#Fellow Tetrapod

[yee-qi]

The council is meeting An exploration of some of the sapient species designs based on various phyla I came up with last year, loosely inspired by Daniel Bensen's Fellow Tetrapod and Dimetrodone's Phyla Challenge. Countercockwise starting from the center, they are: - a giant, predatory flatworm - a swarm of nanomachines - a bipedal rotifer - a small colony of bryozoans in a metal tank - a loriciferan in a protective suit I'd imagine they're meeting on the bryozoan homeworld.

[danbensen]

I have finished writing Fellow Tetrapod! In celebration of this and other things, I welcome you to the presentation I made for #Specposium. Enjoy the pretty pictures, of alternate-earth sophonts, made by me, @simon-roy and Tim Morris.

[dungeons-and-tetrapods]

Fixers - Lore

On a Earth, somewhere in the universes of space-time, an ancestral dog learnt to climb. Running was useful, yes, and prey scatters freely - but what about forests? The trees? The places where the feathered-things roam? Prey does not only flee on land.

The agile, curious ones could reach those protein-rich eggs of these feathered-things (commonly known as birds), but eggs are fragile and all to easy to break.

So, these ancestral dogs learnt how to throw, and how to catch.

Throwing is usually seen as an ape trait, something requiring long, flexible bony digits on a thing called a "hand", but these dogs had gravity and height on their side. Mated pairs would set out, with one of the pair climbing up to the nest and dropping an egg below it.

Of course, the first few attempts weren't successful. The eggs splattered across the ground as sticky spoils, which made it useless. The ground needed to be soft, gentle - a cache of food for the future pups and lean winters!

How does a dog soften a blow?

By climbing more, obviously. Those ancestral dogs would curl face-down the tree and toss the egg sideways into a waiting mates' soft mouth. This was a success. Flesh is gentle! It weans and fixes! No more cracks in the shell!

Pups were brought up with the knowledge that the mouth fixes things. It creates. Creation - enough to form family-lines of tossing, factories of oldest to youngest carrying eggs. It was inconvient only carrying one, so flesh-pouches were made. More food, more healing, better life.

It was a while before the ancestral dogs hit sophoncy. Their life simply didn't need it for a long, long time, until disease struck the eggs. Those who couldn't identify sick from healthy were struck down, leaving the remaining dogs to categorise.

If everything is gone, what do you do?

You learn. You adapt. You become smarter, or you starve.

It took a long time for the Fixers of Flesh to join, but they are curious, and the mouth craves. They have been hungry.

[red-red-spout]

I love science fiction and speculative biology and evolution and such, but so much of it has just… godawful characterization stemming from bullshit reddit evopsych

[dougdimmadodo]

March’s Fossil of the Month - Acanthostega (Acanthostega gunnari)

Family: Acanthostega Family (Acanthostegidae)

Time Period: 365 Million Years Ago (Late Devonian)

