Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Speculative biology is simultaneously a science and form of art in which one speculates on the possibilities of life and evolution. What could the world look like if dinosaurs had never gone extinct? What could alien lifeforms look like? What kinds of plants and animals might exist in the far future? These questions and more are tackled by speculative biologists, and the Speculative Evolution welcomes all relevant ideas, inquiries, and world-building projects alike. With a member base comprising users from across the world, our community is the largest and longest-running place of gathering for speculative biologists on the web.

While unregistered users are able to browse the forum on a basic level, registering an account provides additional forum access not visible to guests as well as the ability to join in discussions and contribute yourself! Registration is free and instantaneous.

Join our community today!

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Your Project Ideas; A place to share your ideas for projects
Topic Started: Oct 14 2015, 09:27 AM (65,391 Views)
IIGSY
Member Avatar
A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Yiqi15
Jan 4 2017, 02:41 PM
Hished

Meet Henry Johnston: a forty three year old divorced man who lives alone in Chicago, Illinois. He spends his days commuting to a Meijers store where he works, watching sports with his friends, and getting visits from his son who has just graduated university. He doesn't seem like of guy whose name would be known across the multiverse.

Little does he know however, in an alternate dimension, he's an entire planet. To be precise, a massive version of his head the size of earth exists, floating around a yellow star. If you were to go onto this planet, you would find a bizarre and grotesque world. Its a world where hair follicles replace grass and trees; a world of very derived parasites; a diverse planet, from the great Polar Hair Forests, to the Teeth Mountains, to the subdermal Bone Desert.

It all happens while Henry is busy checking food items out.
What. The. Hell. Do it.
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
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Yiqi15
Member Avatar
Prime Specimen
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Uncanny Gemstar
Jan 4 2017, 02:53 PM
Sorry for asking so many questions btw.
@Uncanny Gemstar No need. I'll answer most of them.

Quote:
 
Is the head alive and have an immune system and functional blood vessels and nerves and all?
While it it does have blood vessels and nerves, the head is not technically alive.

Quote:
 
Or was it alive and is now dead, and if so is it decaying? Or was it never alive and never decays?

I haven't decided.

Quote:
 
Does it have a molten core due to the pressure and heat?


Sort of. It has a molten brain instead.

Quote:
 
And is it affected by regular Henry Johnsons day to day life; as in he takes a shower and the planet floods, he cuts his hair and the polar hair forests are suddenly torn apart, he gets a black eye and the planet suddenly gets a giant bruise? And if so, when our Henry dies then does head planet die too?


Some of Henry's actions do have an effect on Hished. For instance, the Southern Hairplains (the area corresponding to his cheeks and chin) are subjected to massive wildfires whenever Henry shaves. Similar to the Great Plains, these are an important factor in their ecosystem.

Yes. Once Harry dies, most of the planet will start to wither away until the 'skull' is left.
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
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
GlarnBoudin
Member Avatar
Disgusting Skin Fetishist
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Beetleboy
Jan 2 2017, 12:36 PM
What were your ieas for The Future is Altered, Glarn? I've never really seen any projects by you before, so I'd be interested to see what you come up with. Let me guess - I bet there'll be descendants of chickenosaurs. Probably awesome and tyrannosaur-like, knowing you Glarn. :P
Quite a few groups of those, yeah - they do quite well in the future.
Quotes
Spoiler: click to toggle


Co-creator/corporate minion for the Pop Culture Monster Apocalypse!

