#speculative biology

[j-tee]

During the great cone migration he sits up in the trees to try and catch cones between his horns.

[troythecatfish]

[zgasly]

Drew him from different angles for artfight so people can get his face right on their drawings

[grox-empire]

Fun fact: Celeste, Being a Spacer Grox, Has a hyperflexible spine. This freaks Epsilon out.

[mariolanzas]

NEW VIDEO" The Future is Wild 3.

This is a collaborative video in which I design original Speculative Evolution concepts that very creative enthusiasts submitted.

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Youtube channel

[copperpipes]

Someone sent an ask about green and black beetles and it got me thinking about DC's Martians' designs because of how I designed blue beetle and the fact that green beetle is martian. So I redesigned martians :]

I have lots of beef with american alien concepts (xenomorph too but less for various reasons) especially intelligent alien species' designs. Yes, i understand the audience needs to empathize with our alien heroes, Cameron, but then they stop being alien. Aliens don't need to be appealing visually, psychologically or socially to us at all, if you are intending to write them seriously.

But of course, all this applies only if you want your writing and design to be realistic or close to reality.

I have several noted points about DC's Martians I'd like to question and or correct in my design, I'll be going off of young justice's martian designs because those are the least human canon designs of them and the most interesting ones. (They can mostly be seen at the beginning of season 4 of YJ) here's the green beetle without the suit and miss martian for reference:

In the show martians are shown to not only have a variety in color but also body type (in some places) which is rare even in an animated show with just humans so big kudos for the animators on that, big fan.

AND martians have webbing between their fingers, arms and torso in this design which could point that they were a water dwelling species in the far past, so also a very big fan of that.

To the redesign:

I had a few ideas.

First I got rid of the teeth on the outside and turned them into a beak because that would be the same thing. Proportionally they are also quite different from the original.

I have some issues with martian abilities. The density shifting is ridiculous (leave it to the ghosts who can bend reality) flying would be unnecessary with the gravity on Mars, there shouldn't be a reason why they could do that. Telekinesis too, for what? What would be its purpose? For survival? They would have found a way without it and otherwise it is physically impossible. *huff*

But some are forgivable, like shape shifting and camouflage if you don't have bones which i solved and telepathy which could just be a very specific frequency only they could emit and hear, that could be adjusted depending on who they were speaking with (with the reading thoughts bit just make them loose the ability to lie, problem solved.) Of course that would also mean their vocal cords wouldn't be made for human speech, but that technology can solve.

The weakness to fire could just be because Mars is also a lot colder then earth.

Our biochemistry should be similar enough tho, carbon based n' all. @wazzappp i thought maybe you would want to see this :>

[whereserpentswalk]

You're a parasite possessing a human’s body. The hunan in question was doomed the momment they touched you. Of course, you didn't know it at the time, your species is only as intelligent as what it latches on to, and you happened to latch on to one of about a dozen truly sapient species in the known universe. You killed them, but you were no smarter than a bug when you killed them.

You exist in this weird space between humanity and inhumanity. Your body is human, your voice a human’s voice, your face a human’s face, but none of that is yourse, you're a creature that crawled in through that body’s mouth and replaced the brain. They were just someone searching around an alien forest, you barely know who they were, and now you're basically puppeting their corpse.

There are also ways you're not human. Most people who meet you assume genetic modification, cybernetic implants, or just some sort of mental illness makes you act the way you do. You useally don't admit what it actually is. Your mannerisms are off, even though you feel human emotions your voice and face rarely reflect them well. When you infected the body, your very nature changed it, you neutered it and made it soft and sexless, you made it take in the minimum amount of food making it skinny and frail. You feel more like a monster than you would if you looked more inhuman, like you're puppeting a corpse.

Still you have freinds, a steady job, a human life on a planet far away from the one you originated from. Despite everything people like you, there are humans who care about you despite you not even being one. You never told them of course, you just said it was faulty cybernetics. But you can live life, read books, enjoy the view of the rain from your apartment, listen to music faintly playing on a street corner. And it all feels stolen, like you can only enjoy all of this because you're stealing someone else's chance at it. The thought rarely crosses your mind but it does so frequently enough, perhaps once every few months, to truly upset you with what you are, to make you feel like everyone who loves you only loves you because they think you're something you're not. You remember that you're an invasive species, that you have no mother or father, that your very existence isn't meant to be.

