#Speculative Biology

[charseraph]

Who and Grinch.

Whos are highly social. Grinches are more solitary, but can be acclimated to Who societies, especially if imprinted.

Whos enjoy an extensive culinary history, whereas Grinches remain disease-resistant scavengers into advancement.

[fuzzynecromancer]

Reblog if you read Man After Man before Seasons Greasons became a meme.

one of my favorite books as a kid was this one on speculative zoology/evolution that I loved so much I borrowed it to the point my school had to chase me up on returning it several times. it influenced my early creature art and design and pushed me to delve into my own specbio (on dragons. no surprises there). I loved the informatic entries, all their little lore bits and ecological adaptations; the wild color palettes, their weird little shapes. it was called The New Dinosaurs, by Dougal Dixon.

there were two more books in the series that my school didn’t have, which is either a blessing or a curse, because the third book in the set is called Man After Man.

which contains this.

[alexriesart]

Wrack-wings, tiny, angry flyers from Chriirah that are usually the first to feast on anything washed up by the surf, living or dead...

[aliensharkbacon]

Food and culture ideas! Notes under the cut

A majority of food comes from the ocean and shallow waters of their home world. Large-scale hunting is done on a smaller scale, ever since larger communities moved to shallower, warmer waters when civilizations began to rise. Any food items that require an ingredient from a deep sea animal is usually a delicacy.

Anything that isn't eaten fresh is preserved in a glazed ceramic vessel or sealed in a plastic-like packaging made from seaweed. Bowls and drinking cups are typically made from bone, shells, or carved stone.

Soups tend to be sent with away agents because that is one of the easier ways to make sure that daily nutritional goals are being met, while it is not often eaten on the planet itself. Large pieces of meat and fish, along with most other cultural staples, are difficult to store long-term and aren't sent with away teams.

[fruitful-gummies]

Art trade for @styllwaters :] I had alot of fun drawing this

[tribbetherium]

almost forgot this year

it's december again folks

[beeb-oob]

nothing special for christmas, just this wip of a lil something i'm working on

Happy Holidays everyone <3

[garblegarden]

Happy holidays! Human guy and Patrick make a snowpalindrome.

[chroniclingworlds]

(I haven’t been working on this project much recently, but I have been developing the lore of this universe some and adding new species to the Galactic Accord, so I may shift to posting more of that in the future. Here’s some guys I’ve been working on!)

Niquins (above) and Pyrobians (below)

Niquins

Home Planet: Anatheria

Joined the Accord: 2,000 years ago

These strange organisms have no eyes, instead relying on advanced echolocation to visualize their surroundings. The large sail-like structure on their head is essentially a giant and highly sensitive ear, and directly below it is a fatty melon similar to a whale, used to broadcast high-frequency clicks and gain a mental picture of their surroundings. Their oral tentacles are highly sensitive and act both as taste receptors and hands.

Anatheria has an incredibly thick atmosphere, similar to Venus, which casts the planet in almost perpetual darkness. As such, the lifeforms here never evolved vision and rely solely on other senses.

With no eyesight, the Niquins were unaware of the universe above them for much of their history. However, this certainly did not prevent them from becoming a very technologically advanced species, developing technology at least equivalent to 21st-century Earth. But, with the invention of more advanced radio listening devices, they picked up the noise of stars and planets around them and deduced their existence. Utilizing a similar sonar technology as their other vehicles, they created spaceships that can navigate even vast open stretches of empty space with incredible accuracy.

Due to the high atmospheric pressure and heat of their home planet, coupled with their lack of pigment, they prefer to wear weighted, insulated clothing over much of their body, which they are rendered without in the above picture.

Pyrobians

Home Planet: Ixion

Joined the Accord: 5 million years ago

The Pyrobians are one of the oldest species in the Galactic Accord, and have a strong presence established across the galaxy with dozens of outposts on uninhabited planets and even more space stations. They are a cyborg species, dependent on their robotic suits to survive.

Early in their history, they were free-living creatures which built an advanced civilization. But six million years ago, a catastrophic supervolcano eruption resulted in a mass extinction and the planet becoming nearly uninhabitable. Although the Pyrobians survived in bunkers, they could no longer live on the surface of the planet unaided, so they built protective suits to venture out into this post-apocalyptic world. Over millennia, they became ever more dependent on their technology until they integrated with it fully. Although their planet has now largely recovered from this disaster, the Pyrobians are unable to return to the free-living state they once enjoyed.

