#neopian biology project

[neopianbiologyproject]

one of my favorite item jokes on neopets is fruit and veg items having "Organic" counterparts that are identical in every way, except that they are categorized as "Healthy Food" and are slightly more expensive

also the descriptions tend to be a little different:

[neopianbiologyproject]

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to The Neopian Biology Project!

This blog is an offshoot of a series of posts started on my main account. It is run by me, @asterixcalibur, in association with Happy Lab Accidents on @cabletwo. I'm an artist and funny person by trade, but a biologist by tragic BDGilbertian retribution.

The goal of this project is to identify all of Neopia's unique species, categorize them by kingdom and region of origin, and find an ideal specimen for each that can be put into a natural history museum (my gallery on Neopets). As of writing, the project has identified over 2000 unique species of Neopian wildlife.

Our main methodology is scouring item descriptions for helpful information. This process also involves researching and standardizing the taxonomical, ecoregional, and evolutionary timeline terminology of Neopia.

Longer term goals are to obtain the ideal specimen of every identified species for the museum, and renovate the museum into a simulated museum experience through careful application of visual assets and CSS/HTML. Maybe one day we can shoot for the Gallery Spotlight?

On Neopets

My account on Neopets is classypotassium. Feel free to ask to be NeoFriends -- just tell me who you are here!

The Neopian Biological Sciences Natural History Museum itself is here.

Ways to Contribute

1. Donate a specimen

If you'd like to donate or loan a specimen to the museum, contact me so we can discuss attribution and collateral!

The gallery's JellyNeo wishlist is here. It will be continually updated as specimens are identified, so consider it a work in progress. As of writing I also haven't checked anything off even if it's been obtained, so double check the museum before offering donations!

2. Donate Neopoints

You can also "donate" by buying a Plushie Fungus from my shop! These are intentionally overpriced so that the change can be considered a charitable donation.

3. Interact here!

A lot of the posts that end up here are going to be asking for people's thoughts on origin, kingdom, uniqueness, and so on, through polls and direct questions.

You can also submit items, images, links, art, specimens, fossils, documentation, scientific papers, primary sources, etc. and so on, for consideration by the Project!

You don't need to know anything about Neopets to put in your two NP (or cents USD). In fact, sometimes it's better to get a perspective grounded in normal Earth biology, because, speaking as a biologist here in Neopia, I can very well say oh ym god please help ohhhh my god you don't even know

Conclusion

You don't need to be into Neopets to enjoy or contribute to this blog; I'll try my best to write posts so that they can be enjoyed by anyone aware of but not necessarily into Neopets. In my experience, explaining Neopets to someone entirely unfamiliar with it is always fun. This shit runs deep, dark, and as spaghetti as its code. Best part of Neopets, to me, is that the site rewards you for exploration, and some of the most consequential but by far weirdest lore can only be found by happening upon a page six links deep into a chain of site features that have gone untouched since 2009, as part of a philosophy of interaction that runs the entire site and is entirely against modern website design principles.

Anyway,

Thank you for visiting!

Science awaits!

[neopianbiologyproject]

A Comprehensive Look at Neopian Apples

[-> Part 1 <-] [ Part 2A ] [ Part 2B ] [ Part 3 - coming soon ]

The Neopian Biology Project has identified >90 items with the word "Apple" in the name that are worth considering as species candidates.

Previously, I tried to categorize these items in roughly alphabetical order, but this time I've tried a new approach. Essentially, I made a few "buckets" that a candidate could fall into, and hoped that by correlating candidates to buckets, the trickier determinations could be made easier.

Because there are 90+ "apple" candidates, I won't be posting every single apple's information. However I will be linking their Jellyneo pages, and you can always find information relevant to the project on our spreadsheet.

First up:

Part 1: Apples that aren't apples

These are candidates that may qualify as distinct species, but are only referred to as "apple" colloquially, and are not actually apples.

