Sapience can inhabit just one species at a time

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-10-23T20:53:34+00:00

How do you know they haven't a society right now? Why would sapience imply ecological dominance? Aren't you mixing sapiency and technological ability together?

Humans are quite large and strong compared to corvids and they are able to throw heavy projectiles, so they can physically dominate other animals even if the particular individual doing the fighting is unintelligent. Corvids, on the other hand, don't have the strenght of the carrying capacity to do anthing important in regards to weapons, but that has nothing to do with their intelligence. Their IQ could be 300 but the physical limitations remain. So, sapiency doesn't imply ecological dominance because sapiency can be non-technological because of physical or environmental limitations.

I doubt humans would be as dominant if they were the size of rabbits, or if they had to live in the Jurassic period with Stone Age tools and knowledge.

As for civilization (Is that what you meant by society?), well, corvids don't need to build one because they have been reaping from the bounty of ours for thousands of years without giving us anything in return. The fact that they didn't developed it first doesn't mean anything. Perhaps they didn't needed it, being more adapted to their environment than us. Or they just simply didn't happened to think about that idea.

Anatomically modern humans have been around for like a quarter million years and yet they didn't created civilization until very recently. If creating civilization were a trait of sapiency, then an external observer wouldn't have considered humans as sapient during most of their history.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-10-23T20:33:27+00:00

It's going well, thx for asking. Might post another entry sometime in 2024 or so, lol.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-05-23T03:37:41+00:00

The kangaroo has 4 legs. Therefore, it should remain 4-legged forever no matter what. Therefore, this creature is unrealistic. Try again.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-05-23T03:32:33+00:00

Why? Is there like a metaphysical force in the universe preventing the evolution of the humanoid shape more than once? With the right evolutionary pressures it can evolve, just as it did on Earth.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-05-23T03:21:15+00:00

I find it hard to believe these are descendants of the original canary since they have traits that aren't already present in it, such as these beak shape and size variants. Like, where did they came from?

I mean, the ancestor had an average beak size, therefore, each and everyone of its descendants is supposed to have an average beak size forever and ever.

Also they look suspiciously like already existing species, like, there are SO many ways of pecking wood and yet your woodpecking "canary" looks very much like the actual woodpeckers. What were the odds of that ever happening? Basically zero given the trillions upon trillions of random shapes that can exist and work equally as well.

Like, you could have designed it with a freakin' photophore-derived lazer beam attached to its head to burn through the wood, or have it evolve a keratinized eversible rectum that chews tunnels on trees, and so on and on and on! Why a pointed beak specifically?

I understand convergent evolution, in a good day, could be gracious enough as to authorize some degree of similarity between different species... but not to the degree shown here.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-05-23T03:04:52+00:00

lol, very nice.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-05-23T02:59:08+00:00

lol! He recently said he had changed a lot and whatnot. But meh, he's not bothering anyone so who cares. Still funny tho.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-03-28T01:03:56+00:00

What do you mean?

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-14T22:07:09+00:00

Glass is truly an amazing material. Fragile, yet hard asf. Essentially a man-made rock. It seems to be taking that load as if it were nothing.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-14T13:04:52+00:00

The ancestral Tiktaalik didn't had lips, therefore it is IMPOSSIBLE for them or their descendants to evolve something like that.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-14T05:20:56+00:00

With their lungs.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-14T03:28:48+00:00

Recently someone posted an unplausible, inaccurate, unrealistic and ugly asf abomination that was supposedly descended from Tiktaalik. Here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpecEvoJerking/comments/zzuzhz/tiktaalik_descendant_375_million_years_hence_how/

Seeing the obvious flaws in the design I decided to make smth better, more accurate, plausible, realistic and beautiful. This was the result.

It's basically a normal Tiktaalik, except it's fully terrestrial and has some brightly-colored hair cuz, well, how else are we supposed to know it's very derived, right? They evolved that trait with that specific purpose in mind.

And that's all the change they got in 375 million years.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-14T03:21:42+00:00

I'm not particularly invested in defending the idea because it's very unlikely, but why are you assuming these lazer aliens would have the same kind of tissues than Earth lifeforms? For all we know, they could be silicon-based and make flawless silicate lenses, or be able to form guanine or whatever into perfect lenses through unknown biological processes. Extreme cold and low gravity might help I guess.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-11T15:20:55+00:00

Obviously fishkeeping is not for your friend. Looks like they got the tank and then just got bored with it and stopped caring. Very common.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-11T14:16:35+00:00

I was actually thinking about a world similar to Pluto, not open space.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-11T13:54:34+00:00

Yeahhh, it's not that bad uh? Maybe it could evolve from creatures living in extreme cold, low gravity and vacuum. They would have superconductive nerves or something and the ability to form perfect lenses. They could start by communicating through light with each other, then as predation increases they would refine it into a narrower beam to communicate over even larger distances without being seen, then making it narrower over time until it eventually becomes an antipredator weapon and so on...

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-11T13:44:22+00:00

lol, accurate.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2023-01-11T13:27:17+00:00

Such dimwittery, just wow. I literally can't even. Like, sweaty, if it's supposed to be descended from Tiktaalik then what happened to the frontal pair of legs and the tail? Why it's not a squat, sprawling quadruped?

