Skysnappers do not have bird lungs at all, they're practically flying salamanders that got fuzzy and don't have any close analogue among earth reptiles.

Ophreys have lungs that are somewhere between bird lungs and grasshopper lungs and are at least as efficient as bird lungs, if not more so as they don't need to exhale out the same hole they inhaled through. Colddigger was incorrect about them being "intestine-like"; they have air sacs, like birds do, and sufficient frilly structure to maximize oxygen absorption. The unrelated songsauces are the only saucebacks that I'd describe as having intestine-like lungs.

To add on since it got buried on Discord, ophreys can fly comfortably literal miles above where a pack of these guys will start struggling to breathe. This style of lung puts a severe limit on breathable altitude and ophreys are quite literally the worst thing to try hunting by inducing hypoxia.

Non-ophrey biats should be more feasible for them to use this strategy on, but none of those really soar high up like that.

Edited

I'm reading the description more closely and I don't think they can successfully cause hypoxia in ophreys as a whole. All ophreys have unidirectional macrolungs, which makes them able to fly much higher than this can ever hope to with its comparatively simple bellows lungs. It was this that allowed the ascendophrey to evolve, rather than the ascendophrey gaining new specializations for sky life other than just not landing as much. (Vultoph also flies similarly high to the ascendophrey)

You realize that cellulase is a digestive enzyme that their immune system cant really do anything against, right?

Though, it should mainly be a problem for tooth wear. Mucus should already be protecting the inside of the gut.

No, I mean how some species make hormones and others do other things. Those should all be different genus groups. Right now this is like making a genus for all gut microbes, when even ignoring lesser taxonomic differences, gut microbes are in multiple domains in real life.

The ones fulfilling different roles should be different genus groups ideally of unrelated microbes. A genus group should only fill one ecological niche and not hog niches away from other submitters.

I figure having eyes on the back kinda destined them for strangeness in the cephalization department. Having their sensory organs and presumably a brain so close to their legs allows them to react to threats far faster than if they were more separated, like having a hot stove level reaction for visual input. As small creatures that are prey to everything, keeping this setup for the sake of rapid reaction time would have been advantageous and it's possible that more cephalized individuals largely ended up getting eaten. Cephalopods have been prevented from going freshwater because they'd have to lose their lightning-fast reflexes in the process (as it depends on saltwater) and they can't afford to; the same could be the case for brains in basal legged wingworms.

That's not really what the subject of this thread is about

I described the butt-end brains as abdominal because it wouldn't necessarily be all the way at the back. I was imagining a fairly elongated brain due to the spread of the eyes.

To my understanding, cephalization happens quick once a primary means of sensing the world evolves, which usually means developing to support the eyes.

Wingworm brains. They're on my mind tonight, since the cephalization of saucebacks (which also needs to be discussed) made me think about it.

Wingworms are pretty weird. They see on one end and eat from the other. The cephalic implications of this have been ignored by some, but not by others. This has resulted in a rather inconsistent setup that calls for some kind of solution, so I'd like to propose a description of the wingworm central nervous system.

So, wingworm brains...cannot be in the sauce. At least, not purely. This is because of the delay between input from the eyes and the signal actually reaching the brain. They about have to be abdominally cephalized, which means that flying backwards is actually ideal for them. However, some species still fly forwards and even gain mouth-end eyes, which would imply they have a mouth-end brain. To reconcile this, I would like to propose a sort of two-part brain which is specialized more one way than the other depending on the species.

Wingworms would in effect be said to have two brains (though when extracted it would look more like one continuous organ), one of which is the "fast brain" and the other is the "slow brain", referring to how quickly they respond to visual input. The fast brain would contain the equivalent to the frontal lobe for a given clade.

In species with sensory organs only in the front, the mouth end bears the fast brain while the abdomen bears a spinal cord-like slow brain, as one might expect. Pretty standard cephalization.

In species with eyes on their back but which still move mouth first, the abdominal brain would be the fast brain, allowing them to take off running far faster than you or I could at the first visual sign of danger, while the mouth end would bear a slow brain that aids in choosing direction of movement to pass on to the fast brain.

