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Possibility of a sapient metatherian; Could they evolve?
Topic Started: Feb 15 2010, 01:38 PM (1,427 Views)
Dean
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Okay, let's imagine that either eutherians never evolved, or there exists a landmass, where metatherians thrive without eutherian interference.

Could a metatherian eventually develop sapience?

Metatherians are very similar to eutherians, and given enough time, metatherians could converge into forms resembling eutherians (Thylacosmilus, thylacine, etc...)
There seems to be many euarchontoglires-like metatherians, maybe a primate analogue can evolve from one of them.

But the main question is, is the metatherian body capable of developing a very large and complex brain? Because of their reproductive strategy, embryos need to over-develop front limbs and facial features, and other parts of the head related to feeding, at the cost of the brain.

Also, they don't have a corpus callosum in their brain. Would this make more complex neural processes slower, or would a metatherian on the road to sapience eventually develop an analogue?

Sugar gliders seem quite social, and according to old reports about the thylacine, it seemed pretty intelligent, and easy to tame to be a pet.
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Dean
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Holbenilord
Feb 19 2010, 10:52 AM
If they have such a short pregnancy time, do they even develop noeteny and how could their brains grow so large?
Most of the development would take place in the marsupium. Since thylacines, sugar gliders and even the oviparous raven are pretty smart animals, maybe the theory that long placental development is a requirement to a complex brain, is not applicable to every case.

As a group, intelligence is generally high among placental mammals, but there are metatherians and non-mammalian animals that are smarter than some placental mammals.
Edited by Dean, Feb 19 2010, 11:14 AM.
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

The milk should have lots of folic acid. ;)
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Dean
Infant
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Here's my sapient sugar glider idea


Name: Pirate Flyer (in marsuhuman language they're known as "demons")


Short description: Sapient, volant, sugar glider-like creatures, who live like corvids

Evolution: Sugar gliders became more and more skillful in flying, and eventually their gliding membrane and part of their arm and hand evolved into a bat like wing, that permits both powered flight and usage of the remaining fingers as a useful tool-using hand.

Their new volant lifestyle gave a rapid boost towards intelligence, until one day, they became sapient.
They have evolved a kind of co-existence with marsuhumans, but it's not a peaceful, nor a mutual one. Because they lived like corvids, but were sapient, and reproduced more rapidly, they eventually out competed most corvids in their niches, so in this world crows and ravens are extinct.

Description: Today, they are opportunistic omnivores, who adapted to live in the big cities of marsuhumans. They don't have a real society, instead they live in a kind of anarchy. They rarely interact with each other, other than to reproduce, and battle for territories. They are skillful flyers, can eat virtually anything, and prefer foods with a very high sugar content. They've been a pest of the marsuhumans since the stone age, but the live-and-let-live policy of marsuhumans prevented them from lauching a genocide against these creatures. Instead marsuhumans found clever ways to keep these creatures away from their habitat. In the big cities of today, this is becoming harder and harder.

Development: Their development is very similar to that of the original sugar glider, and fully developed joeys who emerge from the marsupium can fly by instinct, but need a little training by parents to surface the ability. After that, they quickly pick up what they need to know about life (which isn't very much) then off they go, never seeing their parents again.


Body System: Very similar to that of the sugar glider, only differing in their large, sapient brain, and the bat-like wing, with manipulator fingers on the end of it.
Their main modes of communication are vocalizations with which they can speak a rudimentary spoken language, a kind of dance-based sign language, and pheromone signals.

Culture:
Their culture is pretty simple, it revolves around fighting for territories, which they elaborately decorate to attract mates, stealing food and simple tools from marsuhumans, and of course the favourite activity of the creatures: Goofing off, and annoying the hell outta marsuhumans! (That's where they got their marsuhuman nickname: demons).

