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The Species Factory; Empty your mind
Topic Started: Nov 6 2014, 06:54 PM (33,400 Views)
GlarnBoudin
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Disgusting Skin Fetishist
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There are ants that have developed a suicide bomber cast. So there's one way to do it, I guess.
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Co-creator/corporate minion for the Pop Culture Monster Apocalypse!

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My dA page.
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HangingThief
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ghoulish
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GlarnBoudin
Sep 10 2016, 09:27 PM
There are ants that have developed a suicide bomber cast. So there's one way to do it, I guess.
Yeah but that's not so good for defending oneself.
Hey.


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peashyjah
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Bydo
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Rodlox
Sep 9 2016, 11:29 PM
peashyjah
Sep 9 2016, 03:32 PM
The way how Marsupial Frogs reproduced might be a little bit disturbing!
using something evolved for one purpose, for another function later? avoid mouth-brooding fish, then.
That's almost the same problem with the mouth-brooding fish too.
Discontinued projects:
The New Ostracoderms (i might continue with this project again someday)
The Americas (where in 58 million years from now in the future North and South America has both become isolated island continents)



All Expansions (my attempt at expanding the universe of All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet aka C.M. Kosemen, started June 6, 2018)
Anthropozoic (my attempt at expanding the universe of Man After Man and also a re-imagining of it, coming 2019 or 2020)
New Cenozoica (my attempt at expanding the universe of The New Dinosaurs and also a re-imagining of it, also coming 2019 or 2020)
All Alternatives or All Changes (a re-telling of All Tomorrows but with some minor and major "changes", coming June 10, 2018)
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HangingThief
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ghoulish
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I doodled this the other day. It's an eight-legged arthropod thing with one pair of legs used as mouthparts, another developed into wings and antennae that have become climbing and manipulating appendages.
Posted Image
Sort of my take of what might've happened if terrestrial arthropods developed flight instead of aquatic insects.
Edited by HangingThief, Sep 17 2016, 02:33 PM.
Hey.


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Dr Nitwhite
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Luddite
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They remind me somewhat of my flying shrimp, based in Laniakea. Which will someday be updated. Someday.
Speculative Evolution Projects-

Other Relevant Work-

Final SE Lifelist standings

BREAKING NEWS
We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this cutting edge report.
ATTENDANCE DROPS DRASTICALLY ON SE SERVER
This past Monday on Discord, famous server Speculative Evolution took a hit in the attendance office when it's offline member list suddenly reappeared. Mods scrambled to rectify the situation, but unfortunately there was little anyone could do. Server member Ivan was asked what he thought of the situation. "So long as Flisch, lord of machines and scion of Urborg lives, all will be well". SE, (in)famous for it's eccentric userbase, has recently been spiraling downward, and now we have hard conformation of the decline. Moderator "High Lord" Icthyander states "There is nothing to be concerned about, Discord is merely changing its UI again", but members are beginning to suspect the honesty of their staff.
Stay tuned, we'll be back with more at 11.
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Finncredibad
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Edgy and Cool
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The quantum tadpole
A meter long space going creature made of plasma contained in a thin yet very strong lair of "skin". The quantum tadpole has a tail that it uses to propell itself forward. This creature also doesn't have a brain, or any other complex organs other than a nucleus and a tail in perpetual motion. They reproduce by exchanging plasma with another quantum tadpole or in some cases, a nearby star. Very often a ship may come across one of these creatures in space, and if so, the tadpole will most likely be caught, and thrown in the fusion engine as a high quality fuel source.
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LittleLazyLass
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Proud quilt in a bag

Here's one: A large snake-like creature, but with the sound-making orifices at the tail end of the creature. It would make noise from one direction, leading the prey away from said sound and towards the head. It'd probably be an alien, and almost certainly not an animal, and would have to live in an area with a lot of cover, and/or hunt at night, but I think it could work.
totally not British, b-baka!
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I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
Me
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truteal
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forum bigfoot
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The Multifruit: A tree that produces three types of fruit, a large dull green fruit with a strong scent on its lower branches that attracts the colour-blind herbivorous mammals of the understory, medium sized yellow fruit higher up that attracts primates and birds and small bright blue fruit that attract small birds
My sporadically updated Youtube page