These are:

Blue Ice Apple - From space; alien.

Imposter Apple [sic] - "That's no apple!" Possibly a common orange.

Flat Apple Fruit - Neither apple nor Flatfruit

Grapple - Not to be confused for the Grapple Apple.

Pearapple - Species of pear.

Triapple

Arnapple

Blackapple - See below.

Dewy Apple

Pineapple

Pyrapple - Possibly a pineapple. See below.

Many of these species make reference to tasting like an apple, which in these cases I have chosen to take as unironic comparisons rather than some joking "it tastes like an apple because it is an apple!" These specimens also all have un-apple-like (unapfellich) features that make them easy to consider them non-apples, at least morphologically.

The two exceptions/uncertainties are the Pyrapple and Blackapple.

The Pyrapple is not an apple, for certain, but may be a Pineapple. We'll either explore it in another post about Neopian Pineapples, or in its own post, but not here.

The Blackapple requires a closer look:

I hope the inside is not as black as the outside.

There isn't much to go off of here. This specimen is from Apple Bobbing, but if you take all the Apple Bobbing specimens together, this isn't a good indicator of apfellichkeit ("apple-ness"). Both non-apple and apple species are mixed up in Apple Bobbing, and some of the apple species are qualifying candidates while some are variants of other apples (we'll discuss this more in the next part).

The description is also very typical of Apple Bobbing and specimens from the Haunted Woods in general — that specific brand of Neopets humor that hints at something that should concern you, but won't tell you the full extent of the problem or how it occurred. This kind of description has influenced me greatly as a writer and is also the bane of my existence as a scientist.

The deciding factor for me here is that the Blackapple isn't a Black Apple, or a Blackened Apple as we'll see some of later. Blackapple is a new word, akin to the made-up "Triapple," "Arnapple," and "Pineapple" above. Because of this, I have been swayed to consider the Blackapple a unique, non-apple species.

Next up:

Part 2A: Apple cultivars ->

[neopianbiologyproject]

A Wuzzer is a cross between a Warf, and erm...something else!

so okay it's just straight up not though

[neopianbiologyproject]

I already know I'm about to disqualify a bunch of these, but I double checked the "Apple" specimen count and it's up to 93 potential Apple species

[neopianbiologyproject]

Neopian Apples Part 2A: Apple Cultivars

[ Part 1 ] [-> Part 2A <-] [ Part 2B ] [Part 3 (coming soon)]

An important consideration here is which apples are other apples and which apples are new apples. That is, which apples are genetically or otherwise distinct enough to be new species and which are "just apples," i.e. non-distinct variants of existing species.

In Earth biology, I'm pretty sure a "cultivar" is considered a variant of a species and there's a whole lot going on with genetic variation and cross-breeding of subspecies and so on. It also tends to refer to intentionally or artificially cultivated variants, which in our case would qualify the candidate as Constructa and remove it from taxonomic considerations.

But, it's a useful term for getting one's mind to the right place: a descendant sub-type of an ancestor plant that is consistently observable but distinct from other descendant sub-types of that plant. It also has a connotation needing special conditions to occur.

So I find it useful to use here in place of "a relatively rare, but consistently observable, genetically distinct plant deriving from (and colloquially referred to as) the common apple" especially when we do not have access to genetic testing. That is, n.b. when I say "cultivar" regarding a Neopian species, it is still possible for that species to be naturally occurring and taxonomically distinct from the ancestor species, where the typical use of "cultivar" on Earth might not allow for this meaning.

I'll try to avoid it where the distinction is especially important and clarify whether a candidate qualifies as a new species or not.

Above are the easiest-to-determine "new apples"; they are visually unique, are naturally occurring outside of Neopian/human influence, and tend to have unique traits, without veering into being entirely new fruits.

In addition to standing out to me on my first scan of the apple candidates, it's helpful to separate out these apples before diving into the others, as these will be the apples we will compare future apples to when determining the (dis)similarity of other apples.

