#flatcreatures!

[2d-dreams]

A quick view at the Bees of Flatland

here depicted: a Square man looking at a few bees, among them a Queen (the largest) and a drone (curved beak/stinger). There is also a wasp (maybe more appropiately a hornet? not sure on the name) which is larger and has three spikes at its back. On the far side is a Linear Woman for size reference.

Bees and wasps are the main pollinators in Flatland. Though their acute stingers seem dangerous, their main purpose is actually to be narrow enough to fit inside of a flower.

here depicted: A flower, characterized by a stem supporting two petals. Each petal (though it can't be seen sorry) has little hairs with pollen. Inside of the flower is a chamber with nectar. A bee is sipping up the nectar! Some nectar drops can be seen inside of its two stomachs.

Bees are the main focus of this post.

In Flatland, they are mistakenly referred to as being mainly male, with the queen instead called the king, the juvenile reproductive members who travel away from the hive being called princes, and the drones being referred to as the females, etc. This is actually wrong, and similarly to Spaceland and Planiturth bees, these are a mostly female species, with males only being useful for fertilizing the queens.

Drones or male bees are characterized by their extremely thin (line-thin) probo-stinger (mix of proboscis and stinger!), which is also curved. This is because of the Queen's reproductive organ's structure. It also helps them get rid of dead drones- after mating, a drone will instantly or near-instantly die, and another drone will stab him with his probostinger, pull him out and then get his own business done.

The queen can store huge amounts of sperm, as you can see the storage organ takes around a fourth of her body. She is also, unlike other bees, able to digest the perimeter of other animals. This is generally restricted to eating her dead mates.

On the note of digesting things, all bees have two stomachs. One is the private stomach, which is the one that synthesizes their meals for themselves, and the other is a public stomach, where they store nectar either to bring back to the hive to store in a cell, or to feed other workers, the queen, or the brood through a process called trophallaxis.

Well, there is an exception to this, and it is drones. Drones are useless for everything that doesn't involve mating, and only have their private stomach. They don't even have more than a tiny fragment of a brain.

Bees, like those in our world, have their caste system based on the reproductive role of an individual, along with a division of labor among the sterile workers, usually dependent on their age. Some clean up the cells and hive, some collect nectar, and some build the cells. They can manage to do all of this with nearly no brain!

The way bees navigate the world is based on highly developed sense of smell and Feeling, like a vast majority of animals.

Other than Irregularity and dimness, another characteristic of most animals in Flatland is the lack of eye. Their facial organ is instead usually just a mouth or also packed with extremely smell-sensitive cells. In my interpretation of Flatland, there are no hairs or cilia, except for in some animals.

More will be said soon, especially focusing on wasps, their relationship to bees, and some other dangerous beings.

[2d-dreams]

they are not precisely, winged, atleast not in this interpretation (in the bill-cipher-style they have wings, will draw soon too)

Sorry its MS Paint art, i will make art in this program until i get home lol

But here are the bees for now, (will make post in a minute about them + wasps)

drawing with a mouse is hard - also people in flatland possibly refer instead as Bee Kings and switch the sexes for them, but biologically they are actually mostly females. Feel free to ask every possible question about them hehehehehe

i really love the idea of animals in Flatland, though they were never mentioned in the book. So, here’s my theory on animals in Flatland.

There’s usually no sure fire way to tell whether something is animal or human, since they’re all geometric shapes, but there are some signs.

Humans have their eye at a vertex, meanwhile animals have their eye somewhere along their side, which is the easiest physical trait to discern.

Instead of having Feelers only along their corners, animals have shorter Feelers all along their sides, though this can be spotty, since some humans do have Feelers along their sides as well, mostly Women. (And if you happen to come across a Woman and suggest to her that she is some sort of dog, you’ll end up coming eye to eye with her non-luminous end.)

And the most controversial trait, all animals are Irregular. A lot of humans argue that just because animals are a different species from them doesn’t mean their Irregularity should be tolerated, but there’s also a lot of reason for keeping them.

A large part of Irregularity not being accepted is because you won’t know what shape somebody is, and so won’t be able to treat him accordingly, but that doesn’t really factor in for animals- I mean, you aren’t exactly going to invite a dog into your home for business. Animals being tolerated are very similar to Isosceles being tolerated- being considered sub-human allows for them to be used for things like labor, especially animals like horses.

Animals are restricted in public places, because of their Irregularity, though many children have dogs or cats, and horses are often used to haul supplies around.