#taxonomy is such a wild thing

[mytardisisparked]

Researching the taxonomy of mongooses like

[eeleye-mcshitposts]

ONE of these fucks does NOT belong.

[britcision]

You don’t have to touch anything gross to study physics

Pretty much all serious biology is going to involve getting messy or getting EXTREMELY EXTREMELY EXTREMELY clean

Okay something that bothers me is the fact physics is seen as the more prestigious of the three main sciences, with biology at the bottom and chemistry in the middle. Like. I doubt most people could name a famous biologist, but they could name 5 famous physicists. Why are Albert Einstein and Stephen hawking household names but Norman Borlaug and Jonas Salk aren't?

Not to dismiss the accomplishments of Einstein or Hawking, or their genius, but their actual tangible contributions to society have been miniscule compared to that of Borlaug or Salk who have each saved LITERALLY hundreds of millions, if not billions, of lives each. Half the food on your plate was probably grown thanks to Borlaug and Salk is the reason half your siblings didn't die of polio as a kid.

Sure Einsteins theory of relatively is important for modern satellite communications but really though how can it compare?

This is coming from someone who studied physics. I love physics, and years ago when i was at uni I looked down at biology and so did everyone else studying physics. And I know others did too. Retroactively of course I know this was so very wrong.

If society as a whole started treating biology with more respect then maybe more students would go into that field. If we had rockstars of medicine and agricultural science that were household names rather than just physicists? think of how many more lives could be saved, how many more lives could be improved.

I'm not saying physics isn't important, and more scientists of any kind is always good, but proportionally I think societies priorities are a little skewd.

[mammoth-clangen]

D’you perchance have any thoughts on the morphological (for lack of a better word?) dire wolves that Colossal Biosciences just revealed to the public? 👀

Oh my god Aenocyon, you can't just ask someone why they're white!

"Morphological dire wolf" my ass. Which is coincidentally where Colossal pulled the white coats from…

Give me an example of a modern temperate/grassland predator that's white*, I'll wait. *Excluding white lions, which are an uncommon but resilient morph resulting from leucism.

I based my Aenocyon design off bushdogs and dholes. They are called Masked Wolves in Kindred's setting, because I enjoy a good pseudo hyena niche uvu-b

Extremely extremely long 'thoughts' below the cut lol c':

Preface: in this discussion the term "dire wolf" has too many meanings, as such I will be referring to them as follows:

Thrones' wolves: for the huge, white, fantasy animals from Game Of Thrones GMO wolves: for Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi, Colossal's creations, Canis lupus Aenocyon: for Aenocyon dirus, the true, extinct dire wolf known from fossils across North America

----

Part 1: That's not a dire wolf-

The first question everyone has been asking is "So, are dire wolves de extinct now?" The answer is an emphatic "NO!" from anyone with knowledge of genetics, palaeontology, or taxonomy.

Aenocyon dirus were actually not wolves, nor dogs, but a secret third thing.

They are canids, but last shared a common ancestor with grey wolves and their lineage some ~5.7 million years ago.

For context, this paper suggests a similar divergence time between genus Homo (humans, Neanderthals and co) and Pan (chimps and bonobos); animals that look and behave markedly differently from each other.

The genomes of Canis lupus and Aenocyon dirus being 99.5% similar may sound like a lot, but again, humans share 98.8% with chimps, and 99.7% with Neanderthals, and yet are very distinct from both.

Skeletally, behaviourally, in soft tissue, etc, you could tell any of the three apart; the same goes for Aenocyon and Canis members.

Additionally, Colossal made 20 changes in 14 genes.

The grey wolf genome has 2,447,000,000 base pairs. Does that maths seem a bit off to you?

That's not even enough to change a grey wolf into a domestic dog, let alone an ancient outgroup!

This would be akin to modifying a lion to have bigger teeth and saying you resurrected Smilodon fatalis.

Or editing a Asian Elephant genome so they retain their juvenile hair and calling it a Woolly Mammoth.

It's a bold-faced lie.

Beth Shapiro says "they look and act like dire wolves" but that, too,simply isn't true.

Visually, the GMO wolves simply aren't what Aenocyon would have looked like. It's what a Thrones' wolf looks like.

Hmmmmm, funny about that, seeing George R R Martin helped fund the 'dire wolf project'...

