And yet someone designing it with a corridor is a misinterpretation? How is that not a plausible interpretation of that description?

Or through a lens more relevant to the topic, beyond the importance of understanding the scope of plausible interpretations and placing the onus on the artist, the reality is that any layout you choose would have different advantages and disadvantages. By obscuring the design with what is essentially "plot armor" in the ongoing story of Sagan, you prevent reasonable scrutiny. Which could be fine under some circumstances (such as when all sides regard the details of the system with a degree of abstractions), but is it reasonable when you are the one making the comparison by actively holding that system as an advantage?

Wouldn’t you prefer it if the defense of your work was more than barely one stepped removed from "my lineage can beat your lineage because of its super-efficient lungs!" while listing "super lungs" as the respiration type?

"So like, a house, with rooms, and walls, and a front door and a backdoor"
- if you gave that to a 100 architects, do you think you'll see the same layout twice?

That said, other than being told their ancestry is comparable to vertebrates but deaf with 3 eyes, sky snappers' internals are even more of a mystery. How do we know what respiratory solutions did they adapt for flight? Having a vertebrate-like respiratory system hasn't stopped birds from evolving a very bird-like respiratory system. If the creators are willing, there is plenty of room to fill in the blanks and figure out what internal systems might have developed through millions of years of flying.

One thing that comes to mind is the bird-like pose. Do they have a keel?

So they have separate intakes and exhaust spiracles and 4 lungs but are not "intestine-like" (in terms of through gut?) because their unidirectional lungs use air sacks like birds rather than a through passage between the lung pairs which would mean CO2 reaches the exhaust spiracles by individual molecules going on a heroes journey through a portal to Narnia in a closet hidden in the first pair of lungs as long as the witch doesn't cause sneezing.

Yep, that doesn't need any visual clarification at all.

QUOTE (colddigger @ Jan 17 2023, 02:34 AM)

Flightless long toed visorbill with rapid shaking display feather toe tips when-?

Yes! And given the degree with which saucebacks can move their feathers (the same way ophreys lift them off the ground), could the quills be repurposed? Possible as pseudo-fingers, maybe they can use them the way chimps use sticks on insect hives, or like chopsticks, or for fishing, or as knitting needles for complicated nest weaving in conjunction with some sort of flora? Maybe they'd "knuckle walk" over folded feathers?

Meta-convo side note: Even though the comment was an attempt to condescend and my response to it was an attempt to diffuse with a joke, that exchange and a repurposing of the resulting mental image has just inspired an idea that might be relevant 3 or 4 gens from now. So still worth it

QUOTE (Coolsteph @ Dec 28 2022, 03:19 AM)

I noticed that your response exclusively points out negatory things: that is, it's both negative in tone and provides no favorable concessions or admissions for skysnappers.

It's an understandable bias, one I bet all creators can relate too. At the risk of going against that bias and shooting a few of my own sagan children in the wing-legs...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALziqtuLxBQ

pterosaurs relied on their hindlimbs, so how did bipedal pole-vault launching go through without anyone demanding so much as a sketch (Asking for a friend who had to learn CAD just to demonstrate basic biomechanics... Twice over so far)? Not to mention doing so from branches with hooves. Just watch how cautious goats need to be when climbing and how carefully they angle their foot just right to catch the corner of the foothold between the hooves, and imagine having to be just as careful with and calculating where you step while having to build up speed (though echolocation could be key to that). Don't get me wrong, I believe it can be done, but we can't be certain and I definitely haven't seen anyone put in the work to demonstrate it or explore it, and that's a whole can of worms of potential consequences and implications that I haven't seen explored at all and could very well bring about a more grounded comparison between these lineages, if not an outright grounding one.

Additionally, from this thread it appears clear there is lack of avalible information about the ophrey respiration system, which make it difficult to discern potential disadvantages and weaknesses it might have, and that's another area that has the potential to bring about a more thorough comparison with skysnappers.

As adorable as the mental image of an interbiat stripped of feathers except for the toes and trying to fly with just those might be, sadly no, my mind wasn't blessed with such an enjoyable interpretation at the time.

This was what the songsauce piper was "transitional" towards:

QUOTE

By extending the length of the outer hoof-toe and growing wing feathers directly from it, it was able to function as a flexible wingtip, forming elliptical wing proportions. As the toes maintain a mostly homologous relationship, growing a longer and thinner outer wingtip-toe has also resulted in a longer and thinner inner toe to walk on. While it will still run on its hooves, it will increasingly rely on a plantigrade pose in rest or when perching. With the main curve of the wing provided by the wingtip toe, the cannon bone extended further out while the tibia and femur shrunk, reducing the wing area under the knee but in turn allowing thick thigh muscles to stretch between the tibia and the femur, resulting in a slider-rocker linkage mechanism, creating a stout mascular limb portion out of the bicept fimoris that enable powerful and rapid hopping and launching. - The Songsauce Piper

RoboVisor v2

Love the juicy explanation. Does the cyan on the tail and legs stem from the juice as well? Is it an artifact of self-grooming or maybe social grooming (do they have a hierarchy within male bachelor herds)?

