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| Terra Metropolis; The Future of Urban Sprawl | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 1 2016, 10:22 PM (12,954 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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| Beetleboy | Jan 28 2016, 09:53 AM Post #76 |
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Gotta love those microraptor-pigeon-thingies. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Dragonthunders | Jan 28 2016, 12:08 PM Post #77 |
The ethereal archosaur in blue
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It is amazing the exhibition of domestic species, I liked especially foxes breeds  |
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Projects "Active" projects The Future is Far Welcome to the next chapters of the evolution of life on earth, travel the across the earth on a journey that goes beyond the limits, a billion years of future history in the making. The SE giants project Wonder what is the big of the big on speculative evolution? no problem, here is the answer Coming one day Age of Mankind Humanity fate and its possible finals. The Long Cosmic Journey The history outside our world. The alternative paths The multiverse, the final frontier... Holocene park: Welcome to the biggest adventure of the last 215 million years, where the age of mammals comes to life again! Cambrian mars: An interesting experiment on an unprecedented scale, the life of a particular and important period in the history of our planet, the cambric life, has been transported to a terraformed and habitable mars in an alternative past. Two different paths, two different worlds, but same life and same weirdness. My deviantart | |
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| Beetleboy | Jan 28 2016, 12:32 PM Post #78 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Yes, I will be interested to learn what other domestic creatures there are.
Edited by Beetleboy, Jan 28 2016, 12:32 PM.
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| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Velociraptor | Jan 28 2016, 02:24 PM Post #79 |
Reptile
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Hey Sheather I've noticed that the way you resize images tends to compress their width. Could you maybe try doing it proportionately so that doesn't happen? Anyways, I love the Spanish courser fox! When it comes to domestic animal breeds, my favorites are the ones that have a "wild" look to them. |
 Unnamed No K-Pg project: coming whenever, maybe never. I got ideas tho. | |
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| Sheather | Jan 28 2016, 02:40 PM Post #80 |
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Which images look wrong to you? They all look nice to me. |
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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 28 2016, 02:42 PM Post #81 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Same here. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Velociraptor | Jan 28 2016, 02:46 PM Post #82 |
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Reptile
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Actually, most of your more recently-uploaded images are like this for me. Here's a screenshot of how one of the images appears in the thread: http://i.imgur.com/vvI44lb.jpg Compared to a direct link to said image: https://i.imgur.com/ebqjeHM.jpg |
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Unnamed No K-Pg project: coming whenever, maybe never. I got ideas tho. | |
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| Beetleboy | Jan 28 2016, 02:47 PM Post #83 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Not that bad. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Sheather | Jan 28 2016, 02:49 PM Post #84 |
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This is how my screen appears. Spoiler: click to toggle I do not know why your device is altering them so badly, when that is not the dimensions I have them scaled down to. |
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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 28 2016, 03:26 PM Post #85 |
Shitposter
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So the foragers are basically a homing pigeon crossed with a dual purpose chicken? Cool, but how do they manage with diseases and parasites since they eat free range? (Gape wrom, other parasitic worms, mites, protozoa, bacteria, lice, fleas, you know the usual bird parasites and diseases) Did they make them more immune to such parasites than regular pigeons and other birds? I would like to see other pets such as exotic and strange pets of the future. Maybe a Yi or [Insert other Pet Bird/Dinosaur, Mammal or Reptile or even FISH]? |
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| Sheather | Jan 28 2016, 03:37 PM Post #86 |
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You speak as if free-ranging pigeons is a new idea. It's a practice that dates back to before the middle ages, when the wealthy kept enormous collections of pigeons which roosted in great aviaries by night and raised their young there while flying and feeding over surrounding farmland during the day. Homing pigeons today are still free-flown in city environments. Occasional deworming/antiparasitic solution in their water, occasionally spraying down the loft to kill insects, and vaccination - probably not even necessary anymore with genetically introduced immunity factors - does the job to keep the birds healthy. Yi qi would be a poor pet. |
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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 28 2016, 03:50 PM Post #87 |
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Shitposter
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Then I must read the Eden Yi post again... I already see how Yi would be a poor pet choice. (It's like having a untrainable dinosaurian sugar glider or flying squirrel. That is also carnivorous.) You mean like those century old dovecotes that "royals" had? (Even though pigeons have been domesticated for more time than just the middle ages. About 10,000 years...) I almost forgot that people vaccinate pigeons and other birds. (Oral vaccines with live viruses) Other medications too and keeping birds healthy. But will there be different species of pet that don't exist today, but in Terra Metropolis? Maybe some parrots species that have been "calmed down" genetically. Aggression is taken away and easier to tame birds now exist without having to spend months or even years to tame and they can accept a wider range of foods without ill effects, can survive household pollution (Smokers) and even can be HOUSE TRAINED, (Most likely with budgies or cockatiels or even zebra finch and society finches since these species are semi-domestic. Except the society finch, it's fully domestic.) Edit: Nevermind the house training thing since I've seen parrots being trained to be house broken. Edited by Steampunk FireFinch, Jan 28 2016, 04:54 PM.
