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| Terra Metropolis; The Future of Urban Sprawl | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 1 2016, 10:22 PM (12,955 Views) | |
| Sheather | Jan 1 2016, 10:22 PM Post #1 |
 
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 ~~~ The year is 2600. At present, after several centuries' of rise and then gradual fall, there are almost 8 billion people on our Earth, as society has spread to cover the Earth from pole to pole on every continent over the last few tens of thousands of years out from their ancestral Africa through Europe and Asia, to the Americas, and across the sea to Australia and countless islands. Antarctica came last, its true settlement only made possible in the last two centuries, when the formerly ice-bound southernmost continent was finally left habitable by a warming climate thanks to the enormous carbon emissions of the industrial age. This world, once temperate, is today predominately as warm and tropical as it's yet been since the Eocene, yet there are are no virgin rainforests left to show for it - at least of of any significance. Over the last six centuries, we have gone through the sixth major mass extinction in our planet's long history. We saw the seas emptied of life to fill our dinner plates and the jungle cleared for lumber, the casual destruction of thousands of species indirectly and hundreds more extinguished with calculated slaughter. We'd bring some back, at least in some variation, and realizing our grave errors too late, engineer superficial copies of the rest - even, once we had the technology, organisms that vanished before we set foot upon this Earth - but for most life would never be as it was before the dawn of man. It would still be centuries again before the world as a whole was ready to make the efforts needed to try and rebuild some semblance of the wilderness of the planet we'd scraped dry for our selfish needs, to give the majority anything more than an artificial captivity to call home, and change would only come after the darkest of days. War, famine, and societal collapse took many lives, but from the ashes we rebuilt again. In the end, we could never restore it to its former identity; too much was lost, unable to survive in the new world we built around theirs - or the opposite may have been true, ecosystems so altered by introduced organisms for so long that they adapted and become dependent upon the lifeforms that once threatened their existence. Our world is now a new one, far from perfect, but no longer one set upon a seemingly unstoppable path towards its utter obliteration. We are a species that, for all our faults, is here to stay - but that no longer means we can't share our world in a sustainable way. Through a combination of nature's timeless resilience to adversity and our newfound power to modify the very foundations of life as we know it to help it along, Terra Metropolis is the future of us all. The experimental colonies aside, we as a species are all bound to this little blue marble - Earth, our home - but one which we've only recently learned as a species requires as much attention going in as resources being pulled out to ever hope to be sustainable in the long run. As man and nature both learn to live side by side and with mutual give and take, not with a parasitic relationship neatly divided and single-sided, a new and promising chapter in the book of life begins today. Table of Contents
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 The Gaiaverse | Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands | Other Spec Evo | Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur A Wholesome and Good Thing | Sam | | |
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| Sheather | Jan 24 2016, 08:03 PM Post #61 |
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Not a lot really, I wouldn't imagine them being much different from sewers today. It's not the sort of environment any big animal is going to thrive in, but specialist insects and invertebrates probably thrive in them, alongside the occasional rat or other furry creature visiting them for shelter. |
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The Gaiaverse | Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands | Other Spec Evo | Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur A Wholesome and Good Thing | Sam | | |
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| Velociraptor | Jan 24 2016, 09:53 PM Post #62 |
Reptile
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No sewer alligators? |
 Unnamed No K-Pg project: coming whenever, maybe never. I got ideas tho. | |
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| Sheather | Jan 24 2016, 10:00 PM Post #63 |
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Just a few. |
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The Gaiaverse | Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands | Other Spec Evo | Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur A Wholesome and Good Thing | Sam | | |
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| Beetleboy | Jan 25 2016, 10:32 AM Post #64 |
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Ah, I see. It it just that I once had an idea for a species of small pig which lives in sewers, and I was wondering if anything like that existed. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Sheather | Jan 27 2016, 03:41 AM Post #65 |