If we zoomed into the juice-absorbent hairs under a microscope would they appear more like translucent sponges or hollow vase like tubes or maybe leaf like structures that use adhesion and surface tension to collect and hold onto the juice droplets?

I'm wondering what can these hair structures evolve into. Imagine things like water storage or grooming oils or retaining the scents of social bonds or forming scent disguises or creating an environment for bonded bacteria to grow in.

So the main problem I see is that externally, cephalization didn't happen to wingworms: The sensory apparatus didn't evolve on or migrate towards one end, the eyes are spread along the back and are far away from the taste & scent, and shifting directions of motions seems to be incredibly easy for the lineage as a whole... which makes it kind of awkward to enforce internal cephalization. already you have to start with the compromise of two brains and one is more than half the length of the body... is that an artifact of cephalization, or a lampshade that pulls our attention to the lack thereof?

It's kind of like a cookie with candles on a birthday, rather than making the other kids believe that the cookie is a cake, it is more likely to get them to notice that there is no cake, raising the question... what happened to the cake? And what's the thing in the kitchen on the tray with a hole the shape of dads face? Mysteries that demand one's attention.

IMO, if we want to arrive at a working evolutionary story for wingworms, maybe we should try to answer that question here - within the in-world context - why didn't wingorm cephalized?

What kind of developmental constraint could have prevented it from being the go-to development it tends to be elsewhere and favored the spread-out sensory development we see in its evolutionary history?

I'd been reading into this lineage recently. It seems many species have eyes all along the back, including the earliest ones.

To me, this doesn't suggest a cephalized starting point, but maybe something like a system of repetition and redundancies that could have had advantages for very quick but very simple processes.

What about - as a starting point - distributing the brain into segments along the nervous chord? Earlier cognition could have consisted of avoiding certain colors and being attracted to certain colors. At which point the first segment to see would be the first to send the signal along the body. Cognitive functions could have developed along the connective tissue between segments. I.e. Two eyes deciding the distance of a potentially yummy purple spot.
Over time, these highways between brain segments allowed the build-up of a hierarchy of higher cognitive functions, such as spatial awareness or object recognition or identifying the flight pattern in pursuit of prey, and those would be the ganglions to trend towards one another in one of the body ends and undergo partial cephalization, as redundancy for higher functions would be more costly.

The end result could be a general trend toward anterior or posterior cephalization, while also allowing for localizes systems along the way. Those can include both input and output. For instance, maybe the species with bat wings could have a central flight ganglion that merely receives desired vectors and acceleration stats from a front ganglion.

Rather than describing them as fast vs slow, I would reserve fast for functions where a ganglion or a segment has the authority to send an instruction on its own, and slow to describe functions where consensus between multiple cognitive systems is needed.

I.e. Even if its mouth is in its posterior, let's say the Uniwing, the decision to spit out something that tastes bad is fast, but the decision of determining if it's safe to land on a fruit can be slow.

P.s. Maybe anal cognition vs oral cognition can be used instead ?

On second thought I decided to remove that line. For the moment they raise their necks and can safely be assumed to do what all sauce backs do

The future throat designs pending future generations

honestly, its because the question has inspired long-term potential for cartilaginous throat rings, and I do see a reasonable evolutionary feedback loop between raising the neck to swallow and the development of cartilaginous throat rings creating "stop points" which once passed the individual can start lowering the neck, gaining those few extra moments of being prepared to grab the next morsel.

I do not mind delaying that a generation though, letting this one raise its head.

Tbh I'm half tempted to put in "whatever plesiosaurs did" and gamble the future of the lineage on whatever findings paleontology digs up. Not the most practical approach to spec evo, but it would be exciting.

I think I see the confusion.

If you look closely you'll notice the joint is on the side of the red bar. That's because in the most extreme the shin would twist outwards on about a 90-degree angle while the ankle turns up to add about 60-75 degrees which would put the cannon bone at a maximum of about 165 degrees total from the thigh at the high point of the wing rotation, but the ankle does not turn a full 165 degrees on its own.

I can tweak the angles but IMO that's already less than a human arm, and well within the flexibility of birds and bats curving and shaping their wings during flight. I did not get the impression that interbiats fly with stiff wings.

A stamp of approval on the leepi meepi face since the displaced space was displaced and replaced by a backspace

Approval Checklist:
Art:
Art Present?: Y
Art clear?: Y
Gen number?: Y
All limbs shown?: Y
Reasonably Comparable to Ancestor?: Y
Realistic additions?:

Name:
Binomial Taxonomic Name?: Y
Creator?: Y

Ancestor:
Listed?: Y
What changes?:

• External?: Toes, shallow nostrils
• Internal?: Slight shift from skeletal to hyodrostatic support
• Behavioral/Mental?: Smaller brain

Are Changes Realistic?: Wonderfully so
New Genus Needed?: (If yes, list why)

Habitat:
Type?: all of 'em
Flavor?: all of 'em
Connected?: Y
Wildcard?: maybe? not sure about genus rules

