Sister thread: Dorite's Sagan 4 Creature Art Tips
I've been thinking a lot about things like how to position eyes in carpozoans, or how one might make a more plausible version of the rejected "horndog", or what implications there are in the anatomy and evolution of saucebacks. I'll post replies to this thread with individual topics, then link them in this table of contents.
Note that in this thread I cover living species and lineages that I consider to be implausible, especially in the context of common mistakes. I do not call for their immediate extinction unless they violate the laws of physics; however, if they are at a severe competitive disadvantage, it would be logical for better-fit organisms to displace them naturally.
Table of Contents:
General
Making Of A Plausible Genus Group
Earth Clones (The Good, The Bad, and The Undone)
Keeping and Losing Flight
A Time and A Clade: One Bird's Implausible is Another Bird's Innovation
Common Mistakes
Atavism (Evolving Backwards)
"Atavism Larvae"
"How To Kill" series
How To Kill Saucebacks
Binucleida
(none yet)
Carpozoa
(none yet)
Mancerxa
Plent Pigments
Don’t Do Skinny Tail-Like Butt Nostrils!
Biome-Related
What's That Biome? Chaparral
What's That Biome? Tundra
What's That Biome? Riparian
What's That Biome? Cold Seep
Miscellaneous
(none yet)
I've been thinking a lot about things like how to position eyes in carpozoans, or how one might make a more plausible version of the rejected "horndog", or what implications there are in the anatomy and evolution of saucebacks. I'll post replies to this thread with individual topics, then link them in this table of contents.
Note that in this thread I cover living species and lineages that I consider to be implausible, especially in the context of common mistakes. I do not call for their immediate extinction unless they violate the laws of physics; however, if they are at a severe competitive disadvantage, it would be logical for better-fit organisms to displace them naturally.
Table of Contents:
General
Making Of A Plausible Genus Group
Earth Clones (The Good, The Bad, and The Undone)
Keeping and Losing Flight
A Time and A Clade: One Bird's Implausible is Another Bird's Innovation
Common Mistakes
Atavism (Evolving Backwards)
"Atavism Larvae"
"How To Kill" series
How To Kill Saucebacks
Binucleida
(none yet)
Carpozoa
(none yet)
Mancerxa
Plent Pigments
Don’t Do Skinny Tail-Like Butt Nostrils!
Biome-Related
What's That Biome? Chaparral
What's That Biome? Tundra
What's That Biome? Riparian
What's That Biome? Cold Seep
Miscellaneous
(none yet)
General: Making Of A Plausible Genus Group
For the longest time, genus groups were regarded as something very difficult to make because of how much there is to cover when submitting an entire genus of organisms. But then I showed up, and sure, my first few were rough, but then I started knocking out multi-paragraph genus groups like it was nothing in both timelines, to the bafflement and occasional terror of the rest of the community. This is because I approached the concept of genus groups from completely outside Sagan 4's context (even the post explaining how they work was thought lost at the time), so my entries were based on what I felt made sense based on real ones rather than on the original Sagan 4 approach.
Some people have successfully copied the method I use to make genera, but others struggle. So, here I will share an explanation of how I approach creating a genus group, and why.
Genus Vs Genus Group
First, let’s look at what a genus group actually is. It’s easy to look at how a genus group is multiple species in a genus, and therefore approach it as you would multiple species submissions. This is how most genus groups were before the revival. However, while the disparate niches you might get out of that in normal submissions could all be in one genus, that is not how a genus group that has hundreds or even thousands of species works on Earth.
In real life, the highly specious genera that the genus group system is made for do not have the same diversity you might see in, say, the genus Vulpes (foxes). It is better to look at genera that are highly specious in real life, such as Camponotus (carpenter ants) and Astragalus (milkvetch). Any investigation into these reveals something very important about highly specious genera: Variation in anatomy and diet are extremely low, with the vast majority of variation lying in size and local climate adaptations.
First, let’s look at Camponotus. Species in this genus chew out tunnels in damp wood to make nests, farm aphids for honeydew, and have polymorphic workers including majors and minors. They are generally carnivorous, hunting other insects or scavenging for food, though they may also drink nectar and other sugary liquids when available. The previous two sentences apply to most, if not all of the 1000+ species in the genus. This is very different from something like Vulpes, where the different species may have completely different diets and social structures. The variation that does exist between Camponotus spp. is so small that one has to look closely to even tell them apart; most of the differences are in color to blend in with different environments, with only a few species that really have anything particularly unique about them. (For the purpose of Sagan 4 as a game, something like the Cylindricus complex (exploding carpenter ants) would belong in a local species split.)
Now, for the plant example, let’s look at Astragalus. Members of this genus are flowering herbs or shrubs which have pinnately compound leaves and clusters of bilaterally symmetric flowers in a raceme. Like most plants in the bean family, they fix nitrogen, the flower’s calyx is tube-shaped, and they have three types of petal: the banner, wings, and keel. There are both annual and perennial species. As with Camponotus, this description applies to most if not all members of the genus. The distinctions between species, apart from size and coloration, are largely local adaptations and fruit shape. For instance, the shaggy milkvetch (A. malacus) is covered in hairs which protect it from water loss in its arid environment, and the alpine milkvetch (A. alpinus) lives near water and depends on floods for seed dispersal.
I think these are good models for what should vary and what should stay largely the same when making a genus group.Minikruggs*, Xenobees, Cloudswarmers, Miniswarmers, Pioneeroots, Glaalgaes, Chitjorns, Neuks, Vermees, and other multi-niche variable-behavior/anatomy genera are implausible or otherwise gamebreaking and must be split up and/or replaced for this reason, and similarly variable genera must be rejected in the future.
So, What About Making A Plausible Genus Submission?
With those real-world examples in mind, making a genus group is actually very easy--in fact, I’d argue that it’s even easier than making a single-species submission, as the weight of working out the diet and habitat is severely reduced. Here’s my general process when making one:
First, I think of the unifying characteristics of the genus--what the typical species is like in general anatomy and niche, basically. I approach this aspect more or less the exact same way that I approach a single-species submission. For example, the original idea behind the Parasitic Floats was just a parasitic colonial sky plant that resembles a chain or vine of Cloudbubbles and attaches one end of the colony to other flora. I could’ve submitted it as a single species, but I decided it made more sense as a genus group, due to its small size, parasitic niche, and rapid reproduction.
After I worked out what they were, I worked on variation. They ended up having no need for significant shape variation, so I gave them variable pigmentation and lighting preferences based on where they live. I threw in occasional branching because I found there was nothing physiologically wrong with them doing so, and it’s a fairly easy mutation in real life.
Finally, I put all of that in a description. I won’t go too deep into my description-writing method, but I typically organize genus submissions into an opening paragraph (split or replace, most important defining characteristics), a section explaining the important or unifying traits in more detail as well as diet and behavior, another section about what it has in common with its ancestor and how it reproduces, and a final paragraph detailing the variation between species within the genus.
Hopefully this post is understandable for those looking to make genus groups. I’m willing to clarify if any part is confusing.
--
*: Minikruggs have since been retconned into opportunists, fixing the issues brought up.
For the longest time, genus groups were regarded as something very difficult to make because of how much there is to cover when submitting an entire genus of organisms. But then I showed up, and sure, my first few were rough, but then I started knocking out multi-paragraph genus groups like it was nothing in both timelines, to the bafflement and occasional terror of the rest of the community. This is because I approached the concept of genus groups from completely outside Sagan 4's context (even the post explaining how they work was thought lost at the time), so my entries were based on what I felt made sense based on real ones rather than on the original Sagan 4 approach.
Some people have successfully copied the method I use to make genera, but others struggle. So, here I will share an explanation of how I approach creating a genus group, and why.
Genus Vs Genus Group
First, let’s look at what a genus group actually is. It’s easy to look at how a genus group is multiple species in a genus, and therefore approach it as you would multiple species submissions. This is how most genus groups were before the revival. However, while the disparate niches you might get out of that in normal submissions could all be in one genus, that is not how a genus group that has hundreds or even thousands of species works on Earth.
In real life, the highly specious genera that the genus group system is made for do not have the same diversity you might see in, say, the genus Vulpes (foxes). It is better to look at genera that are highly specious in real life, such as Camponotus (carpenter ants) and Astragalus (milkvetch). Any investigation into these reveals something very important about highly specious genera: Variation in anatomy and diet are extremely low, with the vast majority of variation lying in size and local climate adaptations.
First, let’s look at Camponotus. Species in this genus chew out tunnels in damp wood to make nests, farm aphids for honeydew, and have polymorphic workers including majors and minors. They are generally carnivorous, hunting other insects or scavenging for food, though they may also drink nectar and other sugary liquids when available. The previous two sentences apply to most, if not all of the 1000+ species in the genus. This is very different from something like Vulpes, where the different species may have completely different diets and social structures. The variation that does exist between Camponotus spp. is so small that one has to look closely to even tell them apart; most of the differences are in color to blend in with different environments, with only a few species that really have anything particularly unique about them. (For the purpose of Sagan 4 as a game, something like the Cylindricus complex (exploding carpenter ants) would belong in a local species split.)
Now, for the plant example, let’s look at Astragalus. Members of this genus are flowering herbs or shrubs which have pinnately compound leaves and clusters of bilaterally symmetric flowers in a raceme. Like most plants in the bean family, they fix nitrogen, the flower’s calyx is tube-shaped, and they have three types of petal: the banner, wings, and keel. There are both annual and perennial species. As with Camponotus, this description applies to most if not all members of the genus. The distinctions between species, apart from size and coloration, are largely local adaptations and fruit shape. For instance, the shaggy milkvetch (A. malacus) is covered in hairs which protect it from water loss in its arid environment, and the alpine milkvetch (A. alpinus) lives near water and depends on floods for seed dispersal.