In life, Acanthostega gunnari would have likely resembled a cross between a lungfish and a salamander, and this isn’t dramatically different to what it really was; Acanthostega was a stem-tetrapod, an early member of the lineage of animals that now contains all reptiles, birds, mammals and amphibians, and is believed to be an example of a key stage in the transition between fleshy-finned fishes and the earliest terrestrial vertebrates. Although it possessed 4 short limbs ending in wide, 8-toed feet, the lack of any clear wrist or ankle joints suggests that Acanthostega likely couldn’t support its weight on land, and this combined with its well-developed pelvic bones implies that it was likely a fully-aquatic animal that primarily relied on a paddle-like fin on its tail to propel it forwards while its limbs were used to steer or possibly to grasp aquatic vegetation. During the late Devonian much of the world (including the area of what is now Greenland where Acanthostega fossils were first discovered) was covered in humid, swampy deciduous forests, and this combined with Acanthostega’s anatomy suggests that it likely inhabited warm, oxygen-poor forest pools, which would also explain one of its more unusual characteristics; in addition to possessing fish-like internal gills (as suggested by the presence of gill arch like structures at the base of its skull), a rudimentary rib cage implies that Acanthostega likely had lungs, allowing it to extract oxygen from water as well as air and thereby survive in shallow, oxygen-starved pools that fishes and larger stem-tetrapods would have struggled to breathe in. The teeth of Acanthostega (which were arranged in two rows and were short and sharp, with two larger fangs on the lower jaw) implies that it was likely carnivorous (possibly feeding on terrestrial arthropods caught from above-water beds of vegetation or the banks of its home pools), and comparisons of the anatomy and mineral makeup of fossils of smaller individuals (believed to be juveniles) with those of larger individuals (which are generally believed to be adults) implies that it grew slowly, possibly taking up to 6 years to reach full maturity (at which point most individuals were around 60cm/23.6 inches long, although the difference in the length of seemingly mature individuals suggests that, as with many fish, adverse environmental conditions could considerably limit Acanthostega’s growth.) Although it is unlikely that Acanthostega or its descendants ever succeeded in colonizing land, it is generally accepted that (having become so well-suited to life in the oxygen-poor pools they inhabited) they had little need to, and as several of Acanthostega’s fellow stem-tetrapods (such as the significantly larger Ichthyostega, which had jointed, six-toed limbs and a more developed rib-cage that likely allowed it to haul itself onto land for prolonged periods like modern mudskippers or seals) are known to have done so, the study of the anatomy and lifestyle of this strange little swamp-dweller can still help to shed light on how the variety of land-dwelling vertebrates seen today came to be. 

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Image Sources

Fossil: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acanthostega_gunnari.jpg#/media/File:Acanthostega_gunnari.jpg

Restoration: https://www.10tons.dk/acanthostega-gunnari

[stellerssong]

Swan I promise I'll get caught up on your fanwork soon. Soon as I actually watch these overdue DVDs of The Watchman😉. In the meantime consider this an invitation to do a director's commentary from back when Will Graham was a bird?

please enjoy your viewing of the watchman! don't quote me on this, but i hear he (the eponymous watchman) was in a comic book once...really make u thimk.

oh god okay umm...how do i put this politely for the good people in the audience who have not been following me since 2013. so. ok. so i've long maintained that turning a character into a bird monster is one of the truest forms of love i am capable of expressing. "but swan!" you say, shocked and horrified, "surely you mean turning a character into a WEREWOLF is one of the truest forms of love you are capable of expressing! you have a whole thing about werewolves! it's an expanded universe with hinted crossovers! there's internal logic and now a magic system! you have spilled literally thousands of words that are No Plot Just Describing Midcycle Werewolves and you KEEP THREATENING TO DO THAT MORE." and like. you're not wrong strictly speaking. and i do inflict that aggressively upon my favorite characters. but there is something particularly monstery about the bird monster that a werewolf just doesn't get at.

it's the uncanny valley of it all, you dig? a werewolf is, when you get down to it, a wolf whose instincts are fettered to a human perception of the world—hence, functionally, a dog. a very large, gross, dangerous, infectious dog, in some cases—a dog with hands and fucked-up people teeth, frequently—but it's fundamentally the emotional tension of the dog that i'm working with here, right? the sit and stay and will i get a pat or a kick of things, the what is a pack and what are they owed of it, the animal caught in a little box with the human and the realization of how little space there is between those two things. which is all lovely delicious good food for me, personally, and of course i am capable of making something tangibly offputting out of those compelling pieces.

but the bird monster is a different game. that's a different part of the uncanny valley, and i hesitate to call it a more physical part, but the physicality IS part of it. a bird has warm blood, like you or like me (with apologies to any reptiles, amphibians, ectothermic fish, etc. reading this). it breathes air. it's often social and intelligent. it has a voice—more importantly, it makes music. we connect with these qualities, as fellow warm-blooded social tetrapods. we think, oh, this is a familiar creature, this is a creature i can easily empathize with (again, apologies to those reading this who, like me, are thrown into a tearful cute-aggression frenzy over the japanese giant salamander).

but a bird feels different from a human in a way that a dog doesn't. it's got feathers. it's got hollow bones. it's got an expressionless face and eyes that don't convey the same warmth as a dog's or a wolf's or even a cat's. there are tame birds and domesticated birds, yes, but in general there's not the same cultural sense of the bird as companion animal that smooths the way (or burdens) the dog or the wolf-as-dog.