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 Click for Full Resolution Central Park, New York City. ~~~ It is mid-June, and summer has begun to come full swing in the green metropolis of New York City. The forested walls of enormous integrated structures containing thousands of offices, indoor farms, and countless other industry have become verdant and green after a long bare winter season, almost completely covering the walls and turning entire indoor towns into rolling mountains. An enormous suspending arch between two massive districts that lean over imposingly upon on either side of the historic Central Park becomes a green bridge for the migration of deer and elk and a high vantage point for hunting bald eagles to scan the park below for prey. The towering skyline of the nearest city center shines brightly on the distant horizon, while a variety of isolated apartment complexes rise high into the air within the park. Upon them, window boxes and rooftop garden have burst into magnificent bloom in the summer air, providing food for hummingbirds and butterflies and nest sites for millions of birds. The return of warmth and sunlight to this temperate super-city signals one thing and one thing alone to the biosphere: it is time to reproduce. Colorful pied street pigeons gather in flocks of thousands on every ledge and park pathway, the colorful males strutting and bowing, showing their vigor to potential partners. They strive to continue the cycle of life as they have since the first of their ancestors were brought from the old world to the new on the ships of the pilgrims, an intended food supply gone wild. In just days, they will have made their picks and pairs begun preparing nests together in the bountiful ledges of the urban jungle, as life goes on. Even a normally nocturnal Whillawhisper cat emerges to hunt in the height of the summer, forced by the mewing hunger of a litter of kittens, now several weeks old, hidden in a hollow den high on a landscaped skyscraper. Though normally a creature of the dark night, she must hunt around the clock at this trying time to ensure her young are always supplied with food. She pursues a squirrel up a rooftop tree only for her intended prey to make a leap of faith downwards, falling several stories downwards to land on a lower ledge. For any other cat, this would mark the end of the hunt - but the whillawhisper is anything but any other cat. She follows her quarry over the edge of the building without a moment's pause in an apparent act of suicidal impulse. Her death seems imminent, for she misses the nearest ledge - the only one she could ever have hoped to reach by her leap alone - and begin to plummet down towards the squirrel. But she knows exactly what she has done; in typical cat fashion she simply splays her legs and in an instant, what separates her from the other cats is immediately apparent. Large, billowing skin membranes, covered in sleek sound-absorbent fur, stretch between her legs on either side of her body, supported by cartilaginous rods in her outer wrists. Her silhouette becomes a nearly complete oval as she lifts her front paws high over her head, aided by a free monkey-like shoulder socket, and she stops her descent almost at once, turning in the air and speeding along the side of the skyscraper towards the squirrel that flees for its life along the ledges, unable to climb up the slick walls. Still dazed by its high fall, it scrambles and trips repeatedly as it tries to flee for the nearest clump of trees far ahead, but the shadow comes over it before it gets the chance. It turns to face its attacker and trips, squeals as the cat lands alongside it and pins it to the window with her unsheathed claws before lunging to bite the rodent's neck and sever its spine. Her canines are huge for her size, nearly an inch long, even though she weighs just a few ounces more than her victim. When its body goes still, she quickly turns behind her to ensure the coast is clear. Seeing nothing about to threaten her, she grabs the squirrel by the scruff of its neck and proceeds to drag it the several hundred meters back towards her den, making use of the convenient series of horizontal window ledges that leads back towards her home building. She is remarkably strong for her size, pulling the body with ease at a rapid clip backwards over the flower boxes and past screen windows containing mortified children, barking dogs - and a little orange fox, an ornamental breed with its hair in tight wiry curls and a fine mustache of twisted whiskers on its lip, which watches her with intense interest. Is she friend or foe? The trickiest part will be carrying it upwards when she reaches her building, but she will manage, grabbing firm hold of the body and pulling herself up the lattice of ivy that conceals her sky-high den. By the time she arrives, six tiny silver kittens will have gathered to peer out and call for her in little chirps, ready for breakfast - and entirely unaware of the incredible journey her mother has taken, and must take every time, she goes for the groceries to feed her family. She's only doing what comes to her by her nature - but unlike most animals, her instincts came out of a computer. Her adaptations to her lifestyle were drawn out as blueprints, as if she were a car or a toaster oven. Though her lineage has lived out in the wild for several centuries, and adapted on a local level, and though she certainly has no idea herself, her fundamental biology has not come from the evolutionary process Darwin would find familiar. Felisciuridus volans ferox, the "fierce flying squirrel cat" - the naturalized subspecies of the Silver Whillawhisper, is - like all of her species - a man-made animal, a living product of advanced genetic engineering. ~~~ It Began With a (Whilla) Whisper How best should we use our world when suddenly man has for himself the powers before limited to God? ~~~  The wild morph of the Silver Whillawhisper, F. v. ferox, illustrated with membranes partially spread. ~~~ Left to nature's own devices, it would probably take millions of years to have turned the house cat into the Whillawhisper. Five million at minimum, perhaps ten. The inflexible carnivoran shoulder system would probably be the biggest hurdle, and to restructure it sufficiently to allow the Whillawhisper her gliding posture might well take even longer. Yet the Terra Metropolitan city is filled with these little cats - no bigger than the squirrels they hunt - going about their lives, leaping like hang gliders from one ledge to another, because the Whillawhisper is one of the first wild animals to have an origin independent of natural selection; it is an animal engineered by human interference, to fill a niche for which there was no time to wait millions of years. The ethics of the Whillawhisper were surely unsure, but by the 22nd century, genetic engineering was hardly a new idea. It had already become a fact of life, producing much of the food we ate. The day and age had come where anything could theoretically be engineered, any sort of organism that looked or acted in any way. The potential was enormous. Private