I think these are good models for what should vary and what should stay largely the same when making a genus group.
So, What About Making A Plausible Genus Submission?
With those real-world examples in mind, making a genus group is actually very easy--in fact, I’d argue that it’s even easier than making a single-species submission, as the weight of working out the diet and habitat is severely reduced. Here’s my general process when making one:
First, I think of the unifying characteristics of the genus--what the typical species is like in general anatomy and niche, basically. I approach this aspect more or less the exact same way that I approach a single-species submission. For example, the original idea behind the Parasitic Floats was just a parasitic colonial sky plant that resembles a chain or vine of Cloudbubbles and attaches one end of the colony to other flora. I could’ve submitted it as a single species, but I decided it made more sense as a genus group, due to its small size, parasitic niche, and rapid reproduction.
After I worked out what they were, I worked on variation. They ended up having no need for significant shape variation, so I gave them variable pigmentation and lighting preferences based on where they live. I threw in occasional branching because I found there was nothing physiologically wrong with them doing so, and it’s a fairly easy mutation in real life.
Finally, I put all of that in a description. I won’t go too deep into my description-writing method, but I typically organize genus submissions into an opening paragraph (split or replace, most important defining characteristics), a section explaining the important or unifying traits in more detail as well as diet and behavior, another section about what it has in common with its ancestor and how it reproduces, and a final paragraph detailing the variation between species within the genus.
Hopefully this post is understandable for those looking to make genus groups. I’m willing to clarify if any part is confusing.
--
*: Minikruggs have since been retconned into opportunists, fixing the issues brought up.
Common Mistakes: "Atavism Larvae"
I don’t know where to begin with this. It’s such a ridiculously common phenomenon on Sagan 4 that I don’t understand where it came from or why it’s ever approved. I am referring to the bizarrely common evolution of larvae that look like an earlier stage in a lineage’s evolution, such as this especially egregious example:
My best guess is that this originates from a misinterpretation of the fact that characteristics from earlier in one’s evolution appear during fetal development, such as gill slits in many tetrapods and long tails in birds. I could see someone who does no further reading then making the false assumption that an embryo/fetus’s development will resemble an organism’s evolution, and therefore something that’s born or hatched earlier will resemble distant ancestors from even hundreds of millions of years prior.
No. No, it will not.
All it takes is a quick google image search of “embryonic development” to see that this is not the case; if it was, would human fetuses not go through stages resembling our distant ancestors? They don’t even go through “ape” stages, and that’s from just a few million years ago! The only earlier-grade characteristics that show up at all are ones that are necessary for the development of features derived from them, like gill arches that become the jaws, a notochord that turns into the backbone, and a tail that’s compressed into the tailbone. We don’t even grow nubs for the dorsal or anal fins that our distant ancestors lost. Even among tetrapods that have larvae, you don’t see entire long-lost limbs popping up on baby amphibians or marsupials. The genes for them are almost certainly long lost as well, making a return as improbable as it would be for ordinary atavism (which I will also be making a post on).
In short, “atavism larvae” cannot happen, and new instances of them should not be approved in the future. In species with presently-unelaborated larvae, if they are modeled after earlier ancestors at all, the changes that have been made since must be taken into account, such as lost limbs being removed and new or changed organ systems being added.
I don’t know where to begin with this. It’s such a ridiculously common phenomenon on Sagan 4 that I don’t understand where it came from or why it’s ever approved. I am referring to the bizarrely common evolution of larvae that look like an earlier stage in a lineage’s evolution, such as this especially egregious example:
My best guess is that this originates from a misinterpretation of the fact that characteristics from earlier in one’s evolution appear during fetal development, such as gill slits in many tetrapods and long tails in birds. I could see someone who does no further reading then making the false assumption that an embryo/fetus’s development will resemble an organism’s evolution, and therefore something that’s born or hatched earlier will resemble distant ancestors from even hundreds of millions of years prior.
No. No, it will not.
All it takes is a quick google image search of “embryonic development” to see that this is not the case; if it was, would human fetuses not go through stages resembling our distant ancestors? They don’t even go through “ape” stages, and that’s from just a few million years ago! The only earlier-grade characteristics that show up at all are ones that are necessary for the development of features derived from them, like gill arches that become the jaws, a notochord that turns into the backbone, and a tail that’s compressed into the tailbone. We don’t even grow nubs for the dorsal or anal fins that our distant ancestors lost. Even among tetrapods that have larvae, you don’t see entire long-lost limbs popping up on baby amphibians or marsupials. The genes for them are almost certainly long lost as well, making a return as improbable as it would be for ordinary atavism (which I will also be making a post on).
In short, “atavism larvae” cannot happen, and new instances of them should not be approved in the future. In species with presently-unelaborated larvae, if they are modeled after earlier ancestors at all, the changes that have been made since must be taken into account, such as lost limbs being removed and new or changed organ systems being added.
Common Mistakes: Atavism (Evolving Backwards)
Atavism in Sagan 4 organisms is...all over the place.
On Earth, atavisms happen pretty often, on a subtle scale. Some frogs regained teeth on their lower jaw, some formerly flightless stick insects regained their wings, and hoatzins have regained functional fingers with bony claws. However, on Sagan 4, atavism is comparatively crazy. You’ll see a snapper lack hind legs for multiple evolutions and suddenly regain them in a fully formed and functional state, a swarmer which had just one eye for hundreds of millions of years suddenly have three, and a fraboo inexplicably have larvae that look exactly like thornworms even though it makes no developmental or anatomical sense with how much has changed since then.
In real life, outside of losses that are relatively recent (such as the past few million years), you never see whole lost body parts suddenly reappear. You certainly don’t see a sudden shift to a completely different, but ancestral, body plan. When lost body parts do reappear, they’re usually ones that still exist in another part of the body; for instance, frogs still have teeth on their upper jaws and birds still have functional digits and bony claws on their feet. This is because genetic drift will gradually cause lost characteristics to degrade until they reach the point of being impossible to recover; for example, attempts to reactivate teeth in birds fail because genes related to forming them have been mutated beyond repair. The atavisms I described on Sagan 4 are impossible.
Atavisms of long-lost traits with no more developmental basis are not plausible, and should not be submitted or approved. In their place, I would like to suggest convergent evolution--that is, evolving a similar trait to the one that was lost--or simply working with the restrictions the organism has. Constraints breed unique solutions, after all.
(Edit: Since I originally made this post, the rules have been updated to disallow extreme atavisms by enforcing a 25 million year time limit for all future submissions. Nice!)
Atavism in Sagan 4 organisms is...all over the place.
On Earth, atavisms happen pretty often, on a subtle scale. Some frogs regained teeth on their lower jaw, some formerly flightless stick insects regained their wings, and hoatzins have regained functional fingers with bony claws. However, on Sagan 4, atavism is comparatively crazy. You’ll see a snapper lack hind legs for multiple evolutions and suddenly regain them in a fully formed and functional state, a swarmer which had just one eye for hundreds of millions of years suddenly have three, and a fraboo inexplicably have larvae that look exactly like thornworms even though it makes no developmental or anatomical sense with how much has changed since then.
In real life, outside of losses that are relatively recent (such as the past few million years), you never see whole lost body parts suddenly reappear. You certainly don’t see a sudden shift to a completely different, but ancestral, body plan. When lost body parts do reappear, they’re usually ones that still exist in another part of the body; for instance, frogs still have teeth on their upper jaws and birds still have functional digits and bony claws on their feet. This is because genetic drift will gradually cause lost characteristics to degrade until they reach the point of being impossible to recover; for example, attempts to reactivate teeth in birds fail because genes related to forming them have been mutated beyond repair. The atavisms I described on Sagan 4 are impossible.
Atavisms of long-lost traits with no more developmental basis are not plausible, and should not be submitted or approved. In their place, I would like to suggest convergent evolution--that is, evolving a similar trait to the one that was lost--or simply working with the restrictions the organism has. Constraints breed unique solutions, after all.
(Edit: Since I originally made this post, the rules have been updated to disallow extreme atavisms by enforcing a 25 million year time limit for all future submissions. Nice!)
General: Earth Clones (The Good, The Bad, and The Undone)
Y’all probably knew this one was coming. This is not a discussion anyone likes to have on Sagan 4. But I’m also about to make a pretty bold claim.
The wolf shrew is the most realistic case of convergent evolution that occurred during its time.
I know what you’re thinking. This is literally a wolf, right? Well, what if I told you that it isn’t? While it looks vaguely doggish and has somewhat wolfy behavior, this is not what makes a wolf. The wolf shrew has a proportionally large, muscular head, a short neck, and a long thick tail. The nose is large and not particularly dog- or wolf-like at all. It’s a facultative biped and has an opposed hallux for stability. Whatever this creature is, though it has “wolf” in the name, it is certainly no wolf.
The wolf shrew is recognizable, but not exact. It has decidedly non-wolf characteristics, both intentional and not. It can be likened to a variety of large predators on Earth that are not wolves, such as mesonychids and thylacoleonids, but is not a clone of either of those either. This makes it a far more realistic Earth clone than some of the others which evolved around the same time (and sorry Cheatsy, I’m gonna rip into some of your childhood drawings a bit)...
The hornhog is literally just a babirusa with a sail and plent features. It even has “shock absorbers” that look like nostrils to complete the look. While convergent evolution can and does produce familiar forms sometimes, this is far too extreme--it is incredibly rare for it to produce something like animal X but group Y, especially when novel ornamentation gets involved. Usually, the results of convergent evolution are a mixture of characteristics from multiple familiar groups working together to make something both familiar and unique, something that the wolf shrew accomplished but that the hornhog did not.
