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.
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"Let's get stupid loud!" from SMFA. "You can't brush your damn teeth without a damn hook!!! " from Squidbillies..............
Gender:
Male
W.C.K.D
Dec 15 2016, 07:55 AM
Remember an ancient show called Prehistoric Park guys? Good times, watched it when I was 7. Really nice show except for the completely impossible time travel. Loved how they portrayed the terror birds and they introduced me to the Toxodon. I don't really know much about them though, just that their lifestyles were probably similar to hippos.
I used to watch Prehistoric Park on Animal Planet before a long time ago.
Discontinued projects: The New Ostracoderms (i might continue with this project again someday) The Americas (where in 58 million years from now in the future North and South America has both become isolated island continents)
All Expansions (my attempt at expanding the universe of All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet aka C.M. Kosemen, started June 6, 2018) Anthropozoic (my attempt at expanding the universe of Man After Man and also a re-imagining of it, coming 2019 or 2020) New Cenozoica (my attempt at expanding the universe of The New Dinosaurs and also a re-imagining of it, also coming 2019 or 2020) All Alternatives or All Changes (a re-telling of All Tomorrows but with some minor and major "changes", coming June 10, 2018)
A noxious pest of livestock and stored grain products.
Gender:
Chitinous
Talenkauen Spec
Dec 25 2016, 12:26 AM
Polypodium hydriforme is the only species in it's genus, family, and class. It's a freshwater parasite, that attacks the oocytes (immature egg cells) of acipenseriform fishes (Sturgeon and Paddlefish). This makes it one of the few known metazoan species that live inside the cells of other animals. P.hydriforme is traditionally classified as a primitive cnidarian. However, genetic analysis suggests it actually has closer ties to bilaterians.
I wonder if they make pests of themselves at caviar farms.
A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
Posts:
3,758
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Members
Member
#1,987
Joined:
Sep 11, 2016
Gender:
Male
Area of expertise:
Future Evolution
Favorite Quote:
Don't have one
Also known as:
Anomonys
Gender:
male
Dromaeosaurus
Dec 25 2016, 07:07 AM
Stretching the boundaries of what counts as a "taxon"...
The 8th February 1951, the hospital of Baltimore took cervical cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman who would die because of that cancer in October. Despite the death of their original host, the cancer cells survived well enough in the lab, because of a genetical mutation that allowed them to replicate indefinitely. They're hypertriploid, reaching 76-80 chromosomes per cells, and they have absorbed viral genes from the papillomavirus. They were successfully cloned in 1955. Six decades later, those cells are still growing and reproducing. Known as HeLa cells, they're shipped around the world to be used in all kinds of experiments - cancer research, resistence to toxins and viruses, sensitivity to drugs or cosmetics, and so on. If you still count them as parts of Henrietta Lack's body, Mrs. Lacks weighs around 20 tons at 96 years. Because of their inhuman genome, Leigh Van Valen, whom you might remember for the Red Queen Hypothesis, proposed to classify HeLa cells in the new species Helacyton gartleri, named after Stanley Gartler, who had worked on their clonation and issues with contamination of other cultures. An alternative proposal would classify them as Homo sapiens gartleri. So here you have it - the first (kinda) official posthuman!
I am left absolutely dumbfounded. Someone should make a spec project about this.
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
"Arthropod respiratory systems aren't really "inefficient", they're just better suited to their body size. It would be quite inefficient for a tiny creature that can easily get all the oxygen it needs through passive diffusion to have a respiratory system that wastes energy on muscles that pump air into sacs. (Hence why lungless salamanders, uniquely miniscule and hyperabundant tetrapods, have ditched their lungs in favor of breathing with their skin and buccal mucous membranes.) But large, active insects already use muscles to pump air in and out of their spiracles, and I don't see why their tracheae couldn't develop pseudo- lungs if other conditions pressured them to grow larger."-HangingTheif
"Considering the lifespans of modern non- insect arthropods (decade-old old millipedes, 50 year old tarantulas, 100+ year old lobsters) I wouldn't be surprised if Arthropleura had a lifespan exceeding that of a large testudine"-HangingTheif
"Humans have a tribal mindset and it's not alien for tribes to war on each other. I mean, look at the atrocities chimpanzee tribes do to each other. Most of people's groupings and big conflicts in history are directly or obliquely manifestations of this tribal mindset."-Sceynyos-yis
"He's the leader of the bunch You know his Coconut Gun is finally back to fire in spurts. His Coconut Gun Can make you smile If he shoots ya it's firing in spurts. His Coconut Gun Is bigger, faster, stronger too! He's the gun member of the Coconut Crew! HUH!
