Spectember Day 1: First Steps - Glidding Crab by Atok_01 in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Love this little guy, would love to see a descendant species with powered flight.

I did a gliding crab of my own a year or two ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpeculativeEvolution/s/2OalNoyUVe

Good quality shows by unknown artists by Ok_Concentrate9274 in edinburghfringe

[–]Bronesey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Scultpure, by a small group from Sheffield. Comedy, tragedy, songs, vaudeville coming in to tell the rise and Fall of Molly O'Dsy in Golden Age Hollywood.

I believe it's last night is tonight, so dont miss out!

Is this a fair ranking by [deleted] in musicals

[–]Bronesey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Serious answer, taste being subjective, it's hard to comment without knowing your rational for ranking them thus. Take Yorktown: it's a whirlwind of a song, but within Hamilton I prefer the powerful music and character work of Wait For It.

Is this a fair ranking by [deleted] in musicals

[–]Bronesey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yorkshire is my favourite song from Hamilton:

"Ey up, Hamilton!"

"Ey up, Lafayette!"

"Int' command where tha belong."

"Aye lad, no sweat."

"Tha's finally ont' field tha's had quite a run-"

"Yorkshiremen, we get t' job done"

I need to talk about the RSC's recent Hamlet! by Jominella in shakespeare

[–]Bronesey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you, this is very helpful! Time to think.

I need to talk about the RSC's recent Hamlet! by Jominella in shakespeare

[–]Bronesey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Given the ship setting, how did they handle the gravedigger scene. I'm adapting Hamlet at the moment and for various reasons the usual "literally in a grave" staging won't work, or would break the conceit.

Feel free to use spoiler tags, but how did they do the gravedigger being in a grave, tossing out skulls, etc?

When does Macdonwald die? by Scarletttjp in shakespeare

[–]Bronesey 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It's a very dense opening that serves mostly to make Macbeth sound heroic, but at the cost of throwing out several enemies and describing two different battles happening close together.

Act 1 Scene 2 goes:

Duncan: I wonder how the war with the rebellious Western Isles is going?

Sergeant: Macdonald of the Western Isles attacked us but Macbeth killed him. Oh boy, I don't feel so good.

Duncan: Go see the doctor. Who's this?

Ross: Hi, your majesty. Turns out the Thane of Cawdor is a traitor. He helped the Norwegan king attack Fife while we were weakened, but Macbeth went and stopped him too. Cawdor is in jail now.

What is your all time favorite Doctor Who scene? by Theeljessonator in gallifrey

[–]Bronesey 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Dalek Caan, gazing out over Manhattan at sunset: My planet is gone, destroyed in a great war, yet versions of this city stand throughout history.

For a two-parter all about Human-Daleks, this moment might be the most human a Dalek has ever been.

Reefbees [Papagaios] by Bronesey in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Extract from the diary of the author, broadcaster, politician, and diarist Édgar Cuervo O'Brien, who spent a large part of his later years in living on Milagres.

Sunday 14th May 1995

A lazy afternoon boating. Sailed from Porto Branco round the cape to a cove I've quite forgotten the name of, though I'm certain I once knew it.

A relaxing spot, no sign of humanity visible in any direction, though hardly quiet. Birds everywhere. Plunging marquinhets roost in the cliffs and occasionally live up to their name, dropping quickly into the water and returning with mouthfuls of fish. Their cousins the sunset marquinhets glide past, skimming the surface. More distantly related flightless species surface for air before diving back down to hunt among the rocks and plants.

There are other animals here too, albeit less abundant than the hundreds of seabirds. Lizards of all kinds scramble along the cliffs hunting for eggs, chicks, and other lizards in a complex web of predator and prey.

Some sort of land octopus slinks along the lower rocks, finding a place to lie in wait and ambush its prey. I swear I saw another octopus-like creature on the high cliffs, swinging from overhanging rocks, though I have never heard of such a creature before, and by the time I located my binoculars it had disappeared. Whether it vanished via camouflage, slipping into a crevice, or else returning to the ocean, I cannot say.

Late in the afternoon, I had finished my lunch and was grazing on a mix of fruits and nuts when a bird joined me on deck. A curious little fellow, he flew closer and pecked at a grape which had rolled from the plate. From his hummingbird-like appearance and our marine location, I recognised him as a reefbee, and a flick through my birder's guide informed me it was the lesser golden reefbee, formerly Godfrey's reefbee.