and it flies. that's fuckin' different.

so it's a different tension there. where the werewolf's sense of alienation stems from the uneasy knowledge that there's gray area between wolf and dog and human, the bird monster's deal is a more classic disjoint. a human is not like a bird. these two things are (or feel) more diametrically opposed. and yet in the bird monster they exist within a single body anyway. the human in you is content to travel in two dimensions. the bird in you understands that there's a whole lot more world if you just look up. the human in you needs the solidity of earth underfoot and the comforting anchor of gravity. the bird in you knows those things for chains and cages in disguise. the human in you tastes blood and grimaces, gags, spits and screams and weeps. the bird in you swallows, expressionless, and sings.

ok so then imagine if it was will graham,,,

[greedisland-devs]

How does Mystery Pond (008) determine what is and is not a fish? Cladistically, mammals (and, indeed, all tetrapods) emerged from fishes and so are fish as well. If I, hypothetically, pushed a fellow player into the pond would a another person appear the next day? Would it be another distinct human or a clone of the fellow player? Have you considered the ethical ramifications of cloning players without their explicit consent? Furthermore, would the same hold for NPCs? How are they classified by the game's internal logic? If 'fish' is limited to paraphyletic definition (cowards), which extant groups are considered? Do you account for extinct fish which through unnatural means may be manifested within the game? Are Galgaida (1217) and Chidon (7018) fish or, due to their nature as game constructs, classified differently. Have you considered that differentiating them from True fish might be discrimination?

How does Mystery Pond (008) determine what is and is not a fish?

The definition of fish that we are using goes as follows

The creature must be a vertebrate

They must be aquatic

They must be lacking terrestrial locomotive members

They must not be descended from any land tetrapods

Since tetrapods have terrestrial locomotive members, they are not considered under the taxonomy of what we designate a fish.

If 'fish' is limited to paraphyletic definition (cowards), which extant groups are considered?

There are six distinct modern lineages of fish which were considered when classifying which organisms can show up:

Mixini (hagfish)

Cephalaspidomorphi (lampreys)

Chondrichthyes (sharks & rays)

Coelacanthimorpha (coelacanth)

Dipnomorpha (lungfish)

Actinopterygi (bony fish)

Do you account for extinct fish which through unnatural means may be manifested within the game?

Here are the extinct lineages we took into account.

Ostracoderms (jawless fish)

Acanthodians (spiny sharks)

Placoderms (plate skinned bottom dwellers)

The only extinct fish which appear within Mystery Pond (008) are ones we have substantial records of in order to recreate.

Are Galgaida (1217) and Chidon (7018) fish or, due to their nature as game constructs, classified differently.

Galgadia (1217) and Chidon (7018) do count as fish that can be spawned within the Mystery Pond, however, the cards for these fish cannot be acquired by catching them through mystery pond. These fish can be interacted with but if they are spawned by the pond they are considered to be part of that card, not their own distinct cards.

And now for the more philosophical debate of comments made above.

If I, hypothetically, pushed a fellow player into the pond would a another person appear the next day? Would it be another distinct human or a clone of the fellow player? Have you considered the ethical ramifications of cloning players without their explicit consent?

While players cannot be cloned through the methods stated above, there was an interesting argument we had regarding the insertion of a cloning card. Through our beta testing, we came to realize a few things.

If the clone gained sentience, there was always a confusion of which was the original and which was the clone, as both people had the memory of using the card, and every memory prior to that. The extra confusion came from the fact that the clones were spawned holding a copy of the same card, which gave them resonable suspicion to believe they were the original. This caused a huge ethical issue for the beta tester, who at the time wanted to de-spawn his clone, who had run off and gained new experiences thus becoming a new person.

Is it ethical to be able to de-spawn a person? Would that not be the same as killing?

Therefore, we had to classify any new life as life and not an NPC

Shadow List is still running around Greed Island to this day, we cannot apprehend him.

Furthermore, would the same hold for NPCs? How are they classified by the game's internal logic?

