#spec zoo

[troythecatfish]

[aeriona]

HEY! Do you guys like squid biology? creature headcanons? cool art? well BOY do I have the document for you~~!

It is with great pleasure to show off this absolute chonker of an art/writing project; The Mollusc Era! BEHOLD, MY MAGNUM OPUS!

In this document I go over the intricacies of various cephalopods; Inklings, Octolings, Cuttlings and even the Nautilus! The entire study is illustrated by yours truly, so there's plenty of pretty pictures to gawk at as well as pages upon pages of my concentrated autism ramblings to pour over if that's also your thing. Enjoy!

I’ve also included a Legacy Version of the document: a much older, unfinished version complete with ancient-ass art from mid last year in all of its poorly-rendered glory. A lot of the information in there is also outdated and poorly written, so good luck with that. yuck.

I recommend viewing both of these on desktop as the formatting seems to work best on there. You're more than welcome to use any of the info in there for whatever you like, if you're gonna use my art please credit me though! cheers!

[makairodonx]

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.

[torchtour]

my work so far on @he-who-needs-to-be-silenced's spec bio project: project homeworld!

it's super chill and and anyone can join (me shilling)

[ntls-24722]

Debu run cycle!

They can't jump, so they can't gallop like a horse, which, thank fucking god.

They have the hypothetical spring for it, but their bodies are so big and heavy that they just. they don't. So they instead just walk reaaaally fast and urgently at you. Though, it draws a pretty interesting line between them and the zebrapeople, where both the elves and men are known for jumping - the zebramen in particular being able to leap a truly devious 3 meters straight up in the air, which is their height and more. By law they are banned from the basketball court ❌

Sorry for the lack of DJMM posts lately. I've been kind of burnt out since I've been producing almost exclusively digital art since summer started. I hope this makes up for it 👍👍

[grox-empire]

Would you guys believe me if I said this was Sims spec bio. Because this is Sims spec bio.

Preemptively begging you guys not to be weird about them being parasitoids please.

Anyways! Meet Daybreak's newest sophont species, The Sixamites! Native to... Well... Planet Sixam, Of course! They are the product of immense amounts of Autism and my hyperfixation on maxis games extending from Spore to The Sims.

These insectoid sophonts are Parasitoids and rely almost entirely on other species to reproduce. Back on their homeworld they have specialized hosts meticulously GMO'd to care for their young, But recent developments have lead to them expanding their horizons. They are extremely friendly towards other alien species, And due to this they tend to form relationships with other aliens. To a Sixamite, Offering someone to bear their young is the ultimate form of affection.

Sixamites cohabitate very well with other species and are found all across the galaxy, Often on planets not colonized by them, But by other species.

[strawby-fields]

Compilation of burrowing bugs, aka my funny little specbio buggy dudes who look like the tbh autism creature

They’re just so fun to doodle

[rununcal]

New ideas for the Headsplitters incoming! I was thinking there would sort of be different breeds with different abilities occupying Earth. I have no idea what I'm doing but it's a lot of fun!

In the meantime I realized I never showed the (outdated but still useful) lore here so here's the full guide!

The only thing that's outdated here so far is the art and the fact the nonhuman headsplitters are called Arthroids (they're Parvae now) , so you can read it and be up to date! They are an extremely adaptable and diverse race for the purpose of people making their own ocs with them!

[kattheerat]

[pocketraccoons]

I made the skolzik chonkier because I remembered Allen's rule is a thing and I wanted to see what they would look like if they were more like that.

[speculative-world]

a middle aged drekol named letak, they are part of the crew of a freelance multipurpose transportation vessel known as the voidray, they are the sole survivor of a tragic engine failure and still suffer the effects of it decades later, this is the first art of the new drekol design, alongside the ap i will be updating currently existing drekol to be in their newer design, just like the ap with new information

[troythecatfish]

Can anyone else relate?

[aeriona]

After learning a lot more about squids I was inspired to biology-post once again. Observe my cephalopods, boy.

I wanted to incorporate more traits from the actual in-game design while still adding a healthy dose of creature. I’ll probably still go back and forth between this design and the one i’ve been been using for the past few months, just to get the best of both worlds haha.

Inklings have chitinous teeth in their suckers as well as retractible hooks in the tips of their fingers and toes, the shape and size of which will vary a lot between species. as well. Squids also have a gladius (or “pen”), which is a plastic-like, chitinous structure that basically act as the squid’s backbone and provides support.

Octolings however don’t have this structure, so instead they rely more on the ink veins to support their body weight. Mainly fluid pressure in the legs, which you’ll notice the veins there are denser than an Inkling’s.

Ancient cephalopods made the jump from being muscular hydrostats (no skeleton, all muscle) to true fluid-based hydrostats (using fluid pressure as a “skeleton”) pretty early in their evolution. Their ink sacs grew in size and became their primary form of defence against predators like sharks, which had recently gone terrestrial and were ravaging early molluscan populations at the time.

I’m still not entirely sure how inkfish would change the colour of ink inside their bodies, so for now I’m just going with the headcanon that they do it artificially by ingesting dyes/chemicals before matches, whereas otherwise it would be a deep, inky-black.