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| Sheather | Jan 28 2016, 09:26 PM Post #88 |
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A Strange Success Story As a result of the rise in genetics technology, by the time of Terra Metropolis, it has become possible to modify the genomes of organisms in any way imaginable, to produce end products ranging from insignificant genetic tweaks, perhaps immunity to a certain disease in a pet, up to the point of crafting entirely new creatures of our own design. Either by completely re-shaping the genome of single model organism or combining the genomes of multiple species to form a stable chimera, there is very little man cannot today do. Among his most famous feats have been the restoration of extinct megafauna from all across the ages. For the most part, these have been the result of genetic engineering in and out, and they are but convincing copies of the real thing forever lost to time - but they are sufficiently convincing that, except to the perfectionist, they are the real thing, and this is surely how they come across to mother nature herself wherever they have returned to a life in the wild, either through our efforts or in spite of them. The intentionally restored subpolar mammoth steppe in the European north is certainly well-known, but there have been multiple other instances where GaianAdvance "extinct" animals have naturalized around the world - sometimes in the most unlikely ways. ~~ One of the most unusual examples would be the Thylacine, Thylacinus cynocephalus. This large meat-eating marsupial once thrived all across the arid land down under as one of the largest land predators of Australia, but their extinction there was rapid when the continent's first indigenous people rafted down from the east Indies and brought with them the primitive dog that would naturalize as the dingo, working in packs to secure food and out-competing the once numerous marsupial predator. It persisted, though, on a single small isle just off the coast for a fair while longer. On Tasmania, the tiger survived until European settlers finally found it in its haven and shot it off in short order by the beginning of the 20th century. Worried the creature would kill their livestock or harm their families, it was a rational idea at the time. We wouldn't realize until the first thylacine was cloned in the 21st century just how wrong we were about the species. The story of the fall of the Tasmanian "tiger" was especially sad, because it was one of simple misunderstanding. Thylacines, you see, are one of the few formerly extinct animals on Earth today that can be considered genetically pure. Their genomes are fundamentally natural, the entire population originating from a female and a single cub which were both preserved after their death in the National Zoo in America in the early 1900's. While efforts were later made to selectively clean up their genes and undo the deleterious effects of inbreeding that so little diversity brought to the clones, no new material was added and as a result the thylacine cannot be considered a genetically-engineered organism, only one which has been minimally modified. This means that behaviorally, the captive population descended from the first clones could be viewed as a realistic approximation to the wild animals they directly descended from. Even putting entirely aside the issue of their unnatural familiarity with humans as a result of captivity, when humans could again interact and observe living, breathing examples of the species one thing was immediately apparent; the Thylacine was nowhere near as dangerous an animal as it was believed.  Is this the face of ferocity? The famous and endearing tale of Dizzy the Thylacine and her adoptive family of Warrahs at Eden Paleo-Zoological Park in the year 2111 captivated the world and even inspired a children's story. For one, it was quickly realized that the supposed "slayer of sheep" would have been hard pressed to kill anything beyond the youngest lamb. Their jaws were remarkably weak for their size and with one of the lowest bite forces of any carnivorous mammal - a house cat could deliver more. They weren't fearsome and indiscriminate top-of-the-food chain predators, but in fact quite specialized hunters of very small game of less than 11 pounds; they probably ate mostly bandicoots, possums and small birds - anecdotes from the time of their first historic documentation even mention that they seemed clueless when offered living wallabies as food, just a bit larger than this, with the assumption they'd be quick to dispatch them - but no matter how hungry they were, they wouldn't try to eat them until they were already dead. Modern assessment confirmed similar results - thylacines were remarkably docile animals. In the more than a century they were exhibited at the famous Eden Paleo-Zoological Park - which kept and bred more than 180 over the years - there was never a recorded human attack. They were also, in contrary to historic tales of great cunning and malice, relatively dim-witted. In captivity after their restoration, cloned specimens and their descendants were energetic and curious, but very slow to learn. They could be trained, but the process took many months. They probably wouldn't have spent much time trying to invade hen houses that were properly secured, for their attention spans were short if they weren't getting an immediate reward.  