companies had already re-engineered extinct animals, both genuinely and via convincing copies - living reconstructions of dinosaurs and similar animals that made billions of dollars in revenue at high-end amusement parks - and had begun expanding their markets to novelty pets, too - tame, cuddly foxes that came when called and loved to snuggle! Tiny rats with the brains of collies, able to learn thousands of tricks - and house train, too! And, yes, not too long after an adorable genetic hybrid of a housecat and a sugar glider, a tiny and playful little thing that combined the best attributes of a kitten which would never grow up with the aerial antics of a bird without the mess - they used a litter box. The Whillawhisper saw its origin as nothing more than the latest novelty pet, highly domestic, docile, and not any more likely to survive in any wild environment than any other small pet - but something was different about this creature. It was the first pet of its kind to be noticeably different on a physical level from its ancestor, being genuinely unlike anything that had ever evolved on Earth. A gliding cat was cute - but what if it could be useful, too? ~~~ Though many animals adapted well to the spread of urbanization which had already begun by the time of the Whillawhisper's genesis, the resulting ecosystem had always been generally quite unstable. Only a few species ever thrived, and of them, prey greatly outnumbered predators, with rats and pigeons in particular having insufficient natural agents of population control and tending at all times to overrun their environments. House cats and the odd fox took some rats, and falcons thrived on pigeons, but neither predator was specialized to hunt in the urban ecosystem; in particular, there was no predator able to infiltrate the nests of either, the pigeons building theirs tens of stories above the ground, and the sly rat rearing its young in the smallest and tightest of spaces in the concrete jungle where no cat could ever reach. But if that cat was tiny, and if that cat could move through the air... it could fill that niche. And so, though originally engineered as a pet, the naturalized variation of this diminutive arboreal descendant of the domestic house cat was commissioned by the city of New York in the late 22rd century as a specialist predator of urban rodents and pest birds; roof rats, grey squirrels, and feral pigeons in particular. The wild breed was considerably different from its predecessor; it was fearful of man, aggressively predatory. It was engineered not to hunt like a cat, by ambush, but like a ferret, running its prey down through whatever means necessary, be it through the widest open space or the smallest crack - prey that was proportionately huge in comparison to the normal prey of the ancestral house cat. Though Whillawhispers will hunt mice, they were bred to prefer bigger game: the rat, the squirrel, the pigeon. Their clavicle would collapse to fit them through any gap big enough for their heads, like the rats they would pursue, while their shoulder blades could rotate fully in their socket to carry the little cat on the wind to the defenseless nests of the feral pigeons. Their jaws were enlarged to handle bigger prey, and their teeth followed suit. Their wing membrane was tweaked to a maximum airfoil, for the most efficient glide, while the skin was fitted with contracting collagen fibers to tightly fold away when out of use so as not to snag. The Whillawhisper was crafted into the perfect urban micro-predator, a creature suited as the apex predator of a brand new ecosystem the world had never before seen. They spread on their out from New York throughout North America, and soon the rest of the world wanted them for their own cities. They were freed in London and Mumbai, The United Nations of Africa, and even to Sounder, Antarctica. Australia refused them, fearing for the safety of their many endemics, which thrived in new green cities. But New Zealand took them to combat their invasive possums, and the little cats did their job remarkably well, drastically cutting the pests' numbers. Since its introduction, the tiny felines have thrived and served their purpose well - though they do sometimes prey on non-target species. But as the first notable introductions of life intentionally designed to thrive in the modern city environment, their success set a precedent; many more organisms would follow, but not all would succeed. Of those that would, not all would do so in the ways intended. A new era had begun, where man could take an active and immediate role in designing the biology of his world - the final conquest, some called it. In many respects it was a positive thing - animals that would otherwise be destined to die out in a changing world could, with just a few slight tweaks, be engineered to thrive. But for all its wonders, when man took the role of God and began to build his own life from scratch, a Pandora's box had been opened; just how much could something be changed and remain the same? Perhaps the release of the Whillawhisper wasn't too harmful. Perhaps all of the GaianAdvance dinosaurs weren't causing any trouble - they were not real animals after all, and they provided enormous convervation funding. But then some escaped - sure, they didn't seem to dramatically damage the environment... but they were definitely not supposed to exist on this Earth any longer and had been restored anyway. Then there was the restoration of the mammoth steppe biome in the frozen north - it probably wasn't too harmful - after all, those animals died out because of humans, it was assumed, so we were just undoing our wrong. And then we figured "hey, it couldn't hurt to genetically engineer a panda which breed freely in captivity, could it? Then they'd never die out!" So we did that, too. But soon, pandas were everywhere - nobody cared about pandas anymore. The panda lost its uniqueness when it wasn't rare. Many think we did the panda, and nature itself, a disservice - even though it surely owed its survival to genetic engineering; but then again, was it really saved - or was it replaced with a new, better panda, the original lost forever? What about the Australian savannah? Numerous popular megafaunal animals may have found solace, but at what cost