These are:

Apple Apple

Bell Apple - "This watery apple is named not only for its shape, but also for the peculiar ringing sound that it emits when picked."

Blue Berry Apple*

Cactus Apple - "Its-- ouch! Well-- ouch! ... Ouch, just ouch."

Cherry Apple*

Cloud Shoyru Apple - See Part 2B

Dappled Apple

Dopple Dapple Apple - See Part 2B

Electric Apple

Fire Apple

Green Apple - Fun fact, this is the first apple item ever released on Neopets, and the first item in the entire Jellyneo item database, with a DBID of 1.

Jumble Apple*

Melon Berry Apple*

Muntando Apple*

Mutant Apple - See Part 2B

Pine Apple*

Rainbow Apple - See Part 2B

Red Apple

Speckled Apple - See Part 2B

White Apple

Yellow Apple

Unmarked candidates are kinda based on vibes, but I do think they're each apples, don't overlap with other cultivars, and are organically occurring/non-Constructa. None of these apples have any indication of being painted to look the way they do, either, which is not the case for later candidates. And also I don't have much to say about them.

As always, I am happy to take review and provide evidence if anyone disagrees.

As for the others...

Fruit Apples

Apples marked with an asterisk (*) are what I'd call "fruit apples." They are apples that are commonly recognized to resemble and share qualities with other fruits, and have been named as such. Unlike in Part 1, however, these fruits are apples, not simply named for them.

The Blue Berry Apple, Cherry Apple, Jumble Apple, Melon Berry Apple, Muntando Apple, and Pine Apple are all named for other fruits; these are the Earth-similar blueberry, cherry, and pineapple, and the Neopia-unique Jumbleberry, Melonberry, and Muntando Fruit.

Some of these apples express confusion about their origins in their description:

Blue Berry Apple Blueberry! Apple! No, blueberry! No, apple!

Cherry Apple These cherries taste like apples. I mean these apples taste like cherries.

Jumble Apple Has this been splashed with paint?

While the Muntando Apple is very confident about not being a Muntando fruit:

Muntando Apple Perfect substitute for the Muntando Fruit. And easily available too.

However, none of them definitively refer to themselves as the non-apple fruit.

With this, and a familiarity with Neopets item naming conventions (it almost always goes [unique descriptor][noun]) I think we can be pretty confident that these are, in fact, apples. It also stands out to me that the apple variants tend to split compound fruit names, as in blue-[space]-berry and pine-[space]-apple.

One thing you may notice, however, is that the Melon Berry Apple... doesn't look like a Melonberry. And I honestly don't know why this is! Their descriptions don't overlap, and the only other Melonberry/Melon Berry item in the database is a smoothie that seems to be flavored with melons and berries. This doesn't really impact our determinations, but stands out to me as strange. Maybe they're completely unrelated? Or is there a hidden Melon Berry that the Melon Berry Apple was named for?

This post is getting long and I need a break, but this is a pretty good stopping point? So we'll attend to the rest of the apple cultivars in

Part 2B: Notable apple cultivars ->

[neopianbiologyproject]

Unpaintable Petpets

Neopets and Petpets (pets for your pet) can be "painted," typically using a magical Paint Brush (PB) that changes the pet(pet)'s physical appearance to varying degrees.

for the purpose of this project, each species of pet or petpet is considered a unique species -- but painted pets and petpets are considered morphs or breeds, even if there are significant anatomical variations between the colors. my logic is, if pets can move between PB colors throughout their lifespan, then there is likely no genetic difference between colors, or any genetic variation that does exist is mutable throughout the pet's lifetime. an Aisha can be Blue or Snot or Eventide, but it's still an Aisha, and "Aisha" is the species

that said, there are unpaintable petpets -- petpets that are ostensibly of the species of their overall line, except there is no way for them to become a different PB color OR for any other petpet of their kind to become the PB color they are.

for example,

the Checkered Cadro is an unpaintable petpet. it looks like this:

and here is a Blue Cadro

the Blue Cadro can be obtained by painting any paintable Cadro with a Blue Petpet Paint Brush. so you can take a Green Cadro, paint it Blue, and the item turns into a Blue Cadro.