Do you get it? I hardly ever come here so I'm like something a cryptozoologist would study
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Yiqi15
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Prime Specimen
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The Dakotan Unicorn (Okapiahippus aigeiros): a species of future horse found in the Midwest with an okapi-like bauplan. It feeds on trees which have become much more common on the Prairies 15,000,000 years hence.
Current/Completed Projects
- After the Holocene: Your run-of-the-mill future evolution project.
- A History of the Odessa Rhinoceros: What happens when you ship 28 southern white rhinoceri to Texas and try and farm them? Quite a lot, actually.

Future Projects
- XenoSphere: The greatest zoo in the galaxy.
- The Curious Case of the Woolly Giraffe: A case study of an eocene relic.
- Untittled Asylum Studios-Based Project: The truth behind all the CGI schlock
- Riggslandia V.II: A World 150 million years in the making

Potential Projects
- Klowns: The biology and culture of a creepy-yet-fascinating being

My Zoochat and Fadom Accounts
- Zoochat
- Fandom
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IIGSY
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Here is some ideas that you can use if you feel like it.

Platyhelminthes dominated world
Planet with freshwater oceans
Monitor-like anole
Fully aquatic mole
Scaphopod derived cephalopods (I actually remember seeing this somewhere)
"neo fish" derived from amphibians
Projects
Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates
Last one crawling: The last arthropod

ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess)

Potential ideas-
Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized.
Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal.
Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents.

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Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


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Other cool things


All African countries can fit into Brazil
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IIGSY
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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HangingThief
Sep 17 2016, 02:32 PM
I doodled this the other day. It's an eight-legged arthropod thing with one pair of legs used as mouthparts, another developed into wings and antennae that have become climbing and manipulating appendages.
Posted Image
Sort of my take of what might've happened if terrestrial arthropods developed flight instead of aquatic insects.
Can I use that?
Projects
Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates
Last one crawling: The last arthropod

ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess)

Potential ideas-
Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized.
Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal.
Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents.

Quotes


Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


More pictures


Other cool things


All African countries can fit into Brazil
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Sphenodon
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Calcareous

A species of spinosaurid that has adapted to a near-completely aquatic lifestyle, allowing them to survive to the end of the Cretaceous. The species exhibits extreme sexual dimorphism - males resemble large metriorhynchid crocodilians and are completely seabound, while the female bauplan is best described as a crocodilian elephant seal. In line with this extreme level of dimorphism, they have developed a social structure far more advanced (re: existent) than that of their ancestors - the species forms pods of individuals, with each pod being comprised of a male (which are born at a less frequent rate than females) and several females. The male guards his harem, being significantly larger than any of them and even more adapted towards aquatic movement. While the females nest at rookeries, the males wander about the ocean in an immense radius around the colonies, eating as much as they can; when the females return with their brood (by now thin from having had to feed a burgeoning pair of chicks), the males feed them the excess food stored in their crop so as to give them a head start to recovery.

We have a Discord server! If you would like to join, simply message myself, Flisch, or Icthyander.
Some of my ideas (nothing real yet, but soon):
Refugium: A last chance for collapsing ecosystems and their inhabitants.
Pansauria: A terraforming project featuring the evolution of exactly one animal - the marine iguana.
Mars Renewed: An insight into the life of Mars thirty million years after its terraforming by humankind.
Microcosm: An exceedingly small environment.
Alcyon: A planet colonized by species remodeled into new niches by genetic engineering.
Oddballs: Aberrant representatives of various biological groups compete and coexist.

..and probably some other stuff at some point (perhaps a no K-T project). Stay tuned!
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Dakka!
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Prime Specimen
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Snakes that fuse their teeth into cutting blades and use them to eat plant matter.
"I was a Psychiatrist in Florida! For 3 weeks! Have you ever been to Florida?"