to countless tiny plants and animals without so much public support? Nature wouldn't have given the elephant and the lion any greater support in the game of life than any other animal, but human influence brought them to a new continent and rather dramatically altered the ecosystem there forever at who knows what cost to the smaller creatures we might not find as interesting or worth protecting. Conversely; we stood by and allowed the hybrid coyote to completely take over the North American continent from its three endemic wolves, two of these species found nowhere else on Earth and now extinct. They have all been replaced with a generalist single species - should we have tried to keep the environment as it evolved before humans came along? These are the issues that trouble the world today. Not everyone thinks man should have this much power. A divide had already grown in the days of Eden Paleo-Zoological Park between the modern artists - the "new-agers", who thought man should be free to rebuild and reshape the living aspect of his world as much as he had the inanimate, to skip away entirely with waiting on evolution to get the job done and to solve what they perceived as problems, to improve upon nature, instantaneously - and the traditionalists, who agreed with none of this and preferred a world kept primordial, as nature intended - modifying mankind's behavior to accommodate it, and not the other way around. A new rise in popularity grew in selective breeding and old-fashioned agricultural practices - the widespread modern practice in urban farming, which has developed again only in the last 60 years, can be observed as a direct result of this trend, which has in that time been the dominant mindset after many centuries of new-ager dominance that resulted in such things as the Whillawhisper and countless other genetically-engineered organisms - but it is already tainted, for there is almost no domestic organism around today that has not in some way been genetically modified, be it a tomato growing in a garden - which can now photosynthesize in very low light levels thanks to its modified photosynthetic processes - or the dog that fetches your shoes, who almost certainly has an ancestor somewhere down his family tree given the rabies immunity gene that helped to finally eradicate the disease on a global scale. A lot has already been lost - or, as others would say, perfected. Neither mindset is fundamentally wrong; it's simply a difference in personal opinion, the modern analogue of the politics of years' past. The world has long since discarded the dangers of capitalism - its supporters lost a lost of their wind in a world without oil - and of the trivial differences in opinion politicians once milked to their extreme to fear-monger and divide the people for so long, to stay in power. The people now run the government, the government doesn't run the people. Politics worldwide are more homogeneous than at any other time in history. We are no longer divided factions fighting one another over the most trivial differences in ideology - there hasn't been a major war in 270 years and world peace has never been closer. In a connected new world, Islam, Judaism and Christianity - and countless other religions - find their similarities outweigh their differences. The world isn't secular, but the large gap between secular and religious views has lessened more and more through the years as we, as a species, concentrate more on our similarities than what divides us. But on this one issue, how we should make use of our planet, many still stand divided. Terra Metropolis exists as the very embodiment of this divide, a meshed world equal parts primordial and man-made. |
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The Gaiaverse | Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands | Other Spec Evo | Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur A Wholesome and Good Thing | Sam | | |
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| Beetleboy | Jan 27 2016, 09:54 AM Post #66 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Incredible stuff here! Has there been any diversification in urban pigeons? |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Adman | Jan 27 2016, 11:13 AM Post #67 |
Totally not lamna
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This is truly some great stuff right here. I really like how you managed to make an eco-friendly city as well. Will you be going over the domestics and wild inhabitants of the cities in TM? |
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Projects and concepts that I have stewing around Extended Pleistocene- An alternate future where man died out, and the megafauna would continue to thrive (may or may not include a bit about certain future sapients) Inverted World- An alternate timeline where an asteroid hit during the Barremian, causing an extinction event before the Maastrichtian. Dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and notosuchians make it to the present, along with a host of other animals. Badania- Alien planet that has life at a devonian stage of development, except it exists in the present day. Ido- Alien world where hoppers (derived flightless ballonts) and mouthpart-legged beasts are prevalent. Leto- Life on a moon orbiting a gas giant with an erratic orbit; experiences extremes of hot and cold. The Park- ??? Deeper Impact- a world where the K-Pg extinction wipes out crocodilians, mammals, and birds; squamates, choristoderes, and turtles inherit the earth. World of Equal Opportunity- alternate history where denisovans come across Beringia and interact with native fauna. Much of the Pleistocene fauna survives, and the modern humans that end up crossing into North America do not overhunt the existing animals. 10,000 years later, civilizations exist that are on par with European and Asian societies. The Ditch- Nothing is what if seems.. | |
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| Steampunk FireFinch | Jan 27 2016, 11:29 AM Post #68 |
Shitposter
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So far only pollution resistant pigeons and maybe regular pigeons. The picture is beautiful and somehow ONLY 2000 x 1500 or so, amazing. (Not that amazing, but so much detial in such a small space. Just wow.)