(the "default" Cadro can also be obtained by taking a Cadro of any paintable color and painting it with a Yellow Petpet Paint Brush, so it is technically Yellow but simply called a Cadro)

HOWEVER, unlike the other Cadros, a Checkered Cadro can only be obtained as a Checkered Cadro -- no Cadro can be painted Checkered, and no Checkered Cadro can be painted at all

so, as far as this project goes, we'll consider unpaintable petpets to be their own species as well, as they are separate and distinct from all other petpets, and immutably so, even for petpets of the same name.

these petpets are usually obtained through special events -- for example, a Birthday line was released in honor of Neopets' 17th anniversary that can only be obtained from a goody bag. we'll have to go through each unpaintable petpet individually to determine whether their origins and appearance are grounds for them qualifying as species

I think we'll be starting with the unpaintable petpets that come from Trudy's Surprise, because there are some interesting things to discuss about what Trudy's Surprise even... is?

but yeah the next few specimens will be the default versions of the Trudy's Surprise petpets, so we can use those as a baseline for discussion of their unpaintable brethren, and the eventual Trudy's Surprise post can focus more on where Trudy's Surprise comes from and what that means for Kingdom and Habitat of these candidates

[neopianbiologyproject]

Abominable Snowball (poll at bottom)

sorry about the delay in getting this blog up n' postin', I realized after getting setup going that I don't actually know how I want to order this stuff. anyway, let's start by going roughly alphabetical

this is an Abominable Snowball!

Abominable Snowball A great friend... for as long as the weather stays cold.

Item Category: Wintery Petpet

Available From: Restocks in Wintery Petpets (Terror Mountain), but also available from the Ice Arena of the Battledome (Terror Mountain) and The Snowager (Terror Mountain)

the other places the Abominable Snowball occurs use rarity-based systems of item generation (i.e. they can give any item of a certain rarity regardless of origin, e.g Esophagor in Haunted Woods, The Wishing Well in Neopia Central, Kiko Pop in Kiko Lake).

therefore it's pretty easy to determine that the Abominable Snowball's natural territory is Terror Mountain, primarily Happy Valley and the Ice Caves.

Habitat: Terrorpolar Alpine Forests

here's the rub: Abominable Snowballs may not be naturally occurring

How to Build an Abominable Snowball Its quite easy once you look up how.

Abominable Snowballs can be built! this doesn't preclude them occurring naturally, but it is possible to roll some snow together, decorate it, and bring forth new life

note: it is not actually mechanically possible within the game of Neopets to build an Abominable Snowball, but that does not mean it doesn't happen outside of player influence.

(there is the question of whether Abominable Snowballs are even sentient, but it's the opinion of this blog that all Petpets are alive, or at least self-mobile, even Rocks, because all Petpets can enter and exit the Symol Hole independently)

this puts the Abominable Snowball's kingdom as either Elementa or Constructa, depending on whether they occur without Neopet influence.

i couldn't find any other items that lead me to believe one way or another, except that it's probably a common pastime to build Abominable Snowballs as one would a snowman:

Abominable Snowball Fights Those poor Abominable Snowballs...

Abominable Snowball Usuki Set This Usuki set comes with a carrot, mittens and buttons to dress up your Usukis Abominable Snowball.

the Abominable Snowball Acara Muffler and Abominable Snowball Acara Wig even equate the Abominable Snowball to a snowman:

Abominable Snowball Acara Muffler A muffler for the added effect of a snowman.

Abominable Snowball Acara Wig A pretty brown wig with a snowman hat for your Acara!

that said, building a regular snowman doesn't require instructions, as building an Abominable Snowball apparently does

also of note, Abominable Snowballs melt in heat and hot weather:

Desert Abominable Snowball Maybe this was a bad idea...