So, what about fixing or undoing bad earth clones like that, making them more alien? Well, there’s certainly some completely wrong ways to do it.
The climbing cantro was an attempted “fix” of an alleged earth clone, the cantro. The fact that the cantro was most certainly not any more an earth clone than this aside, the climbing cantro takes the completely wrong approach to alienification. It randomly moved all its eyes into a fragile, skull-snapping position. It lost bipedalism and got small arm-like feet for no reason. Its direct descendant, the chastro, became a foreleg biped for no reason other than to “alienify” it even more. The changes that were made to “fix” it make no logical sense, the organism is even more broken than before and shouldn’t even be able to function, and the changes don’t even do a good job of making it more alien because it somehow looks even more like a wolf than any other dromaeocanid, even the wolf shrew itself.
Another great example of how not to undo an earth clone is the kangatwail. The approach taken here seems to have been to duplicate body parts, giving it three pouches and a forked tail. This is about the same level of “alien” as your average star trek humanoid, and the creature is still fundamentally just a kangaroo with extra stuff slapped on.
So, how does one fix a bad earth clone?
First, let me state that I do not support wiping out earth clones or alienifying them just for the sake of getting rid of the terran characteristics. This is just an example of how it is possible to make something that is not an earth clone from an earth clone with only plausible, natural changes.
In the thaw following the snowball event, excluding an odd offshoot of pipents that was recently retconned to have survived, the Trogagon and its descendants became the last of the non-gundi nodents still alive. The Trogagon has just a single feature that makes it unlikely to produce anything resembling an actual rodent ever again--its incisors basically became a beak for cracking crystal flora and don’t resemble the “buck tooth” ancestral to nodents at all. The majority of its descendants have followed suit, and now have beaked faces rather than rodent-like. This one little change alone makes any plausible elaboration of the species unrecognizable as once having been a rodent clone, as they converged on faces more typical of birds, ornithischians, and turtles than of any mammal.
And speaking of plausible changes resulting in a more alien appearance from non-alien ancestors, we must also talk about tuskents!
Tuskents are also derived from nodents. They weren’t alienified on purpose--they are the result of a natural progression into becoming a marine creature which eventually “unwhaled” back to land. The entire hand and foot had been modified into polydactyl, wooden, claw-based paddles convergent with swimming beetles or those nail-swimming things from Snaiad, and the original elbows and knees became immobile. As a consequence, in living secondarily terrestrial species the entire forearm and lower leg are hand and foot, respectively, and they walk on the two innermost digits of each limb and have a very large number of dewclaws.
All of these things came about as adaptations for the time without intent to make something super alien, just to adapt to new environments and new niches, and suddenly this aberrant branch also became the only survivors of the once mighty pipents. In a sense, they can be thought of as the monotremes of nodents: They’re the most derived, yet most early stem-tuskents are no more alien or aberrant than the lineages leading up to modern trogagons and gundis. It’s unlikely that tuskents will ever produce forms resembling their earth clone ancestors no matter how much convergent evolution occurs, standing as an example of the second way to make non-earth clones from earth clones: by creating a lineage that gets so derived that it’s unrecognizable, yet is also completely plausible. That’s how seed worlds like Serina do it, after all.
(these are canaries!)
Y’all probably knew this one was coming. This is not a discussion anyone likes to have on Sagan 4. But I’m also about to make a pretty bold claim.
The wolf shrew is the most realistic case of convergent evolution that occurred during its time.
I know what you’re thinking. This is literally a wolf, right? Well, what if I told you that it isn’t? While it looks vaguely doggish and has somewhat wolfy behavior, this is not what makes a wolf. The wolf shrew has a proportionally large, muscular head, a short neck, and a long thick tail. The nose is large and not particularly dog- or wolf-like at all. It’s a facultative biped and has an opposed hallux for stability. Whatever this creature is, though it has “wolf” in the name, it is certainly no wolf.
The wolf shrew is recognizable, but not exact. It has decidedly non-wolf characteristics, both intentional and not. It can be likened to a variety of large predators on Earth that are not wolves, such as mesonychids and thylacoleonids, but is not a clone of either of those either. This makes it a far more realistic Earth clone than some of the others which evolved around the same time (and sorry Cheatsy, I’m gonna rip into some of your childhood drawings a bit)...
The hornhog is literally just a babirusa with a sail and plent features. It even has “shock absorbers” that look like nostrils to complete the look. While convergent evolution can and does produce familiar forms sometimes, this is far too extreme--it is incredibly rare for it to produce something like animal X but group Y, especially when novel ornamentation gets involved. Usually, the results of convergent evolution are a mixture of characteristics from multiple familiar groups working together to make something both familiar and unique, something that the wolf shrew accomplished but that the hornhog did not.
So, what about fixing or undoing bad earth clones like that, making them more alien? Well, there’s certainly some completely wrong ways to do it.
The climbing cantro was an attempted “fix” of an alleged earth clone, the cantro. The fact that the cantro was most certainly not any more an earth clone than this aside, the climbing cantro takes the completely wrong approach to alienification. It randomly moved all its eyes into a fragile, skull-snapping position. It lost bipedalism and got small arm-like feet for no reason. Its direct descendant, the chastro, became a foreleg biped for no reason other than to “alienify” it even more. The changes that were made to “fix” it make no logical sense, the organism is even more broken than before and shouldn’t even be able to function, and the changes don’t even do a good job of making it more alien because it somehow looks even more like a wolf than any other dromaeocanid, even the wolf shrew itself.
Another great example of how not to undo an earth clone is the kangatwail. The approach taken here seems to have been to duplicate body parts, giving it three pouches and a forked tail. This is about the same level of “alien” as your average star trek humanoid, and the creature is still fundamentally just a kangaroo with extra stuff slapped on.
So, how does one fix a bad earth clone?
First, let me state that I do not support wiping out earth clones or alienifying them just for the sake of getting rid of the terran characteristics. This is just an example of how it is possible to make something that is not an earth clone from an earth clone with only plausible, natural changes.
In the thaw following the snowball event, excluding an odd offshoot of pipents that was recently retconned to have survived, the Trogagon and its descendants became the last of the non-gundi nodents still alive. The Trogagon has just a single feature that makes it unlikely to produce anything resembling an actual rodent ever again--its incisors basically became a beak for cracking crystal flora and don’t resemble the “buck tooth” ancestral to nodents at all. The majority of its descendants have followed suit, and now have beaked faces rather than rodent-like. This one little change alone makes any plausible elaboration of the species unrecognizable as once having been a rodent clone, as they converged on faces more typical of birds, ornithischians, and turtles than of any mammal.
And speaking of plausible changes resulting in a more alien appearance from non-alien ancestors, we must also talk about tuskents!
Tuskents are also derived from nodents. They weren’t alienified on purpose--they are the result of a natural progression into becoming a marine creature which eventually “unwhaled” back to land. The entire hand and foot had been modified into polydactyl, wooden, claw-based paddles convergent with swimming beetles or those nail-swimming things from Snaiad, and the original elbows and knees became immobile. As a consequence, in living secondarily terrestrial species the entire forearm and lower leg are hand and foot, respectively, and they walk on the two innermost digits of each limb and have a very large number of dewclaws.
All of these things came about as adaptations for the time without intent to make something super alien, just to adapt to new environments and new niches, and suddenly this aberrant branch also became the only survivors of the once mighty pipents. In a sense, they can be thought of as the monotremes of nodents: They’re the most derived, yet most early stem-tuskents are no more alien or aberrant than the lineages leading up to modern trogagons and gundis. It’s unlikely that tuskents will ever produce forms resembling their earth clone ancestors no matter how much convergent evolution occurs, standing as an example of the second way to make non-earth clones from earth clones: by creating a lineage that gets so derived that it’s unrecognizable, yet is also completely plausible. That’s how seed worlds like Serina do it, after all.
(these are canaries!)
...Discussion is allowed, the table of contents is there so that discussion can happen without burial
What’s That Biome? Chaparral
“What’s That Biome?” is a series focused on helping members to understand commonly misunderstood biomes by explaining what they are in detail and what kinds of species live in them. This is intended to be an aid to making species native to such biomes.
Today’s topic is the chaparral. This term is mainly used in real life to refer to the specific subtropical shrublands in California, but there are other chaparrals in other parts of the world going by different names. Other names for the same biome in different geographic regions on Earth include maquis (mediterranean basin), matorral (chile), fynbos (south africa), and kwongan (australia). It may also generally be referred to as a “mediterranean climate”.
On Sagan 4 Alpha, the chaparral is classified as a temperate mixed biome. In real life and on Sagan 4 Beta, it’s classified as subtropical. Certain chaparrals in Alpha, such as Drake Chaparral, are actually severely misplaced; a chaparral would never exist so close to polar biomes. (Edit: Since this post was made, the map has updated and the chaparral biomes have been fixed)
Chaparrals have sandy nutrient-poor soil, a lot of low-lying flora and various shubs with few trees, and experience a wet season and a dry season, much like a savanna. However, unlike a savanna, during the dry season…
OH GOD! EVERYTHING’S ON FIRE!
The dry season in the chaparral is very hot and dry, and the shrubs that grew over the wet season are prime kindling for fire. Full-on wildfires are pretty rare without influence from fire-using species (ie, humans or firehawks), only occurring once every few decades. However, smaller-scale fires happen regularly all over the chaparral during the dry season. While old-growth chaparral flora over a century in age can exist, this is more or less out of pure luck. Most plants in the chaparral are either fire-resistant, able to regrow after fire, or have a life cycle dependent on fire. For example, some small vegetation exists as successional flora that only grow when it rains on a patch of land that was recently burned.
