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A modern shrew with a hairless tail? What an abomination. (That's a joke. The Great Leotam and Leemalla and probably a few others already have very furry tails.)

The joeys breathing through their skin is interesting, but I'm not sure how plausible it is. Mammals generally cannot do that, not only because their skin is too thick, but because of their high metabolism. On the other hand, bats are capable of some gas diffusion through their wings---something I learned just after a quick search for this organism. The joeys probably have even more vascularization of their skin than the bat of the study. On the other hand, the description suggests the gas exchange is such they need only surface for air "periodically", instead of just doing unusually high levels of gas exchange through their skins. That the babies seem to be good swimmers and have no indication of being largely inactive might mean they have a metabolism higher than, say, a turtle (some are capable of unusual methods of breathing) or frogs. If the joy performs gas exchange of some sort like an epauletted fruit bat, it seems having a hairy body would impede that.

How does it detect embryos that have dramatic shifts in tissue placement? It's not like it can see inside its womb.

This post has been edited by Coolsteph: Feb 9 2021, 08:46 PM

The joeys must still breathe air periodically. They will still eventually drown, especially as they get older. Newborn joeys, being literal fetuses, don't have especially high metabolisms; the need to breathe air grows with age, but so does their ability to get to the air on their own. I've edited to make that clearer.

I'm not sure about marsupials, but human reproductive organs are apparently able to straight-up sense the potential of sperm and prevent specific sperm cells from reaching the egg. I could see whatever mechanism is used there to also be repurposed to detect problems with embryos.

This post has been edited by Disgustedorite: Feb 9 2021, 10:50 PM

I admit though that this species is certainly among my more ambitious ideas. It takes some inspiration from Serina's metamorphic birds; ancestrally, they similarly hatch as fetuses with overly developed forelimbs, and one branch went down a pretty similar path where babies started breathing through their skin in addition to breathing air. Since nobody's really yelled at Sheather about that--and believe me, they would if they had a reason to--I assume such a path is probably possible in Shrews too.

Note this is not a rip-off of any Serina species (I'm not pulling a horndog here); I don't think there are any species on Serina that are quite like this. It's convergent evolution, and my ideas for where to take it next are quite a bit different from what metamorphic birds do.

I see no issue with this. Will future splits might evolve towards smaller ears, similar to earth mammal (not really any other group here on earth with large external ears)?

Great to see different lineages of shrews taking to the water.

I have several different ideas for how these may go in the future. My "main line" idea actually does something quite different with the ears.

You know, between it never being depicted before in any species and Cheatsy expressing his strong preference for shrews to have subtle bird- or lizard-like genitalia, I'm surprised not one person has said a word about how I depicted the juvenile's bottom.

Some intense forum downtime later spanning the entire time between those these two messages, there has now been thorough discussion of shrew genitalia on the discord server. I'll have to think it over before determining whether I need to edit the art.

This post has been edited by Disgustedorite: Feb 25 2021, 12:49 AM

I am also in favor of being subtle over it. If shrews weren't subtle, I don't think I would ever draw one.

The joey wouldn't exactly have anything prominent going on anyway but it's at least been determined roughly what a male shrew looks like from behind.

I think people have largely intentionally depicted females to avoid the issue of what the males look like. In some basal furred shrews the artwork even explicitly depicts females (pouch visible, sexually dimorphic traits are clearly feminine).

I probably depicted the rear end of the juvenile accurately. I just also arrived at that appearance by misinterpreting a photograph of an opossum.

This post has been edited by Disgustedorite: Feb 25 2021, 11:50 AM

So are we keeping the art?

I've decided that I accidentally made it accurate, so yeah, keep.