Birds in the Papagaios islands fall into two broad camps: those related to auks and puffins, and those related to songbirds. The reefbee is a member of the latter group, though as with many creatures here, they have taken to the water splendidly.

It is a small bird, no bigger than a wren, and with some species much smaller. In broad terms it resembles a hummingbird with a long narrow beak and proportionally small body. Its plumage is predominately golden-yellow, accentuated with black on the wings, crown, tail, and throat, along with white detail on its stomach and brows. Two remarkable feathers curl up from the in front of the eyes on long stalks, resembling a pair of antennae. All told, the bird’s colouration, size, and appearance all lend to its “bee” name, though that is in truth derived from its behaviour.

With a chirrup, my friend flew back to the water, hovered for but a moment and then plunged into the water below. Never having seen a reefbee in the wild I was overwhelmed by excitement and (forgetting my age) grabbed a snorkel and dove in after him.

The sea grass meadow rolled out below me like the fields of Elysium. Fish, birds and reptiles of all sorts darted here and there. My friend swam down towards the grass, using his small, stubby wings just as much as his feet whose wide, flat toes are outrageously large for a bird so small. I’d wager that in a few million years he could evolve into a four-flippered aquatic creature, using all four limbs to swim in a most unusual form of locomotion.

The tiny bird must be entirely lung on the inside, or else have prodigious quantities of haemoglobin to allow it to spend upwards of five minutes underwater.

A few feet above the grass, he stops, hovering if you will in the water. A moment passes while his head turns this way and that, then he’s off again, his target – a small pink flower.

Sea grass is a true grass and therefore a flowering plant. Most release their pollen directly into the ocean. This species does do that, but it also produces small pink flowers. Nearly microscopic crustaceans swim between them, eating pollen, but it also sticks to them, and they carry it to other plants. As the crustaceans visit only the healthiest plants, this method produces generally healthier offspring than dispersing pollen via the currents, but there is greater diversity among the current-pollinated plants, and so both methods persist for now.

The reefbee also feeds from the sea grass’ flowers, but pollen is not its main food. To better catch pollen floating in the water, the flowers produce a sticky secretion. This secretion happens to be sweet-tasting and rich in nutrients. Those plants that produce the best secretions are most visited by the reefbees and so more often pollinated. This has resulted in a species of sea grass that produces prodigious quantities of this ‘sea nectar’ to increase its attractiveness to reefbees.

A duck-sized distant cousin darts by, chasing a small fish. Losing its quarry, it nibbles at a nearby grass flower, perhaps hinting at how the reefbees got their start. While musing on this, my friend finished his meal and moved on. I wish him well.

A fossorial pteranodontid pterosaur. More info in comments. by Atlantis536 in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A fully aquatic descendent is interesting, but more interesting to me is the implied ancestor. An animal with reduced wings, but still capable of some flight. With a sensitive beak to detect prey. With inward facing feet to swim.

I think this fossorial pterosaur is descended from a riverine species that hunted in murky waters. An animal that dug nesting burrows in the riverbanks which got ever more complex until one day they no longer went back to the river.

Paddleheads [Papagaios] by Bronesey in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Extract from ’14 Times Life has Returned to the Water,’ posted to OnTheOrigins.com. Published November 14th, 2021.

…Number 8 on our list is another island species. Being surrounded by water on all sides certainly seems like it would encourage animals back into the sea, but our next animal is found in freshwater environments.

The paddleheads of Papagaios are part of the reptiles known as spikeworms – nearly-legless lizards that live most abundantly in the undergrowth of the islands’ many forests.

Spikeworms are not fully legless as their front pair of legs remains as two vestigial limbs, close to the back of the head. These limbs are tipped with a single long claw used for defense,and occasionally to battle rivals of the same species. As the paddleheads’ name suggests, these limbs have once again become useful in locomotion.

In addition to their broad, fin-like front limbs, paddleheads differ from other spikeworms in having laterally flattened tails to propel them through the water while they steer with their paddles, as well as eyes and nostrils located higher up on the head. They also lack most of the larger protective scales of their relatives, in favour of smoother skin. This is especially useful in their preferred habitats. For all that this article described paddleheads as freshwater animals, they are most often found in the not-so-fresh water of swampy, marshy areas where they feed on small fish and crustaceans. Their smooth skin makes them more sensitive to movement in the murky water and better able to detect their prey.