My Projects
Spoiler: click to toggle

Coming Soon
Spoiler: click to toggle


My dA page.
My Fanfiction.net page.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Corecin
Member Avatar
Have you ever been bitch slapped for lack of listening? lack of doing what your told? cuz i'm not far from slapping you
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
GlarnBoudin
Jan 4 2017, 03:39 PM
Beetleboy
Jan 2 2017, 12:36 PM
What were your ieas for The Future is Altered, Glarn? I've never really seen any projects by you before, so I'd be interested to see what you come up with. Let me guess - I bet there'll be descendants of chickenosaurs. Probably awesome and tyrannosaur-like, knowing you Glarn. :P
Quite a few groups of those, yeah - they do quite well in the future.
Same here. What were some of your other ideas?
Posted Image
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sayornis
Member Avatar
Neotenous
 *  *  *  *  *  *
I was thinking about Barlowe's Expedition and how some of the fauna doesn't make much biological sense-- such as the creatures that apparently have detachable parts-- and an idea occurred to me. Some of us have speculated/headcanoned that since Barlowe's narrator isn't a scientist and could only make very limited observations, he is wildly misinterpreting their biology or drawing hasty conclusions based on uncommon behaviors.

So my idea is, what if an alien visited Earth and observed our fauna as Barlowe's narrator did with Darwin IV? Sort of like "All Todays" but set in the present and based on living fauna instead of fossils.

I imagine how this visitor would interpret altricial birds, based on a few observations of a parent feeding its nestlings: The nest would be mistaken for an outgrowth of the plant it was on, and the babies as motile structures similar to Venus Flytraps, which the parent bird was feeding due to some enigmatic symbiosis with the vast carnivorous plant.
Edited by Sayornis, Jan 7 2017, 10:20 PM.
The Library is open. (Now under new management!)
Dr Nitwhite
Aug 19 2016, 07:42 PM
As I said before, the Library is like spec crack.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sphenodon
Member Avatar
Calcareous

A while ago I came up with a rather odd idea, which I remembered just today. The premise is that just prior to the K-Pg extinction (or perhaps during it, or right after the impact of the Chixculub bolide), a small area of land (not sure of the continent) centered on a large herd of dinosaurs is put in completely suspended animation by an unexplained force (let's say Alien Space Bats). Hundreds of thousands to a million years later, very early into the Paleocene (after life has comfortably recovered, but prior to any real speciation), the area "un-pauses", freeing the biota within - plants (probably quite similar to those outside of the field), invertebrates, small populations of smaller animals, and the herd of dinosaurs.

The catch is, the herd of dinosaurs upon which the area was centered was a herd of large titanosaurian sauropods, the area in question being their nesting site shortly following the deposition of their eggs.

The project then focuses on how the Cenozoic progresses with the influence of both a very limited raft of more "standard" alternative K-Pg survivors and that of a large sauropod, which at the moment is the largest species of animal on the planet (terrestrial or aquatic - a strange concept) by a few orders of magnitude and possesses neither competition or predators on an effective scale.

Do you think it sounds interesting, or is it too pulpy?
Edited by Sphenodon, Jan 7 2017, 10:35 PM.

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!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
trex841
Member Avatar
Entity
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Would the plant life at the time be enough to sustain sauropods? I don't know about the Flora right after the KT.
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs
A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.

At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sphenodon
Member Avatar
Calcareous

The thought was that the area would "unfreeze" a short time after forests had recovered themselves from the impact and become widespread, and had become self-sustaining. That was another thing I was considering - without predators (of adults or even moderately-large juveniles, at least), you'd likely see some catastrophic ecological overturn cycles until either the plants or sauropods (or both) had adapted to each others' conditions, or until predators caught up to the things - or both.

You do bring up a point about the composition of earliest-Cenozoic forests, though. Were they essentially like their pre-extinction counterparts in terms of species (barring those that relied upon now-extinct animals for reproduction), or mostly new? I don't know either. Also, a completely baseless theory I came up with just now - with the lack of large herbivores for a few million years after the K-Pg, wouldn't forests have spread from lack of consumption?

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!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
trex841
Member Avatar
Entity
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Yeah, just wasn't sure about how high plant levels would be even then, or if the climate have changed due to the event. They need a lot of food after all.
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs
A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.

At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Beetleboy
Member Avatar
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Sayornis
Jan 7 2017, 10:02 PM
I was thinking about Barlowe's Expedition and how some of the fauna doesn't make much biological sense-- such as the creatures that apparently have detachable parts-- and an idea occurred to me. Some of us have speculated/headcanoned that since Barlowe's narrator isn't a scientist and could only make very limited observations, he is wildly misinterpreting their biology or drawing hasty conclusions based on uncommon behaviors.