However, this interdependence with their technology has allowed them to move to other worlds that would be difficult for a fully organic species to adapt to. These resilient cyborgs can continue to operate in extreme heat, extreme cold, a variety of different atmospheric conditions, adapt to various levels of gravity, and even survive in the void of space, making them true space-farers.

All members of the Pyrobians are technically female, reproducing via parthenogenesis.

[spacewhalesdaily]

Wonderful!♥️

A bonus creature feature made just to end of Spectember 2024! A mother Western Whale-Mole and her calf rise up to the surface of the cold ocean waters surrounding the southern coast of Svarogia to take in a breath of fresh air. Swarming around the giant marine mammals are flocks of two different seabird species that are both endemic to Svarogia: white, ternlike like relatives of hummingbirds and orange-headed, gannet-like relatives of starlings. At 14 to 18 meters long and weighing up to 42 metric tons, the Western Whale-Mole or Aquacondylura orientalis is one of the most common species of the Whale-Moles, a family of giant, aquatic moles that may have evolved from fossorial, pig or cow-sized ancestors millions of years earlier, and it thrives across the seas lying within the planet's Southern Temperate Zone. Western Whale-Moles usually migrate north to the tropics for the lagoons of island chains such as the Strzelecki Archipelago in which they can calve, and the families will soon head further south where shoals of feeder fish or krill have been brought up by the cold, nutrient-righ waters of Potworia's great southern ocean. Like all whale-moles, the Western Whale-Mole usually uses its long, whisker-lined rostrum and clawed flippers, the latter of which are also sometimes used for fighting, to dig up the ocean floor in order to forage for tuna-sized fish and crustaceans, and it is capable of smelling underwater by exhaling large air-bubbles onto any objects or scent-trails and inhaling the bubbles to carry scents back to its nostrills. These same bubbles are also used by individuals gathering together to trap fish or krill in a bubble-net feeding strategy similar to the one used by Earth's humback whales.

[mebis-reblogs]

ok it's about time I elaborate on this post, at least on the starting point

so what's this made up fellow, and why do I think it's the building block of iterator processing biota?

almost every biological component we see inside an iterator has a combination of dots (nuclei?) like little flashing balls, and mycelia (well, wall mycelia only shows the mycelia strands but still). this drawing is what this common denominator would be

you can even see that coral neurons are composed of entangled/"braided" strands rather than a single red mass (think of it like how muscles are made of several fibers in bundles)

coral stems are covered in segments, but these seem self-grown, potentially similar to what encases the circuit connector (round roomba thing)(completely forgot to include it in the original post btw), so I'd argue they too, like the red coral neurons, are a bundle of strands (you can think of them as axons, or like the puppet's umbilical)

then there's deep processing

at the background layers of many rooms, blue lights flickering much like these dots/nuclei

these could also just be the blue flashes resulting from interacting mycelia, or a distant fuse panel (seen above), but i personally do think both options still lead to a thick, interconnected layer or strata of these lil guys, and from this strata wall mycelia and coral stems grow

(the fuses could very well be partly made out of these guys after all)

tldr most fleshy bits made out of filaments and beads meshed together

[charseraph]

No particular characters, who male and who-socialized grinch female. Anatomical study.

Lip lift is contentment expression.

[translunaryanimus]

CHENESHT HOMEPLANET - ÂCHLANHTE Star: K-Class, Main Sequence 'Phetchâ' [Petkaa] - Comes from the word for white [Phe] and a contraction of Tlechâ [T'châ - Halo or Radiance. Has godly connotations] Position from Star: Second Axial Tilt: 15 degrees Gravity: .83g Vegetation: Dark Greenish Teal Supercontinent Name: Eshtmhêt [esht-meet] - People Path/People Track Planet Name Meaning: Âchlanhte [Aaklante] - Usually roughly translated as 'All Our Egg'. The name spawns from a Têphecha religious belief that the planet they live on was the first egg laid by one of their gods. Each culture has their own version of this story, but the Têphecha version is the most commonly told to other sophonts.