Edited by Steampunk FireFinch, Jan 27 2016, 11:46 AM.
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| Sheather | Jan 27 2016, 11:43 AM Post #69 |
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This scene is a composite mixed-media, I utilized both stock photography and digital illustration together to produce it.
Yes, to a degree.
Both! |
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The Gaiaverse | Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands | Other Spec Evo | Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur A Wholesome and Good Thing | Sam | | |
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| Steampunk FireFinch | Jan 27 2016, 11:46 AM Post #70 |
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Shitposter
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So that explains why some parts look a bit Photo-manipulated.
Edited by Steampunk FireFinch, Jan 27 2016, 11:47 AM.
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| Sheather | Jan 27 2016, 11:48 AM Post #71 |
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The background is pieced together from actual overhead views of Central Park. |
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The Gaiaverse | Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands | Other Spec Evo | Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur A Wholesome and Good Thing | Sam | | |
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| xaritscin | Jan 27 2016, 12:33 PM Post #72 |
Adult
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gotta love the gliding kitties owo
Edited by xaritscin, Jan 27 2016, 12:33 PM.
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| Sheather | Jan 27 2016, 10:26 PM Post #73 |
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Terra Metropolitan Pigeons: Volume 1 Ultimate City Survivalist | Pampered Poultry | The Enigmatic Rock Dove.  Feral pigeon; about 13 ounces in weight and coming in a variety of shades from gray to brown to white, birds of this ancestral, generalist sort - which do not vary much in size or shape - are the most common in Terra Metropolitan Earth. ~~~ The domestic/feral pigeon, Columba livia domestica, also known as the rock dove, is one of the most widespread animals in the world and thrives in the urban ecosystem. Pigeons are almost impossibly well-suited to the city environment by their nature, for the tall ledges of buildings closely mirror their ancestral habitat in the rocky mountain cliff sides of western Europe and a generalist grainivorous diet translates perfectly well from seeds to human refuse, stale crumbs and dropped hot dog buns and anything else rich and starchy that humans find so palatable. They breed rapidly and a pair, which tends to mate for life, can produce as many as 20 offspring every year for up to fifteen seasons, and the young go from bald, altricial nestlings to fledglings taking their first flights in three weeks and attain near to their adult weight within a month's time - traits that make them as well-suited to a life in the wild as to being domesticated by man. In Terra Metropolis, the domestic pigeon has risen from almost obscurity to being the second most abundantly kept species of poultry in the world, behind only the domestic chicken, by merit of their natural adaptability to modern urban agriculture. They are small, quiet, productive and easy to house in the smallest allotment. They are easily fed, and the majority of them can be trusted to fly freely by day and return on their own accord in the evening, having fed themselves on the wild riches of the city at no cost to their owner. Having been domesticated for upwards of 5,000 years and likely even longer for food, for pets, and to carry messages, the resurgence of the domestic pigeon in agriculture is but a continuation of a long relationship. Modern domesticated pigeons have been bred and engineered into a myriad of distinct variations. Forms exist for beauty and function, though the most popular modern forms try to combine both attributes. With a modern emphasis on sustainable agriculture, where free-range livestock is the ideal, the type of pigeons being bred for human consumption has shifted in most regions from plump and nearly flightless barnyard birds to very large, lean, and powerful flying forms, not so much specific breeds but rather a general body-type, known as Foragers, which are as much as four times the size of an average wild pigeon with very wide, pointed wings able to carry them far and wide over the city in search of food. Flying the city by day in great flocks of hundreds or more, birds from countless different owners mingle and fly in mixed flocks with their feral cousins to wherever food is abundant, sometimes traveling over one hundred miles in a day round trip. Forager-type pigeons are taller, heavier, and longer than wild pigeons and overall are very bold and imposing birds that are able to intimidate smaller wild competitors and out-compete them when food is scarce. They are also able to eat a wider variety of foods by merit of much larger, slightly hooked beaks, which even allow them to add animal foods to their diet including young rodents and insects as large as locusts in addition to normal seed and grain-based fare. This competitive edge means that where forager pigeons are very abundant, typical street pigeons tend to be sparse. In the evening, the foragers showcase perhaps the single most highly-selected attribute, a remarkable homing instinct - foragers are derived largely from homing-breed pigeons, with some out-crossing - that brings each bird back to its familiar roost before nightfall, no matter how far it has ranged by day. Forager pigeons are by far the most efficient livestock to raise on a budget, being able to find all of the food they need on their own accord in most urban environments, making them effectively free to maintain and subsequently so popular - more than half of city gardens have at least a small flock. The only requirement to teach them to return home is to confine them until the age of four months and ensure that in that time they are allowed pick a mate - which