(note that this is also the only Abominable Snowball color that has a unique description)

Abominable Snowball Plushie Unlike the original, this ones an all-weather friend.

Abominable Snowball Borovan Oh no! Who dropped that poor Abominable Snowball in the mug?

however, there is something to be said for the fact that the Desert Abominable Snowball retains the intelligence of a white Abominable Snowball, and can be converted back into an Abominable Snowball of any color by repainting it -- there is some quality of its aliveness that is carried across all colors, even if it appears to have melted, and despite the apparent ease with which one can put together their own.

due to the magical properties of Paint Brushes, though, this only goes for melting or other conversion through painting; that one in the borovan is gone forever.

there is also something to be said for the fact that all Abominable Snowballs of one color share identical accessories in identical configurations. one requires a green and red hat with a pompom to make an Abominable Snowball; no other hat will suffice. likewise it is possible in theory to make a small snowman that is almost but not quite identical to an Abominable Snowball, but that does not come alive as a true Abominable Snowball would. maybe this indicates the platonic nature of an Elemental, but one that can be replicated by Neopians? or perhaps one that is intangible in its natural state and, through creation of a suitable host, brought forth to inhabit a body?

finally, there is no indication that an Abominable Snowball can be made in any of its other colors, only its default color of White. that is, it may be the case that one can build a white Abominable Snowball, but must repaint it to achieve other colors. (which raises questions about the Robot color and others, but we don't need to worry about them thank god).

note that if it may occur as an Elemental, it should be considered an Elemental, even if it could also occur as a Construct

you can also make an argument in the replies or in my ask, etc!

all of the items examined in making this post have been added to this wishlist on Jellyneo, including some that were not discussed here but had some other tidbits about the nature of Abominable Snowballs.

[neopianbiologyproject]

On Kingdoms

i havent studied biology outside of a couple epidemiology courses and rereading the Southern Reach series a few times. actually, I think most of my biology knowledge comes from studying neuroscience for a a computer science class, which itself might've been for a unit on linguistics. it's disparate, is what i'm saying.

thankfully Neopia is not Earth, and while the Earth Kingdom framework is a useful starting point, mistakes I make for Earth biology are not necessarily mistakes in Neopian biology.

anyway, in Earth categories, the Kingdoms are Plants, Animals, Fungi, and then, depending on who you ask, some combination of Protists/Monera/Bacteria and sometimes Viruses to cover the miscellany.

Neopia has those and a few more.

Plantae, Animalia:

easy. Neopia definitely has these. at risk of getting ahead of ourselves here I think like 75% of the life I've documented is a plant or animal. I don't think I need to share examples, you know a plant or animal when you see one. all of the Neopets are animals.

there is a hazy territory about plants and animals, but we'll get to that.

Fungi:

Fungi is a lot less common, but it's easy to identify. any specimen named "Mushroom," "Toadstool," "Shroom," or "Toadstool" is a fungus.

except Fungi Fruit and Sroom Fruit, which are both plants named after their fungusy qualities.

there are no lichen in Neopia, at least not in the form of an item, so we don't have to worry about that just yet.

Protista/Monera:

Neopia definitely HAS bacteria. there's a Gummy Amoeba item, which may or may not be biological life itself but is an attestation of the existence of amoeba.

there are also several diseases in Neopia. i want to review these more closely before saying anything about any single one, but their existence is strong evidence for the general existence of bacterial life.

more importantly, there's algae! I wasn't aware until recently that algae aren't plants but bacteria! here is a Spongy Algae:

speaking of:

do you know how badly i wish i could read any of the volumes of Biological Encyclopedia of 14 Basic Neopian Algaes Vol. 12? i need to know. and that's 14 whole algaes!

anyway I have very few things in the Protist/Monera category, and even fewer in Viruses, so I clumped them together. really hard to say whether these even constitute separate kingdoms in Neopia without being able to put any of these under a microscope. one could even argue algae are plants in Neopia if TNT doesn't know they aren't. dunno. we'll deal with this later. for now this kingdom is a catchall for "we have these on Earth but they're not Plants, Animals or Fungi," which now that I think about it is how they function on earth too really.