As with many fossil animals, we don't know much about Aenocyon's behaviour.

You can't say the GMO wolves (who are also still pups) act like Aenocyon, because that's based off nothing.

What we do know is Aenocyon were likely pack animals (from the sheer number found in La Brea Tarpits), and crunched more bones than modern wolves (from their many broken teeth).

Also, crucially, they had Wild Sex Lives (from the many, huge, broken and healed bacula... youch).

Colossal is also being colossally shady by: doubling down on their bs use of the outdated "morphological species definition", blatantly misleading the public with their use of the words 'cloning', 'dire wolves', and 'de extinction', and refusing to share their methods in a peer reviewed paper before going public with a clickbait headline.

Do not trust them with your Red wolves either. They're using coyote hybrids and considering what they deem 'close enough' for a dire wolf, I wouldn't put any money on the quality of their GMO red wolves either...

Also can I just say, whatever genes they modified to "make the skull larger" clearly didn't impact the lower jaw...

No, I'm not sorry for this image uvu-b (But for real look at that poor pup and his overbite jfc)

Part 2: -and if it was, that wouldn't be good either.

I fundamentally do not support de extinction.

No, not even for the Thylacine, not even for passenger pigeons, nor the dodo. Even my beloved Homotherium should be left in the past.

This might be an unexpected stance because I am, surprising no one, a big fan of extinct animals, megafauna and otherwise.

But the thing is, I'm an even bigger fan of actual, living animals.

The animal ethics of de extinction are dubious at best.

The surrogate dog mothers of the GMO wolves likely won't live good lives.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were destroyed after being used, because their bodies could contain feto microchimerisms and Colossal absolutely doesn't want their special wolf genome getting out.

I doubt the GMO wolves themselves will live a full life before they outgrow their hearts, like Ligers.

This would likely be the case for any modern animal genetically modified into megafauna; a body not adapted to deal with the increased size.

Purely conjecture, but I also wouldn't be surprised if Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi have vision/hearing issues from their white coats.

White coats in wolves are associated with hearing impairments, so the gene used for these animals was from domestic dogs. Meaning Colossal has created a very expensive wolfdog.

Again, what kind of life are these wolfdogs supposed to live? As awful pets for the rich? In a zoo? Released to pollute wild wolf genomes? (assuming they're fertile; I hope not)

Regardless, it's not looking good if they ever planned to have them be 'wild animals'

Even true clones (which the GMO wolves are not) tend to have health issues.

Celia the Pyrenean Ibex (bucardo) was cloned, but the clone died after 9 minutes from a deformed lung.

So in 2003, this made the bucardo the first species to go extinct twice, yippee?

There's also the problem of genetic diversity.

How many intact genomes do you have on hand?

For dire wolves the answer is Zero!

To my knowledge, we don't have the full genome coded from one individual, just Frankenstein-ed from many. Which is fine for sequencing the canine family tree's relatedness, but not for cloning.

The absolute minimum individuals to survive a genetic bottleneck is said to be 50 in larger species. Called the 50/500 rule, it states that 50 is enough to survive, but 500 is required to prevent genetic drift.

To which I say, good luck!

Even with well preserved permafrost species (such as woolly mammoths), you'll have a hard time finding 500 individuals with prefect genomes.

And then, where will you put them?

If you were to, somehow, make a breeding population, where are they going? A national park? A zoo? Is their old habitat still available to them?

In Aenocyon, the answer is simply "they don't have a niche anymore".

Unlike the Thylacine or Dodo, humans did not directly cause the extinction of Aenocyon dirus. And even if they had, it was 10,000 years ago!

Would making room for a de extinct species impact the habitat/niche of another species?

Regular grey wolves fill Aenocyon's role as a canine mesopredator, with Puma as the apex (alongside bears as an apex omnivore).

With the loss of megafauna to prey on, a de extinct predator would just compete with other, also endangered species.

Animals also change the environment they life in.

Mammoths will clear trees like modern elephants. This would recreate the Mammoth Steppe, but those trees making up the taiga and boreal forests are themselves crucial habitat.

Other species have moved in since the mammoths' extinction. Siberian tigers, lynx, muskoxen, brown bears, elk, moose, and so many others; many endangered.

Trees also prevent erosion, which is already happening at unprecedented rates due to agriculture and deforestation.

