#Speculative Biology

[t34-mt]

"When my mother came here, she was only allowed to slaughter the cattle."

Cattle slaughter in the ayêsh group is done by a single individual of the community. The Ayêsh ethnic group also majorly slaughter their cattle by draining the blood out of the carcass. The drawing features Oragnu slaughtering a maanul domesticated animal (yoonia), an animal originally from the inland seas regions, by severing the carotid artery. Her two children, Monmartre and Morang, are seen in the background on the left, playing with a kite, while their house is on the right.

sketch in ms paint, rendering in rebelle 7.

initial sketch that i painted over

[oneirophasia]

Wellllllll... what distinguishes "language" from "communication" is having a structure and grammar. Spoken language involves sounds which gain meaning from their sequence; written language involves shapes which gain meaning from their position. The two difficulties with a smell- or taste-based language I can think of are:

Chemical synthesis is complicated and not very flexible. There's a reason writing systems use symbols based on shapes, rather than colours - because collecting and mixing paints takes more effort than moving a stick. Pheromone glands can only send a limited variety of signals, based on the pheromones they can produce, and usually their meaning is related to however the organism came to contain an excess of those chemicals. A conversation in scents could only last until someone ran out of reactants, and every reactant would have to be used sooner or later to avoid building up an excess.

Gases and liquids diffuse and mix with each other, which makes it difficult for me to imagine how a message would be arranged in a consistent structure. Certain messages or parts of a message would spread faster, based on their physical properties, and the longer a conversation went on the more dissipating components of previous statements would saturate the air, inhibiting further communication.

(Advanced technology doesn't really justify this to me - such a species would have to evolve the language first before inventing a medium to support it.)

But let's assume that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in mere sound and colour. I'd still have concerns about whether humans would even recognise it as a language to begin with, for all the reasons I usually have about humans having difficulty recognising intelligence not only inside their own biosphere but within their own species - I continue to believe that First Contact will happen without anyone realising it until decades or centuries later. However, if an olfactory language is possible to begin with, then I don't see why it couldn't be translated into native human languages... with only slightly more trouble than humans have translating and adapting their own literature.

Let’s say that there is a type of alien who primarily experiences the world through smell and secondarily experiences the world through taste.

With their advanced technology, they have orbs that they can wrap around that can produce almost any taste or scent within their perception, analogous to our visual and auditory televisions.

Other than their senses, they are much like us, and enjoy the exact same stories that we do.

Would it be possible for their olfactory and gustatory devices to convey the same types of complex characters and narratives? Could a human ever appreciate the “films” on the orb? Could one of such aliens ever appreciate human cinema? Could Shakespeare be translated wholly and completely onto the orb? Could a classical work of alien fiction ever be remade for human eyes and ears?

Let’s say that they can see about as well as we can smell and hear about as well as we can taste. Could we even meaningfully communicate at all?

[simon-roy]

More of "HALE-BOPP", a tale of hive-men, dyson trees, and interstellar vacuumorphs, continues over on WEBTOONS - read it here: https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/griz-grobus-and-other-stories/hale-bopp-part-2/viewer?title_no=741329&episode_no=76

[credus99-blog]

Atterran Terrestrial Catfish (also known as whisker fish) are a lineage of non-teleost fish that have successfully transitioned to terrestrial life, like the ancestors of tetrapods on Earth and Atterra.

Like Earth, the oldest currently known catfish fossils date back to the late cretaceous period of Atterra, which, according to Old World archives, was found in the western continent. While the original fossil was lost during The Fall, the surviving data indicates that the fossil was from a species of armored catfish with similar morphological adaptations to modern-day armored catfish. Atterran biologists theorize catfish evolved between 100-110mya at the beginning of the late Cretaceous period or near the end of the middle Cretaceous period. Unlike the terrestrial teleost fish lineages, the ancestors of the terrestrial catfish did not develop within the hollows of Atterra but instead on the evolved deserts of the surface. These basal catfish would move between bodies of water across the desert sands, like the armored catfish of Brazil, to find food and reproduce. Whenever these fish could not find a suitable body of water, they would hunker down in the mud and hibernate until the wet season arrived, bringing more pools for the fish to inhabit.

Over time, during the late cretaceous, as the desert slowly began to become drier and the catfish had to traverse farther and farther to find suitable pools of water, the catfish's branchial tissue behind their gills slowly became more robust. Taking up larger portions of the body behind the head as the gills began to become smaller from less time spent in water. At the same time, the skin of the ancestral terrestrial catfish became thicker and more resistant to water loss, allowing the catfish to spend more time traversing the dunes in search of water or cool places to hide. Eventually, the armor plating of the ancestor's body became less rigid and sparser, allowing the catfish more flexibility as it raffled across the desert, leading the fish to incorporate its tail into its locomotion and utilize it as a powerful springboard to hop forward. As the catfish's gait and locomotion improved, the brachial tissue moved down into the fish's chest cavity to form primitive lungs. The gill arches began to ossify into the ear and hyoid bones to aid the fish in detecting predators and swallowing food. Alongside the new ear bones, the gill cover slowly became less ossified and flexible to turn into external ears.

