_PNG_96dpi.png (88 KB, 602x448)

88 KB PNG

Happy National Fossil Day!

>>5059450
>>5059533
>>5059683

The sodium pump seems to be their main hassle. The siphon may also increase osmosis and preent them from retaining their nutrients in fresh water

>>5060129
>The sodium pump seems to be their main hassle
But why can't they evolve a sodium pump? Freshwater fish evolved from ancestors that didn't have a sodium pump.
This is like the panspermia solution, it doesn't solve anything, it just pushes the question back a step.

>>5060013
there's always still the factor that insect respiration just doesn't scale up al that much, they'd need to develop more active forms of respiration, and by the time they manage it's likely all megafaunal niches would have been filled by crustaceans, arachnids or gastropods

while completely speculative, it would seem that crustaceans developing a way to breed on land is less of a step than insects overhauling their respiratory system

>>5060187
they could just move their skin? exoskeleton? because its not really a hard exoskeleton, its flexible part, and it would function like a bellow, and the hard parts expand and pull air into their airtubes, not too dissimilar to ribcages, some of them already do weird pulsing. but this doesnt even get into the fact that adult insects only live a few weeks for sex, that could be a limiting factor here rather than anything else, crustaceans live for years, spiders, same thing

>>5060187
You keep going on about their respiratory system but so far as I can see their respiration is not the limiting factor. Giant insects in the permian still had the same respiration system insects do today.
The main thing limiting insect sizes seems to be their need to shed their exoskeleton.

>>5059379

Same it evolved dinosaurs: increasing complexity. Modern porcupiles already have striated quills, which is a starting point

>>5060152

Guess we'll never know.

Cephaloposds had freshwater ecosystems handded to them several times, yet the most they can do is a single brackish water species

>>5060188
perhaps but like you said, there's other limiting factors
not to mention that there needs to not just be a theoretical functional endpoint but every in-between stage up to that end point also has to be viable

>>5060189
even if not the only limiting factor it certainly is part of the limiting factors, even during the carboniferous insects never managed to get large bodyweight and during the permian the bodymass of insects further declined

not to mention that all the adaptations that suited insects for larger bodysizes have long since been lost and insects have undergone hundreds of millions of years of specialization towards smaller sizes which isn't easily undone

which was my original point, that insects are exceedingly unlikely to ever intrude on megafaunal niches

already the very start of the argument was that all tetrapods had to go extinct which already by itself requires a ridiculously specific level of mass extinction
and even then, for a variety of reasons, insects aren't the best suited at drastic increases in size, be it because their respiration is not as efficient at larger sizes as crustaceans or gastropods, or their requirement to shed their exoskeleton while having lost the adaptations long ago that lets crustaceans manage significant sizes despite it

the chance that a member of the insect class will ever again be among the top 1% most massive animals on earth is exceedingly unlikely

They've just spent far too long adapting to small sizes, it's not unlike expecting a mammal to regrow gills, too much time has passed for those genes to remain dormant

>>5060283
>Cephaloposds had freshwater ecosystems handded to them several times,
such as in the...

>>5060439

Devonian
Aftermath of the Permian extinction
Triassic Pluvial episode
Most of the Mesozoic
Most of the Cenozoic

Across all those new groups of aquatic invertebrates evolved. But no cephalopods

File: sq.png (392 KB, 316x557)

392 KB PNG

>https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/squirrels-are-displaying-widespread-carnivorous-behavior-for-the-first-time-in-a-california-park-new-study-finds-180985707/
What is the next logical step on their path ?

What species will we bring with us when we colonize space?

>>5061244
squirrels have always been omnivorous, this is most likely an incidental change - could have been due to all those fires they've been having...

>>5061247
tons of pets (everything from dogs and cats to bearded dragons, hamsters, guinea pigs, pacman frogs, greek tortoises... etc)
a few pests - I'm sure they have to deal with flies on the ISS already, somehow
Livestock, presumably as tests
other animals good for eating and testing - tilapia will be everywhere.
And probably lots of abundant vanity species. I can imagine one of those rotating habitat cylinders populated by deer and such.

>>5061244

so long as carnivorans remain dominant, carnivorous squirrels will be an odd incident

>>5061330

This. Other than highly endangered species or poorly studied ones in dense jungles and deep sea, nearly all organisms are valid for space exploration

>>5061330
>>5061391
is there even a single rodent that's not omnivorous?
if anything squirrels are fairly tame by rodent standards when it comes to hunting

>>5061508

Most hystricomorphs and beavers are heavily herbivorous. Other rodents have "herbivore teeth" but will gladly snap animals

>>5061557
and here I'm suddenly wondering about the concept of omnivorous beavers adapting their behavior to set up fish farms behind their dams

>>5061247
Lab rats, algae, and yeast. The less variables the better.