C.G.! Coconut Gun! C.G.! Co-Coconut Gun! Shoot yourself with a Coconut Gun! HUH!"-Kamineigh
"RIP, rest in Peytoia."-Little
"In Summary: Piss on Lovecraft's racist grave by making lewds of Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep.
Then eat arby's and embrace the void."-Kamineigh
"Dougal Dixon rule 34."-Sayornis
Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups
Italy (it's somewhere in the Virgo Supercluster, I think)
Also known as:
Concavenator
The sea pig (Scotoplanes globosa) is an abyssal sea cucumber that has turned a few of his tube feet into hydraulic legs to walk around the seafloor, 3-5 km deep. They have five pairs of legs (not many compared to the hundreds of tube feet of most echinoderms) are inflated and deflated with water by cavities in the main body; other tube feet have formed two pairs of dorsal tentacles, while curiusly hand-like anterior appendages explore the mud in search of food. Despite being the ultimate bottom-feeders, they only eat the freshest food - which in the deep sea means detritus that has reached the bottom less than three months before.
***
Bonus pictures
Exidia glandulosa ("black witches' butter"), a fungus with gelatinous bodies that grows on rotting wood
Paedophryne amauensis, a frog from New Guinea and the smallest known vertebrate in the world at 7.7 mm long
Tuckerella sp., the "peacock mite", magnified 260 times
The sea pig (Scotoplanes globosa) is an abyssal sea cucumber that has turned a few of his tube feet into hydraulic legs to walk around the seafloor, 3-5 km deep.
As a bonus, ophiocistoids might have effectively been sea urchins with sea pig feet coming out of their corners.
Forum user Uncanny Gemstar drew what is supposed to be a me. Thanks!
Spoiler: click to toggle
As they walk in, they're greeted by a small, poorly kept pathway leading to a poorly constructed Japanese-style gate. Behind this, a small field made up of corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, among other plants is contrasted by large piles of books, as well as a few rather out of place looking laptops. Off in the corner, a small woman, with long, striped, and strikingly colorful socks, no shoes, unremarkable denim shorts, a large, fancy black coat, arm warmers, glasses, a tuque, and somewhat unkempt, mid-length blue-and-pink-streaked red hair, is rummaging through a trash bin, located behind a sign saying "employees only". She continues this for a while (walking behind a wall to change her outfit now and then), until one of her visitors coughs. Startled, she looks up, apologizes, and grabs a handful of textbooks and novels before daintily running off to join them.
What, you want me to tell you what these mean?
Predenterra The (Lost) Lost World The Standing World
Read First
Clarifications on my sex and gender Sorry if I come off as rude, I don't put much thought into word choice sometimes. I'm also super prone to editing my posts, sometimes multiple times, in the minutes following posting. For the love of god, take my posts from my earlier days on the forum with a grain of salt. I was not particularly knowledgeable or mature back then. Some of them are so cringe-worthy I can't even bring myself to look at them.
Words Maybe
Great Words
Words To Spec By
It would have to be something extremely alien, pushing the limits of our imagination. But those are always my favorite kinds of life. ~~The Words of The Xenologist
Words To Live By
Ignorance is never insulting if you're willing to learn, we're all ignorant about most things. ~~The Words of Lamna
Words I Live By
Yeah, and even if you don't agree with creationists on that concept, that doesn't mean they can't be decent people. I have friends who are creationist (possibly even young earth) that I get along with fine in general life. I don't think they're right of course, but that doesn't make them intellectual degenerates. ~~The Words of forbidden3
Member Quotes
jman123
Ass-breathing fish-lizards? Sounds like a punk rock band
Sheather
"Holy fucking shit a toilet paper roll! Our favorite thing!"