ETHNICITY NAMES AND MEANINGS

Llalâphe [Lalaape] - Fisher Fenhêalch [Feneelt] - Derived from an old word for Soil [Fenhach] Têphecha [Teepeka] - Stilt or Pole Lhbore [L'bore or Labore] - Large or Tall, sometimes translated as 'Giants' Ôernh [Oorn] - Derived from an old word for Water [Ôrnha] Chlâsle [Tlaasle] - Beader Nhâchchech [Naak'kek] - Weaver

More information under the cut

Âchlanhte's lower axial tilt and lesser gravity cause seasonal patterns to be far more mild than those of earths. The poles barely freeze or melt, the swamps stay wet and humid, and the haze of airborne algae stays easily suspended in the sky, turning it a foggy mint color. The predictable and mild seasons also allowed for easy, early chenesht settling across a vast majority of the Supercontinent's surface which led them to becoming the dominant species, and eventually, the only sapient one.

Some of you may remember This Earlier Post in which I touched a little on natural color variants within Chenesht, consider this the expanded version. Chenesht have 7 distinct ethnic groups which, for the most part, are also their cultural groups. I've covered the Chlâsle and the Nhâchchech briefly before in other posts and plan to eventually go more in depth on the other 5. In terms of cross referencing with the older post, the Chlâsle are the 'standard' coloration, the Nhâchchech are the 'polar' coloration, and the Têphecha are the 'central' coloration. While the colors in this post are still canon, Chlâsle are no longer considered the standard coloration as they're one of 7 ethnicities.

Âchlanhte's supercontinent Eshtmhêt has experienced very little tectonic drift since merging several million years before the dawn of civilization, allowing the various Chenesht cultures to stay socially and technologically connected and up to date with one another throughout their development. It's because of this that all Chenesht largerly speak the same language, with the only differences being slang terms and the occasional differing words between cultures. Each dialect is rougly 90% mutually intelligable with any other, with the Llalâphe and the Ôernh having the most linguistic drift. The 'correct' names for each ethnicity are sometimes debated due to variations on what they're called by themselves vs by others, ie. the Nhâchchech also being called the Eshtchchonh (pattern people) by the Chlâsle. The ones listed here are the popularly accepted proper names.

[sapphicslaylist]

Realizing This Crossover Never Made It To The Borrower Tag [+ Lore Drop]

So I'm a goof and forgot to post my Slay The Princess AU into the Borrower tags as well so haha. Lemme fix that -

Main Post & Fic Here

Story & designs by me,

art commissioned from @feraljayce

(I prefer reblogs on this one!)

Further Worldbuilding stuff - Translation of STP into Borrower format

For those curious about the GT front of things so it's not just a repost, getting into those details here:

There are four types of Borrower species within this world: Traditional Domestic, Traditional Wild, Domestic Fae, & Wild Fae

Domestic Borrowers:

House-Dwelling Borrowers who live in the walls/under floorboards

"Borrow" household goods & lost objects to survive

Often use artificial tools to climb and navigate.

May live in groups, but many are singular family units or alone

Are traditionally considered "pests" and forced out of homes

These are closest to Mary Norton's / cannon Borrower taxonomy

Domestic Fae follow many of the same tenants as Traditional Domestic. Differences being:

Possession of artificial magic (conjuring manmade objects, cooking, metal etc)

Elven/spaded ear tips, but no tail

Are the only Borrower species considered "good luck"

Often captured to be sold as pets or other companionship to humans

Wild Borrowers:

Prefer living out in the woods to gather natural resources away from humans.

Use artificial tools to hunt & gather. Often live in groups if able.

May opportunistically packbond with local fauna

Live in abandoned burrows primarily, but will also take hollows, nests, and most other shelters if available.

Do possess unusual humanoid traits except for slightly sharper teeth & nails designed for climbing.

Wild Fae:

The most feral of Borrower species, and the most mistreated by humanity

Direct association with The Wild (goddess of the natural cycle) & The Network (the Wild's domain & the Fae/Borrowers' Underworld)

Possess Elven/spaded ears and a variety of different tails based on genetics (Ex: Thorn & Witch are of Feline roots)

Often have more "feral" facial features like different noses, slit pupils, etc which are either permanent or alternate with more human apperance (ex: Thorn)

Also use tools like weapons & gear, but sparingly/as a backup. Their teeth & clawed hands usually do most of the work of fighting & climbing

Live in small colonies in underground burrows, where each member has a specific chamber. Similar to a Warren. You'll rarely see them alone

Some have digitigrade legs to walk upright & all fours with ease (dominant trait)

Magic is naturally derived, and takes the form of Medic or Mercenary. Medics have to "charge" their magic by doing a two finger pulse check to summon necessary materials for the patient.