Crucially: What's to stop an extinct animal going the same way it went out last time?

Ask yourself this:

Would the average American appreciate "flocks of Passenger pigeons big enough to darken the sky and whiten ground with their guano"?

Would people suddenly be okay with lions in Europe eating their livestock, when they are champing the bit to shoot Iberian wolves again?

Would Tasmanians suddenly feel the same about the Thylacine, when farmers in Australia still happily kill dingoes and eagles for lamb predation? [citation, I am an enviro technician and have had farmers tell me they shoot Wedge-tails, knowing I'm a toothless lion to stop them.]

I doubt it

At what cost?

Are we going to find 50 thylacine genomes?

If so (doubtful), how much will cloning and/or modifying a relative into a thylacine cost? Now that x50?

Wouldn't that money be better spent on quoll reintroduction?

What about finding 50 gestational carriers for mammoths?

Are you going to use their closest relative; the already critically endangered Asian Elephant?

Wouldn't that time and effort on those elephant mothers be better used making more elephants?

And the social cost:

If extinction isn't forever, what's to incentivize lawmakers to fund conservation?

Really, it comes down to this:

Why bring back the dire wolf when we could put this money into protecting the Iberian and Red wolves?

Why bring back the thylacine when their cousin is dying of a transmissible cancer?

We've already seen the impacts of "extinction isn't forever anymore", with those in power already trying to cut funding to conservation, because you can "just bring them back".

But as we've seen time and time again: there is no Planet B. There is no De-Extinction, not really.

Maybe what was gone should stay gone, so we can focus on what we still have.

[unpretty]

can i join the kink taxonomy hell kvetching circle? i really like some fairly specific pain kink content and trying to sort through ao3 for it can be such a nightmare.... they don't have a pussy torture tag at all as far as i can tell so i'm just stuck trawling through the "genital torture" tag for the rare non-dick focused fic, even though there's ALSO a "cock and ball torture" tag?? like. come on man. help me out. also, trying to find my specific preferred flavor of dp is a pain in the ass on any platform because everyone groups it all together, even though imo two dicks in two holes is very different than two dicks in one hole, and sometimes i have a preference for which hole!! but no one considers these things apparently :(

dude the fact that DP can mean two totally different things like that is wild, they are SO different

[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.)

[velvetwyrme]

!!!My Idea for Triple-Changers!!! Since there's only, like, four triple changers, i think they'd be really really rare hybrid individuals. Also I think Tarantulas steals genetic/CNA data during scavenging missions and shoved all of them together with his own to create little springer, which is why he Looks Like That. Dragonfly/grasshopper thing.

Also I think in the wild, Cybugs in general are more omnivorous, but mechanimals, helicopters, and seekers are much more carnivorous as a requirement. I think Seeker Trines first started forming in order to hunt bigger prey (tarantulas, songbirds, etc)

Speaking of Tarantuals. I think he's much closer to an obligate carnivore, and likely hunts birds and large insects (plus the occasional poor cybug he can catch in his web)

Springer can create webs/thread as a grub, but looses the ability after metamorphosis. Also Tarantulas does Not go through metamorphasis, he molts many many times instead like a regular spider. He probably eats the shedded plating/armour too

this is so fun i am very very entertained by Little Creechurs

AAYWAHAJHDJ AHH this is really really cool 🥺❣️ these are all very very fun things to think about >:000

springer being a hybrid of a buncha different types of CNA... really fun! outlier of outliers... hybrids are already not very common but he's got a WEIRD mixup of genes (in realistic terms i think they'd be too far apart in terms of biology/taxonomy for a typical genetic hybrid to be created* but also. it's Tarantulas. he could do it.

i like the idea of trines forming to hunt larger prey- i can absolutely see that being one of the factors tht influenced their formation :0!! also i definitely agree abt your thoughts on diet <3! (obligate carnivore tarantulas... !!)

*usually hybrids occur between subspecies/species/genera, but again, it's Tarantulas. also sometimes we can bend the rules because they are. little guys that turn into vehicles but are also bugs. AND i think technically w/ the existing taxonomic chart most triple changers wouldve had to hybridize at a level above genera anyway, so honestly who the fuck knows.

[gluzzo]

Brennan Lee Mulligan during the fireside chat for The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One - Episode 9

[Image ID:

Screenshots of excerpts from the transcript of the Worlds Beyond Number podcast’s fireside chat on The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One - Episode 9.