This photograph, widely popularized from the turn of the 20th century, when the thylacine was still alive for the first time, appears to show a Tasmanian tiger mauling a hen and is often blamed for the rapid wave of anti-thylacine propaganda that eventually brought about the animal's extinction. However, it was later proved to be a staged scene featuring a taxidermy - Thylacines rarely hunted owned poultry. ~~~ The truth was thylacines rarely targeted livestock and had not once been documented approaching a human being with aggressive intent. Rather, their docility was probably their downfall; they simply lacked the fear of us common to most other animals. It was repeatedly remarked on how readily they tamed in captivity, and the fact that dozens were documented to be taken live from foothold traps - and then regularly kept chained like pet dogs - in the late 1800's without harming their handlers suggests again that they were not an aggressive animal. They weren't really affectionate but nor were they mean animals - for the most part, they avoided any contact with humans if possible, which made their persecution all the more unfortunate. But in the modern age, those very same attributes of temperament would prove not detrimental but very beneficial to the newly de-extincted creature's prognosis in its second chance on Earth. These new thylacines, soon having endeared themselves to man in zoos the world wide with their athletic beauty, puppy-dog eyes, cat-like independence and yet simultaneously gentle nature, eventually followed in the footsteps of the house fox. And another exotic pet was made. ~~~ The Tiger's Return Thylacines were originally one of few de-extincted animals of the 21st and 22nd centuries which were not copyrighted by the GaianAdvance company. As a result, they were relatively widely available for a time and many zoos bought them up - but after just one or two generations, they proved almost infertile and began to die out as a result of inbreeding depression. This eventually left only the GaianAdvance population alive, which had been modified to overcome the harmful genetic traits built up in their genes. GaianAdvance occasionally loaned their improved thylacines out to other parks for heavy fees, but it wasn't until the year 2162 that any could officially be regarded as leaving the company. In this year, a woman by the name of Noel Vera, the granddaughter of GaianAdvance founder Daniel Shaersha Sr (and daughter of the current CEO up until this time, Daniel Shaersha Jr.) took over her father's position as the head of the company, which had begun to slowly lose some of its large global influence in the past decade as the novelty of its dinosaur parks and other wonders began to wear off. In particular, Noel found the thylacines that the Eden park raised and loaned to other zoos the worldwide especially endearing. She was particularly drawn to the two young female siblings at the park which exhibited a beautiful light cream color, the result of a random mutation that replaced their dark orange pelts with a beautiful diluted shade and their golden eyes with deep blue. Eventually, so awed by their elegance and gentle nature of the animals, she took three of them - a normally-toned male and the two leucistic females - as personal pets to her lavish residence in Darwin, Australia, and began with her a husband a process to selectively breed for this particular color morph that she found so lovely. Vera was an eccentric individual but the kind and bubbly sort of person everyone liked. She was also traditionalist in her views on genetic engineering, most ironic given her position at the top of such a new-ager company, and not only strove to produce a breed of thylacine that bred true to this attractive color pattern without utilizing any artificial means, but also greatly reduced the engineering subset of GaianAdvance as a whole in favor of pushing her company's influence entirely away from genetic engineering and fully towards humanitarian efforts and conservation (the many scientists trained in gene science who found themselves subsequently without employment are generally thought responsible for the new competitive companies which quickly rose in GaianAdvance's place to continue in the field of commercial genetic engineering, but this is a story for another day.) Over more than 30 years, Vera raised litters of Tasmanian tigers in her back garden, treating the tamest among them little differently from dogs