NPCs are beings made of nen that we have full control over. They function as more of an autonomous nen beast until control is needed, in which they can be shut down, edited, or set back into free range motion. Some NPCs have the ability to achieve more structural autonomy in a long form of conjuration, which can happen if the player who wins the game suggests to take an NPC card out of the game. While the NPC will not technically be "alive" in the same way you or I will be alive, that will fullfill the nen condition that makes them fully autonomous from us. However, they must have a constant source of aura or therefore they will start to despawn, therefore they need to eat plant or animal matter from the real world. So long as your NPC will eat, they will live.

-Ging

[danbensen]

Recommended reading (from Fellow Tetrapod, a book not entirely unlike the fabulous premise above)

Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard Dawkins

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo by Sean B. Carroll

Cesar Millan's Short Guide to a Happy Dog: 98 Essential Tips and Techniques by Cesar Milan

Now go at it! Let's have some ethology fiction! If you write anything, please send me a link.

Dr Doolittle-style show about a detective who can talk to animals, except instead of talking like people the animals still talk like animals, just translated into English sentences, so the plot of most episodes centres around trying to figure out what the star witness testimony actually means.

Victim's murder was witnessed by her pet snake, whose tank was in the room. Unfortunately pet snake is incapable of describing the world around them except in terms of 'rocks' and 'meat', with their descriptions of individual forms of 'meat' focusing almost entirely on body temperature and smell.

(Solved when it turns out that their description of 'warm-cold meat with rock' was actually an attempt to describe a suspect with a prosthetic limb, which is pretty unnoticeable to a human, but looks dramatically different in infrared.)

Murder at a honey farm. Each witness managed to see about ~0.06% of the full crime, in order to get the full picture, you have to get them to swarm.

Victim was found several days after death, already crawling with maggots. Days into the investigation, protag begins a frantic search to find any surviving maggots/flies that were on the corpse, after realising that how the victim tasted would give vital information about the poison used.

Also there's at least one or two animals who actually do talk in full sentences and in terms humans can understand, and the reason behind this is never fully explained.

All cats in this universe talk in terms of 'mine/not-mine' and mainly focus on territory, mates and food, with the one exception of the main character's cat who is named Watson and knows how to use sarcasm.

All insects speak in one word sentences where everything is 'food', 'enemy' or (for hive insects) 'friend' and 'queen', with the exception of seven-spotted ladybirds specifically, who for some reason speak in full English sentences and are up to date and knowledgeable about world events. The protagonists is as concerned by the full implications of this as you are.

[yee-qi]

More sophonts for the phyla challenge!

- The Sylvans, terrestrial orthonectids with a vaguely plantlike life cycle. On this earth, they filled the role that plants did on ours, forming a collective entity out of a small grove of near-sophont individuals. They prefer to stick to themselves, as they have enough company with each other.

- The Aimless Prayers, sapient siphonophores and a true hivemind, each organism acting as a slightly more complex cell powering a full decentralized brain. They’re nearly planktonic, which is unique for a sophont, and many are highly religious, hoping that fate and the current sweep them on the right path.

- The Pact of Weathering the Storm, sophont arrow worms originating around the Arctic circle. Their main governing body is a mass of loosely intertwined herds, although as with most sophonts, the specifics can vary and be interpreted in any number of ways. The individual pictured here is walking a pet “reptilian” “dog”.

[danbensen]

I've been thinking about making a fanfic of Fellow Tetrapods to explore the environment (the worldbuilding is fascinating! I love it) so i come with a strange request - are there any sophont species you didn't manage to fit in the current draft?

In fact, Tim Morris has made a spreadsheet of the various sophonts of Fellow Tetrapod, including those who haven't made it into the story (or were only mentioned in passing). You'll find them at the bottom of the list, after the numbered species.

Or you can follow my process for making a sophont:

Pick a bizarre, unlikely clade from somewhere back in the fossil record. Bonus points if nobody has ever heard of it.

Define a series of unlikely steps that result in the evolution of sapience. Bonus points if you also have branches of the family tree that did not lead to sapience.

Figure out the quirks of evolutionary psychology that will make your new sophont a major aggravation to the human characters.

I'm honored. Have fun with the fanfic. Please link your readers back to Fellow Tetrapod.