Brennan Lee Mulligan: And, to me, that describes so many heartbreaking situations, where something deep and true does come, like- the number one belief I have, in terms of like, whatever my secular morality is— is that there's a weird attitude in some parts of our culture, that like, impulses are sinful, and morality is like a structure?

Aabria Iyengar: YES!

Brennan Lee Mulligan: And that bullshit. Moral impulses are incredibly real. Nobody needs to explain what's wrong with-think of the first age you are, where someone's mean to another kid, or an animal, and something in you goes, "Wrong!!" And that's primal.

[…]

Brennan Lee Mulligan: And like it's-it's brutal! It's very Imperial. It's like this oppressive weight, from a very smart opponent, who is convincing themselves. Like, the reason the arguments have that urgency, is that Suvi is also self-indoctrinating, and it's part of that thing that comes back up. And I think the big, sinister part of, of….. The idea of principle. Like, what, in principle, is different from a demon being bound in a circle of salt, and what you saw happening to Naram out under the derrick. This is-I don't have time to explain this in this talk back. I have issues with the philosophic concept of principle, point blank.

[…]

Brennan Lee Mulligan: Yes. And I think that the idea of principle, from-especially to a wizard, who is all about organization, taxonomy, patterns, and systems-principle is this idea that, maybe is built on sand, right?

Aabria lyengar: Yeah.

Brennan Lee Mulligan: When we think about "what are your principles," we use it as a synonym for being a good person. "Are you principled?" But the idea of principle being like, maxims, axioms, "What are some rules that I can ALWAYS follow?" And speaking of them, like, if you go back to Aristotle's Golden Mean, maybe living by principles produces bizarre, immoral edge cases.

[…]

Brennan Lee Mulligan: So it's this idea of, like-but it's unexamined by Suvi in that moment, and the reason it's unexamined, is because I think it's one of the main tools of the indoctrination of the Empire. What have you already accepted? Right? I see this in ethical discourse all the time, which is why whataboutism is so powerful, in modern philosophical discourse, is people go like, "Okay. You've made a moral point. You've made a call to action. You've said, 'we need to do something to make the world better.' So what I'm going to do is find some other moral failing of yours, hold it up in front of you and say, 'but you did this bad thing like this,' or this other situation occurred that was similar to this, where you did not act. So wouldn't you in fact, be a hypocrite by acting or not acting in a similar way this time?'''

Brennan Lee Mulligan: Which sounds, when you see it in the world, like sound moral reasoning, and it's garbage.

Taylor Moore: [Laughs]

Brennan Lee Mulligan: Because it's basically saying, like, "Instead of helping, why don't you be consistent?" And it's like-

[…]

Brennan Lee Mulligan: It's like stupid. What the fuck is the point of consistency? Like principle as a measurement of consistency, and the Fox's whole deal would be like, "Yeah, yesterday I did something bad and today I'm going to do something good because I want to." That's all.

Erika Ishii: Yeah.

Brennan Lee Mulligan: And someone would be like, "You're a hypocrite." And he'd be like, "Okay! I'm gonna get some fish slurry."

End ID.]

[velvetwyrms]

How to find the good ones. (Click for more detail!)

Hello folks! I've had this AU bouncing around my head for a little while now, then I blinked and ended up with a whole page of illustrated taxonomy notes, a bunch of lore, a first chapter and several fic illustrations, featured in this first chapter! Amazing! I'm very excited to share this AU, enjoy and please let me know what you think & spread the word/reblog so that others can enjoy my hours of hard work too <3

Title: Falling Fast Through Fragmented Universes. Chapter 1: How to find the good ones. Rating: Mature (For later chapters) Warnings: Body Horror, Uncanny Valley, Prey Fear (for like a hot second. Gaara makes wild first impressions), Alien Anatomy/Biology for later chapters. Pairings: GaaLee Summary:

XVI • The Tower • Venus Flytrap

Sometimes plans go awry (like a bus being late on a rainy day), then sometimes aliens crash land a few feet in front of you and turn your entire life upside-down: It was the little things, the small, everyday wonders that…wait, what the— A large, round object raged a few meters above the road, silhouetted by the ambient light. For a second Lee thought that his eyes were playing tricks on him but then he stopped squinting and felt his jaw drop. It was ominously shifting with glowing energy and emanated a menacing hiss, joined by a low ‘whoomphawhoompth’ sound that was mostly drowned out by the pat-pat-pat on the roof and the howling wind. And then it opened; this brilliant flash of rich, swirling gold, hinting at pocketed depths far beyond its surface. It promptly spat something out, landing with a cut-off shout and a grunt of pain, before collapsing in on itself, and disintegrating immediately into a pool of sludge. What? “What?!”