As crazy as it sounds, nothing makes a pirate flyer more happy then to make pranks and annoy marsuhumans. They are known to swoop down on candies and ice creams of children (which is a favourite food of them, because of their high sugar intake), lace drinks with laxatives, and confuse people by sending them false information.
Pirate gliders are unable to speak marsuhuman because of their type of vocal chords, and their hands are not dexterous enough to use the pens and pencils of marsuhumans, but they can learn to understand spoken and written marsuhuman language, and can write with marsuhuman typewriters, or by dipping their finger in ink, and writing by hand.
More aggressive pirate gliders are knows to help marsuhuman organized crime, kill people who annoy them, and organize terrorist attacks against certain marsuhuman organizations, if they think it threatens their liberty.

Marsuhuman opinion about them is divided:

Conservatives try to apply the old methods of keeping them away,
Liberals try to make plans to reach a mutual agreement with them
and Far-Right radical groups are thinking about a genocide against them.
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Margaret Pye
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Just one thing I'd like to poke sticks at: I always assumed ancestor-worship to be an extension of the fact that most living ancestors (not all, obviously, but most) are wiser than their descendants. Seems like a short step from "I'll trust Mum's judgement on this because she has more experience" to "Mum's dead, I still want her opinion, I'll set up a shrine so that she'll show up as a ghost and explain things to me." So why doesn't that work for marsuhumans?

Also, just how humanoid are marsuhumans? Are they still nocturnal, or did they become diurnal at some stage? Do they have fur? Sugar gliders have glorious, silky fur, and I think it'd be a shame if intelligence made them go bald.

How human do their faces look? Do they still have the constantly-growing rodenty teeth? If they retain the teeth, I can imagine them gnawing things into shape (whittling wooden knicknacks, maybe?)

Do they still have tails? Again, sugar gliders have lovely bushy tails that it'd be a pity to lose.
My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont.
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Dean
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Marsuhuman children are less emotionally attached to their parents and become independent thinkers at an earlier age, than their placental counterparts.
They don't like it when their parents tell them what to do, and usually form opinions that differ from those of their parents, but they pretend that they love their parents dearly, because as long as their parents take care of their needs, like food and shelter, they don't have to go to work.
Eventually, after they move out, they don't really care about their parents anymore.

Marsuhumans are as humanoid as a metatherian can get. Marsuhumans are the result of the evolution of a marsupial group that evolved on the same path as hominids.
As a result, they are diurnal, they have the same amount of hair as we do, their teeth are metatherian-derived, so a bit different, but they don't grow constantly like those of rodents.

Pirate Flyers look very similar to the sugar gliders we are familar with. They do have a bigger head, but it isn't bald, they have tails because it is important in steering during flight, and of course instead of the gliding membrane, they have bat-like wings.


Hey, I just got another idea about pirate gliders! Maybe a small group of them studied the live-and-let-live policy of marsuhumans, and decided that instead of torturing them, they'll help them by catching dangerous pirate gliders.
They could be like Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. :)
Edited by Dean, Feb 20 2010, 04:25 AM.
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Margaret Pye
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Hmmm... so if they're that humanoid, do they have breasts?

Without nipples, obviously. But the most sensible theory for why human females have big lumps of fat round their mammary glands goes like this:
Female apes' bottoms are important for sexual attraction.
When ape becomes bipedal, females' bottoms are no longer in front of males' faces.
Therefore, for the sake of sexual attraction, evolve fake bottom further up.

And that'd still work without involving the mammary glands.
My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont.
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Dean
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Margaret Pye
Feb 20 2010, 08:37 AM
Hmmm... so if they're that humanoid, do they have breasts?

Without nipples, obviously. But the most sensible theory for why human females have big lumps of fat round their mammary glands goes like this:
Female apes' bottoms are important for sexual attraction.
When ape becomes bipedal, females' bottoms are no longer in front of males' faces.
Therefore, for the sake of sexual attraction, evolve fake bottom further up.

And that'd still work without involving the mammary glands.
Well, I've already thought about this, and came to the conclusion, that they still have breastless nipples in their marsupium, but marsuhuman males find the marsupium itself as erotic as placental human males find breasts.
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