There was a time when you met someone on the street who knew the body you once inhabited. She recognized it, ran up to you wanting to talk to you, saying she thought you were dead. When you came clean to her you expected to be horrified, to want to hurt you. She didn't. She said she understood, and that she's happy the person your inhabiting still exists in some regard. A lot of people die in the forest, how blessed your body was to birth something new.

[luxudus]

Merfolk in the Trail of Cryptids (for @jennywolfgal)

woah hey i wasnt expecting to have participated in mermay bet here i am now. This is for @jennywolfgal and her project the Trail of Cryptids which i talked about awhile ago with her dragons. enjoy!

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Another group of species endemic to this alternate earth are the legendary Merfolk. Trident wielding Half-man half-fish people of the sea of the myths in our world. The merfolk here aren’t humans or hominids, nor are they even great apes. But instead they are a sister-clade of the family Cebidae. They are related to the Capuchin monkeys of central and south America.

They split off 10 million years ago with a similar evolutionary history to the cetaceans. Allowing an evolution of similar extremeness akin to the time between Pakicetus and Dorudon.

Icthypithicids contain a variety of aquatic monkey species. True merfolk belong in the genus Meralosapiens. With some species inhabiting the mediteranean, coast of east Europe, and their ancestral ground the Caribbean with a leaner build adorned in less fat.

To start off physically, They are like Cetaceans, kind of. their tail extended to an extreme degree to swim. Unlike cetaceans and like some ancient artwork of mermaids of our earth. Their legs still remain useful to swim and hold onto partners. Their arms freed up, remain as manipulators. They remain folded to reduce drag. Which lets them hold onto large objects and young merfolk when breastfeeding.

Uniquely they have a full head of hair like humans in spite of the drag created. This hair is maintained and kept healthy through grooming with the aid of two serrated claws on the lower half of their hand. Their teeth are tipped with canines and slowly become more trident shaped further back. Which they use to flush water out of their mouth. And Lastly their nostrils can completely close like a seal, and are at the very front of the face to ensure they breach the water first.

Ecologically, they are mostly carnivorous. They eat a wide array of fish, squid, and other small marine life. They take a particular liking to seaweeds and copepods, which they use their trident teeth to filter them out of the water. They take so much of a liking to copepods they will even follow their vertical migration.

They are quite social and live in family pods. Like mentioned earlier they will groom each other to strengthen social bonds. While most Icthypithicids are comparable in intelligence to their capuchin cousins. Meralaosapiens are fully sophont organisms that have the capacity for understanding and creating art and complex language. Technologically they are comparable to neolithic humans. Most populations use stone tools or other organisms slightly bred for more cooperation, living tools if you will. While other populations scavenge for more advanced tools left behind by humans.

Overall they are neutral to humans. Often keeping their distance or outright hiding from humans. Some more aggressive merfolk will attack or even hunt humans as a source of preyluring them in with their locks of hair. Which is believed to have arisen from a few merfolk cultures going through famine and growing desperate for food, eventually looking to their cousins beyond the water.

And of course there are others naturally curious of their terrestrial relatives and will frequently come up to human divers, even attempting to communicate with them. The future is uncertain, but hopefully the humanity of this earth will treat these people with respect and maybe even lend them a hand.

[dragonartist56]

Night Fury Speculative Biology pogchamp

[gloomywoodsys]

Does tumblr actually like my WOF art... I just left the fandom 😭😭 aaaauuuwhhh I turned all of my WOF stuff into original dragon content ( some of these designs are outdated )

[ntls-24722]

[forallnumbersosc]

since algebraliens have paws, do they ever handle items with their mouths? Do they ever walk on all fours?

[pencil doodle time, admin is at work :'D]

Well this situation is quite convenient for this question--

While algebraliens are known for their strange abilities, each one usually has one or more skills that they are more comfortable using than others, and will need to get into the habit of training if they wish to hone them... Thus, sometimes algebraliens that haven't practiced their ability to move objects with their mind may use their mouths as an extra way to carry or use tools.

Armless algebraliens seem to have the strongest capacity to learn psychokinetic abilities!

I haven't really-- figured out the whole "powers" thing yet with my time switching species, but maybe ill get the hang of it before we find out how to swap back--

As for the four legs bit, yeah I've seen a good number of us run on all fours if they need to get around quicker, but not all of us prefer it...

[troythecatfish]

[theantiazdarcho]

The Lancetfish is a species that looks like it comes straight out of a realistic fantasy world building project.

[grox-empire]

'A Yet-To-Be-Named oc for my friend @t34-mt's spec bio project! He's a kyhuine, Mixed Salt flats + mhierthri

[armadillorollup]

biology of a stapler