So my idea is, what if an alien visited Earth and observed our fauna as Barlowe's narrator did with Darwin IV? Sort of like "All Todays" but set in the present and based on living fauna instead of fossils.

I imagine how this visitor would interpret altricial birds, based on a few observations of a parent feeding its nestlings: The nest would be mistaken for an outgrowth of the plant it was on, and the babies as motile structures similar to Venus Flytraps, which the parent bird was feeding due to some enigmatic symbiosis with the vast carnivorous plant.
Awesome idea! Are you planning on going further with it?
~ The Age of Forests ~
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Dr Nitwhite
Member Avatar
Luddite
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Beetleboy
Jan 8 2017, 08:03 AM
Sayornis
Jan 7 2017, 10:02 PM
I was thinking about Barlowe's Expedition and how some of the fauna doesn't make much biological sense-- such as the creatures that apparently have detachable parts-- and an idea occurred to me. Some of us have speculated/headcanoned that since Barlowe's narrator isn't a scientist and could only make very limited observations, he is wildly misinterpreting their biology or drawing hasty conclusions based on uncommon behaviors.

So my idea is, what if an alien visited Earth and observed our fauna as Barlowe's narrator did with Darwin IV? Sort of like "All Todays" but set in the present and based on living fauna instead of fossils.

I imagine how this visitor would interpret altricial birds, based on a few observations of a parent feeding its nestlings: The nest would be mistaken for an outgrowth of the plant it was on, and the babies as motile structures similar to Venus Flytraps, which the parent bird was feeding due to some enigmatic symbiosis with the vast carnivorous plant.
Awesome idea! Are you planning on going further with it?
Funnily enough I had a similar idea, in fact after reading a book I believe was on speciation. In the book, a hypothetical alien visitor was tasked to organize snails into species, and failed for various reasons, one being the color the other I can't seem to recall. It sounds like a great idea, go with it!
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.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Yiqi15
Member Avatar
Prime Specimen
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Sayornis
Jan 7 2017, 10:02 PM
So my idea is, what if an alien visited Earth and observed our fauna as Barlowe's narrator did with Darwin IV? Sort of like "All Todays" but set in the present and based on living fauna instead of fossils.

I imagine how this visitor would interpret altricial birds, based on a few observations of a parent feeding its nestlings: The nest would be mistaken for an outgrowth of the plant it was on, and the babies as motile structures similar to Venus Flytraps, which the parent bird was feeding due to some enigmatic symbiosis with the vast carnivorous plant.
For a more comedic twist on that, the alien could have a human guide who keeps trying to correct him but the alien keeps wildly misinterpreting him.
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
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sayornis
Member Avatar
Neotenous
 *  *  *  *  *  *
Beetleboy
Jan 8 2017, 08:03 AM
Awesome idea! Are you planning on going further with it?
I don't know if I'll develop this into a proper project, but I did have an idea for another misinterpretation:

Chrysales on plants are fruit, and butterflies are how the plant reproduces, a sort of motile seed (a bit like the walking fruits of Ilion). Caterpillars are something unrelated, which the plant evolved autonomous flying seeds to avoid.
The Library is open. (Now under new management!)
Dr Nitwhite
Aug 19 2016, 07:42 PM
As I said before, the Library is like spec crack.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
TerrificTyler
Member Avatar
Snazz God
 *  *  *  *  *
A project involving a terraformed world where the only vertebrate is the star-nosed mole (Other organisms would include centipedes, worms, flies, grass, and dandelions)

It would center on the planet after about 250 million years.

Posted Image


The Time Bubble- A universe-sized terrarium

My Deviantart


Wkhuh duh rqob wzr jhqghuv
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Beetleboy
Member Avatar
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
For those who were interested, Man's Legacy is now up on evolutionary continuum.
~ The Age of Forests ~
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
2 users reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
Members: Duckeyboos
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Create a free forum in seconds.
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · General Spec · Next Topic »
Add Reply