Size:
Same as Ancestor?: N
Within range?: Y
Exception?: Island dwarfism

Support:
Same as Ancestor?: Yish
Does It Fit Habitat?: Y
Reasonable changes (if any)?: Rigid structures replaced with soft mesh
Other?:

Diet:
Same as Ancestor?: N
Transition Rule?: Y
Reasonable changes (if any)?: Neotonic

Respiration:
Same as Ancestor?: Y
Does It Fit Habitat?: Y
Reasonable changes (if any)?: N/A
Other?:

Thermoregulation:
Same as Ancestor?: N
Does It Fit Habitat?: Y
Reasonable changes (if any)?: Neotonic

Reproduction:
Same as Ancestor?: Y
Does It Fit Habitat?: Y N/A
Reasonable changes (if any)?:
Other?:

Description:
Length?: Medium-well
Capitalized correctly?: Y
Replace/Split from ancestor?: Split
Other?: There's a misplaced empty space in "cere ,"

Opinion: Pending(Misplaced space);

They must, how would the interbiat be able to fly if they didn't?

Sauceback yoga:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP7e5iqwfJc

This is a fun problem because it's essentially a locomotion problem inverted, one with many solutions: It could raise its neck to slide the food down like suggested above, or attach internal muscles along the neck vertebrae, or pass it along slight cartilaginous rings in a wave like motion along the neck using the external neck muscles. it could use the tongue and lips as a water pump to flood the throat and slurp it up and then spit out the water, it could inverse slither with simple tire trek pattern within its throat, it could vibrate its neck using its tongue's echolocation clicks, and my favorite though least likely option would probably be extending the tongue muscles inwards, maybe using the inside of the sauceback lower nostril supporting bone as a (secondary?) hyoid.

I've edited in my pick.

^ That makes me wonder if anyone has ever done an autumn sagan 4 diorama

If my rockshorian descendants pull through, I'm interested in doing a R/P/S rockshorian complex. rockruiser females could sneak into bobbysoxer bull's harem & share their neotenic male larva with other females, while a 3rd WIP "Austin rockshorian" monogamous decedent would be protected from such deceit but their males would be under threat from invasions of the competition-specialized bobbysoxer bulls, resulting in a combined pool of physical characteristics and dominant/recessive traits.

I'm not entirely sure how to go about this. Can I make a hybrid of 3 species saying they are closely related? Should I go 2 hybrid species and make the complex a hybrid of those two? And how do I present that complex, should it count as a genus submission?

Unfortunately there's no elastic material option, but this has the same affect: Since it's being pulled but doesn't need to push, the grashof loop only needs to provide a constraint. Generally the loop has to be tough but not hard - it's basically functions as a rope -but thicker layers of fascia would probably help prevent injury while still allowing the wider part to function as a muscle.


The joint doing most of the contortion is the ankle (the knee is the joint between the red & blue bars). In a real organic structure there would be a bit of swivel for the structure as a whole so the contortion wouldn't seem as bad, still a wide range but it wouldn't look as robotic and isolated as… Well, robovisor.

Fine, I still feel like we're applying a terrestrial intuition about head size that shouldn't apply to saucebacks proboscis (a hollow oral tube is a literal air pipe) but it's not that important for the concept and future lineages, so if it increases believability... Fine.

I've Updated the female head size

QUOTE (Coolsteph @ Dec 1 2022, 11:59 PM)

I'm also not sure if the overgrown claw-toes would realistically look like that.

if you mean the orientation of the claw, that was a question I've struggled with when coming up with the rockshorian.If the larval roofbacks started catching prey with their claws, using it like a mantis raptorial, then the opposable segment could be more likely to grow as a heel bump from underneath the toes, which is closer to what I initially wanted for this lineage.
The problem is that their primary purpose is to grip feathers, and the initial stages of such a bump would reduce the surface coming into contact with the feather. It can be done, even now someone can take another descendent of roofbacks and do just that, but not without sacrificing the roofback's unique nesting model.
Alternatively, extending a rough area above the "knuckles" into a hook would increase the surface area in contact with the feather barbs within the plumage even before creating a gripping point, eventually leading to a tipping point where the better grip on the feather is above the toes rather bellow them. This allowed the rockshorian to evolve opposable claws while retaining the roofback nesting model.

QUOTE (Coolsteph @ Dec 1 2022, 11:59 PM)

The neck of the adult in the middle doesn't look like it could support its proboscis's weight.

How much would you say a sauceback's "head" weighs compared to that of a crane, egret, heron, or flamingo? Ears and nostrils but no brain, supportive plating but no enclosed skull, a hollow oral tube with an oral ring but no jaw. You can probably easily double the size of the head while keeping to a similar weight, and it's probably still not as bad as an RL male gerenuk with fully-grown horns.

QUOTE (MNIDJM @ Dec 1 2022, 04:57 PM)

Do you mind putting a white background behind the cross sections for this and the Rockruiser? It's a bit too confusing to have it integrated into the landscape like this

Done