Wild Fae do not Borrow - they hunt & aggressively scavenge objects. They work in packs, which may include Chimeras (their designated packbond species) if going for larger or riskier prey.

All Fae worldbuilding stuff is my own; Wild Borrowers are semi-cannon, and domestic variations are cannonical to Mary Norton. The Wild Fae are semi-inspired by The Littles, which are typically what fanmade Borrowers most resemble.

(Yes, I happily accept questions about this AU! As a warning it does get a bit dark in places, but happy to discuss both the nitty gritty and the soft cuddly stuff.)

[bladespark]

TIME FOR MORE TROODONTIDS!

(From Wikipedia. Lativenatrix, which is a troodontid species similar in size to how I picture mine. The largest females might be a bit larger than this, and the smallest males considerably smaller, though.)

So obviously this species of mine isn't one known to science (we would definitely hear the excited screaming from space if somebody discovered an extraordinarily big-brained theropod with flexible shoulders and wrists, lol.) and there's a reason for that! I wanted this to be something that could exist in theory, and I also was inspired by birds of paradise, so these guys live on a tropical island that is covered with jungle.

For those who don’t know, tropical rain forests are notoriously bad for fossilization. The soil is acidic, thus any bones that aren’t eaten by scavengers will be eaten by the jungle itself. Animals may fossilize in lakes or in ocean lagoons bordering such forests, but the forests themselves leave no traces of their inhabitants behind. This means that while there were doubtless countless prehistoric creatures of all kinds living in Earth’s tropical rain forests, we know very little about them. They almost certainly consisted of species related to those found in other climates. They had to have filled ecological niches similar to rain forest animals today. Beyond that we can only speculate.

My Troodontid People share their jungle with early birds, early mammals, lizards, crocodilians, and of course other dinosaurs, some much like the ones we know, but the largest, most famous types such as sauropods or ceratopsians all probably on the smaller side, island/jungle dwarfism being a thing. There are no T-rexes or allosaurs, though, the troodontids are the biggest predators present.

They don’t use stone tools much. Their large volcanic island home has obsidian, but unlike humans they have claws and teeth that serve for cutting, so there’s less need for them to look to stones. They’re smart enough to pick one up to crack a difficult nut, or to use a flake of obsidian to carve on bone that’s harder than their own claws, but that’s about the extent of it. Their hands, wrists, and shoulders are more mobile and flexible than a typical troodontid’s, but are still less dexterous than humans, due to not having opposable thumbs, and also due to having their primary feathers anchored to their middle finger, which doesn’t prevent it from bending, but does mean that any motion it makes comes with the feathers moving too. (Amusingly this means that while doing delicate work they probably have a “flipping off” posture, where they keep the middle finger extended and rely mostly on the two side fingers.)

(Pictured here: the tin-foil cores of the head, hands, and feet for a troodontid sculpture/art doll I'm working on. Including two hands with the "flipping off" posture.)

Their main tool-use centers around weaving, from making giant nest houses to weaving leaf-fiber mats that they use as rugs, wall-covers, and canvases. They also make rope. They weave with their teeth and feet just as much as with their hands, though, especially when manipulating the larger vines and branches they work into their homes.

Their language is mostly signed, or danced, rather than spoken. It developed from the kind of “mating dance” and other communicative gestures and body language common to birds the world over, but especially common to tropical birds of paradise. They use sounds mostly for additional color, emotion, or emphasis.

(Here's one VERY tropical boy, who is even fancier and more elaborate than most male troodontids, because this is the god Dance, the patron of both language and performance. Drawn by @sombertide-0 )

Like many modern birds, and almost certainly many dinosaurs, they are sexually dimorphic, with the females being larger and the males being smaller. Here too I took inspiration from birds of paradise, so the males are brightly colored and adorned with extra decorative plumage, while the females are in simple, plain brown, cream, white, or black. In birds of paradise the females do most of the work getting food for the chicks, and the troodontid females do all the hunting, bringing back meat for their villages, but there is some evidence that troodontids were omnivores, not strict carnivores, so I’ve included a “gathering” role as well, filled by the males, who would also be in charge of fires and cooking. The troodontids would have no trouble with raw meat, unlike us small-toothed humans, but like say dogs, who are omnivores with a carnivorous background, they probably would benefit greatly from roots and other starchy foods being cooked first.