they will retain for life - before being turned loose, for otherwise they may stray to greener pastures in search of companionship later on. As forager pigeons return to their coops to roost and also serve to displace wild flocks which do their roosting over dwellings and upon city ledges where they soil the ground below them, cities encourage pigeon-keeping, which is both a cheap and sustainable source of food for all people and but one of many ways in which the population of pesky wild birds is kept in check. The exceptionally large size of the forager pigeon is a multi-purpose development; it provides more food when the bird is slaughtered and leaves the pigeon less vulnerable to bad weather and outdoor environmental conditions, but it also serves to protect them from whillawhispers, which will not readily go after so large a prey animal. Most usually, when foragers are kept as meat animals, the free-flying adults are treated as pets, or at the very least given reprieve, while the offspring they rear in their dovecotes are taken just before learning to fly, when they may weigh more than their parents. Raised this way, they may produce more than 20 offspring in a year, each resulting bird large enough to feed a family of four a healthy main course.  A basic utility race, "forager" refers to a general type of large utility breed pigeon, including many established breeds and non-breed races. The Atlantic Forager, here pictured, is a typical representative of the type and the most common breed in New York aviculture. Large males foragers can weigh as much as four pounds, more than four times the weight of most pigeons. Average feral pigeon silhouetted to scale. ~~~ The majority of pigeons in the world today and almost all selectively raised breeds are transgenic or genetically engineered in some respect, but most don't necessarily show their modifications, having been heavily mixed and matched through breeding in the many decades leading up to the modern day. The most natural birds would be the basic street pigeons, or ferals, which have not changed much from their wild ancestor, the rock dove, but even these may carry latent genetic holdovers from distant crossing with owned birds at some point in their ancestry. Generally the main changes that remain notable within the wild pigeon population include higher egg production, with modern feral pigeons often raising larger clutches than the normal two of the ancestral pigeon, as well as increased immunity to avian diseases. The most unique, however, is surely the occasional presence of an elongated and fully-formed "raptor tail", the result of a modification to a single genetic trigger introduced into captive members of the species in the early 22nd century in early experimentation in restoring dinosaur-like animals. The trait was novel and quite popular among hobbyists, and is single-factor dominant, meaning it took only a single tailed parent to produce a clutch of 50% tailed offspring. As a result of the mutation's ready appearance, it quickly found its way into almost every modern breed, both production and ornamental, as well as into wild populations worldwide which occasionally met with escaped domesticated birds and exchanged their gametes. Today almost any pigeon, wild or owned, can occasionally give rise to an offspring with a tail, for the gene can lie latent for generations and crop up at the most unexpected time. Though it may reduce their agility in flight, many pigeons nevertheless survive the slight handicap and live to reproductive age in the wild. Some cities, such as London, are particularly well-known for large populations of tailed street pigeons, which seem to survive because of their ornate tails; they may prove more attractive to female pigeons than normally-tailed males. This may be the result of the pigeon's tail being basically a handicap feature not unlike that of a peacock - basically showing a potential mate that this male is clearly very fit if he can survive lugging about this big feathery tuft on his rump and not find himself caught by a predator. When in combination with "hind-wing" feathers on their feet - normally a feature restricted to captivity - the resulting pigeons can exhibit a very pronounced four-winged paravian appearance, though of course the similarity is entirely superficial and the additional hind plumage, carried without instinct on how to use it, actually reduces the birds' aerodynamics considerably. Selectively-raised breeds such as the aptly-named Microraptorine, however, strive for a bird as close to an ancestral early avialan as possible, with hind wing feathers of a semi-functional nature rather than random tufts of flight feathers down all over the toes and a conservatively plumed tail without extravagant ornamentation, while other breeds have been selected instead for extremely showy plumage down the tail and all over the body, and a very artificial appearance. When a tail occurs in a production breed bird, it may be encouraged simply as an additional cut of meat when the bird is processed, and some meat-type pigeons have very large, heavy tails that are considered a delicacy. Tailed pigeons exhibit a noticeably modified stance when walking compared to tailless pigeons, carrying their bodies more horizontally to compensate for the change in their center of balance. ~~~  A blue-pied crested Microraptorine pigeon, a very popular and highly varied ornamental breed originating in the north of England in the 2300's. Though this individual's uneven markings would disqualify him from the show bench in official showing, he is in other respects an excellent example of his breed, with an even split tail fan and smooth, even wing feathering on his legs which stops at the ankle and does not interfere with walking. |
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The Gaiaverse | Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands | Other Spec Evo | Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur A Wholesome and Good Thing | Sam | | |
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| Tartarus | Jan 28 2016, 01:02 AM Post #74 |
Prime Specimen