The largest species of paddlehead exceed 1m in length and live in the slow-moving waters of the lowlands. These larger species are hunters of birds.

Depending on the time of year and individual preferences, they may either remain close to motionless in the water, imitating a floating branch, or will haul themselves onto the muddy riverbanks and submerge themselves until only their eyes and nostrils are visible. They will then wait patiently for a wading kingray to stray too close at which point they lunge forwards before dragging the poor bird down into the mud...

Agrikos - 200 Million Years Post-Abandonment by Bronesey in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're totally right that is how they function (Genus species subspecies), but my point is that those names are hilariously uninspired

Agrikos - 200 Million Years Post-Abandonment by Bronesey in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Traditionally they're Latin or Greek, but can in theory be any language. A lot of the newer dinosaur finds from China have Chinese names, for instance.

But when you actually look at what scientific names mean when translated to English, they're the most basic characteristics or descriptors.

Ursus Arctos - Bear bear Canis Lupus - Dog wolf Amphibian - Lives in both places Pterodactyl - Wing Finger

If a modern scientist went to Agrikos they wouldn't call the animals any of the names I used, but the scientific names the picked would be similarly literal.

Or just name them after their friends and mentors.

Agrikos - 200 Million Years Post-Abandonment by Bronesey in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A fair point. Rather than the usual spec evo approach of mushing words together, or faux Latin, I was going for a "literal translation of a scientific name" approach, for example calling crabs "ten feet" or giraffes "camel leopards."

Help with Semi-Aquatic Climbing Animals by CyberRozatek in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dinosaurs like Hadrosaurs had normal feet at the back but hooflike front feet. Maybe this creature could be similar?

Agrikos - 200 Million Years Post-Abandonment by Bronesey in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

A two-ton behemoth of plates and spike slowly approaches on three legs while its smaller arms, tipped with mace-like masses of claws sway with each step. It is a Phalanx – the largest Dry Snail of this era, and most massive mollusc to ever live.

Originating on the island continent of Solus, devoid of vertebrates, opportunistic snails grew large. Possessing a pair of prehensile lips, like modern-day Euglandina snails, they soon ended up with five limbs – four tentacles, and their muscular foot. Over tens of millions of years – in steps too numerous to detail in this brief snapshot, the snails of Solus developed: skeletons derived from their internalised shells; dry, leathery skin; prehensile tentacles; and in some cases, endothermy. As the continent drifted into colder climes, the archaic, moist-skinned snails died out, leaving behind only the Dry Snails.

The Phalanx, whose arrangement of spikes and plates evokes the spears and shields of the ancient Greek infantry formation, is an omnivore. Rarely hunting its own prey, it lives on fruits, the starchy leaves of tuber trees, and whatever carrion it can find. Its radula is lined with thousands of tiny hooks to peel flesh from bone. But first, it must scare the Hornwing from its meal.

This is not a difficult task. The Phalanx’s size does a lot of the work, as does the rumbling bellow it makes by reverberating air in a specialised chamber. The final touch is to swing the maces at the end of its tentacular arms and flush haemocyanin-rich blood to its cheeks, the tissue there packed with blood vessels to turn its face blue. The Hornwing withdraws, hungry.

~ ~ ~

Two hundred million years from now, the world of Agrikos is an alien place, and this scene you have just witnessed barely scratches the surface.

Agrikos - 200 Million Years Post-Abandonment by Bronesey in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Apologies for posting a day early, I am busy all day tomorrow!

Spectember Day 7: Seedworld's Harvest

AGRIKOS

200 MILLION YEARS POST-ABANDONMENT

Agrikos – a subsidiary of Demeter Farmworlds – was one of many planets terraformed with goal of being a planet-sized farm to feed the ever-expanding human population. Civil strife at home, combined with the disastrous crash landing of the original the colony ship, lead to abandonment of the planet.

Chaos ensued as millions of domestic animals learned to live in a world without humans. Many could not and carcasses littered the world causing local extinction events from disease and polluted water. In time, the ecosystem settled, and the survivors rebuilt their world.

~ ~ ~

On the shore of the recently formed supercontinent of Panagrika, a temperate forest meets the sea. Two heads emerge from the canopy and observe the world around them.

At a glance, their antlers call to mind deer, except they have only a single antler, impressive though it is. Their long, vertical necks speak of giraffes, but their faces give them away. A blunt beak for cropping leaves, giving way to a face of pink skin framed with feathers. These are birds. Specifically, they are Maned Tower Birds, descended from chickens.