In older growth, the ground may be covered in dense thickets of shrubs less than 3 meters in height, while younger growth is dominated by small flora, including grasses, other herbs, and small bushes. However, some larger flora do exist, such as the red shank, which can grow to around 8 meters tall and is able to recover and regrow after burning. Unlike a savanna, which may sport scattered groups of large trees measuring in the tens of meters, larger plants in a chaparral biome will mostly be restricted to gallery forests (the “riparian” biome, which I shall cover in another post) where regular flooding prevents them from being burned to the ground. Perennial plants in the chaparral are generally evergreen, their main growth period being in the “winter” wet season, and they have arid adaptations to survive the “summer” dry season.
On Earth, animals that live in chaparral-like climates include rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, quokkas, komodo dragons, honey possums, roadrunners, lynx, jackals, and a myriad of grazers and browsers. More large predators and megafaunal herbivores comparable to the kinds found in savannas probably also existed in these biomes in the past, but it’s hard to find a good reference for them because the holocene extinction killed them all. Preferred camouflage tends to match the colors of dirt and dry flora, with streaking, speckled, or peppered markings being pretty common in smaller species while larger ones may prefer a single color matching the dry flora with soft countershading or large patch-like markings which break up their shape against different-colored dirt and shrubs. The biome is open enough that cursorial adaptations are favorable, but there is also enough cover that ambush hunting is feasible.
Fauna native to chaparrals will usually have some way of avoiding wildfires, such as fleeing on foot or wing, digging underground, or ducking into pre-existing large burrows that can serve as a refuge for many unrelated species. Some predatory species, especially flying ones, may exploit the frequent fires to hunt, and those with tool use may even spread the flames themselves.
“What’s That Biome?” is a series focused on helping members to understand commonly misunderstood biomes by explaining what they are in detail and what kinds of species live in them. This is intended to be an aid to making species native to such biomes.
Today’s topic is the chaparral. This term is mainly used in real life to refer to the specific subtropical shrublands in California, but there are other chaparrals in other parts of the world going by different names. Other names for the same biome in different geographic regions on Earth include maquis (mediterranean basin), matorral (chile), fynbos (south africa), and kwongan (australia). It may also generally be referred to as a “mediterranean climate”.
On Sagan 4 Alpha, the chaparral is classified as a temperate mixed biome. In real life and on Sagan 4 Beta, it’s classified as subtropical. Certain chaparrals in Alpha, such as Drake Chaparral, are actually severely misplaced; a chaparral would never exist so close to polar biomes. (Edit: Since this post was made, the map has updated and the chaparral biomes have been fixed)
Chaparrals have sandy nutrient-poor soil, a lot of low-lying flora and various shubs with few trees, and experience a wet season and a dry season, much like a savanna. However, unlike a savanna, during the dry season…
OH GOD! EVERYTHING’S ON FIRE!
The dry season in the chaparral is very hot and dry, and the shrubs that grew over the wet season are prime kindling for fire. Full-on wildfires are pretty rare without influence from fire-using species (ie, humans or firehawks), only occurring once every few decades. However, smaller-scale fires happen regularly all over the chaparral during the dry season. While old-growth chaparral flora over a century in age can exist, this is more or less out of pure luck. Most plants in the chaparral are either fire-resistant, able to regrow after fire, or have a life cycle dependent on fire. For example, some small vegetation exists as successional flora that only grow when it rains on a patch of land that was recently burned.
In older growth, the ground may be covered in dense thickets of shrubs less than 3 meters in height, while younger growth is dominated by small flora, including grasses, other herbs, and small bushes. However, some larger flora do exist, such as the red shank, which can grow to around 8 meters tall and is able to recover and regrow after burning. Unlike a savanna, which may sport scattered groups of large trees measuring in the tens of meters, larger plants in a chaparral biome will mostly be restricted to gallery forests (the “riparian” biome, which I shall cover in another post) where regular flooding prevents them from being burned to the ground. Perennial plants in the chaparral are generally evergreen, their main growth period being in the “winter” wet season, and they have arid adaptations to survive the “summer” dry season.
On Earth, animals that live in chaparral-like climates include rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, quokkas, komodo dragons, honey possums, roadrunners, lynx, jackals, and a myriad of grazers and browsers. More large predators and megafaunal herbivores comparable to the kinds found in savannas probably also existed in these biomes in the past, but it’s hard to find a good reference for them because the holocene extinction killed them all. Preferred camouflage tends to match the colors of dirt and dry flora, with streaking, speckled, or peppered markings being pretty common in smaller species while larger ones may prefer a single color matching the dry flora with soft countershading or large patch-like markings which break up their shape against different-colored dirt and shrubs. The biome is open enough that cursorial adaptations are favorable, but there is also enough cover that ambush hunting is feasible.
Fauna native to chaparrals will usually have some way of avoiding wildfires, such as fleeing on foot or wing, digging underground, or ducking into pre-existing large burrows that can serve as a refuge for many unrelated species. Some predatory species, especially flying ones, may exploit the frequent fires to hunt, and those with tool use may even spread the flames themselves.
What’s That Biome? Tundra
“What’s That Biome?” is a series focused on helping members to understand commonly misunderstood biomes by explaining what they are in detail and what kinds of species live in them. This is intended to be an aid to making species native to such biomes.
Today’s topic is the tundra. On Sagan 4 Alpha, it’s incorrectly classified as a polar desert. In real life and on Sagan 4 Beta, it is a polar steppe (or grassland). A real tundra cannot be classified as a desert, as while it has little precipitation, it is too cold for it to evaporate afterwards; as a result of the constant accumulation of water, when the winter snow thaws, it transforms into something practically bordering on wetlands as the nutrient-rich soil becomes soggy and huge lakes and marshes form throughout. (Edit: Since this post was made, the tundra has been partially fixed and distinguished from desert-like terrain)
For most of the year (~9 months), tundras are covered in snow. Most plants found in them are very short, as permafrost prevents the formation of deep roots, but larger plants can exist if they are wide rather than tall and can survive the freezing winters. Trees are not completely absent and can grow in some more sheltered regions and along rivers (the polar riparian, which is in fact supposed to be a forest despite it being against the rules to put trees there for unclear reasons). Fires are infrequent due to the soggy ground making viable kindling rare and the general lack of tall flora preventing any broad spread. Where fires do occur, however, they can regulate the permafrost layer and prevent it from rising higher and locking away nutrients. Plants in the tundra must be adapted for short growth periods in the summer and bitter cold winters.
The tundra is home to many examples of warm-blooded animals that change color and coat density between seasons. Thin or short summer and thick or long winter coats are quite common. Small animals such as arctic foxes, ermines, lemmings, and hares change color very dramatically, going from earthy colors to blend in with soil in the summer to pure white to blend in with snow in the winter. Larger animals such as reindeer may be patchy and beige in the winter, breaking up their shape against mixed snow and dead flora, and switch to earthen colors in the summer. Some animals simply have wintery colors year-round, such as arctic wolves, snowy owls, and polar bears, which causes them to resemble patches or piles of snow that has not yet thawed. Species which would ordinarily have naked legs or foot pads commonly have their respective fibrous integument covering them instead.
Cold-blooded fauna in the tundra are rare but can exist with sufficient adaptations, most commonly long hibernation periods or annual life cycles. For example, the Terran wood frog uses antifreeze proteins to avoid freezing to death and hibernates for most of the year, only coming out during the summer thaw so it may mate and lay its eggs. Mesotherms and heterotherms such as insects can also survive in the tundra, and moving into this frigid biome can encourage the evolution of complete endothermy and fibrous integument, even for those that only appear during the short summer.
Lacking much in the way of large plants, a tundra’s large herbivores will mainly be grazers or rooters, and cursorial adaptations are viable. Due to the presence of permafrost, some animals may use the ice as freezers to store food which would otherwise rot, such as meat or eggs. Burrowers can be very ecologically important; take the arctic fox, for example, which creates “fox gardens” by turning the tundra soil and encouraging plant growth.
What about those tundras that actually look like deserts?
That is a polar barren. Polar barrens are not currently represented on Sagan 4 (edit: they are now), but if they were they would be classed as polar deserts. I will cover them separately if they are ever added to the project.
“What’s That Biome?” is a series focused on helping members to understand commonly misunderstood biomes by explaining what they are in detail and what kinds of species live in them. This is intended to be an aid to making species native to such biomes.
Today’s topic is the tundra. On Sagan 4 Alpha, it’s incorrectly classified as a polar desert. In real life and on Sagan 4 Beta, it is a polar steppe (or grassland). A real tundra cannot be classified as a desert, as while it has little precipitation, it is too cold for it to evaporate afterwards; as a result of the constant accumulation of water, when the winter snow thaws, it transforms into something practically bordering on wetlands as the nutrient-rich soil becomes soggy and huge lakes and marshes form throughout. (Edit: Since this post was made, the tundra has been partially fixed and distinguished from desert-like terrain)
For most of the year (~9 months), tundras are covered in snow. Most plants found in them are very short, as permafrost prevents the formation of deep roots, but larger plants can exist if they are wide rather than tall and can survive the freezing winters. Trees are not completely absent and can grow in some more sheltered regions and along rivers (the polar riparian, which is in fact supposed to be a forest despite it being against the rules to put trees there for unclear reasons). Fires are infrequent due to the soggy ground making viable kindling rare and the general lack of tall flora preventing any broad spread. Where fires do occur, however, they can regulate the permafrost layer and prevent it from rising higher and locking away nutrients. Plants in the tundra must be adapted for short growth periods in the summer and bitter cold winters.