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Love the whillawhispers and the future pigeons. The future world shown in Terra Metropolis is a sort of future it would be nice to have, what with the healing of old environmental damage (even if the genetically engineered new organisms raise important ethical issues) and the formation of a more politically and economically fair society. |
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| Sheather | Jan 28 2016, 03:09 AM Post #75 |
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Terra Petropolis: Companions for a Future World Chapter I ~~~ The House Fox  ~~~ The House Fox (Vulpes vulpes amicus - "the friendly fox") is a completely domesticated subspecies of the red fox which by the time of Terra Metropolis has risen to the ranking of second most popular pet in the world, having surpassed the domestic dog in the late 2500's but still trailing well behind the numbers still claimed by the domestic cat by the year 2600. Descending entirely from a single selective breeding project initiated in the middle 20th century, the subspecies very nearly died out almost before it began when the project fell into significant financial stagnation in the early 2000's. Limping along and gradually cutting its numbers, the project almost shut down completely before being quietly bought out by the at-the-time little known GaianAdvance genetics and pharmaceutical company in 2066. From there, the population disappeared for almost twenty years before reappearing suddenly in 2085, when they suddenly appeared everywhere that sells pets, touted as the house pet of the modern era. They were one of the very first pets of the genetically-engineered pet era, and by modern standards they were very minimally engineered if altered at all - the foxes bought by the company had already reached a considerably tame and pet-quality form through a century of selective breeding. It seems the company did very little if anything to the foxes on a behavioral level in the years in between the buy-out and their release of the house fox to the public, simply producing a few new varied coat types and color patterns and breeding a huge surplus of the animals in anticipation of high demand. The foxes were a global sensation as predicted, and soon flooded markets around the world, anywhere that sold pets cashing in on the trend with their own little enclosure full of little fox pups in the window, whining and wagging their tails at passers-by. They were nothing crazy different compared to dogs or cats, but the simple fact that they were neither, but real live foxes - an embodiment of natural beauty, cleverness, and grace - that now could be loved and owned in one's very own home, that was the main kicker for their hug popularity. They were also simply new, something nobody had before, and humans crave novelty. The first house foxes were fundamentally similar-looking to the modern domestic foxes that exist in very small numbers today - they had mostly erect ears as adults, but which had begun to flop, and tails with slight curls. They all had short, coarse hair like the wild fox, but it had begun to come in many exotic colorations. Their selling point was their temperament, as tame as puppies, yet not quite so needy as a dog. Independent but not aloof, they fell in perfect balance between the cat and the dog, the ideal pet for almost any situation urban or rural. They adapted to high-rise apartments or to wide open farms. They potty-trained. They could learn tricks and take human direction but did not suffer nearly so much when left alone by working owners during the day, being content to nap until their return. GaianAdvance removed their musky natural odor through a few simple genetic switches, the last small tweak to creating the perfect new pet. As foxes became more popular, pet food markets quickly caught onto the trend and cashed in with formulated fox foods and treats. LOLfox memes flooded the internet. Initially considered exotic, foxes quickly became as commonplace as dogs and cats, both of which they got along with very well if socialized at a reasonable age. Over the following decades kennel clubs established focused on the selective breeding of the house fox, and over the centuries following hundreds of distinct breeds appeared as diverse as any dog or cat. Some were bred for specific purposes; chasing game, for example, resulting in fast and lean fox sighthounds - but most, in the shadow of dogs, were kept to simple companionship and beauty standards. The house fox was bred into its own equivalent of almost every dog breed and a great many more unique ones. They were bred to show short, wiry hair, curly hair, long flowing hair and even no hair at all. Some developed short, pushed in faces, but never so extreme as those of dogs or cats. Stumpy legs and long flopping ears, plump bodies and stubby tails, or long willowy hair and huge satellite dish ears - there was very little the fox could not be bred to resemble, and what it couldn't, it could be engineered to. Glowfoxes were popular for a time, with noses, ears, and other regions of minimal fur coverage glowing in the dark by merit of engineered bioluminescence - but just like the Glowdog, GlowKitten, and the original Glofish, such ridiculous animals eventually fell out of public favor. No matter how they looked, however, the house fox was here to stay from the moment it arrived, and as the world gradually evolved towards its current state, and the private farm or sprawling private mansion gave way to the modest urban apartment, society began to turn more and more towards the smaller creatures better suited to such a home. Cats and small dogs, of course, but especially the house fox. With temperaments generally a little more agreeable than the smallest dogs, the fox slowly but surely surpassed them in popularity over the years - granted, only by a slight margin, but a margin no other pet had ever done, save for the cat, the two of which dominated the vast majority of the owned pet population worldwide for centuries. Today, an estimated upward of 100,000,000 million domestic foxes are thought to be under