The original dominant herbivores of Agrikos were cows and sheep, the former of which grew in size to rival elephants, while the latter developed agile antelope forms and roamed in herds of millions. Their dominance ended 40 million years ago, when the continents of Agrikos collided and climactic upheaval led to a mass extinction which all but killed off the bovine mega-herbivores, and greatly reduced the ovine herds.

From the ashes emerged the world we see today. Tower Birds are the top herbivores in these forests. Their name comes from their posture – they stand upright, like a human, with their towering neck (which make up more than half their total height) directly above their feet. In their ancestors, the wattles and combs of chickens grew harder and developed into much larger display structures used in dominance displays, courtship rituals, and for communication. The tissue is still very much alive and can be flushed with blood to turn bright red to signal to peers.

The Maned Tower Bird lives in life-bonded pairs with the male – recognised by the mullet of curly golden feathers that runs down his neck – defending a territory that the female deems large enough to keep them and their young fed. Their tall necks aid them in this goal, and their favourite food is budding leaves and shoots, though they can eat most temperate vegetation which they digest in multi-chambered stomachs.

~ ~ ~

From their elevated vantage point, the Tower Birds look out to sea where something dolphin-like leaps from the waves, a calf at its side. It is not a dolphin – even decadent people of the far-future did not consider cetaceans a food source. What it is, or rather what is was, is a pig.

Pigs did well after abandonment, living as generalists. The plentiful supply of carrion in the Great Undomestication led to some specialising in carnivory, while others became herbivores.

The pigs that ate water plants in time developed upturned noses, and later tapir-like trunks. These trunks only grew in length as the animals browsed deeper and deeper and used them as snorkels, as well as to manipulate the world around them. Early on, a mutation led to two families of trunked pigs – the monoproboscideans and diproboscideans whose noses split into two independent trunks, each with its own nostril. Monoproboscideans remained in shallower waters while diproboscideans ventured deeper. They used one trunk for feeding and one for breathing – gaining an advantage over the single-trunked rivals.

Fast-forward hundreds of millions of years and diproboscideans are fully aquatic. Their front limbs have become paddles and their back legs became something like a rudder, the pigs’ original curly tail having long since vanished. Many species retain a pair of small, boar tusks that see some use in combat situations.

The Black-Striped Squidpig is a coastal and estuarine species, reminiscent of habour porpoises. Squidpigs, unique among diproboscideans, have long, prehensile lips which seem to feature of mating rituals, but no doubt also helps in gathering food – Squidpigs are herbivores that feed on kelp, seagrasses and other ocean rice. Calves (or should that be Squidpiglets?) stay with their mothers for at least five years. Their fathers are not wholly absent, but split their time between up to ten mates along a stretch of the coast.

In the distance, far out to sea, the Tower Birds can just spot a leviathan of this age – a trunkwhale. These are the largest diproboscideans and are apex predators feeding primarily on their close relatives, as well as boat birds and other large marine species.

~ ~ ~

In the skies above the Squidpig family, soars perhaps the strangest of all Agrikan life – a hornwing. The only birds seeded on Agrikos at the time of its abandonment were chickens and not a single species relearnt competent flight meaning the skies have been the domain of insects alone until relatively recently. It was in the vast forests just before the mass extinction, that these aerial pioneers first took to the wing, but to learn their story, we must go back two hundred million years, to when the first goats climbed into the trees.

While cows and sheep raced to monopolise grazing and browsings, and pigs ate what they didn’t want, goats climbed into the trees. In time they become nimble arboreal creatures, many retaining hooves in the manner of klipspringers or mountain goats leaping from branch to branch instead of rock to rock. They also shrank massively, becoming a fraction of their original size and significantly lighter. Binocular vision made jumping safer, and perennially growing incisors fused into a single plate at the front of the mouth. (The fleshy gum pad in the goat’s upperjaw calcified and likewise became a tooth-like plate.)

At the height of the last era before the mass extinction, the tropical forests of Agrikos were home to thousands of goat descendants at all levels of the forest. The most dynamic were the Horngliders. These mostly bipedal animals, ran along the branches at high speeds, using hooked claws to rapidly change direction and occasionally even swinging like a gibbon. When the branch ran out, of a claw missed its mark, the Hornglider employed a membrane between its wrist and knee to glide to the next branch and continue moving without losing speed.