Urufumarukai
Tyrannosaurus aquastronka
Kamineigh
Myo, if you don't stop reading the YouTube comments...
Lamna
Are you saying what I think you're saying?
Sheather bathes in cum?
Cephylus
And last night I dreamed I was blowing up a Kindergarten with a grenade launcher for no particular reason...
revin
Oh, and of course more people get killed by selfies than by sharks. Of course.
The smell of rotting flesh really kills my appetite, surprising, but the visual appearance of corpses makes me hungry. Is that weird?
Ebervalius
I mean, let us say I'm a genderfluid blurflux demi-romantic woman who is sexually attracted to men, but only if they are Melanesian and have a voice like that of Nicholas Cage. Okay, so what?
trex841
When I first saw that picture, I thought you were dissecting a condom.
Mr Mysterio
All hail Robo-Stalin.
Peashyjah
Seems like everything in this project is now dead.
Stealth Rock
Seagulls are pretty much trees, right?
Watcher
We all must finish chapters of our lives to go on to the next. Sometime this means leaving behind versions of ourselves that don't want to die.
Yiqi15
For April fool's, we had to make an orgasm that resembled a human foot.
Flisch
im the black market
CaledonianWarrior96
He was a skater birb, she said tweet you later birb
Most People at Some Point
Quotes
Some dude called plucas1 from Youtube comments
Funny, isn't it, that our world needs Clark Kent a lot more than Superman.
Xenoblade Chronicles
Even though he is our creator, that does not afford him the right to take our lives on a whim. But that is the thinking of a homs. He is a god. Such morals cannot apply to gods. So you think we should just shut up and die?! If that is the fate decided by a god. You are mistaken if you think we will simply accept such a fate and wait to die. We'll never stop fighting. Not till the end. To Zanza, the outcome is the same. Thus your logic is flawed.
Hades - Kid Icarus Uprising
When freaky aliens give you lemons, make freaky alien lemonade.
Kid Icarus Uprising
But Souls are delicious. They're like bacon - they taste good on anything. But if you eat them, you completely remove them from existence! They can't move on or... or be reincarnated! Huh. I never really gave it much thought. Besides, what do you mean by reincarnation anyway? You know, being reborn as someone or something else. Which means different body, different memories, different experiences, yes? So isn't being reborn as "something else" the same as being "removed from existence"? I... I... eating souls isn't right! That depends on your definition of "right". All living things survive by eating other living things. So what? You're a god. You should be above all that! Gods are above living things, which doesn't necessarily mean we care about them.
Dendrogramma enigmatica is a small mushroom-like sea creature discovered off the south-east coast of Australia in 1986, though not named until 2014. It had such unusual anatomy that it was suspected that it could have been a newly discovered phylum or maybe not even an animal at all. It was noted that it bore some similarities to some of the strange life forms of the Ediacaran period (635-542 million years ago). However, genetic studies in 2016 revealed that D. enigmatica was actually a very unusual type of siphonophore. It is also now thought that the specimens so far discovered may actually not be full creatures but rather parts of a larger organism whose exact anatomy and physiology remains unknown.
Sorry, but why do you want to know aboot my nationality, eh? Uh... sorry, that was rude of me. Sorry.
Favorite Quote:
"you know you're a nerd when you search Wookieepedia for porn"
Also known as:
You can call me Little; full list of old names found through profile.
Gender:
Trans Questioning (see link in sig; feminine pronouns)
Was thinking about posting that one eventually. I hadn't actually heard about the genetics study though, that's interesting. On the topic of it though, I heard that specimen was in pretty bad condition, and even if it's not just one body part, it might not have looked quite like that.
Forum user Uncanny Gemstar drew what is supposed to be a me. Thanks!
Spoiler: click to toggle
As they walk in, they're greeted by a small, poorly kept pathway leading to a poorly constructed Japanese-style gate. Behind this, a small field made up of corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, among other plants is contrasted by large piles of books, as well as a few rather out of place looking laptops. Off in the corner, a small woman, with long, striped, and strikingly colorful socks, no shoes, unremarkable denim shorts, a large, fancy black coat, arm warmers, glasses, a tuque, and somewhat unkempt, mid-length blue-and-pink-streaked red hair, is rummaging through a trash bin, located behind a sign saying "employees only". She continues this for a while (walking behind a wall to change her outfit now and then), until one of her visitors coughs. Startled, she looks up, apologizes, and grabs a handful of textbooks and novels before daintily running off to join them.