>>5061566
Or snails. They are easy to catch and a beaver would make short work of the shells.

>>5061566
>>5061616
this is a good one

>>5061616
it could start with that and then as the protein rich diet and higher need for problem solving over time causes an increase in brain size expand to include a few other animals that can be farmed behind beaver dams

snails though are really good because you quickly get a co-evolution where the snails self-domesticate

File: tumblr_147adcbea6a5be2d2e(...).png (1.27 MB, 1280x1265)

1.27 MB PNG

>>5040573

Commission by @hellagator.

The Garkain is a creature from Yolngu and other Arnhem Land culture's lore, said to resemble a bat, man or bird that suffocates its rey with its wings. I went the middle man route and requested a pterosaur.

File: 798224d4b6af783e7b853c65a(...).png (96 KB, 493x386)

96 KB PNG

>>5061742

This isn't the first time I depicted a pterosaurian Garkain, as my game Lands of Fire also has one:

File: 1755320707528391.png (292 KB, 1687x430)

292 KB PNG

>>5061743
what the fuck is wrong with you, kill yourself

>>5061616
>>5061723
They already chew wood, maybe they start seeking out grubs.

>>5062571
Different strokes for different folks.

>>5061742
I prefer the idea of a giant predatory gliding possum

>>5062571
lmao gay furry abo VN is so stereotypical.
Why are there so many gayanons here anyway? This is like the 3rd OCfag thats been revealed to be gay.
Not that theres anything unusual about gay furries being hardcore into sci fi or anything, I'm more asking why 4chan? Wouldn't you guys be better off in a discord hugbox?

>>5062571

lol

>>5062726

I like seeing more brutal criticism. I like to think I'm reasonably thick skinned, not too much or little

>>5062620

That's actually a really nice idea

File: 20240805_062905.jpg (115 KB, 980x735)

115 KB JPG

HEY!!!!! HEEEEEEEEYYYYY!!!!!!!! NEW KAPPA EPISODE!!!!! LOOK LOOK LOOK LOOK LOOK LOOK!!!!!!!!! TURTLES I LOVE TURTLES TURTLES TURLES YEAAAAAAAAA BABIEIEEEEEEE
https://youtu.be/5Y-vODb7CuI?si=jezgXcwNVKiYF8TF

>>5063934
turtle sauropod looks neat

File: 6a999d_e5c90add0dc149b9a1(...).jpg (750 KB, 1600x1280)

750 KB JPG

>>5063934
if anyone wants a better quality version of that image, I managed to track down the source
https://www.travischapmanart.com/product-page/sea-turtle-protecting-his-babies-from-sea-birds-as-they-crawl-towards-the-ocean
full version is 16.4 MB which is obviously way beyond 4chan limits, so pic is a downscaled version

New Alien Biospheres video
https://youtu.be/k6ArtetnKVk

>>5064490
this fag seriously still doing this? lmao. I still remember one of his conlang vids where he sets aside a minute or two at the beginning saying "I can't sit aside and not let it be known that I support BLM and the struggles of black and bipoc people in america!!!" and everyone was laughing at him in the comment section. And the literal fag flags in his slugbird things after a dozen or so episodes, lmao. What a cuckold.

>>5064492
who cares, alien biospheres is one of the few decent spec-evo projects out there

>>5064492
As a non-american that whole BLM moment was incredibly weird to see. I just chalk it up to you yanks going temporally insane as you occasionally do, like that time you invaded two countries over a botched tower demolition or thought satanists were sucking kids down toilets.

>>5065192
its stranger in non american countries

>>5065217
Nah, it's only the wannabe americans who are strange. We had people protesting for BLM outside our parliament as if that would have any sway over american police.

>>5063934
the animation has improved so much holy

>>5065192
bib is a brit which made his outburst even more insane

New Spec-bio Log video
https://youtu.be/1TvjJf3Ux60

File: IMG_0110.jpg (83 KB, 500x667)

83 KB JPG

Do speculative humans belong here?

>>5066425
I mean technically but that's disgusting and retarded

>>5066494
The most accurate post on /an/ right now.