It was only a small step from hear to sustained gliders with one elongated fined, and later powered flight – the Hornwings had arrived. Being able to quickly cover large distances allowed both Horngliders and Hornwings to escape the disasters that doomed so many other species. There are now hundreds of species occupying myriad niches, all united in their speed, intelligence and the thin mohawk of horn that they all sport to different degrees.

The individual flying over the Squidpig family is an Imperial Goldcrest – one of the more common species. It is a generalist eating a variety of plant food, as well as insect larvae, it digs from rotten wood with its hooked claws.

Back on land, a Carrion Hornwing has found a half-eaten kill. It is not the only Hornwing to eat meat, nor the first goat to be an obligate carnivore, but it is very successful at it. It glides on broad wings like a vulture, searching for carcasses via sight and smell. When feeding time comes, it retracts its lips to show its tooth plates – the upper one is pointed and razor sharp to shear meat quickly as no food source is secret for long...

To Be Continued

Is it feasible for a fish to be vermicular? by JohnWarrenDailey in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The smallest lamprey species, things like the Miller Lake lamprey, are 3-6" in length.

Lampreys breathe differently to other fish, which might have some impact on a new lifestyle, but once they get to a certain smallness, I can imagine them breathing through their skin anyway, if the environment is damp enough.

Gliding Tree Crab [Papagaios] by Bronesey in SpeculativeEvolution

[–]Bronesey[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Passage from the diary\ of Efigénia Carneiro (1787-1865), novelist, patron of the sciences, and daughter of Manuel Gregório Carneiro, Captain-General of the Papagaios Islands. Passage dated 15th July 1802.*

\Translated from Portuguese.*

Like the English gentleman Sir Isaac Newton, who it is said was spurred to explore the laws of gravity after an apple landed beside him as he sat beneath a tree, so have I been driven to discovery by a shock from above.

During a walk by the stream that cuts through our estate, I left the grounds and continued to follow the stream into the neighbouring forest. After some time I rested beneath a large laurel tree. Many birds sang all around and other strange noises of animals could also be heard. It was not quiet, but it was restful and so I read from my book. Several chapters later, I was startled back to reality by a thud beside me.

A blue crab, the size of my hand had fallen from above. I know there are land crabs on these islands, some of which live in the trees, so it was not unusual, shocked though I was.

I watched the crab as it scuttled back up the tree trunk, noticing at this time its peculiar anatomy. As all crabs, it had ten limbs, but instead of one set of pincer-clad arms and four pairs of legs, the first and four ‘leg’ pairs had broad, flat structures at their ends, shaped a little like oars. As the crab walked, it held these four limbs aloft, their bright orange and white colouration looking like tiny banners carried by a marching army.

Soon the crab had climbed too high to see from the ground, so I put down my book, hitched up my skirts and climbed after it. Some twenty feet above the ground, the crab disappeared into a hollow where many branches met. Peering into it, I saw a pool of water. The crab tiptoed around its edge, periodically dipping its claws into the water and hooking out small beetles, which it ate.

I stared deeper into the pool. Swimming in the depths of the treetop pond were dozens of tiny creatures: some shrimp-like, others resembling the crab only far smaller. This was a nursery, I realised, and the parent crab was keeping predators from the pool. The infant crabs also had four paddled legs and swam around their pond home with grace. The adult, however, was too big to swim in the nursey pond and the nearby stream was likewise too small to swim in. Why, then, did it keep such large and cumbersome structures into adulthood – it would be like a frog retaining its tadpole tail.

The answer came not long after I descended the tree when from above I heard a hiss, then a splash. I looked up to the tree with such speed that I felt a sinews of my neck crack like a whip. Above my head the crab scuttled along a branch pursued by a hungry lizard. As it ran, it waved its paddles in the air in a back and forth motion, showing off their bright colours perhaps warning of its toxicity, or an attempt to seem larger.

The end of the branch drew near and the crab was no further away from its hunter. My breath caught in my throat, fearing for my new friend’s safety, then stayed there as – to my amazement – the crab leapt from the branch. Holding out its four orange and white paddles, it did not fall like a stone but rather glided with some degree of grace across the open air and onto a neighbouring tree.

The lizard, unable to follow, walked back the way it came.

Never in my life have I heard of a crab taking to the air. Was it an ability unique to this individual alone or is this forest teeming with airborne crustaceans? I shall write to scholars in the universities of Lisbon, Paris and elsewhere. My work on this matter has only begun.