The tundra is home to many examples of warm-blooded animals that change color and coat density between seasons. Thin or short summer and thick or long winter coats are quite common. Small animals such as arctic foxes, ermines, lemmings, and hares change color very dramatically, going from earthy colors to blend in with soil in the summer to pure white to blend in with snow in the winter. Larger animals such as reindeer may be patchy and beige in the winter, breaking up their shape against mixed snow and dead flora, and switch to earthen colors in the summer. Some animals simply have wintery colors year-round, such as arctic wolves, snowy owls, and polar bears, which causes them to resemble patches or piles of snow that has not yet thawed. Species which would ordinarily have naked legs or foot pads commonly have their respective fibrous integument covering them instead.
Cold-blooded fauna in the tundra are rare but can exist with sufficient adaptations, most commonly long hibernation periods or annual life cycles. For example, the Terran wood frog uses antifreeze proteins to avoid freezing to death and hibernates for most of the year, only coming out during the summer thaw so it may mate and lay its eggs. Mesotherms and heterotherms such as insects can also survive in the tundra, and moving into this frigid biome can encourage the evolution of complete endothermy and fibrous integument, even for those that only appear during the short summer.
Lacking much in the way of large plants, a tundra’s large herbivores will mainly be grazers or rooters, and cursorial adaptations are viable. Due to the presence of permafrost, some animals may use the ice as freezers to store food which would otherwise rot, such as meat or eggs. Burrowers can be very ecologically important; take the arctic fox, for example, which creates “fox gardens” by turning the tundra soil and encouraging plant growth.
What about those tundras that actually look like deserts?
That is a polar barren. Polar barrens are not currently represented on Sagan 4 (edit: they are now), but if they were they would be classed as polar deserts. I will cover them separately if they are ever added to the project.
What’s That Biome? Riparian
“What’s That Biome?” is a series focused on helping members to understand commonly misunderstood biomes by explaining what they are in detail and what kinds of species live in them. This is intended to be an aid to making species native to such biomes.
Today’s topic is the riparian. This is the floodplain of a given body of water (such as a river, lake, or wetland), characterized by periodic flooding and the presence of many amphibious organisms. They support a long, narrow forest biome surrounding them, even when they cut through biomes which cannot otherwise support forest communities such as desert, tundra, and grassland. In these cases, the biome is also known as a gallery forest. On Sagan 4, the riparian biome is commonly misused, possibly due to members not knowing what it’s supposed to represent.
Behold, for this is the first biome in this series where I can actually use a Sagan 4 diorama as an example!
(above: Illegal Temperate Riparian in Sagan 4 Beta Week 3)
As it is a forest, the riparian biome will have trees within it which are typical of woodland biomes. Where it borders a more open biome, high browsers with long necks or arms may be present to feed from the tree tops. Otherwise, the riparian is generally populated similar to a forest of the same temperature type. Even polar riparians will have trees and shrubs and it is actually a bit of a science error that they are not allowed in the biome on Sagan 4.
(above: polar riparian in real life!)
In addition to species typical of forests, however, the riparian biome is home to semi-aquatic species dependent on the corresponding river or wetland. This includes animals which retain ancestral ties to water (think frogs, mudskippers, terrestrial eels, etc) and traditionally terrestrial animals which evolved to feed from the rivers (think otters and beavers). It is also home to plants which depend on periodic flooding for their reproduction. Non-arboreal, non-aquatic forest animals native to the riparian biome must have some method of surviving floods, such as fleeing to higher ground or being able to swim to safety.
As the riparian biome is forest-like, coloration typical of forest animals is common. For larger animals this may include spots or stripes and soft countershading, small ground animals will be colored like soil or leaf litter, and arboreal animals will match with leaves or bark. Semi-aquatic animals may blend in with vegetation in the corresponding river or wetland instead; for example, many frogs and turtles are green to blend in with algae.
“What’s That Biome?” is a series focused on helping members to understand commonly misunderstood biomes by explaining what they are in detail and what kinds of species live in them. This is intended to be an aid to making species native to such biomes.
Today’s topic is the riparian. This is the floodplain of a given body of water (such as a river, lake, or wetland), characterized by periodic flooding and the presence of many amphibious organisms. They support a long, narrow forest biome surrounding them, even when they cut through biomes which cannot otherwise support forest communities such as desert, tundra, and grassland. In these cases, the biome is also known as a gallery forest. On Sagan 4, the riparian biome is commonly misused, possibly due to members not knowing what it’s supposed to represent.
Behold, for this is the first biome in this series where I can actually use a Sagan 4 diorama as an example!
(above: Illegal Temperate Riparian in Sagan 4 Beta Week 3)
As it is a forest, the riparian biome will have trees within it which are typical of woodland biomes. Where it borders a more open biome, high browsers with long necks or arms may be present to feed from the tree tops. Otherwise, the riparian is generally populated similar to a forest of the same temperature type. Even polar riparians will have trees and shrubs and it is actually a bit of a science error that they are not allowed in the biome on Sagan 4.
(above: polar riparian in real life!)
In addition to species typical of forests, however, the riparian biome is home to semi-aquatic species dependent on the corresponding river or wetland. This includes animals which retain ancestral ties to water (think frogs, mudskippers, terrestrial eels, etc) and traditionally terrestrial animals which evolved to feed from the rivers (think otters and beavers). It is also home to plants which depend on periodic flooding for their reproduction. Non-arboreal, non-aquatic forest animals native to the riparian biome must have some method of surviving floods, such as fleeing to higher ground or being able to swim to safety.
As the riparian biome is forest-like, coloration typical of forest animals is common. For larger animals this may include spots or stripes and soft countershading, small ground animals will be colored like soil or leaf litter, and arboreal animals will match with leaves or bark. Semi-aquatic animals may blend in with vegetation in the corresponding river or wetland instead; for example, many frogs and turtles are green to blend in with algae.
What’s That Biome? Cold Seep
“What’s That Biome?” is a series focused on helping members to understand commonly misunderstood biomes by explaining what they are in detail and what kinds of species live in them. This is intended to be an aid to making species native to such biomes.
Today’s topic is the cold seep. Cold seeps are regions on the ocean floor (or occasionally in large lakes or water-filled caves) where seepage of hydrocarbon-rich fluids such as hydrogen sulfide and methane occurs. The “cold” in “cold seep” does not refer to them being particularly cold; in fact, they are usually warmer than the surrounding water. Rather, they are “cold” compared to hot seeps, better known as hydrothermal vents. Cold seeps most commonly occur where tectonic activity has created fissures on the seafloor, such as where subduction is occurring or near (but not in) hydrothermal vents and volcanic islands.
Similar to hydrothermal vents, the base of the food chain within a cold seep is chemosynthesis, rather than photosynthesis. However, some cold seeps occur in shallow water where sunlight can penetrate and have both chemosynthetic and photosynthetic organisms. On Earth, nothing like a “chemo algae” has ever evolved; instead, the chemosynthetic “plants” found in cold seeps are animals such as mussels and tubeworms which have traded motility for chemosynthesis through symbiosis with chemosynthetic microbes. As both methane and hydrogen sulfide are available, there will be separate “chemoplanimals” for their respective forms of chemosynthesis. On earth, the methane-using mussels form a covering on the ground like grass while hydrogen sulfide-using tube worms can be over 3 meters in height and compared to bushes or shrubs, but I’m having trouble finding whether their size difference is due to their physiology or the productivity of their respective forms of chemosynthesis. Either way, chemo-planimals, mats of chemosynthetic microbes, and microbial “chemoplankton” are the base of the food chain within a cold seep.
Motile fauna in cold seeps will consist of both swimming and scuttling fauna which feed from the chemo-planimals, filter-feeders which thrive off of the chemoplankton, and predators that eat the other fauna. In deep sea cold seeps, vision is not a factor, and native fauna may tend to be pink or white like in other deep sea biomes. In sunlit cold seeps, disruptive coloration to blend in with the sea bed, chemo-planimals, or potentially algae will be preferred.
Individual cold seeps don’t last very long as the seepage comes to an end and the cold seep becomes inactive, but new ones form all the time. Species which live in cold seeps must have some method of migrating or dispersing to new locations, whether through broadcast spawning or direct travel. Inactive cold seeps are taken over by reef-building filter-feeders at their final stage of ecological succession.
“What’s That Biome?” is a series focused on helping members to understand commonly misunderstood biomes by explaining what they are in detail and what kinds of species live in them. This is intended to be an aid to making species native to such biomes.
Today’s topic is the cold seep. Cold seeps are regions on the ocean floor (or occasionally in large lakes or water-filled caves) where seepage of hydrocarbon-rich fluids such as hydrogen sulfide and methane occurs. The “cold” in “cold seep” does not refer to them being particularly cold; in fact, they are usually warmer than the surrounding water. Rather, they are “cold” compared to hot seeps, better known as hydrothermal vents. Cold seeps most commonly occur where tectonic activity has created fissures on the seafloor, such as where subduction is occurring or near (but not in) hydrothermal vents and volcanic islands.
Similar to hydrothermal vents, the base of the food chain within a cold seep is chemosynthesis, rather than photosynthesis. However, some cold seeps occur in shallow water where sunlight can penetrate and have both chemosynthetic and photosynthetic organisms. On Earth, nothing like a “chemo algae” has ever evolved; instead, the chemosynthetic “plants” found in cold seeps are animals such as mussels and tubeworms which have traded motility for chemosynthesis through symbiosis with chemosynthetic microbes. As both methane and hydrogen sulfide are available, there will be separate “chemoplanimals” for their respective forms of chemosynthesis. On earth, the methane-using mussels form a covering on the ground like grass while hydrogen sulfide-using tube worms can be over 3 meters in height and compared to bushes or shrubs, but I’m having trouble finding whether their size difference is due to their physiology or the productivity of their respective forms of chemosynthesis. Either way, chemo-planimals, mats of chemosynthetic microbes, and microbial “chemoplankton” are the base of the food chain within a cold seep.