private ownership in the United States alone, compared to roughly 120,000,000 cats and 70,000,000 dogs. All of these foxes can be traced back to roughly 300 originating from the Russian experimental population - an enormous increase in so short a time. Generally, however, the house fox is relatively healthy and seems to have recovered its genetic diversity quickly. ~~~ Today, house foxes are no more exotic than house cats, parakeets, or guinea pigs. In many big cities, more people live with at least one today than those who don't. They stare out high rise windows at the world around them, strange to us but simply home to all who have known nothing else. Their care is intermediate between a cat and a small dog, varying to a degree depending on the breed, with some foxes being very high energy and in need of constant enrichment and others being content to sleep the day away on a warm lap without a care in the world. The small ones often enjoy a high perch to rest, like a mantle or a specially-designed carpeted "cat tree", now more often referred to as a "pet tree" as a result of a much greater variety of pets who might enjoy using one. They chase both tennis balls and little stuffed mice, can learn to fetch and just as easily master a litter box or an outdoor allotment to do their business. They chew a bit when young, like puppies, and love a bone to gnaw, but can climb on furniture all they like without scratching it like a cat will, having only blunt canine nails. They bark, but never to the extent dogs do, and their vocal repertoire is mostly made up of whines. They love attention but don't demand it, rolling over for belly rubs and wagging their bushy bottle-brush tails and sleeping curled alongside their owners in bed at night. They can be loyal and protective, with news headlines occasionally bringing praise to a fox here or there who saved its family from a fire or ran for help when Grandma fell down the stairwell. They've been known to fend off intruders and home invaders surely left surprised by just how quiet they can be - and then how sharp those teeth really are in their necks. And yet, with those they trust, they can be the sweetest family pets, sleeping in the toddler's lap to keep her warm and playing tag with the family cat. They are considered safer than dogs on the whole, for they have never been bred in any way for aggression, and their temperaments tend to be more predictable than cats. They can survive on either's prepared diet just fine, usually, even though countless particular ones exist just for them. They go wild with greater ease than dogs, but nowhere near as well as cats; feral populations descended from escapees or abandoned pets exist in most regions today, but they do not survive entirely without human influence where they run into their wild relative, who is almost as widespread and not especially tolerant of his neotenic puppy-like cousin in the wild. By the year 2600, the domestic foxes are here to stay - but they haven't replaced either cats or dogs - they simply found their place, adding a third option to the popular list. There are cat people, there are dog people, and then, somewhere in the middle, today you can find fox people, too - the gray between the black and white. A perfect pet equal parts cat and dog, perhaps it only makes sense they would be ideal for a mixed and matched modern world. ~~~  A sampling of popular modern house fox breeds. From left to right: Canadian Bobtail- a very loyal, affectionate companion adapted to cold winter temperatures that thrives in any environment. Bobtails can get by with less exercise than most, making them ideal for older individuals or the disabled. Irish Rex - a high-energy breed, these curly-haired foxes have strong prey drives but fierce protective instincts, and do great with children to play with in the family. Spanish Courser - This very lean fox, shaped like a miniature greyhound, was bred to chase hares in wastern Europe and hunt by sight. Less tractable than most foxes, they tend towards skittish temperament and require a gentle, understanding trainer to thrive. They can do well with calm children and are not aggressive, but are easily traumatized and often regarded as fragile in the wrong hands. They are very poorly suited to the modern city environment and are on the decline globally as a result. Powderpuff - Feisty describes the diminutive powderpuff, a playful and active miniature breed which comes out of Australia and is often well-noted for its fearless personality. Powderpuffs do well in a variety of situations and are great pets for the active family, but are considered less easily housebroken than other foxes and not especially loyal. Scuttler - a short-statured breed with soft, fully drooped ears and long silky hair coming out of the United Kingdom, the scuttler is a calm and good-natured breed which thrives in a loving family environment. They are not the bravest foxes, but bond very strongly to their families and are very clever; they are often regarded as being among the most easily-trained of all foxes. At the top of the article appears a handsome orange Domestic shorthair. This isn't a specific breed, but rather like the cats of the same name, the term can be applied to any obviously domesticated fox of non-specific breeding. The majority of foxes in private ownership are shorthairs, also known as mix-breeds, mongrels, or "moggies", the same term being used by the English for the equivalent in their cats. These foxes all tend towards the natural fox bodyplan, though color can vary wildly. Similar foxes with longer fur are creatively known as "Domestic longhairs". All of these foxes can carry genes from purebreds that may occasionally be expressed, and can also carry a variety of other traits, including as pointed markings which give the same effect as in a Siamese cat and a tailless gene. Across all their diversity, domestic foxes can range from three to four pounds to a maximum of sixty pounds in weight, but the vast majority of domestic short- and long-hairs are in the 10 to 30 pound range. |
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12:01 PM Jul 13