>>5066425

Abslutely disgusting

File: basket skelly.gif (135 KB, 261x436)

135 KB GIF

>>5040573
Are there resources on alternate skeletons?
I've been looking into a why to do a creature that works differently than vertebrates.
I have one lineage that has a corkscrew like skeleton, but I wanted to add another lineage that had more use of limbs.
I thought about using a telescopic bone structure with pneumatic muscles, so the animals would be specking into explosive movements and a creepy 360 degree turning. But layering bones like that seemed fragile.
Then there's pic rel. A basket skeleton seems cool but I'm adding limbs and a big tail. The tail in pic rel doesn't come from a spine, it just has a tail.
How could I expand this or any concept into a longer and more alien skeleton?

>>5067442

The vertebrates from Snaiad have quite unusual, wood-like skeletons

>>5067442
the problem is why would it do that, bones exist because at some point animals in the past wanted a mineral bank.
i think a spine is going to be a universal development because you want to protect your nerve cord
>360 degree turning.
thats not possible, because flesh gets in the way, you would need a bunch of microbones like an owl to achieve that and even then its going to be a really weak joint because of all the extra bones

>>5067825
you might get a brain in the center of the body rather than on the end which could change the concept of a nerve cord?
or if things evolve from radial rather than lateral symmetry

>>5067884
you can still get a nerve cord, just look at at an octopus
radial symmetry just seems like a bad idea since none of them seem to have a brain, it feels like animals need lateral symmetry to able to point in a specific direction

>>5067890
it could be interesting to think of a form of biology that doesn't allow for lateral symmetry and needs to work with radial
might take far longer for intelligence to arise from radial and it just never got a chance on earth due to lateral creatures outpacing them and nabbing all the intelligent niches

>>5067904
i guess you could make a xorn
but i just think that lateral symmetry is just easier to manage all your guts, that stuff is over here and there and not surrounding the nerve cord, otherwise you would need a decentralized nervous system, like a colonial organism, but that still has some level of lateral symmetry

>>5040573

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbmTOiyIZtk

File: E1W28DNVgAEBKLY.jpg (357 KB, 1200x1192)

357 KB JPG

>>5068021
>kappa but with platypussies
based

>>5068115

I say it's more like Multituberculate Earth but with platypodes, since it focuses on an alternate timeline earth

Age of Monotremes
https://youtu.be/pbmTOiyIZtk

>>5068021
could be fun if this also includes placental skinks so it's the lizards that go full mammal

>>5068220
Are you trying to get me to orgasm?

File: Valvran.png (747 KB, 1024x768)

747 KB PNG

https://youtu.be/c3voxKYmYms

>>5068284
I'm just happy to see other people realize that there's skinks out there with an actual placenta
which is seriously exciting

hope it's not just a one off experiment and it's the start of an entirely new branch of placental reptiles

They should make Australia (or another island) home to only surviving non-monotreme mammals (like Gondwanatheres) or >>5068220

>>5040573
what if the fungi that turned ants into zombies evolved to affect mammals, but it starts off slow by infecting smaller mammals?
if it gets a chance to infrct human beings, i imagine it being a slow painful death while the host slowly goes insane.

>>5069427
problem is body heat and immune system, and it wouldnt really be any different than a fent zombie which most people deal with on a daily basis, people like to meme about muh zombie apocalypse, but we are already there with roving gangs of youth and junkies, isfanything the zombies would be easier to deal with since you know how theyre going to act and theyre not to going to pull a knife or gun on you

>>5069432
well in that case, i think the only things that would be considered a threat are animals infected by the fungi, specifically big and strong ones.

>>5069427
the last of us came out over a decade ago

>>5069453
not really, same principles apply, maybe if youre in some third world shithole, but im pretty sure they have enough guns to deal with it

>>5069427
>>5069432
Why hasn't anyone made a zombie virus that behaves like toxo
Doesn't kill you anstead modifies your behavior
Like how pinworms make you gay and into rimming

>>5069623
Kingdom. Wouldn't surprise me if there's a dozen generic zombie books with the same premise.

>>5069623
Pretty much every example of rage zombies? RE's Las Plagas? Crossed?

Are there any good spec evo projects about life on Europa?

>>5071602

Not to my knowledge which is a shame

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gh2gycaavI

New seed world just dropped
https://youtu.be/RejmfiEJz-E

>>5043690
>implying owls are birds

New Spec Bio Log video
https://youtu.be/mFEkA_oYGZk

I like how people often poo-poo the idea of dinosaur-sized mammals, but we got Paraceratherium 33 million years into the cenozoic while it took dinosaurs something like 50 million years into the mesozoic to reach similar sizes. All the alleged reasons why mammals "can't" get as big as sauropods for instance crumble under close scrutiny, from the blatantly false claims that there was more oxygen or less gravity in the mesozoic, to the "hollow and pneumatized bones" argument (which are actually absent in most dinosaur clades). I maintain that the only reason we haven't seen a mammal the size of a sauropod yet is because we haven't had the right climate, evolutionary pressures and resulting adaptations for it.