and giving them free run of her home and property. Her selective process was intended only to produce new and exciting coat colors and mutations, but an indirect result of her breeding process, preferring the friendliest animals that she could interact with freely and with trust, in just a few generations her animals were notably friendlier than the population at the Eden park. They were not simply tame, but often soliciting attention and giving back affection. Some of their tails began to curl and the tips of their round ears to droop in adulthood. Their teeth were smaller and their heads a little broader. Her project was a success - several interesting new color morphs were produced - but she had also produced an entirely new sort of thylacine - a domesticated Tasmanian tiger. Over the years, she gifted countless excess cubs to friends and relatives, friendly and beautiful but not quite enough to continue in her breeding pool, and some of these owners continued on to breed their pets. Small but growing numbers of the thylacines developed in the United States, in England, and across Australia. For Vera, it was no difficult matter to send the least tractable, wild-type animals her program occasionally produced back to Eden and back into the pool of animals loaned out to zoo exhibition. For other owners, however, particularly as the tame thylacine developed a sizable following around the world, the issue of what to do with these less tractable animals was less clear... ~~~ The first sighting in the wild came from the southeast Australian bush in the early 2190's, eliciting great excitement that perhaps the animal wasn't in fact entirely extinct in the wild until the animal was eventually trapped and determined, of course, to be an escapee from the GaianAdvance population. It was shipped back to Eden to the captive population with minimal trouble... but it was just the start. In the months and years following, six more thylacines came back to Eden, sightings increased in frequency by the day, and people began to realize they were dealing with a larger issue than a few isolated escapees. By the turn of the new century a population of as many as forty Thylacines was estimated to be surviving in a naturalized state on the outskirts of Sydney, apparently descended from an intentional release by an unknown breeder in the area who most likely originally received her animals from Vera. That the feral thylacines were apparently surviving here just fine was unexpected - the species had been re-introduced to Tasmania in the early 22nd century, but never to the mainland, where it was thought that they would not survive in the presence of feral dogs and dingos. This semi-tame population, more accustomed to close human contact than most, seemed to be utilizing the environment differently than the wilder animals released on Tasmania. They avoided dense wild bush where the dingos hunted and instead hunted the edges of the city, where they only had to deal with less aggressive stray dogs and foxes. They modified their activity from a normal diurnal habit to one entirely nocturnal to avoid detection by humans, though didn't strongly fear them, and they adopted a diet of mostly human refuse, pigeons, and feral cats. By the 2230's, more than a thousand thylacines were estimated to be thriving throughout southeastern Australia, and a second population had appeared a world away, in England, where a breeding population of as many as thirty had slowly established itself in Essex, to the immediate northeast of London; the origin was unknown, but the population, which was largely leucistic, was obviously descended from Vera's, if not directly. The English thylacines adopted yet another lifestyle to the Sydney tigers - they were more solitary and spread more thoroughly through rural environments, likely encouraged by the lack of larger predators. By 2250, just twenty years later, they were present in ten districts throughout the southeast of England, from Hampshire to Norfolk. Since they generally avoided humans and the traditional practice of animal-based agriculture had declined significantly by this time, the tigers didn't cause particular trouble and attracted tourism and publicity to the south of England, as curious natives and foreigners alike flocked to catch a glimpse of the bizarrely out of place yet apparently well-adjusted marsupials, the largest carnivores (dogs excluded) that the island's ecology had seen since the localized extinction of the gray wolf. They competed significantly with foxes, but a partition of niches gradually merged, with foxes preferring the most urban habitats and thylacines the rural wood lot and meadow. Eventually they received a degree of legal protection by merit of the tourism they brought the region, and many local school and university teams adopted the tigers as their mascots. The Australian population also continued to grow, and though for a time their fate was uncertain, they