dromeoraptor

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All the dragons from the HTTYD stream. Detailed images below.

The designs from the original movie are basically perfect, which is why I didn't really dare to touch them... until a certain trailer dropped recently.

I'm a spiteful creature.

Anyway. Some ground rules. I tried to make these creatures overall a little bit more realistic and grounded without robbing them of the inherent whimsy that the originals had. All of them are tetrapods, so only 4 limbs max.

Nightfury

These guys have no more functional limbs to move on the ground. They are living stealth bombers. Silent fast fliers.

On the ground they flop around similar to seals, forming small colonies on top of tall cliffs.

Red Death

At a certain size it becomes unfeasible to fly for even a dragon. The Red Death stays on the ground using it's heavy armor and enormous size when raiding other dragon nesting colonies. it'as wings are more like spurs, to injure rivals in combat.

Gronkle

The original had a hummingbird style in flying , something that doesn't work for an animal of this size. My compromise is to make the wings rather stout and being able to be folded a lot.

Nadder

Easiest design, take a unfeathered theropod and combine it with a bearded dragon.

Shellfire

This was the last one I made on stream, it is one of the (in my eyes) worst designs from the shows, so a nice challenge to make it work a little better.

This guy is now a filter feeder, using its large horns to funnel water into its mouth.

Zippleback

Multi-headed dragons are really tricky. In my design I made one of the heads a parasitic male, similar to angler fish, that hitches a ride on the back of the larger female.

Monstrous Nightmare

One of the most classic dragons from the original movie. Lots of crocodilian influence here. The osteoderms on its back have pores from which it produces flammable secretions.

Razorwhip

A fast an agile dragon, but the original doesn't really show that in the head shape and all these spines don't help. I put some tapejarid influence into it.

Rumblehorn

The massive neck of this dragon doesn't work well in terms of aerodynamics, unless it's an inflatable display structure ;)

Whispering Death

The giant maw of this dragon is an even greater challenge, but when you give it the gular pouch of a pelican eel and turn these eyes into eye-spots, it works quite well.

And of course the Terrible Terror!

As you can see it's in my case a close relative of the nadder.

[dromeoraptor]

Ethiopian wolves feed on the sweet nectar of a local flower, picking up pollen on their snouts as they do so – which may make them the first carnivores discovered to act as pollinators.

The Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) is the rarest wild canid species in the world and Africa’s most threatened carnivore. Endemic to the Ethiopian Highlands, fewer than 500 individuals survive.

Sandra Lai at the University of Oxford and her colleagues observed wild Ethiopian wolves lapping up the nectar of Ethiopian red hot poker (Kniphofia foliosa) flowers. Local people in the mountains have traditionally used the nectar as a sweetener for coffee and on flat bread.

The wolves are thought to be the first large carnivore species ever to be recorded regularly feeding on nectar.

“For large carnivores, such as wolves, nectar-feeding is very unusual, due to the lack of physical adaptations, such as a long tongue or specialised snout, and because most flowers are too fragile or produce too little nectar to be interesting for large animals,” says Lai.

The sturdy, nectar-rich flower heads of the poker plant make this behaviour possible, she says. “To my knowledge, no other large carnivorous predator exhibits nectar-feeding, though some omnivorous bears may opportunistically forage for nectar, albeit rarely and poorly documented.”

Some of the wolves were seen visiting as many as 30 blooms in a single trip. As they lick the nectar, the wolves’ muzzles get covered in pollen, which they could potentially be transferring from flower to flower as they feed.

“The behaviour is interesting because it shows nectar-feeding and pollination by non-flying mammals might be more widespread than currently recognised, and that the ecological significance of these lesser-known pollinators might be more important than we think,” says Lai. “It’s very exciting.”

Lai and her colleagues at the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme now hope to dig deeper into the behaviour and its ramifications. “Trying to confirm actual pollination by the wolves would be ideal, but that would be quite challenging,” she says. “I’m also very interested in the social learning aspect of the behaviour. We’ve seen this year adults bringing their juveniles to the flower fields, which could indicate cultural transmission.”

[dromeoraptor]

its the nature of spec bio worldbuilding for this thing to eventually show up

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naked decidueye

[dromeoraptor]

Siphonophores, the "Multi-Organism Organisms"

Siphonophores are really weird. They're like multicellular² organisms. A multi-cellular organism is made of multiple cells, most of them physically attatched to each other. They're all clones of the original zygote cell, (in most animals at least, and I think most things that reproduce via sexual reproduction) and while each cell is alive in its own right, they act as one organism. A siphonophore is made of multiple zooids (each zooid is homologous to an independent organism. So each nectophore is its own "jellyfish."), all of them physically attatched to each other. They're all clones of the original protozooid, and while each zooid is alive in its own right, they act as one organism. At least practically. I don't think we label the word "organism" to the siphonophore as a whole? I'm not sure actually. Normal animals could sorta be considered "single-zooided organisms"

(Diagram of Nanomia bijuga from here. Original drawing by Freya Goetez.) ... and so I went to look at the wikipedia article for organism to see if that helped in figuring out what label the colony goes under...

and it turns out what an organism even is isn't clear. Honestly, it reminds me of the species problem. The whole thing of "what is a species? Are species even natural things or are they just categories we use to better understand the tree of life?" and stuff like that.

Image from the wikipedia article on Species. We have these concepts that are so intuitive to us, these obvious base boxes to separate life into. A box for each type of thing. A box for each living thing. Until we get these edge cases that show us that that these boxes aren't natural. They're useful, absolutely! But it's not something with sharp edges. It's gradients. In conclusion. I think I know what a siphonophore is doing, and how it works. The question of "is a siphonophore an organism" is less about what a siphonophore is, and more about what an organism is. And the answer is... "idfk it's an edge case" edit: I watched the alien ocean video on siphonophores again, and it led me to this really cool quote. Originally from ___. edit: So I watched the alien ocean video on Siphonophores and found this really cool quote. Here's the full version of the quote (or well the full version from the paper she cites. I think Gould's quote has a bit cut out of it hence the ellipsis.

