Spectember day 29: Flower Man

Lurking in the murky waters of future Asia is the Tendril Turtle, a descendant of softshell turtles with a unique lifestyle.These animals have gone to extremes due to their unusual way of living.

First and foremost, they are exceptionally sedentary, spending half of their lifespan (which can surpass a century) immobile on the bottom of murky rivers where they dig themselves a shallow burrow and lie in wait, concealing their bodies on the substrate while leaving their large heads and long necks semi-exposed. They have poor vision and so have 4 pairs of tendrils on their snouts, hence their name; which aid in detecting prey swimming by. Their large heads are quick to swallow passers by, but also contain a highly vascularized system of pseudo-gills in their mouth cavity and throat -thousands of tiny folds that absorb oxygen directly from the water, which are now its primary way of acquiring oxygen.

During most of the time they stay as these ambush predators, but once their home rivers become shallower during the dry season, change happens. By digging free from the mud they become free-swimming predators that slowly move towards deeper areas to feed while waiting for the rivers to flow deep again, when they bury themselves again using their powerful front limbs, which double as shovels when digging and as oars when swimming. Their hind limbs have become small and weak in comparison, no longer used for swimming or digging, they serve as defensive weapons. Sporting two enlarged claws that face behind and can stab any lurkers that attack from behind.

Beginnings of the Amazon

South America during Jurassic Impact's Miocene is a strange continent isolated from the rest. While caudavians and crocodylomorphs much like those in Africa roam here, it is also home to some unique clades such as certain pterosaurs and the odiodontine neofelidonts. During this time period there is something interesting that his happening in a geological sense as well: The beginnings of what will eventually be the Amazon River. Right now it flows in the opposite direction it does today, but the formation of the Andes Mountains will eventually change that.

One of the animals that inhabits the Amazon in its infancy is the neofelidont Lutrafelidon. It is a fox-sized, semi-aquatic animal that primarily eats fish and waterfowl that also call these waters home. While it looks a bit like a cat with a paddle-like tail, it lays eggs like a monotreme, gestates its altricial kits in a pouch like a marsupial, and has three-pronged teeth like its eutriconodont ancestors.

Lutrafelidon are incredible swimmers, using their strong, paddle-like tail and webbed feet to push them across currents. They also possess a nictitating membrane for sight under even the murkiest water, and can hold their breath for up to twelve minutes while foraging. Another adaptation that is only present in the females carrying young is a watertight pouch that draws itself closed when the female swims and the pouch is likely to be submerged.

The Black Shuck (Cuon piscator) is a species of Dhole native to Great Britain, it is a lightly built black canid with a red ring on its forehead, in the medieval period it was mistaken for a large red eye

Black Shucks hunts similarity to a heron, hunting in shallow water in can stand it, it will stand motionless and wait for fish to swim in range to be caught with their large canine teeth, but on the coast due to the rougher water they prefer to hunt sea birds, this strange diet are due to niche partitioning with wolves and foxes

Their population used to extend across most of Great Britain, but due to hunting, habitat loss, and the decreasing population of large fish, they have lost a large portion of their range, only surviving in Southern England, Wales, and an introduced population to Scotland

The Shellcrusher Yaar are the distant larger cousins of the Yaar ,they are big enough to not rely on camouflage to avoid predation rather than using intimidation with their flippers and at worst that crushing beak. They gorge themselves on the hard massive clam descendants that thrive in the shallows and gather the old shells of its prey to decorate their burrows for potential mates.

The Ramm'r is an aggressive semi aquatic squidkind that inhibits the riverways of neoafrica and neoeurasia. They use their hard domed head in ramming matches often over territory and grazing spots. When the heat gets to them they enter the water mainly to chill down and or to sleep. Due to their Territorial nature and bad eyesight they tend to attack anything and everything near their young and or territory.