[aquariuminfobureau]

Although it is surely not the most world famous snake, Erpeton tentaculatum, the tentacled snake of Southeast Asia, is the most visually and behaviorally identifiable. The most obvious features of the tentacled snake are its namesake, paired facial structures of a sensory nature. E. tentaculatum is the only recognized species in the genus Erpeton, which is furthermore very unusual for its remarkably high degree of aquatic specializations, despite its being a non-marine tetrapod. Its sensory adaptations to life underwater have parallels in the two clades of elapid sea snakes, but Erpeton takes them to a further extreme. E. tentaculatum grows up to 50 to 90 centimeters, or 20 to 36 inches.

Although Erpeton possesses venom, it is not at all dangerous to man, and its venom glands are in fact small and poorly developed, relative to those of related, amphibious snakes. When E. tentaculatum are handled, their response is not to bite in self-defence, but rather to stiffen themselves and, presumably, attempt to mimic a piece of stiff, dead wood. They also maintain a curiously rather stiff posture as they wait for prey. This serves to avoid being detected themselves as they lurk hungrily.

Wild, E. tentaculatum inhabits ponds, lakes, ditches, rice paddies, and other stagnant to slow moving waters. Murkiness of the water is preferred by this slow moving ambush predator, and ideal habitats for this snake also feature substantial amounts of emergent or submergent vegetation. These offer E. tentaculatum good camouflage, as it mimics the motion of the plants in the water. Some of the habitats where E. tentaculatum is found are mildly brackish, however this snake cannot efficiently excrete excess salt, unlike some of its relatives, and it is thus a freshwater species that should not be housed in brackish conditions, without access to freshwater for drinking.

Erpeton is currently a monotypic genus, but nests within a clade of mostly semi-aquatic Asian snakes, named the homalopsid or mud snakes. Specifically, Erpeton is closely related to the fellow homalopsid genera, Enhydris, Cerberus and Homalopsis. E. tentaculatum takes aquatic specialisations to such an extreme, that it is virtually unable to slither when it is placed out of the water, which is more typical of marine than of freshwater snakes. Like seahorses, E. tentaculatum is able to anchor itself to submerged objects, using its prehensile tail, something that is quite a rarity among aquatic vertebrates, and expected more of an arboreal reptile than an aquatic one.

E. tentaculatum has unusual feeding behaviors, that are enabled by the most visually striking attribute of this snake, the paired facial structure. The species in the wild has a habitat preference for strongly discolored water, with poor visibility. Where the water is less turbid than is the optimum for their hunting, they are more nocturnal, although they are capable of hunting by eyesight during the day, using their dorsally oriented eyes. Whereas the facial tentacles are highly sensitive to the water movements that cue this snake to strike laterally, rather than frontally, and only at very close range, an enhanced sensory perception giving it an advantage over other fish-eating snakes. Sea snakes, sea kraits, and file snakes also have adaptations allowing enhanced mechanosensory perception underwater.

Captive observation does not bear out claims, that E. tentaculatum consumes adult frogs or aquatic plants, although the latter claim, however counterintuitive it might be, is still repeated in media sources of herpetocultural, aquarist, and even zoological natures. It is indeed difficult to see how this snake might consume them, considering its morphological specialisation, to swallowing only objects of only certain shapes and sizes. Any ingestion of algae or macrophytes by Erpeton, appears to be purely accidental. Erpeton also allows algae to grow on its body, contributing to the camouflage of the hunter, which may be how the snake can approach prey undetected, when it is present in less turbid waters where light more easily penetrates.

Erpeton tentaculatum have a reputation as difficult to keep in aquaria, for the reason that their striking response is triggered by the motion of a fish performing what is called a 'C-start' - a motion of darting away as soon as it senses the predator. Thus E. tentaculatum are said to need live prey, and of only a certain size. Contrary to popular ideas about tentacled snakes, E. tentaculatum can learn to accept captive diets of small, defrosted fish, as at Chester Zoo. When trying to train them, it helps to simulate the 'C-start' motion of a terrified prey fish, by moving a defrosted food item, as one would when training ribbon eels, which have a similar instinct to strike at fish as they prepare to escape.