were eventually re-adopted onto the list of protected native species. They were no longer extinct, and they were no longer endangered. The "tiger" returned to the wild after over 250 years away - but it would never be quite the same again. Human influence had already left a mark on the elegant hunter, altering their behavior and their appearance, bringing them to environments nature had not intended they reach. But they were back. By the year 2600, the English Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus anglia) or "Thyllie", as locals more often call them, has spread across the whole of England and integrated into its new ecosystem - the wild and rural regions outside big cities - by developing a thicker fur coat, larger sizes, and a less tawny and more silver pelage as they begin an evolutionary path as the island's new apex carnivore. In the very different environment of urban Australia, the Urban Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus vulgaris), often just called the "tiger", has become oppositely smaller and leaner, with larger eyes and bigger ears, adaptations to a nocturnal habit. They emerge from their dens by dark to hunt rats and cats and to rifle through rummage bins. Their legs are longer and they are better climbers, moving over green spaces and rooftop gardens in search of food. They have spread up and down the Australian coast and now range from Melbourne to Darwin, having followed right beside the green city trend as it radiated across the continent. While the English thylacine operates as a solitary cat-like hunter, forced by the localized tendencies of their main food supply - human refuse - the feral Australian Thylacine is social and lives in communal clans, like feral cats - a holdover from a brief domestic past and selection for a more gregarious nature. And what of the companion thylacine? It too still exists, in small but stable numbers worldwide, as an exotic alternative to the big three - fox, cat, and dog - perfect for the more adventurous owner. Vera would be proud of the wide variety of colors and coat types one can now find in the fancy thylacine, T. c. veraii, but her hardest work never fully produced a perfect house pet from the wild carnivore. Though now generally even in temperament and quite affectionate, their selling points don't always outweigh their negatives. They tend to eat smaller pets and cannot be trained not to unless they're raised together from infancy; even in this case, they are notoriously unable to generalize - even if one is raised with cats and accepts them as family, this doesn't transfer to other cats: a new kitten introduced years later will probably not be given the same respect. They are also very destructive, difficult to stop from chewing and very avid diggers; they just aren't very smart and training methods used to discourage these tendencies in dogs and foxes just don't work for them. You also won't have much success teaching them obedience or agility, and will never train them to open a refrigerator to fetch a beer or even, most likely, to fetch a ball. They can be housetrained with effort, but may never be fully reliable, and they're not the least bit loyal and will run to freedom in a second given opportunity, requiring a large and well-secured backyard with a tall fence to properly allow them the exercise they require. Their diet is tricky, and they don't do well on kibble. For the eccentric owner, however, they can be very endearing and even cuddly pets. They tend to be smaller than the ancestral Thylacine, sometimes considerably, but there is very little variation in body shape. Most have erect ears which droop only at their tips, long legs and long snouts, and tails with only a slight kink rather than a dog-like curl.  A typical domesticated Thylacine showing a variety of mutations in its coat color, including piebalding and a general dilution of the orange to a light cream color. The dark tail also shows this individual carries the pointing mutation, similar to that in cats and foxes, where the extremities are darker than the body, but the dark on the paws is covered by pied markings. |
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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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| Martin | Jan 29 2016, 10:26 AM Post #89 |
Prime Specimen
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First it was wallabies, then thylacines. Who knows what other southern invaders the UK will get. Also, how do the Australian tigers interact with the introduced African fauna? |
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| Sheather | Jan 29 2016, 10:27 AM Post #90 |
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Very little; they are creatures of the human environment now. |
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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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