[More on AO3 via the link!]

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Results: The Maritime Finale

This is definitely the last one of these, as it's rounding up a bunch of sea creatures I've missed. I assume by this point everyone who sees this knows what it's about, but just in case: https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting. (I'll get the rest of the entries on there soon.)

The entry people are working from is here:

The one for next week does not exist. (Also I apologize if I seem rushed, this is a busy week for me.)

Art below the cut!

@pomrania (link to post here) has us off on a weird start with their interpretation of the Fatrihrukh. I don't have any particular nostalgia for rage-face comics (I was online during that era, just not in circles where they were common), but honestly this made me smile. Also I like imagining some fisherman on a dock, still sitting in a normal pose and holding his fishing rod, just full-throat screaming at the sky, apparently apropos of nothing in particular. This is a fun one, is what I'm saying.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has an uncanny ability to make me think, "sure, that looks like an animal that could be real" even when they're drawing something like Fish With Tentacles, which I am 99% sure is not a thing. Though if fish did have tentacles, they would look like that. This is of course also the Fatrihrukh; apparently people like that one.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) has done the whole set. A lot of these turned out really well -- I think the Ormlalaehr is stealing the show here, but the Bursgaenga is pretty darn cute. The linked post has details on each of them, which I recommend checking out. (Also thank you for providing alt text.)

@wendievergreen (link to post here) continues to impress with their delightful art style. Love the little space-invader Magtlegyegs, and the Lungyoggeas are just... wild. Extremely cool looking. (Also, thank you for providing alt text.)

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) joins the broad consensus that if you're only drawing one of these, it's the Fatrihrukh. I love the (medieval-art-appropriate) choice to give it human-like parts since the entry doesn't say otherwise. The colors are also really pretty; I like the effect on the background.

Okay. Aberdeen Bestiary. No illustrations for this one -- this whole section is just blocks of text.

Ahrmegyaeb

The wording is ambiguous as to whether whales and dolphins also do this -- but the creature in question is the seal. I have no idea how this works; either baby seals are way smaller than I think or I have completely the wrong idea about how seal mouths look.

Bursgaenga

This one is of course the scarus or escarius, which does not exist. Bestiary.ca notes that Scarus is a genus of parrotfish in modern taxonomy, and that the Rackham translation of Pliny the Elder has decided they are wrasse. No idea how well that reflects medieval understanding.

Chraekhret

Another one that doesn't exist, the echenais. Apparently Pliny has heard of some magical applications in love-charms, litigation, and obstetrics. The fish that anchors ships is a good addition to a fantasy setting, I think.

Dhrakyetor

Naturally the fish that looks like a serpent is the eel. More spontaneous generation, too, which is always nice. I swear I've heard that "giant eels in the Ganges" line somewhere before, but can't place it.

Eavbechtgi

Here we have the lamprey. I kind of wonder if this "head vs. tail" thing has something to do with its unusual head shape?

Fatrihrukh

Honestly I probably should have redacted the "many-footed" thing, because the name given is polippus, which... yeah, that actually tracks. I thought maybe this was the result of someone not bothering to actually count the limbs on an octopus, but it's apparently an obsolete umbrella term for octopus, squid, cuttlefish... all manner of tentacled cephalopod.

Griggkhraz

This is the torpedo, which is some fun etymology. The modern usage of torpedo is inherited from non-self-propelled naval mines, which were named after this torpedo, an electric ray. (Presumably they named mines after it because it hides itself & zaps you if you accidentally step on it.) The rays were named for their effect on people whom they zap: torpidus, 'numb'. This is of course cognate with English torpid. Which is a strange word to be cognate with the thing you shoot at boats.

Also:

...if a torpedo from the Indian sea is touched by a spear or rod, even from a considerable distance, the muscles of the fisherman's arms, even if they are very strong, grow numb...