>>5075148
It’s because the mutation hasn’t happened yet and if it did humans would kill them

Conditions do not cause adaptations and more often than not changes are neutral to bad and merely don’t make the animal shitty enough to matter. Conditions actively fight change but a change in conditions does not guarantee an ideal evolutionary change.

>>5075148
one of the issues in getting sauropods specifically is that mammals have a set number of neck vertebra while dinosaurs did not
there's a very real limit on what you can do with a mammal neck

there's also the reproduction issue, that mammal offspring needs to be able to survive birth, which gets precarious if the mother is larger

>>5075148

In regards to hollow bones, sauropods have them, which allowed them to grow larger than any other land animal. But hadrosaurs, whoc don't have hoolow bones, maxxed at 20 tons.

Same with mammals, Paraceratherium and Palaeoloxodon namadicus. So 20-22 tons seems to be the non-sauropod limit for land animals.

Go wild!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqNIgh8P4zE

File: Gj3HDwcXIAA7szw.jpg (102 KB, 1600x960)

102 KB JPG

What type of pressures would lead plesiosaurs or pliosaurus to evolve a more elongated, serpentine body ?

>>5076477
ask eels or snakes

>>5076477
issue with both is that their particular type of swimming isn't really conducive to elongated bodies
you'd probably need them to evolve tail-driven swimming first and then converge on a more basilosaurus type of body, but tail-driven swimming evolving in either of those seems exceedingly unlikely given they already have a perfectly fine type of movement

I have a question about how we define species. As an example I will use members of the Panthera genus, lions, tigers, leopards and so on. They are all morphologically very different, but due to our modern understanding of genetics are known to be extremely closely related and hence, all part of the same genus. At what point, presuming we will continue to monitor and name these animals for the coming millions of years, would we be able to say "one of these animals has now evolved into a new genus"? Like it has "out-grown" the genus Panthera into something new, and name them differently like we would an paleontological find. Where is the hypothetical "cutoff point"? Hypothetically, in the year 50,000, we might still call a lion a lion, even if its now much smaller and a different color for example just because biological classifications are so arbitrary?

>>5078136

Cladistically an animal doesn't stop being within a clade. So for instance a marine filterfeeding descendent of polar bears is still a polar bear.

>>5078145
But that's totally arbitrary. A polar bear is just a member of the genus Ursus. Eventually, let's say all these bears would go extinct except for the black bear which becomes a small cursorial land hunter that looks way more like a plantigrade dog than anything else, would we still call it Ursus? Even while we would name it something other than Ursus if we found it as a fossil?

>>5078145
we get it, humans are fish
>>5078136
when it ceases to be its original shape i suppose, like whales are ungulates, their closest relation is hippos or something, its never not going to be an ungulate but it is its own group within ungulates, theres regular ungulates and theirs ungulates that are derived from cetaceans and so on, and everything between those points is a transitory? transition? species where they branched off from the main group and theyre classified as being closer to one group or the other. kinda like dinosaurs where theyre in two groups of bird hips and not bird hips, and within the not bird hips you have trexs and sauropods and so on

>>5078164
>we get it, humans are fish
You joke but I still get people arguing with me about this.

>>5078165
>>5078164
The whole "humans are fish" thing is part of this. Obviously humans are not fish, they look nothing like fish, they operate nothing like fish, they are not named after fish and while there is a direct line of ascension from fish to human, it would be like calling a car tire a plant just because rubber comes from a tree. It's some kind of next level semantics that seems to make a point out of being unable to discern one thing from another despite the differences being very obvious to everyone, even a child.

I think it's also just a huge sense of bias. A human will call things a "big cat" and group them under the genus panthera despite their obvious morphological differences, but when we find fossils of different kinds of animals we grant each one a new genus name when they might be just as closely related as a leopard is to a lion. So I'm wondering where the "cutoff point" is. This needs to be quantified to some degree because otherwise you run the risk of giving every single species its own genus or grouping literally all land vertebrates under the genus Eukaryota. As it is, it all seems kind of arbitrary.

>>5078186
it is arbitrary, you just determine what the standard is. again, dinosaurs are split into bird hip or not bird hip, you just kinda figure out how much closer they are to each groups, and if theres enough thats not in either, you just create a new group and so on

>>5078186
Humans are anatomically and functionally lobe finned lungfish

>>5078186
Your brain is broken so you see only dichotomies when you should see sets and subsets.

that's all. Normal people can understand that people are one type of fish but not all fish are humans. You're a fucking retard so your brain can't handle that. Your broken brain demands that everything be one thing or another, you can't understand that apples are a type of fruit. You want them to either be apples or be fruits, they can't be both.

it's a sad story, but it's also a bit funny. You're stupid and you think everyone else is stupid because you can't understand them.

