Sagan 4 Forum [Menu]

Oh, that's a clever use of their ability to produce electrical shocks. Meanwhile, every Shrog is staring at them as they ponder what manner of beast is it that can summon flame without flint or tinder.

I may still edit this, I feel like I'm forgetting something important.

Also, big rip to Sagon, this creature does basically everything it could do with a fraction of the brain power

" never actually needed to smell with its tongue in the first place" That seems harsh. Some animals do have sensory redundancy. Butterflies have photoreceptors on their rear ends, which helps with aligning while mating, and catfish have taste buds on their whole bodies. Having smelling receptors on the tongue could have some utility.

These probably massively increase fire incidences in their habitats. How would that affect local flora and fauna distributions? I figure Greater Lahns might burn, and perhaps Lahnworms. Fauna that aren't fast enough to flee, or have keen enough senses to get a warning before it gets too severe, or are able to swim or climb up fire-resistant trees might be somewhat endangered by these. I wonder if accidental fires could spread across habitats...

It does seem strange they would eat almost exclusively things that are poisonous and hard to digest. Humans (the only other example of an animal that regularly cooks its food with fire) don't eat exclusively poisonous things. On a related note, Scarlethorns are also a poisonous fauna option in Drake Chaparral, and they don't look as if they would be fast. Unless, of course, their poison is so strong (or "deadly") cooking doesn't get rid of all of it.

EDIT: This gave me an idea, which I'll probably make next Generation. Do these things like the taste of lemon and chile peppers?

The harsh comment was mainly in reference to how this lineage got their hands in the first place--Flisch had a bad habit of assuming stuff and not reading descriptions and thought plenthogs couldn't smell, so he made a novel organ for it instead of realistically modifying their barbels. On the meta side of things, it literally never needed to happen and frankly probably should not have.

A lot of modern major forest fires are happening because of climate change. What were previously temperate rainforests are becoming more like subtropical woodlands and chaparrals, which are arid and fire-prone, and all those big trees make great kindling. While taserflames can probably cause fires to happen more frequently, they're kept under control by the climate as well as fires caused by lightning strikes would be. I figure they're probably also instinctively careful with fire, at least more careful than humans, since starting a forest fire hurts them as much as it hurts everything else.

I have them eating crystal flora and various plants that look like they probably have fairly tough leaves as well. Crystals in particular have very high chitin content, which can be just as difficult to digest as cellulose.

I'm not sure about spicy food, but some of the plants they eat seem to use acid which I've interpreted as being similar to citric acid, so they might enjoy a lemon.

When you say it eats various ferines...can you specify? Since they're trees, they probably can't be eaten in their entirety, or eaten almost in their entirety, without special adaptations for eating wood. I figure the parts that could be eaten without special adaptations, especially considering they can cook it, would be the berries, flowers, flower buds, leaf buds, possibly shoots, and cambium. (except sleeve ferines, which is probably high in heavy metals) Since that's a long list, you could say "most low-cellulsoe parts of".

Would they avoid eating Scarlethorns?

I meant the leaves and fruit of the respective species, sorry.

I'll edit and add Scarlethorns to the diet.

This is super cool

Makes me wonder about other critters stealing fire for their own use.

Or flora creating easy to collect fuel with fire resistant seeds or whatever to take advantage of the ash and debris filled pits