For Wilson (1975), “the resolution of the paradox is that siphonophores are both organisms and colonies. Structurally and embryonically they qualify as organisms. Phylogenetically they originated as colonies.” For Gould (1984), “the siphonophore paradox does have an answer of sorts, and a profound one at that. The answer is that we asked the wrong question….. Are siphonophores organisms or colonies? Both and neither; they lie in the middle of a continuum where one grades into the other.”

from (Mackie, G. O., Pugh, P. R., & Purcell, J. E. (1988). Siphonophore biology. In Advances in Marine biology (Vol. 24, pp. 97-262). Academic Press.)

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unbothered by loach Activities

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literally how is it fucking real

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Apparently the Congo river is deep enough that there are several species of fish with cavedwelling adaptations (near-total to total blindness, loss of pigmentation, etc) because light doesn't reach where they live. the fuck

[dromeoraptor]

Rats vs Mice

(To be clear, this is not an anti-mouse post. Small cute animals should be allowed to be a little fucked up.)

[dromeoraptor]

could genetic engineering make versions of one sophont's food edible to another's?

There's way too many variables in food and basic incompatibilities in molecular mechanics for that to be a realistic goal.

[dromeoraptor]

CANDACE AGAINST THE UNIVERSE (2020)

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wait if only humans have DNA, what do other sophonts have?

I don't know and I refuse to speculate because I'm not good enough at organic chemistry. They just use different molecular structures to encode genetic information than us.

[dromeoraptor]

In a monumental discovery for paleontology and the first of its kind "Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia"

Abstract The frozen mummy of the large felid cub was found in the Upper Pleistocene permafrost on the Badyarikha River (Indigirka River basin) in the northeast of Yakutia, Russia. The study of the specimen appearance showed its significant differences from a modern lion cub of similar age (three weeks) in the unusual shape of the muzzle with a large mouth opening and small ears, the very massive neck region, the elongated forelimbs, and the dark coat color. Tomographic analysis of the mummy skull revealed the features characteristic of Machairodontinae and of the genus Homotherium. For the first time in the history of paleontology, the appearance of an extinct mammal that has no analogues in the modern fauna has been studied. For more read here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-79546-1

[dromeoraptor]

In a monumental discovery for paleontology and the first of its kind "Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia"

Abstract The frozen mummy of the large felid cub was found in the Upper Pleistocene permafrost on the Badyarikha River (Indigirka River basin) in the northeast of Yakutia, Russia. The study of the specimen appearance showed its significant differences from a modern lion cub of similar age (three weeks) in the unusual shape of the muzzle with a large mouth opening and small ears, the very massive neck region, the elongated forelimbs, and the dark coat color. Tomographic analysis of the mummy skull revealed the features characteristic of Machairodontinae and of the genus Homotherium. For the first time in the history of paleontology, the appearance of an extinct mammal that has no analogues in the modern fauna has been studied. For more read here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-79546-1

[dromeoraptor]

Navaornis hestiae Chiappe et al., 2024 (new genus and species)

(Type skull of Navaornis hestiae [scale bar = 10 mm], from Chiappe et al., 2024)

Meaning of name: Navaornis = [discoverer of the original fossil and the site where it was found] William Nava's bird [in Greek]; hestiae = for Hestia [Greek goddess of architecture]

Age: Late Cretaceous (Santonian–Campanian)

Where found: Adamantina Formation, São Paulo, Brazil

How much is known: A nearly complete skull. Some associated bones from the rest of the skeleton likely belong to the same individual. A partial braincase from the same locality probably comes from a different individual of the same species.

Notes: Navaornis was an enantiornithean, a group of bird-like, usually flight-capable dinosaurs from the Cretaceous. It is one of a handful of enantiornitheans known to have been toothless, giving its skull a superficial resemblance to those of modern birds. However, Navaornis was unlike modern birds (and more like typical non-bird dinosaurs) in the proportions of the bones making up its upper jaw and the lack of a mobile joint in its palate.

The skull of Navaornis is so well preserved that the overall shape and structure of its brain can be reconstructed, a first for an enantiornithean. Similar to birds today, its brain was arched so that its brainstem pointed somewhat downward instead of backward, and the main part of the brain devoted to cognition was relatively enlarged (though not to the same extent as in modern birds). On the other hand, its cerebellum (part of the brain involved in coordinating movement) was relatively small. An especially unusual feature of Navaornis was its greatly enlarged inner ear, the functional significance of which is unknown.

Reference: L.M. Chiappe, G. Navalón, A.G. Martinelli, I. de Souza Carvalho, R.M. Santucci, Y.-H. Wu, and D.J. Field. 2024. Cretaceous bird from Brazil informs the evolution of the avian skull and brain. Nature 635: 376–381. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08114-4

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Short-eared Owl (Asio flammeus), family Strigidae, order Strigiformes, Gujarat, India

photograph by Vyankatesh S Metan

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When things get tough in adulthood, it might seem appealing to return to simpler times. One bizarre marine creature has taken this approach to dire situations quite literally, regressing its physical adult body to a juvenile stage once the stress of starvation or injury has subsided. Until now, the immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) was the only species thought to be able to wind back the clock on jelly-puberty like this, but now it's joined by Mnemiopsis leidyi, better known as the sea walnut or the warty comb jelly.

Contiue Reading.