>>5078186
thing is though, there "are" ways in in which humans operate like fish and there "are" ways in which we look alike

it's less what you said and more like calling a plane a vehicle, even if it operates at first glance nothing like a car
but if you get under the hood, they both use internal combustion engines making them more related to each other than either is to a horse

File: 9780719845710-804x1024.jpg (103 KB, 804x1024)

103 KB JPG

Just a heads-up that the Furaha book is finished and slated for release next month.

>>5078149
>But that's totally arbitrary.
no, it's phylogeny and where it's branch fall on the evolutive tree is the least arbitrary way to classify organisms

>would we still call it Ursus?
yes, it would never stop being part of the clade Ursus no matter how derived it becomes

>Even while we would name it something other than Ursus if we found it as a fossil?
no, if we found as a fossil and we had enough material and data to identify it as descendent of black bears it would be classify as a member f the clade Ursus

New Project Rose video
https://youtu.be/DKCWJ5lVBt0

File: vlcsnap-2022-07-31-08h45m(...).png (121 KB, 640x480)

121 KB PNG

>mfw nobody has released a translated version of Greenworld

>>5078136
The actual answer is that genus and species are a framework that only exists to describe animals within a specific point of time. A descendant of tigers from 500 million years in the future wouldn't be panthera "genus" or tigris "species" but it would be in the panthera and tigris clades.

>>5078136
>>5078980
I think most people who struggle with understanding cladistics just have a hard time with those names. If you just start labeling them as "branching points" where "This is the part where bony fish and cartiliginous fish branched" "This is the part where synapsids and diapsids branched" "This is the part where avian dinosaurs and non-avian dinosaurs branched" "This is the part where tigers and lions branched" it makes it a lot more consistent, because they are all just branching points, and on one side it has this name added, and on the other it has another.
Triceratops isn't
>Triceratops horridus
it's
>Eukaryote Amorphea Opisthokont Animalia Bilateria Nephrozoa Deuterostome Chordata Olfactores Vertebrata Gnathostomata Osteichthyes Sarcopterygii Rhipidistia Tetrapod Reptiliomorpha Sauropsida Eureptilia Diapsid Sauria Archosauromorpha Archosauriformes Archosaur Avemetatarsalia Dinosauromorpha Dinosaur Ornithischia Genasauria Neornithischia Cerapoda Marginocephalia Ceratopsia Ceratopsidae Chasmosaurinae Triceratopsini Triceratops horridus
and we just truncate it to the last one or two names because that is enough specificity for 99% of discussions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGVVvRw8CNs

Why did elephants evolve intelligence? Primates and corvids need it for tool use, cetaceans for sophisticated hunting strategies, but I don't really see the evolutionary benefit of elephants being so smart. Sure they can use tools. but as the largest animals on earth with no natural predators and easy to access food resources do they really need them? Surely they could survive just as well as much stupider animals like rhinos or hippos do, so for what reason was intelligence selected for? The only thing I can think of is their social structure but animals like wolves and lions have similarly complex social groups with only moderate intelligence.

>>5080882
African elephants only survive the way they do because their matrons have crazy good memories letting them find water an food in places few animals can find it

they don't have easy access to water and food at all courtesy of being so massive

and being social animals with an oversized brain for memorization led them to likely develop even better intelligence

>>5080882

This>>5080937

Need to memorise food/water surces + high sociality

New Jotunheim video
https://youtu.be/vKfuaPnYKLM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IDOvO3DAco

>>5080882
>>5080937
>>5080967
not to mention that elephants are so large and perceive the world at such a sped-up timescale that they effectively plan routes as puzzles that need to be solved; what's the best route to take around these known locations in my memory to best feed everybody with the most nutritious sources of food of sufficient variety that everyone stays healthy, and ensure we have access to safe drinking water regularly enough to stay alert, and pass by sufficiently many identifiable areas that the other members of the herd will remember them if I can't lead them there, etc etc. The whole world is a puzzle for them.

>>5081740
is there also a possible truth to the theory that due to the quaternary glaciation resources and climatic conditions are unstable enough large animals can't adapt to the rapid changes purely through natural selection and the development of intelligence is a sort of fall-back solution?

overall, there's been a fairly aggressive selection for higher intelligence among large vertebrates in the past few million years, and as evidenced by elephants and whales, unlike many other periods in earth's history, not even the most massive animals can escape this general trend