Motile fauna in cold seeps will consist of both swimming and scuttling fauna which feed from the chemo-planimals, filter-feeders which thrive off of the chemoplankton, and predators that eat the other fauna. In deep sea cold seeps, vision is not a factor, and native fauna may tend to be pink or white like in other deep sea biomes. In sunlit cold seeps, disruptive coloration to blend in with the sea bed, chemo-planimals, or potentially algae will be preferred.
Individual cold seeps don’t last very long as the seepage comes to an end and the cold seep becomes inactive, but new ones form all the time. Species which live in cold seeps must have some method of migrating or dispersing to new locations, whether through broadcast spawning or direct travel. Inactive cold seeps are taken over by reef-building filter-feeders at their final stage of ecological succession.
How To Kill Saucebacks
Some Sagan 4 organisms are a little bit different from the animals we're familiar with on Earth--all their body parts are in different places, and in some cases basic strategies like strangulation don't seem to work at all. This can make creating carnivores and armored species difficult, as it's unclear what to attack or defend, respectively. So today, I will list various ways to kill saucebacks.
Taking a Look at Sauceback Anatomy
Saucebacks are a great example of a group of organisms that many normal strategies won't work on. You could still probably make them bleed out, sure, but there's no windpipe to crush, the brain is well-protected, and with the brain's odd position there's probably not an easy-to-access jugular equivalent to bite into. But there are still ways to kill them.
Faster
The fastest way to kill a sauceback is to destroy the brain. This can be done with a powerful strike from above, either smashing it directly, or concussing it so badly that it turns into mush. The ascendophrey uses this strategy, stomping the brains of other flying saucebacks from above. But while this is fast, it is not very easy, as it requires getting directly above the sauceback and using a lot of force; the ascendophrey is able to accomplish it because its prey can fly, so it won't hit the ground and shatter its legs immediately afterwards.
A sauceback is immediately doomed and dies of asphyxiation when the base of its tail is broken. Breaking one of the first 4 caudal vertebrae will paralyze some or all of the lungs, thus causing it to suffocate. Predators can aim a bone-crushing bite to the base of the tail to accomplish this. If the attack is aimed too far along the tail, however, not all the lungs will be affected and the sauceback can escape and heal--after kicking its attacker to death, of course.
Slower
A sauceback can be disemboweled by slicing or tearing its chest, as the digestive system is in the font. This requires getting through the gastralia, however. This does not work on flying saucebacks, as their keel protects the chest.
Cruel
A sauceback with a broken leg cannot walk, and will likely starve to death. This is because saucebacks are obligate bipeds, and it is true of flightless birds such as ostriches as well. However, a social sauceback can survive such an injury if it has a pack to care for it.
A sauceback with a broken neck cannot see or move its mouth and therefore cannot feed itself, and will starve. In some cases a pack might still be able to take care of it, but without the ability to swallow on its own, it will still struggle to eat.
A powerful strike to the chest can rupture a sauceback's intestines. If it does not die of internal bleeding, infection from its own gut microbes will leave a sauceback to die a slow and painful death.
Non-Fatal
In the case of defense, an organism might just want to stop a sauceback that's attacking them rather than spend time and energy killing it.
Suddenly yanking the tail can knock the wind out of a sauceback. This is because the lungs are contained in the tail. This can be compared to punching someone in the chest or throat.
Striking a sauceback on the "sauce" or right above the legs can stun it. This is because this is where the brain is, similar to knocking someone on the head.
Some Sagan 4 organisms are a little bit different from the animals we're familiar with on Earth--all their body parts are in different places, and in some cases basic strategies like strangulation don't seem to work at all. This can make creating carnivores and armored species difficult, as it's unclear what to attack or defend, respectively. So today, I will list various ways to kill saucebacks.
Taking a Look at Sauceback Anatomy
Saucebacks are a great example of a group of organisms that many normal strategies won't work on. You could still probably make them bleed out, sure, but there's no windpipe to crush, the brain is well-protected, and with the brain's odd position there's probably not an easy-to-access jugular equivalent to bite into. But there are still ways to kill them.
Faster
The fastest way to kill a sauceback is to destroy the brain. This can be done with a powerful strike from above, either smashing it directly, or concussing it so badly that it turns into mush. The ascendophrey uses this strategy, stomping the brains of other flying saucebacks from above. But while this is fast, it is not very easy, as it requires getting directly above the sauceback and using a lot of force; the ascendophrey is able to accomplish it because its prey can fly, so it won't hit the ground and shatter its legs immediately afterwards.
A sauceback is immediately doomed and dies of asphyxiation when the base of its tail is broken. Breaking one of the first 4 caudal vertebrae will paralyze some or all of the lungs, thus causing it to suffocate. Predators can aim a bone-crushing bite to the base of the tail to accomplish this. If the attack is aimed too far along the tail, however, not all the lungs will be affected and the sauceback can escape and heal--after kicking its attacker to death, of course.
Slower
A sauceback can be disemboweled by slicing or tearing its chest, as the digestive system is in the font. This requires getting through the gastralia, however. This does not work on flying saucebacks, as their keel protects the chest.
Cruel
A sauceback with a broken leg cannot walk, and will likely starve to death. This is because saucebacks are obligate bipeds, and it is true of flightless birds such as ostriches as well. However, a social sauceback can survive such an injury if it has a pack to care for it.
A sauceback with a broken neck cannot see or move its mouth and therefore cannot feed itself, and will starve. In some cases a pack might still be able to take care of it, but without the ability to swallow on its own, it will still struggle to eat.
A powerful strike to the chest can rupture a sauceback's intestines. If it does not die of internal bleeding, infection from its own gut microbes will leave a sauceback to die a slow and painful death.
Non-Fatal
In the case of defense, an organism might just want to stop a sauceback that's attacking them rather than spend time and energy killing it.
Suddenly yanking the tail can knock the wind out of a sauceback. This is because the lungs are contained in the tail. This can be compared to punching someone in the chest or throat.
Striking a sauceback on the "sauce" or right above the legs can stun it. This is because this is where the brain is, similar to knocking someone on the head.
General: Keeping and Losing Flight
On Earth, there's four kinds of flying animals that have ever evolved: insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats. Many insects and birds have lost flight secondarily, but the more observant might notice that as far as we know, neither pterosaurs nor bats have ever done the same. There's a reason for that.
While all these animals fly, the way they use their wings differ.
For insects and birds, the wings are their own structure not used for much else other than flight:
While for pterosaurs and bats, they also double as legs:
This difference in use is massive. An insect or bird that spends most of its time on the ground is wasting a lot of energy maintaining wings that are only used in the air, while a pterosaur or bat with the same lifestyle is putting the wings to work while walking and only expending a little extra energy to make their legs also be capable of getting them aloft. Basically, if you're using your wings for other things too, the benefit of keeping the ability to fly away from predators outweighs the energy cost.
With this in mind, we can probably determine which flighted Sagan 4 organisms are more likely to lose or keep flight. Here I list each living group in order from most to least likely to become flightless.
Flight Easily Lost
Pterophytes have actually lost flight several times independently already, which is quite accurate to what one should expect. Much like insects, their wings did not originate as legs, so they are generally unlikely to evolve to walk on their wings (which would enable them to keep flight more easily).
Notably, pterophytes also have a significant weight disadvantage. They lack air sacs and have four walking legs in addition to the non-walking wings. They also give live birth to developed young. I'm not sure there's any other extant flying group more disadvantaged for flight.
Anatomically basal wingworms which retain legs or some other form of terrestrial locomotion are in a similar boat to insects, though since they aren't fast on foot they may be slightly more likely to keep flight under some circumstances. Similar to phlyers, their wings are separate structures from their legs and don't really serve much other purpose, so they waste energy when left unused.
Wingworms do have the advantage of tracheae, which make them light in much the same way as hollow bones / air sacs.
Skysnappers are in a similar boat to birds in that they are hollow-boned bipeds which have modified their forelimbs into wings. Some of them have/retain hands, which might make it slightly harder to lose the wing altogether compared to pterophytes, but otherwise, unless they were to become quadrupeds somehow, they're about equally as likely to lose flight as birds.
Srugeings are kinda in an odd position. Flight is their primary means of locomotion, but the wings cannot be walked on. However, I can't imagine the wings becoming adapted for much else even if they get more terrestrial, so I'm still putting them in this category.
Wingworms which are obligate fliers lacking any means of terrestrial locomotion probably won't lose flight. They would be instantly eaten. However, they could evolve terrestrial locomotion, which would make losing flight pretty instantaneous depending on their circumstances.
Flight Easily Kept
Biats are wing-walkers to a much greater extreme than pterosaurs or bats--they have no other appendages that could possibly be walked on, so no changes to the limbs used in locomotion would increase the chances of losing flight.
The only way a biat is likely to lose flight is if it exchanges it for a very weight-costly adaptation such as a large fermenting gut--and even that will be a challenge, as they and many other Sagan 4 organisms should have access to cellulase in order to eat plents even as carnivores, which in turn makes them not actually need a massive gut.
Maybe diving / underwater flight adaptations on an island shore could do it.