[makairodonx]

Spectmeber 2024 Day 26: Northern Shark-Sturgeon

The Shark-Sturgeons are a Potworian family of oceanic, sharp-toothed sturgeons that have evolved from bottom-feeding ancestors to occupy a predatory niche similar to those of Earth’s lamniform sharks, use their sensory pits and barbels to detect the electric signals produced by their prey, and are mainly found across the temperate to subtropical waters of the planet’s northern hemisphere. While many shark-sturgeon species reach average sizes of 2.5 to 4 meters long and weigh about 140-185 kg, The Northern Shark-Sturgeon, which inhabits the cold, icy waters surrounding Potworia’s northernmost continent of Gniazdoia, is the largest of them all and can reach adult sizes of around 5.5 to 7.3 meters long and weigh over 1,223 kg. The voracious fish can move at shorts bursts of speed of up to 73 km/h and preys upon smaller, fast-moving fish such as the Angel-Gar, oceanic birds such as shearwater-like passerines and large, flightless puffins, and mammals such as the seal-otters and certain species of small whale-moles. The females migrate upstream into Gniazdoia’s rivers to lay their eggs, and the juveniles will soon move into larger bodies of water such as lakes and estuaries as they grow larger and are eventually old enough to swim into the open ocean.

[torchtour]

can artfight end faster so i can go back to whatever i was doing before? i can smell the smoke of burnout on the wind, threatening to overtake the glossy meadow in which i lay :'[

[ntls-24722]

"what if i turned my mutuals' sonas into bolur creatures"

so i did turn my mutuals' sonas into bolur creatures. and.... im sorry in advance.

@wakebymoonsleepbysun

The creature the most related to the homo mousike: the waeki, the zebraelf equivalent to an old world monkey, and looking quite the part. Sorry, I King Julien'd you, it was the only way. The digits on the hand aren't as flexible as they are in zebraelves and the limbs are more evenly spaced - no hexapodality, but very stable chameleon-like walking across trees and land coral. The waeki is one of the oldest members of their order, the trendsetters of velvet worm-style Goop Shooters and the flexible shoulders and wrists. The mane, though, is a waeki special.

@artastic-friend

Portmanteau of March and babirusa, inspired by how that horn grows! Instead of horns, instead of antlers, that head protrusion are two teeth that grew up and out of the top of the mouth into a giant, 2-pronged tusk instead of a normal tooth. Because, yknow, who wants a regular old tooth like that? Everyone's done that already. The hooves make them a part of the same order as Debu, though the mountain cows are a bit more removed. Instead of just a long pupil, the whole eye is long, too.

@thebookowal

Sorry, it gets weird from here on out. The task was making a skeleton be a fully fledged critter, and the normal route I would've gone was making your sona into a bug since bugs have external skeletons. But for some reason, I could not tell you why, I had the compulsion to make you be able to roll up or compact yourself. To do it horizontally though, bah, armadillos, isopods, millipedes, they already do that. I wanted vertical compaction.

So, those are not ribs sicking out the sides - those are the claws of the 2nd limb of this hexapod. When threatened, the buk'wal flips over and on its back with its belly exposed. If a predator makes the foolish mistake of trying to take advantage of its exposed belly (either by trying to pet it or eat it), the buk'wall snaps its claws together in a bear-trap fashion, nabbing whatever poor fool tried to touch it.

@lyman-garfiel

This is more like a revamping of a pre-existing idea, but Scarab The God Auditor from Fionna and Cake is new.

There was supposed to be more bugs in here, so I guess i'm just hitting double with these two. The lionfleas and omen work together the same way wolves and corvids do: the omen are expert spotters but lionfleas are expert hunters, as they are the only predator of Debu. Omen lead the lionfleas to lone debu (which is how they got their name), and the lionfleas pounce on, holding on with their two raptorial claws and raking the bare flesh with their legs. Debu don't actually have very thick skin at all, and lionfleas are more than capable to inflict lots of damage extremely quickly.

this is literally just scarab. Scarab is just very easy to bolur-ize, i guess.

Bonus: The original bolur creature concept for wakey.

Okay. I can't turn your sona into "the freaky blood pony that people think is going to hell and everyone wants to eat" and expect a good reaction. That's not how this works. This one was literally too weird but the lore fascinated me to the point this might just stay as an unaffiliated creature. It got weird because I tried to make the bun into a flower in the back of the head, i wondered what to make the nectar... I ruined it.

The hellion is named for both the blood constantly dripping down its head and the bloodwasps it brings - Debu believe that there is no afterlife for the animal as its' head seems to be compromised, and the sting of the bloodwasps it harbors is excruciatingly painful, with stories of its attacks on predators sending them to jump off cliffs from the pain. The hellion lives in symbiosis with the bloodwasps - its blood is exceptionally high in sugar and the bloodwasps lap it up from an non-painful opening in the back of its head in exchange for protecting their host. They live in the long hairs of its backmost limbs and when threatened, the hellion shakes its back limbs to spur them into action, which is often desperately needed.

I cannot stress that the hellion is delicious. The high blood sugar makes it the sweetest meat you could taste. Even in bolur's modern era, the meat is insanely expensive because it's also extremely hard to harvest. Handling hellion is, however, hell. The bloodwasps are not able to be removed from the equation, their saliva keeps the hellion alive by making it able to withstand the hardening of its blood vessels. The best that has been able to be done is socializing the hellion and its bloodwasp bodyguards around homo mousike, who offer sugar water in return for harvesting some of its blood.

Anyways, if I didn't draw you, don't fret, I'll probably do it sometime later :>