Would that work if it were a metal rod?

Hretchngin

This is the crab. I did not know all of that about crabs, especially the basil thing.

Khaboghrad

Meet the sea urchin. That's why it specifies "the maritime kind" -- the other kind of urchin is a hedgehog. I don't know why the author calls it "worthless and contemptible", especially since they go on to say it can do this really cool thing. Just seems unnecessarily mean.

Lungyoggea

This one is just shellfish. All of them, apparently. The words given are conca and concle -- Latin concha covers shellfish in general.

Magtlegyeg

Naturally the pearl-bearing shellfish is the oyster, but I love the imagery of oysters going ashore to be fertilized by dew from heaven. The idea of going out at night to watch the oysters migrate onto land and catch the dew is another thing I'm taking note of for a fantasy setting.

Nolthrigyo

Someone probably clocked this one: it's the murex snail, source of the famous "tyrian purple" dye.

Ormlalaehr

Really pushing the definition of "fish" here is... the tortoise. Technically also the turtle, I guess, since the author specifies that this includes land and sea varieties. This is, I think, one that makes total sense once you know what it is, so we're moving on to our last one, which is also really pushing the "what is a fish" envelope...

Riggmungku

This is the frog, also obvious once you see it. The fact that it's being called a fish really throws you off, though, I think.

And that's the whole lot. This has been fun, but I'm also glad to have it completed. (Well, completed with the exception of any responses to this one I've missed or that came in late.) Thanks to everyone who's been looking in on this project -- thanks doubly to everyone who contributed -- and thanks triply to the handful of people who drew something practically every week.

[crevicedwelling]

What is the harm in mixing locales?

it’s a smaller-scale, intraspecific part of an effort to not hybridize things, which results in a loss of biodiversity.

if we have ivory millipedes (Chicobolus spinigerus) from locality A and locality B, and breed them together accidentally or intentionally, the result is something that isn’t identical to either parent. maybe the hybrid can’t survive as well in the wet swamp of locality A but also doesn’t thrive in the dry sandhills of locality B.

now, if these animals are kept in captivity, their availability to live in the wild shouldn’t be a problem, since the keeper will provide them with what they need. but say a poor keeper releases them, or the species goes extinct in the wild and captive populations are used to reintroduce it to its native range, then we might see issues. for the first example, maybe the hybrids are more vigorous than the parents and the animal becomes invasive.

additionally, the taxonomy that we humans come up with isn’t biological reality. sometimes we think two animals are the same species when they aren’t, and after we realize this then we understand all our captive animals are hybrids that don’t match wild populations. the tarantula hobby is a good example of this, since curiously Brachypelma and Poecilotheria tarantulas hybridize readily within their genus. now you’ve got sellers who unwittingly offer hybrid stock, which can get mixed into the unadmixed species, some of which are endangered because of habitat loss and poaching. the result is a bunch of weird spiders that make great pets but nothing else.

in the case of people mixing pet millipedes it’s probably not going to amount to anything other than a loss of a unique form in captivity, which is partly a loss of aesthetic value and perhaps also taxonomic value (since the hybrid animals aren’t “real” species), but the animals themselves won’t necessarily suffer from it. it’s just bad form.

[cyberdragoninfinity]

"Industry plant Danaguy" might be one of the funniest things I've ever seen said about Spectre, Jesus.

SHOUTOUT TO MY DEAR FRIEND AVERY @superrabbittank FOR THAT ONE SHE TRULY UNDERSTANDS THE DANAGUY TAXONOMY

i may hate looking at him but at least the sheer amount of nonstop roast material Spectre gives me will feed me for months. hes like if an undercover fed tried to infiltrate the Dana Labs. hes the government trying to make a danaguy clone and fucking up badly. his stupidass head is so gigantic in some shots he looks like a bobblehead. he talks like AskJeeves. he didnt even have suicidal ideation. HE, AND I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH, WAS PROTECTED FROM WILD DOGS AS AN INFANT BY A TREE. INSANE CHARACTER. I WISH LIGHTNING KILLED HIM TWICE. WHAT IS HIS PROBLEM.

[a-book-of-creatures]

Yo. So I started a project that was way too ambitious than I ever imagined. I wanted to make a taxonomy tree of mythical creatures. Now I’m making a bestiary but I’m having trouble getting a complete list of species of stuff. I want things like yetis and sasquatches not individual monsters like the Loch Ness sea monster which is one of its kind.