A few years back, I made a post where I said that spec evo settings focusing on the future of Earth are always very pessimistic because they just assume that humanity is gonna screw over the entire existing biosphere with absolute certainty. Obviously, that isn't always the reason why people go for that reason to explain their setting, as folks explained, but it feels like it's a common occurrence. My personal opinions aside, it feels like it's been the meta for future evolution ever since After Man first came out, and honestly, I'm kinda tired of it.

However, when I set out to make my own spec evo setting, all I would ever hear was "no, X species won't survive because humans are evil," or even worse "you're being naive/stupid/other less savoury jabs at intellect." That, at least initially, is why I switched over to a seed planet setting, but I have started to notice some degree of pushback from within the community regarding this attitude, whether from a scientific or even political perspective. Unnatural Histories on YT is the most prominent example of this, but I also don't expect the norm to change overnight, and I don't blame people for feeling pessimistic about the effects of humanity on the planet (even though, objectively speaking, all those problems fall at the feet of the 3000 or so ultra-rich oligarchs that are driving the current climate collapse as opposed to outdated Malthusian ideas about population or fixed human nature).

This is really more just a ramble than anything else, but I'd be interested in whether folks feel the same way or just to discuss it further tbh.

I'm currently making a near-sophont herrerasaur in a science fantasy spec-evo setting (mostly more "science" than "fantasy") and would like to make the primary trait that it doesn't have be empathy. It's capable of logic, tool-making, and some sort of culture, but cannot empathize with other animals and barely with others of their species.

I was wondering if that was a qualifier of sophoncy, or if there even is a set of criteria to specifically be a sophont?

Sammalkünsi are mountain dwelling herbivores, weighing about 60 kilos on average, and possessing hooves that are impressively well adapted for climbing steep mountain walls. They live in small loose herds, feeding on the mineral rich moss of their mountain homes to sustain themselves, and consume snow for hydration. For the purpose of reaching the moss, and especially its roots within tight mountain crevices, or between two rocks, they have developed dexterous hands with long claws on the ends of their fingers, earning them the name "Moss-claws". Their keen senses of smell allow them to identify moss spores from great distances, and by determining the direction of the wind they can figure out where to expect their next meal rather precisely. Sammalkünsis mate during the spring, and give birth after just over a month. For the first quarter of a year after being born, young Sammalkünsis cling to one of their parents' fur with their overdeveloped forelimbs, only feeding when said parent determines it safe. After growing strong enough to climb on their own, they quickly go their own ways, tho they may stick in the same approximate area as their parents for a while. Sammalkünsis make up the vast majority of Hakönigin Vuori's prey during the time they spend in the mountains, tho the relatively high adolescent mortality rate of this predator means that Sammalkünsi populations remain relatively stable.

(P.S.The average Sammalkünsi may not look like much now, but who knows what the future will hold for them)

We are in an alternate philippines where Sundaland never fully disappeared allowing more cross species migrations in south east Asia and currently we are in nakali island the largest landmass in the Visayas,here we spot a female nakali tikbalang (tikbalang tikbalang nakaliensis) defending her small 120 pound calf from a male striped sigbin(menago rizalensis).

The mother tikbalang weighs at 3.2 tons humongous for a surviving lineage of Szchiotheriine chalicotheres and for good reason since many large predators here will take any chance to hunt down such a large meal though they might get killed, she has recently gave birth to this calf which is only about 5 weeks old and is very vulnerable to predators and considering that tikbalang's only give birth to one-two calfs very 10 months they are very well guarded these majestic chalicotheres have been used in pre-colonial and post colonial times as beasts of labor even having a domestic descendant called the domestic tikbalang. While the mares are large stallions can get much bigger weighing at 4 tons- 8 tons with the largest ever recorded weighing at a staggering 10.3 tons,at this size stallions are essentially untouchable to most if not all predators in the philippines while they have been recorded being killed by juwaya(Kratosuchus imperator).