The positive side to the strange specialization of E. tentaculatum, is that a great many fish species are large enough to be cohabited safely, with this perplexing snake species. Sadly E. tentaculatum succumbs readily, in home and public aquaria, to fungal and bacterial infections. Tannins in the aquarium water assist in preventing such infections. In the shallows of Tonle Sap, a silty lake where E. tentaculatum flourishes, the pH is probably around 5 to 7.5. At Tonle Sap throughout the year, the water temperature is 22 to 30 degrees centigrade.

Because of its habit of clinging to available items, E. tentaculatum requires elements in the aquascape that it may conveniently grasp with its tail alone. Tall growing, living plants are very appreciated and will allow the snakes to anchor themselves to form an inverted, 'J-shaped' body posture. Because E. tentaculatum is a truly aquatic tetrapod, it does not need, and will not be able to use, any terrestrial portion of an aquaterrarium setup. There is also no point in providing a basking light, and the substrate at the bottom of the aquarium is unimportant.

[spacefinch]

“Greetings, fellow primates/mammals/synapsids/tetrapods” — gender neutral AND inclusive of other species

@a-dinosaur-a-day

“Girls gays and theys” <- uninclusive while trying to be inclusive. Bad. Makes me uncomfortable.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and other distinguished guests” <- inclusive but far, far too formal

“Alrighty gamers” <- Incisive of everyone, informal, and fun to say.

[raingerr]

i’m so emotional rn and was looking at ancient tetrapods and like imagine being one of the first creatures to truly walk on land and thrive with all of your fellow family members and all that is left of you by the time humans dig you up is One Specimen of you and you are the only proof that your genus and your family ever existed that is so sad

[yee-qi]

Even more sophonts

The Hives of Many are sapient bryozoa. The ancestrula forms a hive with many brains surrounding "wombs." New zooids bud off of these wombs, and while developing, the brain "uploads" certain instructions into these new zooids to "program" them before setting them loose. Uniquely; this species communicates via radio waves, and uses this to pilot the zooids, which are capable of living independently and acting as "drones." Hive society involves the ancestrula as much as it does the drones, and together they form a colony that is both determined and surprisingly fast-acting. With the powers of a sort of "mind uploading" and genetically-augmented drones, they were able to achieve incredible feats of engineering. The Flagbearing Tree-Guilds are brachiopods that never fully folded over and closed. Their ancestors and relatives had a wild diversity of shells that they used for manipulation, locomotion, and in one instance, flight. Flagbearers are hugely tribalistic, but also hugely risk-averse. Their wars are fought with elaborate threats that are rarely followed up on, and their governments prefer to exist in isolation (unless, of course, conquest is on the menu). The Flocking-Together are nemerteans with proboscis-derived wings, that soar above rivers and gullies and canyons that they roost on. Asocial but driven, they are willing to cooperate to carve out elaborate tunnel networks in cliffs, and even artificial caves to give them room to fly. Fights and squabbles are common and accepted parts of day-to-day life, with one condition: No injuring the wings. The wings are delicate and non-regrowable, and take a while to deploy. As such, they are a prized part of many Flocking-Together cultures.

[danbensen]

A Multiplex from Fellow Tetrapod.

Pictured is a wrinkly blob with irregular coils and tendrils. It has extruded four legs for jogging.

[danbensen]

Most of why I write is so this sort of thing can happen: I put an idea out there and someone plays with it. If you’re interested in Fellow Tetrapod, go read it, and if you’re interested in the role playing game, check out dungeons and tetrapods. 

Intro and Sophont List

This is a DnD rehaul inspired by @danbensen's Fellow Tetrapod story.

All races and classes available to DnD 5e will be reinterpreted as a sophont according to his guide for making FT sophonts. (Skill trees will be available for each sophont species).

Sophonts currently in FT will not be added until the current workload is complete. Sophont list below, although it's a heavy WIP.

Humans (Human, Hominid)

Noxissum (Aaracrocka, Pelagornis) -> thrill-seeking sophonts that live on cliffsides

? (Aasimar, Polyneoptera)

? (Autognome, Canis)

? (Bugbear, Barbourofelidae)