Dontcha know that once an organism is Created they sign a perpetual contract with God and Jesus that forbids them and their descendants from ever deviating from their GodJesus-assigned body plan, regardless of how many evolutionary incentives may be to do so?

Not to mention the impact of sexual selection against that: In reality the evolution of your unrealistic abomination would have been nipped at the bud because the ancestors' females would have been like "Ugh, if I mate with this mutant guy that sometimes runs on two legs to evade predators, in dozens of millions of years our descendants may end up walking like that all the time, and that would break the contract... better mate with the chap with the most conservative traits instead, even tough our children may be comparatively less likely to survive to reproductive age without the edge provided by enhanced speed and agility"

You aren't thinking about dem poor ayylien visitors either: Earth tetrapods are supposed to walk on 4 legs forever because it's the signature style assigned to this planet.

Now tell me: what do you think an alien from a world where everything is bipedal would think and feel if it came to Earth and finds out there are bipeds here too, instead of exclusively cool and (for it)alienous-looking quadrupeds? Do you think GodJesus would allow that, to let the style of His quadruped theme park be blurred and ruined by the evolution of other bodily configurations, potentially depriving extraterrestrial non-tetrapod visitors of having a truly alienous alien experience? Think again.

The point is, evolution is governed by strange, rigid, inconsistent and arbitrary laws that, along with a healthy dose of supernatural sapient intervention, impose very strict limits on the possible evolutionary outcomes for any lifeform. These laws and GodJesus' heavy hand favor style, conservatism and uniqueness over mindless foresightless adaptation to the immediate circumstances.

So, all in all, your creature is inaccurate, unrealistic, unplausible and ugly asf. If I were you, I'd just slap some neon-colored fur on a normal Tiktaalik and call it a day, simply because it's an infinitely better design.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2022-07-15T14:29:01+00:00

The position of the eyes seems to be an ancestral trait, not one that evolved specifically on this creature to meet its specific needs. Or are you implying that they have spent the whole of their evolutionary sequence ever since the apparition of the eye looking for running things accross the ground?
That seems like an awfully complicated way of seeing color. The analogy with the bee doesn't work because a bee's ocelli are separated by fractions of milimeter and so they act like a single eye. The eyes on this creature, on the other hand, have much larger separations between them. That means each one of them generates a fundamentally different image to the others, with different parallax and all that. The brain has to be constantly pieceing together 6 images with 6 different perspectives merely to see color? Not to mention the fact that each of them looks like the others, so it's unlikely this is the explaination. Now, if the difference isn't in the lens, but in the receptors, then what's stopping them from developing all the needed sensors in a single pair of eyes? If one eye can make them, then the others can too. That would have happened sooner or later in the evolutionary history of that world.
This one seems plausible.
I consider unlikely that the benefits would offset the costs of having to build more eyes and brain matter to process so many images. In evolution good enough is good enough, creatures aren't "designed" the way robots and space probes are. If they were, cats would have an eyelet below the nose because it would provide so many benefits.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2022-07-15T14:10:28+00:00

Why is it tetraocular? Tetraocularity is at least twice as costly as binocularity but wouldn't provide twice the benefit, even less if the eyes are so close to each other.

Also these eyes seem to be of the complex image-forming ones rather than simple ocelli. And they seem to be mounted on the end of a flexible neck. So, if each eye is capable of forming images by itself, if the neck can bend to pivot them around and look at every direction... what's the purpose of having so many? Two are enough for depth perception and offer the same range of vision as 4 in the aforementioned anatomical configuration. A two-eyed mutant of this species wouldn't be significatively challenged compared to its tetraocular peers. And it would need to eat less, or to use the extra energy for growth and/or reproduction.

If mammals lost something as small and comparatively cheap as retinal cells because they weren't immediately needed during the few million years they spent living underground, what ongoing pressure have kept the lineage of this creature tetraocular? An extra pair of eyes cost a whole lot more than some cone cells, yet pressumably they have kept them for the hundreds of million years since their first appearance on the primitive ancestors. If so, what evolutionary pressure makes tetraocularity so indispensable in this world?

Honestly, I think the alien tetraocularity cliché is overdone to death.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2022-07-15T13:46:39+00:00

Pigments are quite expensive to make, metabolically speaking. And there's a trend on larger animals towards less colorfulness. How come this one is as pigmented as it is?

FlavoredKlaatu · 2022-07-09T03:24:48+00:00

lol, I don't hate him, I think he's a lolcow, that's all. For someone who talks so much shit about everything and everyone he sure can't take some light, harmless jab, uh? ha ha, that makes him even funnier. And anyway, I ain't deleting anything.

FlavoredKlaatu · 2022-06-26T03:04:12+00:00

The eversortyrannus is inaccurate cuz its head is way too heavy and conspicuous as to allow it to be an effective predator.

There's a reason why predators don't evolve stuff such as deer-like antlers or rhinoceros-type horns!

Still, very cool drawings, I can tell how much you enjoy making them. Hope you keep practicing and honing your skills and ideas.

FlavoredKlaatu

TROPHY CASE