Terrestrial catfish are believed to have survived the end cretaceous extinction event on Atterra by being generalists that would eat anything they could fit in their mouths and being just armored enough to ward off many potential would-be predators. Like their ancestors, terrestrial catfish still possess mobile venomous dorsal and pectoral spines to ward off predators should their armored hide prove not enough to deter would-be predators. The stings of terrestrial catfish are excruciating and often cause redness and severe swelling around the area of the sting. In some species, tissue necrosis may also occur, making them a dangerous prey item many predators approach with caution when hunting.

[yellosnacc]

What kind of art do the Sloman/Uniima make?

Very hard to answer in a single post so I focused on visual art here. Here are some few sketchy examples from both species.

There's a wide spectrum between the single species' cultures and even bigger between the two species. But there are many convergent art forms where the biggest differences lie in style as slomen and uniima see the world differently (color, space, person recognition...).

Slomen

In slomen cultures, art is commonly created for a community. Either to decorate a space or gift to a group etc. The least rare exception would be gifts for family heads but those usually see it as an obligation to share it with the rest.

So portraits of only one person are very rare. Art pieces also tend to be large, as the average painter group (in Ciwa) consists of 5 members and a mural-making group can be around 20. When they agree on the base motives, each artist executes their part with the resulting piece having all sections equally over-detailed.

Ciwan and general sloman visual art is often about fitting as much as possible experience and telling many stories without focusing on one single aspect (unless it's to highlight a higher-ranking member such as a matriarch). Art that can be touched is preferred.

Ciwan style of people drawing focuses on little facial detail, drawing people more idealistic with expression being shown more in body language. Individual indicators are primarily stripes and markings, sometimes holding a token of their occupation.

Uniima (sky)

In sky cultures, visual art is very popular and used in practical senses too. Ueema cultures commonly exchange art as information in case of language barriers and use it for documentation when they can afford it.

The structure of sky settlements, being that of thousands of microstates, leads many to compete in presentation. Having the most inspired architecture and decoration is why many become artisans which then bleeds into other parts of society.

Art is a job for one and it's full of competition. A good artist acts as their whole company, creating advertisements inside and outside their home, traveling, and inserting oneself into events.

Sometimes, uniima stylization can be realistic and practical but very often it's not and becomes hard to read for outsiders (even other uniima cultures).

Many artsy movements wash over regions in a year, inspired by people, cultures, and faded cultures like those of dead microstates that had little to no outsider contact.

The people drawing style spectrum over ueema cultures alone is overwhelming as they don't work as a single culture and many have a style native to their small area.

Most honor the individual great, including self-portraits and private pieces. The best indicator of who is the painted/crafted individual is the crest and beak shape, after that marking spacing and color + often accessories showing off a uniimas status, skill, and faith stance.

Some styles will include noise visualization to show the person's voice or other non-visual information to make the piece truly pact with context about them.

[grox-empire]

The Abduction of Bella Goth

[translunaryanimus]

Hey all! I'm currently back at college and I have a pretty big workload! Unfortunately I won't be able to post as much as I'd like because of this so there will likely either be big gaps between posts, or more small/sloppier doodles that I make in my very limited free time. Have a couple doodles in the meantime!

[exploding-salmon-heart]

Memory File debut

One of many mini comics I have planned for my spec bio project whenever I don’t feel like working of Heights.

This one, Memory File, is most likely going to be seven pages long.

[amartworks]

Nishant Shawkat Dreamon, an astrobiologist in the story Rainmaker who gets a bit more than he bargained for.

[wickerbeast-in-lila]

I saw an idea that Wof happens on earth in the far future. Our moon exists because an asteroid crashed into earth and part of earth broke off and became our moon (very simplified). So this could happen again and it would be devastating to modern humanity. Our continents are movin constantly and could get back together. This would take millions of years but it is possible. Without human civilazation oxygen could increase. Also our nuclear powerplants would explode due to the asteroids crashing into earth or humanity just not beeing there anymore to check on things. So dragons could be mutated lizards that develop into dragons over a few million years.

Dragons are aliens, they obviously don't live on earth with the whole three moons, less land masses, and higher oxygen levels (everything is big)

I feel like people should lean into the alien world aesthetic more often then the fantasy one since wof is surprisingly not very fantasy-esque

.

[gerblinradio]

Shrab

[prismatixxkhaos]

Alien lmao

[iris-of-the-lambs]

what if instead of horses we domesticated porcines... i think that could be cool

[spaced-out-reader]

A beautiful display of mad science

We hit 20% in the first 36 hours! To celebrate, I asked Facebook what supernatural/paranormal creature I should draw to celebrate hitting $3,000. The winner: A potoo gryphon!

I’ll be doing something else special when we hit $4,000.

[yupmabel]

i think creepers are herbivores who get their chloroplasts by eating plants and then photosynthesize by themselves. like sea slugs