Sagan 4 Forum [Menu]

There are nonmammals that can swallow without gravity.
(Crocodilians, an archosaur example)

But that does bring to consideration what is the soft tissue structure inside the proboscis of Saucebacks.

Most animals are rather small, which leads to fewer diverse examples of throats and proboscis unfortunately.

-birds, because of their beaks perhaps, lack peristalsis in their swallowing -

This post has been edited by colddigger: Dec 10 2022, 11:35 AM

The line to crown-group saucebacks doesn't have a history of using suction in any way and they can't choke like we can, so I have a difficult time imagining them ever having the pressure to evolve to force something down their throat quickly regardless of gravity.

That's interesting to consider, and would probably extend to plents as well.

These can lift their proboscis, so if they needed to rely on gravity like a bird they still can. Which makes me wonder if they could just stuff prey back into their throat while hunting, then when done lift up to swallow it all at once.

It might be possible for them to capture food in their mouths, and then rapidly flick their necks upward to slide the food down, as some birds do when drinking water.

With heads that just dangle constantly?

"While it is just as capable of raising the proboscis to check a potential concern or interest, it is well protected and easily camouflaged by its rock-like sauce-shell, leaving it little to be concerned about on land"

it is fully capable

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.

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.

I don't really see much reason to add some unique way of swallowing, like was originally said in the description it's fully capable of moving the tip of its proboscis in the way that standard sauce backs can. If that's how all the others swallow, then that's how this one is going to swallow too.

I guess if you wanted to introduce a serpentine motion to it, you could make it swallow hard shelled things and crack it like a snake crushing an egg in its neck.

This post has been edited by colddigger: Jan 2 2023, 10:42 PM

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.

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

@colddigger you did the checklist on this before the above discussion, what's the status of your approval opinion now?

Sounds like they swallow in the same manner as all other saucebacks, so approval still applies.

I find the use of the word "rink" interesting when applied to the nostrils.

"followed by dense concentrations of feather-whiskers, a rink of nostrils at the outermost ring,"

Don't run into that description very often.

This post has been edited by colddigger: Jan 29 2023, 06:51 PM

Updated the male neoteny description laying the grounds for what was talked about here, sent the wedding rink to the jeweler but got back a ring instead

And yep, they swallow just like all other saucebacks, though the convo has gotten me excited about alternative throat developments, they are not needed here.

This post has been edited by Jarlaxle: Jan 29 2023, 07:09 PM

Looking over it,

"The larva-like male will stay in its mothers nest-shell until given to a new female, where it will use its claws to climb down the female's plumage, holding onto rough ridges around her cloaca and pushing its entire body inwards, leaving out only its respiratory spiracles & making its way back to its mother's neck or passed between females, depending on the social circumstances and available mating opportunities in the outcrop."

It feels like there's something missing between what I assume is describing how they mate and then returning to their mother.