What, you want me to tell you what these mean?
Predenterra The (Lost) Lost World The Standing World
Read First
Clarifications on my sex and gender Sorry if I come off as rude, I don't put much thought into word choice sometimes. I'm also super prone to editing my posts, sometimes multiple times, in the minutes following posting. For the love of god, take my posts from my earlier days on the forum with a grain of salt. I was not particularly knowledgeable or mature back then. Some of them are so cringe-worthy I can't even bring myself to look at them.
Words Maybe
Great Words
Words To Spec By
It would have to be something extremely alien, pushing the limits of our imagination. But those are always my favorite kinds of life. ~~The Words of The Xenologist
Words To Live By
Ignorance is never insulting if you're willing to learn, we're all ignorant about most things. ~~The Words of Lamna
Words I Live By
Yeah, and even if you don't agree with creationists on that concept, that doesn't mean they can't be decent people. I have friends who are creationist (possibly even young earth) that I get along with fine in general life. I don't think they're right of course, but that doesn't make them intellectual degenerates. ~~The Words of forbidden3
Member Quotes
jman123
Ass-breathing fish-lizards? Sounds like a punk rock band
Sheather
"Holy fucking shit a toilet paper roll! Our favorite thing!"
Urufumarukai
Tyrannosaurus aquastronka
Kamineigh
Myo, if you don't stop reading the YouTube comments...
Lamna
Are you saying what I think you're saying?
Sheather bathes in cum?
Cephylus
And last night I dreamed I was blowing up a Kindergarten with a grenade launcher for no particular reason...
revin
Oh, and of course more people get killed by selfies than by sharks. Of course.
The smell of rotting flesh really kills my appetite, surprising, but the visual appearance of corpses makes me hungry. Is that weird?
Ebervalius
I mean, let us say I'm a genderfluid blurflux demi-romantic woman who is sexually attracted to men, but only if they are Melanesian and have a voice like that of Nicholas Cage. Okay, so what?
trex841
When I first saw that picture, I thought you were dissecting a condom.
Mr Mysterio
All hail Robo-Stalin.
Peashyjah
Seems like everything in this project is now dead.
Stealth Rock
Seagulls are pretty much trees, right?
Watcher
We all must finish chapters of our lives to go on to the next. Sometime this means leaving behind versions of ourselves that don't want to die.
Yiqi15
For April fool's, we had to make an orgasm that resembled a human foot.
Flisch
im the black market
CaledonianWarrior96
He was a skater birb, she said tweet you later birb
Most People at Some Point
Quotes
Some dude called plucas1 from Youtube comments
Funny, isn't it, that our world needs Clark Kent a lot more than Superman.
Xenoblade Chronicles
Even though he is our creator, that does not afford him the right to take our lives on a whim. But that is the thinking of a homs. He is a god. Such morals cannot apply to gods. So you think we should just shut up and die?! If that is the fate decided by a god. You are mistaken if you think we will simply accept such a fate and wait to die. We'll never stop fighting. Not till the end. To Zanza, the outcome is the same. Thus your logic is flawed.
Hades - Kid Icarus Uprising
When freaky aliens give you lemons, make freaky alien lemonade.
Kid Icarus Uprising
But Souls are delicious. They're like bacon - they taste good on anything. But if you eat them, you completely remove them from existence! They can't move on or... or be reincarnated! Huh. I never really gave it much thought. Besides, what do you mean by reincarnation anyway? You know, being reborn as someone or something else. Which means different body, different memories, different experiences, yes? So isn't being reborn as "something else" the same as being "removed from existence"? I... I... eating souls isn't right! That depends on your definition of "right". All living things survive by eating other living things. So what? You're a god. You should be above all that! Gods are above living things, which doesn't necessarily mean we care about them.