Well this is definitely a laudable endeavor and I support you on this 100%. But as to species versus individuals it's kind of a murky area, modern fantasy has taken individuals like Pegasus and the Minotaur and turned them into entire species so I guess you could always go that way. Besides, depending who you ask Nessie is supposed to be an entire breeding colony of dragons water horses plesiosaurs sturgeons giant newts Tullimonstrums giant one-eyed squids long-necked seals Corythosauruses My Little Nessies pikes anything you want, so you could always go wild with that too.

Either way I say go for it!

[mammoth-clangen]

So, first off, as a paleontologist… thank you for that rant. It’s been driving me up the wall that people are going “oh look we revived the dire wolf using gray wolves!!” Even if you ignore the whole issue of de-extinction wolves aren’t even the closest living relative! Jackals and African wild dogs are more closely related to it, and they aren’t anywhere close to being in the same genus.

And of course, de-extinction is a whole other issue. Why are they so focused on the mammoth? At least the thylacine went extinct about a hundred years ago so the niche could still be there. But still, why focus on them? If you want to de-extinct something, why not focus on, oh I don’t know, the northern white rhino which still has two living members for sequencing and who have a living subspecies.

And further more, it’s genuinely cruel to bring most of these back. You think a wooly mammoth that lived in the last glacial maximum would be happy in todays climate that is consistently getting hotter? You think the dodo would appreciate the fact that it’s one habitat has been mostly destroyed? You think the thylacine would enjoy trying to outcompete the dingos that have moved into its niche? No. They wouldn’t.

For the mammoths, it’s especially cruel since they are herd animals and you’d need to clone a lot of them at one time for them to be happy.

And I mean, look. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see these creatures alive. As unlikely as it is, I keep a sliver of hope that the thylacine might still be out there. But that doesn’t mean de-extinction is good. Like it or not, they went extinct for a reason. Yes, that reason may be because of humans, but it is still a reason. You bring them back and they’ll go extinct again unless they are given extreme protection.

They need to focus on living creatures or, if they are desperate to bring something that’s completely extinct back, focus on creatures that have gone extinct within the last two decades.

Ugh, sorry for the mini rant but as someone who understands extinction (including the current Anthropocene mass extinction), bringing things back is not the way to go. I can point to multiple genuses that went extinct for a good reason.

Hello fellow palaeontologist! 🤝 My area of study was actually Dromornithid ichnotaxonomy but carnivorans are holding me hostage nowadays, it seems...

Unfortunately, you have fallen prey to another (thankfully, less insidious) piece of misinformation! Dire wolves aren't wolves, but they are no more closely related to Jackals or African Wild Dogs!

Aenocyon is an outgroup to all wolf-like canids, jackals included!

I've seen the Aenocyon/Lupulella/Lycaon relatedness touted often, and am guilty of repeating it myself before I re-read the paper.

A possible reason for this confusion that African jackals are considered the most basal of the extant, wolf-like canids; as seen on the cladogram above.

Therefore, the ~5.7million year old common ancestor of Aenocyon and the wolf/jackal/dhole lineage would likely have looked more like a jackal. Then Aenocyon convergently evolved a very wolfish skeleton because of their similar lifestyles!

This is also why I chose to reconstructed my Aenocyon with a shoulder patch, seeing many canids seem to have some sort of cape marking.

The 2021 paper that concluded the dire wolf isn't a wolf at all, is unfortunately paywalled :/ Without full access to the paper it's hard to be sure exactly where Aenocyon fits within the larger Canidae family tree (if they discussed it at all), but the abstract describes them as having "an early New World origin".

It seems they were a true outgroup to modern wolf-like canids, being the earliest branching member of Canina! They're not too different from sabercats, in that way.

Also if anyone is following the ongoing edit war on the Dire Wolf Wikipedia page, I beg you to ignore the "taxonomy based on morphology" section. It is only useful as a historical reference for how we used to view Aenocyon dirus as Canis dirus for a long time. Current science supports these morphological similarities being convergent, contrary to what Colossal Lies are being told...

---

I already partially addressed Mammoths (and the issues with their herds inbreeding) in this other ask, but I do agree completely with your points.