Both sexes incubate eggs and help raise chicks, with family being built around an egg-laying female matriarch with her lovers and children, and a village generally consisting of an older matriarch, her female descendants, and their lovers and children. Males tend to move between villages on reaching adulthood, to avoid incest. What we might consider polyamorous and homosexual relationships are also common, especially in the “off” season when females aren’t fertile. Basically there’s a distinction between in-season egg-mating, which of course is always heterosexual, biology being as it is, and out-of-season fun-mating, both of which are also distinct from life-long pair-bonded romance, and it’s completely normal for any given troodontid to have partners of all sorts overlapping, though romantic pair-bonding is most often restricted to a literal pair. Trios and more aren’t unheard of, though. (This is also reflected in modern bird behavior. Vultures, for example, often have life-bonded trios, that behave as true triangles, usually with two males who both mate with their chosen female but also with each other.) They are aware of intersex people and have a concept of third-gender, which is generally seen as “both”, with intersex persons free to mix masculine and feminine village roles as they choose, though there is some pressure towards matching what one’s adult breeding plumage suggests, and how much leeway any individual has to choose a gender identity regardless of birth varies from village to village. The rarer bilateral gynandromoph individual (look it up, it’s neat!) is considered sacred in all villages.

The males are the primary “delicate” weavers, and in addition to making the baskets their food would be hauled and stored in, would also make and paint more artistic weavings. And, of course, they’re the most enthusiastic dancers, artistically elaborating the gestures of their language into full-on performances. Singing, for them, is hardly known, but dancing is their highest art-form, a mixture of theater and poetry that is the center of every important ritual occasion.

The subject of ritual, of course, brings us to the gods, and to Death, the main character in my story, but I'll continue that another day!

Troodontid Worldbuilding Time, GO!

SO, I am working on a story that involves a made-up species of troodontids with human-level intelligence. They have villages, culture, and most importantly for the story, religion. Except it's not "faith-based" because their gods are real and walk among them on a daily basis. The story itself, in fact, follows Death, imagined as the Greek Thanatos, but having an origin far, far older than "ancient" Greece.

But before I get into gods, weaving, dancing and everything else that went into this setting, we have to go back to the start and ask "What is a troodontid?"

This is. Sort of. It's complicated. "Troodon" is a weird thing because the species name was based on the find of a single tooth, which...that doesn't work terribly well, does it? Troodontid teeth are distinct enough to make knowing the group that tooth belongs to pretty easy, but we don't know anything else about the original, except it must have been related to the rest.

That said, some creatures in the broader group that are lumped together as "troodintids" are VERY well described, with lots of extremely complete fossils. Some of the most complete anywhere, in fact, because some of them have feathers so well preserved that we know what color they were!

Overall Troodontids are smallish, feathery dinosaurs in the larger manoraptoran group. Some were absolutely tiny and probably flighted, including some that were four-winged like microraptor, though it's not a troodontid. Some others were pretty big and definitely couldn't fly. The largest known is Lativenatrix, which was similar in size to Utahraptor.

They had a "killing claw" like velociraptors, but were more slender, and built for speed more than strength. They were potentially omnivorious, too!

Also they have a better brain to body ratio than the supposedly "intelligent" raptors.

Yup. If we're going just by brain percentage, troodontids were the geniuses of the dinosaur world.

Which isn't saying much, they have a brain to body ratio that's hovering around the low end of modern birds. If you know birds, you know many of them are not so bright.

But birds are interesting, because their intelligence isn't as closely linked to brain size as it is with us mammals. In fact there's not a huge difference between something as smart as say a raven and something as dumb as say an eagle. (Oh man, guys, eagles are so dumb. I've worked a little bit with birds of prey, and none of them are taking home any prizes for intellect, they are the epitome of bird-brained.)

That opens up some interesting possibilities, though. If troodontids had an intelligence similar to ravens, then it wouldn't take much of a brain boost to get them up to something closer to human.

And thus we have my Troodontid People, illustration above by @sombertide-0. A "what if a theropod dinosaur really was as smart as Jurassic Park raptors seem to be, and what would their culture and society be like?" thought experiment centered especially around their relationship with their gods.

I'll stop here for today, but there's SO MUCH MORE.