And in species with eyes on their backs which also fly backwards, likewise as expected the abdominal brain would be the fast brain, while the mouth-end slow brain would be very spine-like in complexity and mainly serve to help get the mouth around food.

And in species with more mixed traits, like eyes in the front and back, they could be said to have two fast brains, but I suppose the one corresponding to movement direction would be more complex and do more logical processing. It could vary some though.

I think that optimal wingworms which retain eyes on their backs would be best off flying backwards, and likewise having an abdominal fast brain and a simple cephalic slow brain. Though convenient, moving mouth-first isn't technically necessary and a backwards life was destined the moment their ancestors put eyes on their backs to watch for danger from above.

Thoughts?

being inherently heavier, and not needing to waterproof, could make skysnappers more suited to diving and being aquatic in general (though chitin doesn't need as much waterproofing as keratin tmu)

Biats probably wouldn't be very good waders even if a compromise is found for the hip issue. Having wings on their legs means they would have to have long toes, which they then stand on the tips of, to keep the feathers clear of the water. The long toes, in turn, would interfere with flight.

Adding swallowing to solve a problem created by an adaptation is backwards from how evolution usually works. Swallowing would evolve first, and that would allow the dangling head to evolve.

The rotation of the wing occurs at the hip in other species. If I'm understanding your diagram correctly I'm seeing a hinge joint bend a full 180° sideways. If I'm not understanding your diagram correctly, you need to improve it so I can.

Can sauceback ankles contort in that manner? @Evolutionincarnate

How is that working without a solid piece there, exactly?

The rotation is making this hard to parse, is the knee bending sideways in this species?

Pterosaurs actually could launch from water, so I see no reason biats can't. In fact, pole vaulting species will always be lighter in overall weight than things that can't. The leg strength problem is not only nonexistent, but with the existing lightweight traits of biats they can actually get larger than the biggest pterosaurs, in theory.

Biats have some respiratory advantages. It's much easier for them to evolve complex and unidirectional respiratory systems because they have multiple pairs of lungs, while for skysnappers evolving this trait would be uncommon and difficult. Earth tetrapods have done it before, but only a few times.

Skysnappers are inherently much heavier than a biat can be, as their only lightening adaptation is their hollow bones. Having separate legs and wings means they have to have two pairs of strong heavy limbs instead of one, much like birds, and on top of that their wings are membrane-based so they're heavy from all the water inside. Biats have dead dry lightweight feather wings, which not only need to be smaller than a skysnapper wing to carry the same weight but also weigh less overall. Same with all their other flight surfaces such as the ears and tail.

All this said, there's no reason for these groups to be unable to niche partition. Flying isn't a niche, it's a method.

Honestly it was supposed to be a corvid analogue built for looks. I don't know why the face was like that. Maybe I was thinking of short strong snout for cracking bones.

I've actually already been working on a swift-like biat, but their ranges shouldn't overlap.

That's a fair bit different from what I'd had in mind for it, but I like it! Note I intentionally gave it more toes; this was because originally it was eating larger prey and needed more stability when holding it down, but I suppose being polydactyl could also help it hold onto a branch.

Meanwhile, I got into drawing *really* far ahead because of between-gen boredom, so here's a few guys that probably won't see submission for quite a while...

Saucejays are huge jerks. They can mimic sounds and use that to get food.



The ruby pica takes it a step further and has some of the most complex vocalizations of any sauceback. It's a little bandit that forms organized flocks that find food by attacking things that already found it.



and then I got an idea for a sexually dimorphic pica and stopped because any further and I exit week 27 lol

I don't think it's a big deal if someone doesn't draw good muscle definition. We don't require uber-perfect photorealistic art.

I mean, it has incisor fangs and velociraptor claws

Finishing some wips for the coming gen









Edit: Another one

sure

A little late, but for future reference, when listing subgenera in a diet, please list individual species, not the entire subgenus.

With heads that just dangle constantly?