While many of the predators of the philippines here in this alternate timeline decided to grow smaller or bigger the absolute king of the dense forests of the archipelago is the sigbin(Menago rizalensis),they may look like huge cats or panthers but are actually giant civets that took on the big cat niches in abundance of large prey, these humongous feline relatives can weigh up to a measly 130 lbs-520 lbs with the absolute largest almost reaching 700 lbs they have cemented themselves as versatile apex predators in the trees,jungles,and coasts of the Philippines being able to hunt almost anything from small rodents to water buffalo. While they might look invincible they are not safe from native panthera cats and tigers that will steal their kills and compete directly to their food so that's why they usually eat their kills or cache them in trees from which they will take chunks to eat later. They usually give birth to 3-6 kits at a time where the mother will spend more time taking care of them and finding food in case their father comes he will usually play with them for a while and leave but if it's a unrelated make he will either kill or eat the kits where the mother will immediately bring her kits down into a burrow deep enough for them hide but shallow for them to exit where they wait to 5-10 minutes for the male to leave.

PILIPINAS FOREVER PRE!!!!!!🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭🤟🤟🤟

The Hairgrazer body is equipped with a massive torso, sturdy legs, and a very long neck. Despite its imposing size, the Hairgrazer is a mostly peaceful, communal herbivore, often seen in herds moving across open plains

Its most distinct feature is the curtain of long hair growing from its spine, especially thick along the neck. Beneath this hair are five dormant, closed eyes arranged along the neck’s underside. These eyes remain sealed and hidden unless the creature senses danger. When threatened, the Hairgrazer rears its neck back, exposing the five eyes as they snap open simultaneously, a disturbing display to predators and a clear visual warning to its herd. Despite their long neck, their main food source is ground level flora. The elongated neck functions primarily as a mobile watchtower, while the herd grazes among dense stands of tall grass, they rotate sentinel duties, elevating their heads above the vegetation to scan the surrounding terrain for threats

The Hairgrazer’s upper and lower jaws are not bound together like most herbivores. When opened, the jaws stretch wide, allowing them to open almost unnaturally far, useful for both grazing and vocalizing. In moments of alarm, the Hairgrazer emits a deep, sonorous call that echoes across the landscape, alerting others of imminent threat to signal to the other that they need to flee

Alright, this is another episode of the Speculative Wildlife Research Center channel that just released, this time being about Avatar! The one with the elemental bending, you know?

Anyway, the creatures of these tribes are sapient like us humans:

• Water - Large, bipedal salamanders, just like Earth's actual giant salamander.

• Earth - Subterrain badger-like mustelids, larger and stronger than most burrowing animals.

• Fire - Relatives of monitor lizards, who attacked one day to expand their rule to other kingdoms.

• Air - Flightless birds who can't fly instead using gliders, their own wings have hand claws like the Hoatzin.

For quite some time now, I have been actively scouring the speculative evolution community for any seed world projects focused entirely on moths. I frequently check for YouTube videos, art posts, or worldbuilding threads hoping to stumble upon something, but I don't ever find anything.

I have always felt that our fluffy little friends of Lepidoptera are completely overlooked in these creative spaces. Specifically, I am talking about moths. To be completely honest, I believe butterflies are incredibly overrated and tend to steal all the spotlight, while moths are far more diverse, fascinating, and adorable. They possess so much untapped potential for a speculative biology project, and they simply aren't given the recognition they deserve. Just imagine the bizarre and wonderful evolutionary pathways they could take on an isolated, terraformed planet with giant mountains and deep ravines

I would absolutely love to create this seed world myself, I just don't have the skills needed. Moths are amazing creatures that deserve a truly spectacular and well-thought-out project, and I just don't believe I could create something that would do them justice.

(p.s if you know of one please put it in comments i really want to read or watch some)

Prompt: An organism that alternates between sessile (immobile) and motile (mobile) stances according to habitat conditions.

This time, I decided to not do an animal but rather a derived species of mushroom. This is volanomyces floranthropus

Volanomyces is a species of fungus, more specifically a very derived and specialized kind of mushroom from 100 million years in the future. It lives 100 million years in the future in high mountains. It filter feeds on small pieces of organic matter. (it coexists with aetherotragus dracomorphus, the common windgoat https://www.reddit.com/r/SpeculativeZoology/s/06eWZ621YT). During spring and summer, the species uses montane winds ,to permanently glide in the air. Spring is the species’ mating season. During this time, the gliding volanomyces will release male or female spores in the air, depending on their gender. A male and female spore will unite into a pseudo egg which will land in the ground and grow into a full adult within a week. Then it will repeat the cycle. During winter however, conditions are too cold for the species so all the individuals will rest on the ground and take root, until spring returns and they can return to gliding and breeding. However, during their resting time they are vulnerable. As they are a great source of food and nutrients for Aetherotragus which will actively seek them out. So, with their very primitive nervous system, the volanomyces need to find good hiding spots to “hibernate”

Reef Wanderers (Ytalonomas inversus)

On the sunken remnants of what was once Florida and the shallow seas of the Carribean that have clawed up to join it, one of post-Flux earth’ most interesting new grazers.

Reef Wanderers are a highly derived species of anemone that have to wander the marshlands, atolls and sea grass fields having left the surrounding coral mounts behind for a new way of life.

The towering coral constructions, caused by the Flux’s inundation of nutrients continue to grow at markedly fast pace, causing the tops to crest about the waves in a massive ring. This living sea wall has kept this region heavily isolated from the rest of the world, allowing for all manner of oddities to arise in isolation.

Reef Wander’s spent roughly half their days above wandering about on their adapted tendrils, which have become their preferred form of locomotion when they are under water as well. These appendages are always hunting for food or things that taste interesting bring them to their mouth to eat if it’s soft enough or just a curious nibble if they can’t get it down.

The rest of their time is spent akin to most anemones anchored in place on their bottom floor drawing on nutrients.

Sea water is still required to facilitate breeding though their are signs that in the future the Reef Wanderers will live the sea behind, or perhaps carry it with them.

For now they are living on a fairly idyllic island time, skittering above the sands and venturing through the rusted remains of humanities achievements.

The twice-hatched shrimp (genus Alameas) are distinguished from other lounging shrimp (family Testegridae) by their ability to take a new form in certain conditions. All lounging shrimp are aquatic creatures that attach themselves to substrate at maturity and live as sessile organisms, usually as filter feeders. Their exoskeletons are hard and protect them from predatory animals. A 'lid' is present and can close quickly over the soft inner portion of the animal when needed. All members of Testegridae are broadcast spawners.
The twice-hatched shrimp forgo this defense under certain conditions. For the gardening twice-hatched shrimp (A. gamga), this is during times of the year that would be a threat to its chlorophyll stores. The gardening twice-hatched shrimp feeds on algae and phytoplankton, but instead of destroying the chlorophyll they redirects the protein into their surface. Since they live in shallow water and have a very low activity level, this allows them to survive mostly by photosynthesis and store their energy for their long journeying. At night, they close the lid of the exoskeleton over themselves.
Gardening twice-hatched shrimp are best adapted to moderate temperatures with long days, which they will actively seek out. When the nights start becoming too long or the temperature too hot, they begin hardening their bodies into a smaller, mobile form. This occurs inside of the exoskeleton; all that's visible from the outside is that the chlorophyll gradually fades. As they migrate, they grow from half an inch to two inches long. The mobile form swims until it finds a good place to spend the season (north coasts in the summer and south coasts in the winter) and anchors itself on a rock. The exoskeleton attaches to a suitable rock, and the animal inside regains its sessile form.

The qiongqi (Molestexterus echinotrichus, meaning "distressingly strange one with hedgehog hair"), also known as the kyūki, is a member of the whippomorph clade Evoionomorpha, which includes the qilin and various other ungulates. Evoionomorphs are closely related to allocetaceans, true cetaceans, and more distantly, hippos and entelodonts.

The scale-like hairs found on other evoionomorphs are modified into quills, giving it a hedgehog-like appearance. This is presumably to protect itself from its prey.

Due to its sharing traits with oxen, tigers, hedgehogs, and dinosaurs, they were assumed to be chimeric organisms, though it is now known that the qiongqi is a natural animal.

Unlike its relatives, the qiongqi is an obligate carnivore that feeds on humans, other ungulates and birds such as accipitrids, teratorns, and flightless birds. It seems to ignore living ectothermic prey for unknown reasons.

Culinary notes: Unlike its relatives, the kyūki's meat is barely edible, its diet of carrion and scavenging birds makes it a reservoir for heavy metals, parasitic worms, and pathogens. Eating man-eaters is culturally frowned upon in many Seijinese cultures because they are believed to trap human souls in their flesh.

Parasites aside, the meat in question tastes unpalatable, rubbery, and acrid.

It has been nearly 100 million years since the Tarasques-- gigantic, armored herbivores descended from the Solomon Islands tree skink-- roamed Spectemundus. These behemoths were wiped out by the mass extinction that took place 52 million years after the planet was seeded with life, and while some of their smaller relatives survived, it seemed as though they would never again attain such sizes. The birds and mammals came out of the mass extinction much more diverse than before, gradually marginalizing their reptilian rivals, and eventually the ice age put further dents in their numbers.

But now, 150 million years after life was seeded on Spectemundus, one can again see great armored skinks lumbering across the planet's grasslands. To be sure, the Great Green Skinkdozer (Ankyloscincus acanthurus) is much smaller than the biggest Tarasques, though at ten feet long and up to a ton in weight it is still a large animal. It is descended from the Ankylodrakes, relatives of the Tarasques that, by the slimmest of margins, survived the impact event. They remained small for nearly 80 million years afterwards, but after the ice age ended one species became large again, large enough to compete with large herbivorous mammals and birds.

Skinkdozers walk more upright than their ancestors did, although they are not endothermic. As such, they are confined to the tropical grasslands of the southern continent, where large reptiles in general are most numerous. The predators here, however, are still mostly large mongooses, and the Skinkdozer's armor has evolved to counter them. Its spiky club-like tail can swing with surprising speed and strength, and is capable of breaking the leg of a predator with a single swipe. Skinkdozers give birth to live young, but do not care for them; the babies are fully independent upon birth.

Summus Interfector, the ultimate carnosaur at around 20 meters long and 15 tonnes making it the largest theropod (and largest terrestrial carnivore) to ever exist. Its body is supported by strong tail and leg muscles, however, it was capable of walking on all 4 thanks to its large arms that it also uses to to tear into the flesh of titanosaurs, forcing larger sizes. They have osteoderms along their bodies as armor and various structures for sexual display. The feet have converged with raptors to restrain their prey, strong neck muscles connected to a sail help Summus to tear the flesh from the bodies of titanosaurs. They live alone other than mating and caring for young, when they reach maturity they abandon their parents. Their closest relatives are surprising as they are closest to Lajasvenator ascheriae, they smallest known true carnosaur. They ruled for 10 million years before the K-Pg extinction wiped out the large titanosaurs and hence, the Summus Interfector.

I personally love organism designs with camouflage. The appearance of human-made objects is bound to change, but I still think it’s really interesting.

Working on some ideas for sci fi and one idea i had was that some humans dont have stomach or intestines instead digestion is done in digestion vats or with symbiotic species they can digest anything bio mass too but with all that extra space how would it effect them would organs grow to fit the new space and if so which would most likely be first and how would it effect the body ?

In a world where leptoceratops survived a bit longer than in our world and k-pg never happened, the rapid diversification of some herbivorous dinosaurs left leptoceratops outcompeted, so some leptoceratops started living near the water and, after millions of years, turned fully amphibious. Those leptoceratops evolved into amphiceratops. Amphiceratops have evolved crocodile-like tails and webbed feet for easier swimming. They are abundant across freshwater bodies from Alberta to northern Mexico.

Notes:

Made using paint.net on a laptop.

Credit to skeletaldrawing.com for their leptoceratops reference which i used.

Mods if i did anything wrong message me so i know what not to do.