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Questions that don't need their own topics vol.2; New and fresh
Topic Started: Jan 4 2018, 11:18 AM (26,866 Views)
Akurian452
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Tartarus
Apr 23 2018, 07:38 PM
Akurian452
Apr 23 2018, 05:36 PM
What's the largest/longest an oceanic animal can be? I'd like a guesstimate for a potential project for ocean worlds in the Trappist-1 system.
Would depend on a lot of factors, such as how big the ocean it lives in is, how much food and raw materials are available, and its world's gravity (while water would buoy up your creature's mass, preventing gravity from being an issue for holding up its weight, the world's gravity will still have an influence on how much water pressure increases with depth).
Not sure if anyone has come up with any good estimates for what the upper size of an oceanic creature could be given the most ideal conditions. However, I do know some other spec projects have come up with sea creatures much larger than Earth's largest creature, the blue whale. For example, in the Nereus project the largest creature is a sea creature called the triton, which is 72.68 m long: https://sites.google.com/site/projectnereus/home/life/tetrabrachia/ichthyoforma/celeracaudae/triton This seems to be considered a fairly plausible creature, so I'd say you could have a sea creature at least that big. If it could be possible to get a creature much bigger than even this (like say some 100 m or 200 m giant) I'm not sure.
Thanks, I was thinking of an organisms that were akin to protovertebrates as they would have more flexible bodies and (correct me if I'm wrong) a little more resistance to water pressure. The water pressure would be less of of an issue as the two worlds considered the most habitable in the Trappist-1 system have less gravity than earth. BTW, I posted something new in my Centauri thread if you want to check that out.
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LλmbdaExplosion
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Cool_Hippo43
Apr 21 2018, 04:36 PM
Understood...
well...I have a question...
How big can a humanoid be? I really wanted to think about nephilims and things like that, but I do not know about plausibility ...
I'm talking about humanoid beings with heights between 3 and 10 meters ...
and
They will resemble giant giraffes like gorillas
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Talenkauen
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LλmbdaExplosion
Apr 24 2018, 03:18 AM