Unlike biats, gushfliers physically can't outgrow their wings because they have an exoskeleton. Barring exceptional evolutionary circumstances, they're probably not gonna lose flight any time soon.
Certain wingworms such as my minibees which can crawl on their wings are even more advantaged for keeping flight. They simply have no other walking options upon which they could lose use of the flight appendages, similar to biats.
On Earth, there's four kinds of flying animals that have ever evolved: insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats. Many insects and birds have lost flight secondarily, but the more observant might notice that as far as we know, neither pterosaurs nor bats have ever done the same. There's a reason for that.
While all these animals fly, the way they use their wings differ.
For insects and birds, the wings are their own structure not used for much else other than flight:
While for pterosaurs and bats, they also double as legs:
This difference in use is massive. An insect or bird that spends most of its time on the ground is wasting a lot of energy maintaining wings that are only used in the air, while a pterosaur or bat with the same lifestyle is putting the wings to work while walking and only expending a little extra energy to make their legs also be capable of getting them aloft. Basically, if you're using your wings for other things too, the benefit of keeping the ability to fly away from predators outweighs the energy cost.
With this in mind, we can probably determine which flighted Sagan 4 organisms are more likely to lose or keep flight. Here I list each living group in order from most to least likely to become flightless.
Flight Easily Lost
Pterophytes have actually lost flight several times independently already, which is quite accurate to what one should expect. Much like insects, their wings did not originate as legs, so they are generally unlikely to evolve to walk on their wings (which would enable them to keep flight more easily).
Notably, pterophytes also have a significant weight disadvantage. They lack air sacs and have four walking legs in addition to the non-walking wings. They also give live birth to developed young. I'm not sure there's any other extant flying group more disadvantaged for flight.
Anatomically basal wingworms which retain legs or some other form of terrestrial locomotion are in a similar boat to insects, though since they aren't fast on foot they may be slightly more likely to keep flight under some circumstances. Similar to phlyers, their wings are separate structures from their legs and don't really serve much other purpose, so they waste energy when left unused.
Wingworms do have the advantage of tracheae, which make them light in much the same way as hollow bones / air sacs.
Skysnappers are in a similar boat to birds in that they are hollow-boned bipeds which have modified their forelimbs into wings. Some of them have/retain hands, which might make it slightly harder to lose the wing altogether compared to pterophytes, but otherwise, unless they were to become quadrupeds somehow, they're about equally as likely to lose flight as birds.
Srugeings are kinda in an odd position. Flight is their primary means of locomotion, but the wings cannot be walked on. However, I can't imagine the wings becoming adapted for much else even if they get more terrestrial, so I'm still putting them in this category.
Wingworms which are obligate fliers lacking any means of terrestrial locomotion probably won't lose flight. They would be instantly eaten. However, they could evolve terrestrial locomotion, which would make losing flight pretty instantaneous depending on their circumstances.
Flight Easily Kept
Biats are wing-walkers to a much greater extreme than pterosaurs or bats--they have no other appendages that could possibly be walked on, so no changes to the limbs used in locomotion would increase the chances of losing flight.
The only way a biat is likely to lose flight is if it exchanges it for a very weight-costly adaptation such as a large fermenting gut--and even that will be a challenge, as they and many other Sagan 4 organisms should have access to cellulase in order to eat plents even as carnivores, which in turn makes them not actually need a massive gut.
Maybe diving / underwater flight adaptations on an island shore could do it.
Unlike biats, gushfliers physically can't outgrow their wings because they have an exoskeleton. Barring exceptional evolutionary circumstances, they're probably not gonna lose flight any time soon.
Certain wingworms such as my minibees which can crawl on their wings are even more advantaged for keeping flight. They simply have no other walking options upon which they could lose use of the flight appendages, similar to biats.
Mancerxa: Plent Pigments
There has been some historic confusion about the importance of color in plents, a confusion that enabled argusraptors to just go and eat a bunch of them to extinction for being unnecessarily green for photosynthesis. Plents appear to have access to typical plant pigments or some analogue to them, many of which are compatible with photosynthesis. Here, I will go over each one and what it may be useful for.
Chlorophylls
Chlorophyll a
Type: Primary pigment
Color: Green
Effect on Photosynthesis: Primarily performs it
UV: Fluoresces red
Chlorophyll b
Type: Accessory pigment
Color: Green
Effect on Photosynthesis: Absorbs additional blue light
UV: Reflects
Everyone already knows these ones, I should hope. This is the default color, which may be good for display and for camouflage against green flora, but in most environments an additional pigment may be favorable.
Chlorophyll c
Type: Accessory pigment
Color: Blue-Green
Effect on Photosynthesis: Allows absorption of UV light
UV: Absorbs
Generally infrequent in plents apart from skuniks, but it may technically be an option for swarmers to evolve, since they are frequently exposed to UV light.
Chlorophyll d
Type: Accessory Pigment
Color: Green
Effect on Photosynthesis: Allows absorption of infrared light
UV: (having trouble finding information)
Being able to absorb infrared light may be advantageous in an organism which lives in the shade or anywhere else where high-energy light has already been filtered.
Carotenoids
Carotenoids can camouflage a plent against many soils. It also deposits in the skin and feathers of keratin- and chitin-using predators, if they are to eat it.
A non-photosynthetic plent uses modified chlorophyll as a blood pigment, presumably in a chloroplast-derived structure...carotenoids would be in those...are some plents using modified blood to pigment their skin, I wonder? That's cursed.
Carotene
Type: Accessory Pigment
Color: Orange or red
Effect on Photosynthesis: Allows absorption of ultraviolet light
UV: Absorbs
All plents probably have this, given how many plents have taken on colors in this range. It would be present in chloroplasts, including those modified into blood cells, which in turn probably means cooked plents--and their blood--turn red/orange the same way lobsters do.
In excessive amounts, this may take over as the main visible photosynthesis pigment, as it has in many algae. Alternatively, it can be exposed by death of chloroplasts in the skin, either intentionally or from disease targeting the pigment cells, producing the color without the photosynthesis.
Xanthophyll
Type: Accessory Pigment
Color: Yellow
Effect on Photosynthesis: Modulates light energy, protects chlorophyll from intense light
UV: Absorbs
Similar to carotene, but oxygenated. Probably good for plents that live out in the sun. (This may also be a necessary component in the diets of some organisms!)
Interesting note: modern nodent species are very yellow, and coincidentally used to live in caves where they would have lost their existing UV protections. Perhaps these pigments evolved not just for camouflage, but for defense against UV radiation.
Phycobilins
As biles, these would be produced as a product of the plent's metabolism rather than produced directly for their purpose in coloration, so they may be better health indicators than other pigments.
Phycoerythrin
Type: Accessory pigment
Color: Red
Effect on Photosynthesis: Enables absorption of more kinds of light in dimmer conditions
UV: Reflects
Possibly also found in: Boneflora
Another red. This seems to also be present in some swarmers, where it is erroneously noted as "not interfering" with photosynthesis rather than aiding it. Being red might be good for camouflaging in boneflora, or for some kind of display or warning coloration since it's a pretty rare color on land.
Phycocyanin
Type: Accessory pigment
Color: Blue
Effect on photosynthesis: Allows absorption of red and orange light.
UV: Reflects
Possibly also found in: Glass flora
This can produce a rich blue color. In lower quantities, it may help camouflage against glass flora.
Other
Anthocyanin
Type: Non-photosynthetic
Color: Purple, red, blue, black
Effect on Photosynthesis: Little/none when purple; blocks when black
UV: Greatly absorbs
Anthocyanins are basal to land plents and have been used by many species to camouflage against purple flora. They may fulfill an analogous role to melanin as a natural sunscreen and general darkening pigment.
Warning: purple flora reflect UV light. Organisms which can see into the UV spectrum can see purple plents against purple plants.
Tannins
Type: Non-photosynthetic
Color: Brown, reddish brown
Effect on Photosynthesis: May block in large quantities
UV: Absorbs
Tannins are the reason bark is often brown. It may be responsible for the otherwise unexplained brown coloration of some plent wood, which has some interesting implications. When deposited in the skin and flesh of a plent, tannins make it bitter and inhibits a predator's ability to digest it.
There has been some historic confusion about the importance of color in plents, a confusion that enabled argusraptors to just go and eat a bunch of them to extinction for being unnecessarily green for photosynthesis. Plents appear to have access to typical plant pigments or some analogue to them, many of which are compatible with photosynthesis. Here, I will go over each one and what it may be useful for.
Chlorophylls
Chlorophyll a
Type: Primary pigment
Color: Green
Effect on Photosynthesis: Primarily performs it
UV: Fluoresces red
Chlorophyll b
Type: Accessory pigment
Color: Green
Effect on Photosynthesis: Absorbs additional blue light
UV: Reflects
Everyone already knows these ones, I should hope. This is the default color, which may be good for display and for camouflage against green flora, but in most environments an additional pigment may be favorable.
Chlorophyll c
Type: Accessory pigment
Color: Blue-Green
Effect on Photosynthesis: Allows absorption of UV light
UV: Absorbs
Generally infrequent in plents apart from skuniks, but it may technically be an option for swarmers to evolve, since they are frequently exposed to UV light.
Chlorophyll d
Type: Accessory Pigment
Color: Green
Effect on Photosynthesis: Allows absorption of infrared light
UV: (having trouble finding information)
Being able to absorb infrared light may be advantageous in an organism which lives in the shade or anywhere else where high-energy light has already been filtered.
Carotenoids
Carotenoids can camouflage a plent against many soils. It also deposits in the skin and feathers of keratin- and chitin-using predators, if they are to eat it.
