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Jawless Land Vertebrates; An alternative to vertabrate jaws.
Topic Started: Jan 24 2009, 07:08 PM (3,826 Views)
Toad of Spades
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What if some jawless fish adapted to land life and evolved an alternative to jaws? What practical alternatives to jaws can you think of, and if they radiated into niches comparable to our land vertebrates what would be some of the major differences be?
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lamna
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Yeah and working with them would not be fun, having to go pee or drink every 5 minutes.
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agatharights
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Sounds like me, now!
Although, I bet that less physical waste would make for an easier time. Probably the only culture where peeing in the potted plant in the office breakroom is allowed.
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lamna
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Or maybe their floor is one massive urinal that flushes every few minutes.

The export opportunities for those urinal cakes things is astronomical.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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agatharights
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Or maybe they just have dirt floors, or plant indoor grass!

I love speculative architecture. I should make a thread for that. I even designed basic building structures for a friend's alien species based upon their evolutionary history.

("See, humans build up from the ground, because to us, being up high is being safe. But the Lurks, no, they build from the ground down, because they feel safer subterranian...")
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lamna
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Yeah I read about that. Apparently that is why there is so much fighting for the top bunk.

That grass will be getting brown patches pretty quickly.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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agatharights
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Not particularly. Some wild plants thrive in the presence of urea. Plus, if these are herbivores, there may be a high content of undigested sugars in their urine due to the streamlined digestion.
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lamna
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Yeah it's only really predators that much up the lawn. I suppose it could be feasible to have a lawn indoors if it was well ventilated.

Having grates over fast flowing open sewers seems like a good idea for high traffic areas.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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agatharights
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Well, like the Sesshoun I designed up there, they're descended from herd animals. They're used to being constantly ont he move, being tightly-packed, yadda yadda yadda. They might put major roads and highways next to rivers or streams that could wash away waste.
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lamna
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So they feed on liquids then? What is the long tongue for?
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agatharights
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Well, you ahve to remember that they're from an entirely alien planet. That long tongue is actually hollow and somewhat straw-like. They use it to drink from a variety of large pitcher-plant like fruit flowers and from rivers. They just dip their tongue in and slurrrrrp.

So I guess it's not actually a "tongue" so much as an "elongated esophagus that they can stick out" but they also use the flattened end there (which is slightly rough) as a secondary limb at times, as well as for grooming, body language, and what-have-you. No vocal chords, though. They're more birdlike in that aspect, so they can eat and drink while they speak and make noises.
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lamna
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Ah I see now. Not used for breathing then?

Sound very versatile, I wonder what other uses it is put to.

*Creepy wink*
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agatharights
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Get your mind out of the gutter.

That does present another interesting question, though. Without jaws, things like speech and sounds would have to evolve differently...
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lamna
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Hey you can't build a city without sewers.

Well from what I know of birds, the jaw has very little to do with it and they do most of the sounds from down near their lungs.
I expect their language would be tonal, so they would probably find it easier to understand Chinese than English.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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agatharights
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The jaw has nothing to do with it for birds, actually. Having a cockatiel, I've learned that she rarely even opens her beak when she tweets. But a very tonal language would be likely, or a very guttaral one.
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lamna
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I would expect it to be much simpler than the behemoth that is English, and they would probably have symbols for whole words rather than letters.
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Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural


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T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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