They will resemble giant giraffes like gorillas


.... Are you sure about that?
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Cool_Hippo43
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LλmbdaExplosion
Apr 24 2018, 03:18 AM
They will resemble giant giraffes like gorillas
I think this range between 3 and 10 is a little big ...
something between 3 and 6 ... I expected it to look like a big gorilla
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Nyarlathotep
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That seems more reasonable, though I presume they're still obligate bipeds like humans? In that case, then compared to gorillas, they'd hafe a smaller upper body and larger lower body, with a pear shape, even assuming a similar height:weight ratio. Allegedly, the largest known wild gorillas are up to 1.83m tall and 225kg (though they're the exception, not the norm), so maybe that might help?
So using that, a 3m tall humanoid would be 991kg, and a 6m tall one 7.93 tonnes-huge, but not physics breaking for a biped, given Sue the T.rex was estimated at 8.4-9.5 tonnes (depending on whose GDI you think is best) and the Highland Giant would allegedly have been 10-15 tonnes (though take that with salt). For comparison, the Giants from GoT are 3.05-4.27m tall and are considerably less robust than a gorilla in height-weight ratio (though more so than a human or Neanderthal).
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Cool_Hippo43
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Nyarlathotep
Apr 24 2018, 05:53 PM
That seems more reasonable, though I presume they're still obligate bipeds like humans? In that case, then compared to gorillas, they'd hafe a smaller upper body and larger lower body, with a pear shape, even assuming a similar height:weight ratio. Allegedly, the largest known wild gorillas are up to 1.83m tall and 225kg (though they're the exception, not the norm), so maybe that might help?
So using that, a 3m tall humanoid would be 991kg, and a 6m tall one 7.93 tonnes-huge, but not physics breaking for a biped, given Sue the T.rex was estimated at 8.4-9.5 tonnes (depending on whose GDI you think is best) and the Highland Giant would allegedly have been 10-15 tonnes (though take that with salt). For comparison, the Giants from GoT are 3.05-4.27m tall and are considerably less robust than a gorilla in height-weight ratio (though more so than a human or Neanderthal).
I really do not know if a fully biped being with upright posture can grow to more than 5 meters or so ... now for a "biped" like a gorilla or a Chalicothere I think it can really be big
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Tartarus
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Akurian452
Apr 23 2018, 08:16 PM
BTW, I posted something new in my Centauri thread if you want to check that out.
Looking at your Centauri thread I don't see any new posts on it. The last post there is from April 17. Is that the "new" post you refer to or is there a newer one that hasn't shown up on the thread for whatever reason?
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Akurian452
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Tartarus
Apr 24 2018, 06:30 PM
Akurian452
Apr 23 2018, 08:16 PM
BTW, I posted something new in my Centauri thread if you want to check that out.
Looking at your Centauri thread I don't see any new posts on it. The last post there is from April 17. Is that the "new" post you refer to or is there a newer one that hasn't shown up on the thread for whatever reason?
It's the one from April 17 (it's actually 16) and if you click the link that says "small predator" it show cases a Zbrush model of one of the creatures that will be in the project (a small carnivore that fills ecological roles similar to wild dogs, mandrills, and baboons).
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DINOCARID
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Maybe a bit of a hard question to answer, but is it known how did hippuritid rudist bivalves attached to the substrate? Surely they weren't just stabbed into the mud like stakes, they wouldn't be able to maneuver themselves into that position, given their lack of a foot.
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HangingThief
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DINOCARID
Apr 25 2018, 06:19 PM
Maybe a bit of a hard question to answer, but is it known how did hippuritid rudist bivalves attached to the substrate? Surely they weren't just stabbed into the mud like stakes, they wouldn't be able to maneuver themselves into that position, given their lack of a foot.
Perhaps they used something akin to the byssus threads of mussels, which some species such as Pinna nobilis use to anchor themselves in mud.

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Did all rudists necessarily live on mud though? Idk if it's just an artifact of the way they were fossilized, but large, stacked clusters of them seem to suggest that they attached to each other as well.
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ZoologicalBotanist
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From what I understand of gills, they allow water to pass through them carrying dissolved oxygen. The oxygen is then picked up by the blood, which flows through the gills in capillaries that cover the entire gill. This allows the fish or other animal to breathe oxygen underwater. Keeping this in mind, is it possible for something ike the frill-necked lizard, a creature with large, relatively thin frills composed of skin covered in scales and supported by cartilage, to have its frills evolve into gill-like structures by loosing the skills and having lots of blood vessels and capillaries run through them, allowing them to be fully aquatic with almost no reliance on air?


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Akurian452
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Is it possible for a terrestrial, non-flying animal to achieve speeds faster than a cheetah? If so how?
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Russwallac
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Akurian452
Apr 27 2018, 01:32 AM
Is it possible for a terrestrial, non-flying animal to achieve speeds faster than a cheetah? If so how?
There's always room for improvement, but if I had to guess, cheetahs have pretty much hit the limit of what terrestrial animals can do, at least with a tetrapod bauplan. Cheetahs are, after all, significantly faster than pretty much every other terrestrial animal, and they've sacrificed quite a lot for speed. You could probably push it a bit further with lower gravity, a more oxygen-rich atmosphere, or a hyper-specialized bauplan, but at least in terms of Earth animals, cheetahs are at the soft cap.
Edited by Russwallac, Apr 30 2018, 06:28 PM.
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LittleLazyLass
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Aren't pronghorns pretty close to the same upper limits?
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Pronghorns are the second fastest terrestrial animals on the planet, topping at 55 mph, but I think it can maintain a high speed (probably not 55 mph, more like 30 - 40 mph) for a longer period of time. After all they're built to run away from predators so they have to be able to keep running long enough to evade them
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