Having the GMO wolves raised without another older wolf or dog parental figures is frankly, just cruel. Any vet will tell you hand-reared and imprinted animals are significantly more prone to behavioural issues down the line. Mammoths would be worse again, because unlike Romulus and Remus, there is no chance of even having a twin to keep them company.

And yes; What could possibly go wrong with bringing back a polar-adapted, woolly proboscidean, into a world where even winters are getting progressively warmer?

I too, would love to see extinct animals in the wild. I'd be lying if I said I don't secretly hope for many of them to pull a coelacanth on us. But sadly, I don't think that's likely, and nor do I think we should be trying to make it happen.

---

Hank Green brought up something poignant about this dire wolf debacle, which is that extinction is not as simplistic as we imagine it to be. It's not just the death of a species.

"It's the destruction of a space in the natural environment for a species."

And that is really it, you can't just "bring back" an extinct species, because you aren't bringing their niche back with them.

Successful reintroductions of species that were locally extirpated or made entirely extinct in the wild have only worked because effort was put into securing a niche and ecosystem that had been lost.

And even well-planned, well-funded reintroductions struggle, but at least they understood the assignment.

Colossal, on the other hand, seems to think that adding back their very-roughly-wolf-shaped 'jenga block' to the ecosystem 'tower' will completely stop the collapse. But the real 'collapse' is caused by habitat destruction, and no amount of GMO wolves, mammoths or thylacines can stop that.

Bringing the species in to save the ecosystem is climbing ass-first up a tree. We need to save the ecosystem for the species. And all this is still ignoring the sad truth for a lot of extinct animals:

For many of them, there is no 'tower' to save.

[canis-latransbian]

What's your stance on Red Wolves? Seperate species or Wolf/Coyote hybrid?

Short answer? The remaining Red Wolf population are probably best classified as hybrids, and genetically speaking would be more accurately described as Red Coyotes.

Long answer? This is a great example of a struggle in our taxonomical classification system. Prior to the late 20th century, taxonomy was primarily categorized based on morphology and behavioral observations. DNA testing has flipped a ton of this on its head, leading to things like the "fish don't exist" debate.

The modern Red Wolf genome is about 80% Coyote DNA and 20% Grey Wolf, with much of the hybridization occurring in the last 300-450 years. Of course, these ratios can be directly linked to human interference. Beyond the majority of cross-breeding coinciding with European colonization, the actions of Curtis Carley of the US Fish and Wildlife Service single-handedly decimated the Red Wolf's genetic diversity in the name of conservation. His breeding program collected 450 Red Wolves from both the wild and captivity, of which Carley ordered 95%(!!!!!) of them euthanized for being 'too coyote' based on howl morphology. When re-introduction began after being declared extinct in the wild, programs were slowed or stopped because researchers struggled to prevent the Red Wolves from immediately interbreeding with local Coyote populations (although whether this is due to population stress or a recognized kinship between the two is anyone's guess). We can only speculate how the Red Wolf population would look without human intervention (or if it would exist at all).

Jumping back to taxonomy let's consider a genetic cousin, the Eastern Wolf. It is in a similar hybrid situation, being 60/40 Coyote and Grey Wolf first appearing a few millennia ago, yet the Eastern Wolf is generally considered a distinct species (although it too has a similar if less heated debate on whether it should be). So were is the dividing line to be considered a seperate species? Well, most answers to that are arbitrary, inconsistent, and varies depending on what category of organisms you're even looking at.

So by my understanding, modern Red Wolves are an introgressive variation that fit best in the category of a hybrid swarm much like the Eastern Coyote. Both are in the process of hybrid speciation, but are not yet distinct or consistent enough to qualify as their own species/sub-species. Take all of this with a big chunk of salt, as my "expertise" consists of two semesters of genetics and an autistic love of deep-dive research. Most of my figures came from Dan Flores' Coyote America and Wikipedia.

[hadesisqueer]

Coffee and tea are technically broths since we’re boiling ingredients to make flavored water. I dunno if I could consider cereal to be a soup though. I mean, I assume milk is involved and chowders are a thing, but I think some level of cooking as to be involved. Maybe if you microwave your…are you a Frosted Flakes girl? Anyway, the taxonomy of food is wild and amusing.

And I’m not sure if cold brew coffee counts as a broth.

Great analysis anon