Some project ideas
The Future is Right
Ediacaran Explosion
Great Old Ones
Skinkworld


Unrelated:The Final Spec:What Could Have Been, And Still Can
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HangingThief
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ghoulish
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Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Nov 5 2016, 12:29 PM
HangingThief
Sep 17 2016, 02:32 PM
I doodled this the other day. It's an eight-legged arthropod thing with one pair of legs used as mouthparts, another developed into wings and antennae that have become climbing and manipulating appendages.
Posted Image
Sort of my take of what might've happened if terrestrial arthropods developed flight instead of aquatic insects.
Can I use that?
Knock yourself out.
Hey.


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Beetleboy
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Invertebrate concepts:

  • Predatory terrestrial mollusc which creates webs of sticky mucous in fine threads over a hunting area. Small animals becoming entangled in the snail's web, and the vibrations throughout the threads alerts the mollusc, which slowly slides down to its trapped prey to eat it.
  • A smaller relative of the above, which instead of spinning complicated mucous webs, simply leaves sticky 'fly-paper' trails of slime, which gives off a scent that is very attractive to small flies, which become stuck to it. The snail can simply slide back down its mucous trail, swallowing the trapped insects as it goes.
  • A small arboreal snail found in Sylvaria, which is so small that its thin shell does not protect it from its avian predators. It encourages moss to grow on its back, camouflaging it.
  • Poisonous slugs which have aposematic colouration to demonstrate their toxicity. Their skins are various shades of oranges, reds, and yellows.
  • A highly evolved terrestrial mollusc which resembles a slug. It can manipulate its skin texture to match its background, and can even change colour to help it camouflage.
  • Eusocial brittlestars. They create colonies composed of a ruling king, workers, and a few breeding females which give birth to and attend to the larvae. Probably not overly realistic, but it's just an idea.
  • A species of large flatworm which can be found in kelp beds, where it climbs up a frond of kelp, perfectly camouflaged with its frayed edges, and green, lumpy body, hiding it as it feasts upon the kelp.
  • An opilione which moves in colonies across vegetation, clustering in a leggy, confused mass over leaves to chew away at it. They use safety in numbers to keep safe from danger, but a species of spider has evolved to mimic them to creep into the foraging colony and catch them offguard.
  • Giant Sylvarian psuedoscorpions.
  • An ornate, brightly coloured small scorpion which can be found amongst certain orchids, mimicking them with its odd shapes and bright colours. Its claws, body, and stinger are all adapted to look like petals. When a pollinating insect comes close, they strike at it with their tail and claws.
  • A rainforest-dwelling jumping spider which would not be of much note, if it wasn't for a particular behaviour that it practises. It climbs up to bird nests and uses it specialized fangs to break the shell of an egg, then lap up some of the nutrient-rich yolk from inside. After having consumed some of the egg's contents, the jumping spider will open the egg up further so that it can climb inside, covering the eggshell over it to make the egg look relatively intact, at least to a parent bird. All the while, the spider is eating away at the yolk and white of the egg. When the parents aren't incubating the nest, the spider will climb out of its egg if it has consumed everything, and move onto the next one. Individuals that practice this behaviour eat lots in short bursts, leaving relatively long periods of time when eating is not neccasary.
  • Highly eusocial weevils. They live in large colonies ruled by a queen, and one of the most unusual castes is a broad-backed farming caste, on which algae is grown all over their wingcases. As these eusocial weevils are often threatened by a variety of predators, there is much to be said for your whole farm getting up and running away with the rest of the colony. They do not make large hives or nests like bees or ants, instead being gregarious, constantly moving around, the colony staying in bark caves until danger threatens and they move on.
  • Terrestrial dragonfly nymphs.


That's all for now. I have tons more crustacean and insect ideas, but I can't think right now. I also think there might be an untapped potential in butterflies, moths, dipterans, and dragonflies.
~ The Age of Forests ~
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