Elementa:

the Kingdom of Elementals!

Neopia is a magical land and so has biological life that is borne of magic itself. in this category are Faeries, certain spirits, and a variety of Petpets. for example, Motes and Novae are elementals.

the Chainmail Mote is one of a few that have a description indicating Motes are alive and have limited intelligence:

and Novae are a kind of mote:

for an example of a Petpet elemental, see the Moltenore, which is made of fire in its unpainted state:

Faeries also belong here, I think, but we have to eventually do a deep dive into Faeries to decide that for sure. Fyora herself might be an alien.

this category is pretty hazy as there are a lot of currently otherwise-categoried specimens that COULD be elementals. my heuristic so far has been that if it wouldn't function biologically without magical influence, it's an elemental -- such as Petpets with magical abilities or anatomy that doesn't occur in baseline animals, and plants with above average intelligence and maneuverability.

figuring out the lines between Kingdoms will be part of the purpose of this blog!

Construct:

not technically a Kingdom in its own right but a necessary category. Neopia has plenty of robots and advanced alchemical processes and so on that make creating new life fairly easy. however, these creatures do not occur without having been created intentionally by other creatures. see most of the Robot Petpets (note that "Robot Petpet" doesn't mean the petpet is a robot, just that it is sold in the shop that sells Robot Petpets).

this similarly disqualifies specimens that come from an artificial ingredient in the Cooking Pot and plants that only grew a certain way due to intentional outside influence, such as Cube-Shaped Watermelon.

some items that could be considered "Constructed" may be labelled "Altered" or "Haunted" if they are possessed or exist only due to significant intentional influence on a species.

again part of this blog will be determining where the lines on "significant intentional influence" fall, if those are the right lines to even be considering.

Alien:

couldn't figure out the latin for this one.

Neopia has a lot of aliens. it is apparently common to find an unusual creature out on the Virtupets space station and decide to just eat it. Dr. Sloth is an alien. Fyora might be. the Alien Space Fungus sure is.

alien life cannot be considered part of Neopia's typical Kingdoms, as it did not evolve from Neopian life under Neopian pressures. there may be some instances of Neopian life evolving from alien life that made its way to the planet's surface, but that's a separate question. life that is not from Neopia proper cannot be categorized under the Kingdoms of Neopia and likely follows its own taxonomical system that isn't the focus of our efforts here (yet).

alien life is usually easy to identify because it is found on Virtupets or Kreludor or coming from materials from deeper space, like meteors and portals to the void.

and that's that! this is the framework we'll be using for now -- discussion of whether it's appropriate and fitting to our actual evidence is wholly welcome and I already assume we'll be making adjustments as we learn more. just, so far, it has been useful for me to categorize things this way and I haven't found need for others -- the hardest part has been determining which Kingdom a specimen belongs to, when that specimen falls in a hazy area between potential Kingdoms. nailing down how to classify specimens consistently is also a large goal of this project.

happy documenting!

[neopianbiologyproject]

if you follow this blog and have an actual background in any field that may help this project PLEASE feel free to message me with input!

personally my "background" (what I studied in college) is media theory and Japanese lit of all things, so all of my biology knowledge is from a few elective courses, wikipedia rabbit holing, and, like, the Southern Reach series.

outside input is always welcome, especially from people with actual relevant knowledge, even just to confirm my findings or make an Earth comparison!

also i'm doing a lot of the easy determinations first but there are some coming up that are edge cases that might need professional insight