A noxious pest of livestock and stored grain products.
Gender:
Chitinous
Here's something that's a little weird- tetrapods with blood that ain't red.
Skinks in the genus Prasinohaema have green blood and tissues. This isn't because their blood doesn't contain hemoglobin or anything like that, but because of enormously excessive amounts of the pigment that gives liver bile its green color. This might make the skinks toxic or foul tasting, or it might be a defense against malaria parasites.
Even stranger, and apparently unexplained, Amazon Milk Frogs (Trachycephalus) seem to have blue blood. I'm basing this on the color of their mouth lining, the tint of their skin in places (especially on thin- skinned juveniles) and especially on this image of an individual suffering from a cloacal prolapse. The green blooded skinks also have blue in their mouth lining, and one might take that as evidence that the milk frog's tissue is actually green, (it might be, but I think the prolapse is fairly compelling evidence that it's blue) but we can see from numerous examples that the color of a reptile's mouth has little to do with the color of its innards.
Slightly graphic, but spoilered for size, not your petty sensibilities
So what do you guys think the deal is with Trachycephalus?
"I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids and today I hate them worse than everything." - Charles Darwin
Gender:
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
LittleYukidaruma
Dec 27 2016, 08:21 PM
Was thinking about posting that one eventually. I hadn't actually heard about the genetics study though, that's interesting. On the topic of it though, I heard that specimen was in pretty bad condition, and even if it's not just one body part, it might not have looked quite like that.
So what we may have here is an Anomalocaris-appendage situation, but with a currently living animal.
Desmids (family Desmidiaceae) are unicellular green algae found in acidic fresh water. They have a variety of ornate, usually bilaterally-symmetrical shapes.
Even stranger, and apparently unexplained, Amazon Milk Frogs (Trachycephalus) seem to have blue blood. I'm basing this on the color of their mouth lining, the tint of their skin in places (especially on thin- skinned juveniles) and especially on this image of an individual suffering from a cloacal prolapse. The green blooded skinks also have blue in their mouth lining, and one might take that as evidence that the milk frog's tissue is actually green, (it might be, but I think the prolapse is fairly compelling evidence that it's blue) but we can see from numerous examples that the color of a reptile's mouth has little to do with the color of its innards.
Slightly graphic, but spoilered for size, not your petty sensibilities
So what do you guys think the deal is with Trachycephalus?
That's fascinating! Could it be that copper-based blood is more useful in the environment that they live? Or perhaps their ancestors evolved a different blood composition because they lived in harsher conditions and the modern milk frogs have only recently moved into the Amazon.
EDIT: I've had a look online and whilst some sites mention the blue insides, none seem to confirm the idea of blue blood. Perhaps this is just a defensive adaptation. The bright blue would suggest toxicity, even if the species isn't dangerous.
"you are about to try that on a species that clawed its way to the top of a 4 billion year deep corpse pile of evolution. one that has committed the genocide you are contemplating several times already. they are the pinnacle of intelligence-based survival techniques and outnumber you 7 billion to 1" - humans vs machine
Even stranger, and apparently unexplained, Amazon Milk Frogs (Trachycephalus) seem to have blue blood. I'm basing this on the color of their mouth lining, the tint of their skin in places (especially on thin- skinned juveniles) and especially on this image of an individual suffering from a cloacal prolapse. The green blooded skinks also have blue in their mouth lining, and one might take that as evidence that the milk frog's tissue is actually green, (it might be, but I think the prolapse is fairly compelling evidence that it's blue) but we can see from numerous examples that the color of a reptile's mouth has little to do with the color of its innards.
So what do you guys think the deal is with Trachycephalus?
Huh, I've seen this species before but I never knew there was blue inside them as well- I thought it was just skin iridophores. But that's really interesting, and my digging isn't finding much in the way of an explanation.
However, it does seem to be something that happens about a year into development, so it could be something that's happening along with toxin production;
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.
"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
Blame is the playing of children and is given to many like a gift that cannot be returned. Acceptance is the tool of the mature that is rarely loaned out.
Just in case you forgot I love pterosaurs, there's Prejanopterus:
Basically imagine Lonchodectes with a downturned beak: