Comments: 42
Hardvaro [2013-09-19 23:39:17 +0000 UTC]
What do they eat?
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AmnioticOef In reply to Hardvaro [2013-11-12 03:32:53 +0000 UTC]
They eat the fauna that grows around volcanic vents.
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beingsneaky In reply to Hardvaro [2018-06-08 23:44:35 +0000 UTC]
not the creator of this thing but i guess it eats with a proboscis
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MaxterandKiwiKing [2012-02-24 15:09:06 +0000 UTC]
An ectotherm in a frozen waste?Impossible.
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beingsneaky In reply to AmnioticOef [2018-06-08 23:45:20 +0000 UTC]
how about you change it to a messotherm
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OblivionJunkey94 [2012-02-23 17:05:56 +0000 UTC]
Very interesting how does it see?
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AmnioticOef In reply to OblivionJunkey94 [2012-02-23 22:16:30 +0000 UTC]
There are specialized hairs leading to its eyes that act like fiber optics.
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Tektalox [2012-02-16 07:48:43 +0000 UTC]
Love it! Cute, simple and super-alien! I like how it can shed of and grow new legs and that it uses fiber optic-hair in order to see through its fur. Good job!
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Leggurm [2012-02-13 09:33:59 +0000 UTC]
AWESOME! I can imaging this living on the planet Hoth in Star Wars.
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bensen-daniel [2012-02-12 17:40:17 +0000 UTC]
I like the idea that the legs are really puppet-controlled. What happens when one is suddenly damaged?
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AmnioticOef In reply to bensen-daniel [2012-02-13 03:19:54 +0000 UTC]
Alternatively, it could quickly grow a stunted pair of "emergency legs".
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indigomagpie In reply to AmnioticOef [2012-02-17 23:56:29 +0000 UTC]
Well, since it can clearly survive for a while without food, it could probably survive lying still until it grew new legs (particularly if they were stunted.)
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AmnioticOef In reply to indigomagpie [2012-02-18 00:36:43 +0000 UTC]
Maybe. Then again, heat loss is a problem.
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AmnioticOef In reply to bensen-daniel [2012-02-13 02:30:55 +0000 UTC]
I suppose the animal just limps along until it can grow a new pair, or dies. But then, it has no predators, and snow's a forgiving surface to fall on.
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bensen-daniel In reply to AmnioticOef [2012-02-13 06:54:05 +0000 UTC]
I bet that direct contact with the snow is bad for it though. Maybe it can extend the legs it has growing and use them.
Or perhaps, rather than bird-like jointed legs with toes, it has lots of stilt-like rods (like a sea urchin), which are constantly growing, breaking off, and being replaced.
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AmnioticOef In reply to bensen-daniel [2012-02-13 07:09:24 +0000 UTC]
Yeah, it may be forced to extend an immature set of legs.
I don't know about sea-urchin spines. It seems to me that proper legs are necessary in order to walk efficiently, and producing lots of spines that then break off is a waste of biomass.
Maybe it's a system that could work for one of the creatures living in the volcanic caldera environment I was discussing with Yaspb; I can imagine the spines being derived from stiffened hairs.
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Onironus [2012-02-11 22:06:09 +0000 UTC]
Wow! Fantastic! What kind of senses does it have? Awesome concept with the shedding of the legs; never heard of that before. As well, the extra worldbuilding and exoenvironmental twist really complete the Snowball's image.
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AmnioticOef In reply to Onironus [2012-02-12 01:17:24 +0000 UTC]
Thanks Onironus! There are specialized hairs that act like fiber optics to guide light to its eyes, and it has a keen magnetic sense for navigation.
I'm thinking the lower legs are composed of flexible tissue that freezes solid on contact with the outside air.
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Onironus In reply to AmnioticOef [2012-02-12 07:43:35 +0000 UTC]
Wow, alien right down to the last bit!
I like the idea of solidification by freezing, kind of an environmentally mediated ossification. The tendons controlling the joints, are they running all the way down to the toes? And if they are, how do they keep from freezing solid?
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AmnioticOef In reply to Onironus [2012-02-13 03:09:19 +0000 UTC]
Good question. I suppose there could be an oily layer inside the leg to lubricate the tendons and keep them from becoming encased in ice. The tendons themselves would have to be made of an exotic substance that stays pliable at extremely low temperatures; whether something like that exists, I don't know.
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Onironus In reply to AmnioticOef [2012-02-14 21:26:22 +0000 UTC]
Well, icefish have antifreeze in their bodies, which allows them to swim in subzero temperatures, though I'm not sure of the limits this has. Biology always seems to find a way around things in terms of possible and impossible though when it comes to chemistry. I think it's safe to assume that such a material or substance could exist.
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lizerdspherex [2012-02-11 16:41:08 +0000 UTC]
I just want to know how it eats and what?
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yasbp [2012-02-11 12:11:37 +0000 UTC]
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yasbp In reply to AmnioticOef [2012-02-12 01:20:33 +0000 UTC]
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AmnioticOef In reply to yasbp [2012-02-13 03:06:05 +0000 UTC]
Wow, those are some great ideas!
I like the concept of a larval form that resembles the primitive ancestor. In fact, I think the lemming-like creatures I mentioned before are actually Snowball larvae. Maybe in the early stages of their lives they form packs that roam the underground caverns, a bit like baby sauropods.
The hotspots will cover the full range of possible sizes, with small being the commonest and large being the rarest. For this reason, large hotspots may be important breeding colonies for these animals.
The closest thing there are to plants are lichen-like microbial colonies, except perhaps for some moss-like holdouts in the volcanic crater .
I like the idea of sophonts inhabiting a giant caldera. Maybe the crater is a kind of "lost world" of fauna surviving from a period when the planet was warmer, the sophonts included. I can imagine the society being incredibly conservative and strictly regimented, especially after they degrade their already-fragile environment (a bit like Iceland). They may establish some poor colonies in other large hotspots, which could support societies ranging from those of the Greenland Norse to the Henderson islanders (have you read Collapse)?
I wonder what the relationship between the caldera and the human research stations would be. Perhaps the humans know about the hot spot, but haven't had the time/money to explore it. Or maybe they don't know about it; they only know about "the anomaly", a small spot that's constantly covered in clouds which they assume to be the site of a super volcano.
"I'm not sure whether to be super excited by this awesome ecosystem, or utterly disappointed at the fact that us internet folk can produce things so infinitely better than that of big budget movies (or furthermore, saddened by the fact that I didn't come up with it)."
Aw, I'm flattered . I liked the "hive mind" metaphor you used on Spec Evo.
As for what the sophonts' appearance, I like your idea. They should have a shell or bony plate homologous to the vacuum layer on their backs, though.
Alternatively, they could be completely unlike anything else on the planet; the only members of their clade to have survived the ice-age due to their intelligence.
I think sheddable legs are a novel adaptation to the cold. Then again, they may have evolved from a system in which segments of the body take over for one another in succession: new segments appearing at the head end could slowly move backwards, first losing their sensory organs and modifying mouthparts into legs as they became body segments, then developing reproductive organs and finally an anus as they became tail segments.
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yasbp In reply to AmnioticOef [2012-02-14 01:31:05 +0000 UTC]
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AmnioticOef In reply to yasbp [2012-02-15 01:38:40 +0000 UTC]
I love that story, especially the core concept of a man and an alien both set adrift...There are already characters and potential plots going through my mind.
I also love the idea of land boats . Just to clarify, you mean these, right? [link] They could be the main transport vehicles of the researchers.
Yeah, it occurred to me as well that that might not be the best growth scheme for sapience. I think your concept works better.
I've been thinking about the aliens and their culture; I imagine them as ancestrally being plains grazers/omnivores that evolved sapience as a result of their extremely complex social interactions (I'm thinking they may have a baroque breeding system similar to the one you thought up). Because of their featureless environment and lack of manipulators, they never developed the impulse to create tools. They did however domesticate a species of land-urchin (Bensen-daniel's idea) which they raised for food; overgrazing by their herds of urchins then caused the fragile environment to undergo an ecological collapse, resulting in widespread starvation and chaos (perhaps another way in which they modified the environment was by digging tunnels to bring volcanic gases to inhospitable regions).
The society that rose from the ashes of the calamity was extremely conservative. The aliens gave up herding and adopted a philosophy of "animal-becoming", trying to live as much as possible like animals. A powerful organization remained that enforced the new lifestyle through a network of agents placed in every roaming band (effectively thought police).
"I'd hate to feel I'm intruding on your project or prompting you to take on an unnecessary workload. "
You're not imposing at all! I probably would have abandoned this world by now if it weren't for your ideas.
"Somebody will ask me to do something, and I'll be like 'sorry, I have some work I need to be doing', and they'll be like 'what' and I'll be like 'I kind of need to design stuff for an alien planet" and they'll be like 'u srs? That doesn't sound like work' "
XD
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yasbp In reply to AmnioticOef [2012-02-18 16:57:25 +0000 UTC]
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