[neopianbiologyproject]

look at this

[neopianbiologyproject]

there are cooking pot pet with multiple recipes! the Wuzzer was released in 2004! why is this like this, why is this still like this, why is there not even a joke-fix that would be characteristic of TNT. like has this just genuinely gone unnoticed as weird for 20 years? it's a Wuzzer, the description says Warf, the combo is clearly Warf + Buzzer, i cannot be the first person to see this and say something about it. not even JN has a comment? JN has a comment on everything! the Wuzzer won the PPL award in 2009, no one said anything then?

hold on let me check the neopian times archive, this has to have been commented on somewhere

[neopianbiologyproject]

if you send in the names of halloweeny species candidates i'll do their verifications today!!!

some searches to get you started:

Spooky Petpets

Spooky Food

Spooky Furniture

Neovian Attire

Unpaintable Halloween Petpets

Everything with the word "Halloween" in the name

Everything with the word "spooky" in the name

And our master spreadsheet, if you'd like to go through items we've already selected as candidates

[neopianbiologyproject]

sorry for the surprise hiatus, it's the busy season where I work and also I've been testing new chemical brainfeed recipes and there just hasn't been the bandwidth for field work

on the docket is part 2b in the apple saga, plus combing the Y26 Advent Calendar items for new candidates!

keep an eye on the spreadsheet if you want to catch those before I post about them?

also might do some smaller verification-style posts before part 2b is out just to keep things active (and i guess to stay ahead on new items) but rest assured the saga won't go unfinished.

[neopianbiologyproject]

did u see the new eyrie wearables? monarch butterflies confirmed

OKAY i am excited to get to the cog's togs wearables because I think there's actually some discussion to be had about whether they're each a new species indicator or not!

i am literally in bed and about to put my head down so I can't go into it RIGHT now (or at least I am holding off from spending the next 30 minutes refining this response with examples and arguments) but I do think there is a series of tiers between like.

1) costumes that reference a creature by name in their name or description and thus we can go "oh cool, the Monarch Butterfly Wing set, that means that in Neopia there are butterflies that look like this and they're called Monarch Butterflies" (i don't think the Eyrie set you're referencing does this but I'm gonna look it up later before this post spirals)

2) costumes that don't name a creature and use a euphemism/replacement term and a Neopet name, so the most we can take from it is either this is a fictional creature or a subspecies of Neopet. I think the new Hunter Jetsam set is an example of this. like if it were named Hammerhead Shark Jetsam Costume or even Hammerhead Jetsam that'd be a separate question

3) costumes of something potentially fictional, like the Sprite Jubjub set. should we take that to mean Sprites are real and that's a costume OF another creature that might be a separate species? or that that's a subspecies/cousin of Jubjubs? or that's just a fictional creature that makes for a good Jubjub set?

there's also a difference between wearables that depict/replicate elements of a species and items that have that species in it. these wearables are attestations that Neopians are familiar with these candidates, and not specimens of those candidates themselves

also, really trying not to let my knowledge of, for example, "the Sprite set is a reference to Spirited Away" lead me to the conclusion of "so it depicts a fictional creature," because we shouldn't be writing away Neopian species just because they're familiar or unfamiliar to us earthlings in certain ways. Sprites could be a species that we just don't see much as visitors to Neopia! or a reference to Studio Ghubjub! we don't know without delving deeper

I'll try to revisit this post and the costume wearables as soon as I can!

[neopianbiologyproject]

Ackosaurus (Acko)

Primary specimen: Acko

Acko, or Ackosaurus as he is known, is a little dinky dinosaur who loves to brush against things and purr.

Rarity: r95 (Ultra Rare) Category: Tyrannian Petpet Primary origin: Restocks in Tyrannian Petpets

Determination: Species verified; straightforward

Kingdom: Animalia Habitat: Tyrannia

Gallery specimen: Acko Other notable specimens: Petpet Paint Brush recolors

Notes: while the item is called "Acko," the species name is apparently "Ackosaurus."