A non-photosynthetic plent uses modified chlorophyll as a blood pigment, presumably in a chloroplast-derived structure...carotenoids would be in those...are some plents using modified blood to pigment their skin, I wonder? That's cursed.
Carotene
Type: Accessory Pigment
Color: Orange or red
Effect on Photosynthesis: Allows absorption of ultraviolet light
UV: Absorbs
All plents probably have this, given how many plents have taken on colors in this range. It would be present in chloroplasts, including those modified into blood cells, which in turn probably means cooked plents--and their blood--turn red/orange the same way lobsters do.
In excessive amounts, this may take over as the main visible photosynthesis pigment, as it has in many algae. Alternatively, it can be exposed by death of chloroplasts in the skin, either intentionally or from disease targeting the pigment cells, producing the color without the photosynthesis.
Xanthophyll
Type: Accessory Pigment
Color: Yellow
Effect on Photosynthesis: Modulates light energy, protects chlorophyll from intense light
UV: Absorbs
Similar to carotene, but oxygenated. Probably good for plents that live out in the sun. (This may also be a necessary component in the diets of some organisms!)
Interesting note: modern nodent species are very yellow, and coincidentally used to live in caves where they would have lost their existing UV protections. Perhaps these pigments evolved not just for camouflage, but for defense against UV radiation.
Phycobilins
As biles, these would be produced as a product of the plent's metabolism rather than produced directly for their purpose in coloration, so they may be better health indicators than other pigments.
Phycoerythrin
Type: Accessory pigment
Color: Red
Effect on Photosynthesis: Enables absorption of more kinds of light in dimmer conditions
UV: Reflects
Possibly also found in: Boneflora
Another red. This seems to also be present in some swarmers, where it is erroneously noted as "not interfering" with photosynthesis rather than aiding it. Being red might be good for camouflaging in boneflora, or for some kind of display or warning coloration since it's a pretty rare color on land.
Phycocyanin
Type: Accessory pigment
Color: Blue
Effect on photosynthesis: Allows absorption of red and orange light.
UV: Reflects
Possibly also found in: Glass flora
This can produce a rich blue color. In lower quantities, it may help camouflage against glass flora.
Other
Anthocyanin
Type: Non-photosynthetic
Color: Purple, red, blue, black
Effect on Photosynthesis: Little/none when purple; blocks when black
UV: Greatly absorbs
Anthocyanins are basal to land plents and have been used by many species to camouflage against purple flora. They may fulfill an analogous role to melanin as a natural sunscreen and general darkening pigment.
Warning: purple flora reflect UV light. Organisms which can see into the UV spectrum can see purple plents against purple plants.
Tannins
Type: Non-photosynthetic
Color: Brown, reddish brown
Effect on Photosynthesis: May block in large quantities
UV: Absorbs
Tannins are the reason bark is often brown. It may be responsible for the otherwise unexplained brown coloration of some plent wood, which has some interesting implications. When deposited in the skin and flesh of a plent, tannins make it bitter and inhibits a predator's ability to digest it.
General: A Time and A Clade: One Bird's Implausible is Another Bird's Innovation
The notooth snapper and the sausophrey are similar in many ways. Both are aerial carnivores which hunt nodents by swooping down and snatching them off the ground, using their sideways jaws like talons, and take them off into the sky in their mouths. And yet, you'll only ever hear the notooth snapper referred to as an abomination, with there even being calls to decanonize it entirely, while the sausophrey is received more neutrally or even celebrated in comparison. But if they're basically using the same strategies to fill the same ecological niche, how could that be?
The main difference is in their ancestry.
The notooth snapper evolved from the phawk, which is a basal pluzzurd closely related to the ancestor of modern phlyers. Like many raptorial flying plents, it primarily grabbed its prey using a hooked claw on each foot, all four closing around the catch like an owl's foot. It also had a fairly regular eagle-like beak.
In order to take on the form it did, the notooth snapper stopped using the talons at all for no explained reason, and, more egregiously, turned its jaws sideways--muscle attachment locations be damned--to start using them in place of the talons. While this hunting strategy works, it made no sense for the phawk to switch to it--what of the transitional form that had a diagonal beak that couldn't bite and caught nothing? And are its talons just gone or something?
The sausophrey, on the other hand, is a biat--that is, it's a member of a group that was already just kinda shaped like that. Their jaws are already sideways, because their distant ancestors' jaws are modified from lateral teeth, and they have no talons on their underside because they only ever had a single pair of limbs. Its direct ancestor also could already catch small prey in its jaws. All the sausophrey had to do to evolve this strategy was to start grabbing bigger stuff and let evolution sharpen its beak.
This can be applied to many adaptations in many different organisms. It's tempting to try to implement your wildest ideas into your favorite clades immediately, but if it doesn't make sense for it to evolve, you should seek an ancestor that's more suitable--or give it time to incubate in your head so that, if possible, you can come up with transitional forms.
The notooth snapper and the sausophrey are similar in many ways. Both are aerial carnivores which hunt nodents by swooping down and snatching them off the ground, using their sideways jaws like talons, and take them off into the sky in their mouths. And yet, you'll only ever hear the notooth snapper referred to as an abomination, with there even being calls to decanonize it entirely, while the sausophrey is received more neutrally or even celebrated in comparison. But if they're basically using the same strategies to fill the same ecological niche, how could that be?
The main difference is in their ancestry.
The notooth snapper evolved from the phawk, which is a basal pluzzurd closely related to the ancestor of modern phlyers. Like many raptorial flying plents, it primarily grabbed its prey using a hooked claw on each foot, all four closing around the catch like an owl's foot. It also had a fairly regular eagle-like beak.
In order to take on the form it did, the notooth snapper stopped using the talons at all for no explained reason, and, more egregiously, turned its jaws sideways--muscle attachment locations be damned--to start using them in place of the talons. While this hunting strategy works, it made no sense for the phawk to switch to it--what of the transitional form that had a diagonal beak that couldn't bite and caught nothing? And are its talons just gone or something?
The sausophrey, on the other hand, is a biat--that is, it's a member of a group that was already just kinda shaped like that. Their jaws are already sideways, because their distant ancestors' jaws are modified from lateral teeth, and they have no talons on their underside because they only ever had a single pair of limbs. Its direct ancestor also could already catch small prey in its jaws. All the sausophrey had to do to evolve this strategy was to start grabbing bigger stuff and let evolution sharpen its beak.
This can be applied to many adaptations in many different organisms. It's tempting to try to implement your wildest ideas into your favorite clades immediately, but if it doesn't make sense for it to evolve, you should seek an ancestor that's more suitable--or give it time to incubate in your head so that, if possible, you can come up with transitional forms.
Mancerxa: Don’t Do Skinny Tail-Like Butt Nostrils!
Pictured here is a young Scrubland Hornface which, if it manages to escape, will likely die a horrible death, either from infection, blood loss, or choking on its own blood. Or it’ll just be shunned from its herd and picked off by a predator. Either way, it is a perfect example of a trend I’ve seen where plent butt nostrils are elaborated into skinny mammal-like tails without any consideration of the consequences.
The butt nostril is one of the most important and vulnerable external body parts in plent anatomy. In the prehistoric ancestors of plents, it was commonly targeted by predatory worms, including the ancestors of saucebacks. This is because any damage or blockage of the butt nostril would restrict a plent’s ability to breathe, leading to suffocation. Skinny tail-like butt nostrils are even more vulnerable to attack, with it being possible to grab the nostril from the side and tear it off. Species such as that Scrubland Hornface are especially egregious; they also depend on a vocal organ located at the end of the butt nostril, which is also the part most likely to be damaged or torn off by predators. Even if it were not, the skinny tail can still be easily bitten through, which could potentially be fatal.
This is very much unlike the tails of mammals, which don’t contain any vital organs. Copying mammalian tails for butt nostril shapes should be avoided.
However, this is not to say all tail-like butt nostrils are bad. Short, stubby “tails” are fine, of course, as are “dinosaur tails”--a thick tail cannot be bitten through as easily, seen here:
However, this can still have the problem of something biting the end and suffocating the plent, or biting hard enough to crush the windpipe. All these issues can be avoided just by having the nostril not be at the end of a tail at all, if possible. Nodents know what’s right!
Pictured here is a young Scrubland Hornface which, if it manages to escape, will likely die a horrible death, either from infection, blood loss, or choking on its own blood. Or it’ll just be shunned from its herd and picked off by a predator. Either way, it is a perfect example of a trend I’ve seen where plent butt nostrils are elaborated into skinny mammal-like tails without any consideration of the consequences.
The butt nostril is one of the most important and vulnerable external body parts in plent anatomy. In the prehistoric ancestors of plents, it was commonly targeted by predatory worms, including the ancestors of saucebacks. This is because any damage or blockage of the butt nostril would restrict a plent’s ability to breathe, leading to suffocation. Skinny tail-like butt nostrils are even more vulnerable to attack, with it being possible to grab the nostril from the side and tear it off. Species such as that Scrubland Hornface are especially egregious; they also depend on a vocal organ located at the end of the butt nostril, which is also the part most likely to be damaged or torn off by predators. Even if it were not, the skinny tail can still be easily bitten through, which could potentially be fatal.
This is very much unlike the tails of mammals, which don’t contain any vital organs. Copying mammalian tails for butt nostril shapes should be avoided.
However, this is not to say all tail-like butt nostrils are bad. Short, stubby “tails” are fine, of course, as are “dinosaur tails”--a thick tail cannot be bitten through as easily, seen here:
However, this can still have the problem of something biting the end and suffocating the plent, or biting hard enough to crush the windpipe. All these issues can be avoided just by having the nostril not be at the end of a tail at all, if possible. Nodents know what’s right!
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