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[Supermikhail]

Well, I couldn't draw our dear brachius to my satisfaction... Yea, I'm not too good with names, either. That's why my cat is just Cat (should I even capitalize that?). But burger, xwingus and donutsaur sort of work, don't they. As the critters become more complex and, hopefully, strange, they're going to present some trouble for associations, though. Like brachius. Eight-armed critter makes it too much octopus. Octobrachius isn't visual enough. Eh. Fiddlesticks, inspiration.

Anyway, I still imagine it wearing two shell bits, protecting its top and bottom. They're probably much more curved than in the rhombus, because they have to accommodate for the arms and the proboscises. Or in some places they've fused together. Maybe if I could visualize exactly how the inside and the arms of this critter look and work, I could be more definite about the shape of the shell. I take it a jet doesn't have to be especially large to create decent speed. I've just looked at an image of a squid's anatomy, and it's like a compact balloon. But the tentacles are pretty thick... I've just got a pretty scary idea. So, suppose brachius in default position keeps its hands in the front, forming a shape of a cone with them. But when it approaches a prey, it opens the cone up and sort of slides over the prey. This way it doesn't have to expend a lot of energy jumping at the prey from a distance, and ensnaring it... Scary because from outside it would appear pretty peaceful - a brachius gracefully sliding over a donutsaur. But then brachius uses its proboscises!

I've just watched Cameron's Avatar (I had to know finally why so much bad rap, and I wasn't disappointed), and, you know, I wish I had so many people running 3D here for this project. This is just sad. They've fallen leagues short of the potential of their biological concept - a sort of brain-hive-world. All they have to show is half-a-dozen species whose only connection to the hive is a flimsy cord. Completely identical in every species, at that. Like the world was terraformed and gene-engineered some time in the past.

However, the movie has born something good, possibly, inside me. Or maybe stupid. You know, if this project finally gained momentum some time, it could be cool to try to turn famous fictional worlds with inane biology, into something coherent. Take the core concept and build a world based off it. If I understand the core concept of Pandora (I don't think it's cute kitties, by the way), it would be first to try to connect the world into a network using some species. And I even know who could be used for that on this Ark - the lump on the shore. The way I've come to imagine it, is already kind of utopian - its body gives shelter to many species of microorganisms - part of them photosynthesise on the upper surface, another part consume minerals on the bottom. Its "tail" is submerged in water for hydration. The tail consists of many thin "tentacles", similar to the root of a plant, but I guess it could even feed on microorganisms in the water. What if you just prolong the "tentacles", and make a colony out of many lumps around a shore?

Edit: Hm, come think of it, a network of goodness encompassing a whole planet is an inane concept in itself - a single dominant species - no competition - no evolution - where'd Na'vi come from?

[Shoku]

Why would it keep the shell like that? The old purpose in burger was keeping the food consumption process away from where it took in the food wasn't it? This guy is obviously not getting food from minerals out of the water but is predating donutsaurs who only really have the one dangerous spot of the mouth that it can't really move to fight back.

Though I guess that would be an advantage of the unstable one...

So if the jets are on the underside how does it approach things arms first? I'm pretty sure you can't really move very far from sucking water in.

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Huyup. They were and made aliens a la potato head. Let's make the eyes big because people are attracted to that. Let's give them a nose like a dog or something so they feel like our pets. Let's stick glitter on them because...
They obviously designed the hell out of everything and while it was good design work I just don't think the method makes for a very effective world.

Well, actually you can get communication-y stuff like that brain pony tail they all had. Ants have those two interesting antennae hanging off the fronts of their heads so that they can stick them together to communicate. If ants came along earlier in the tree of life there might be tons of species with an accessible communication organ just waiting for a coordinator to come along to tell them what to do. Now, willingness to do it would be another story because even if you had some intelligent tool builder race come along they wouldn't necessarily have all living things' best interest in mind. Just imagine how often humans would tell mammoths and cows and things to go lie down in a field for some nice relaxation and then actually come along and spear the thing to death or drop some kind of huge boulder on it.

Doesn't matter in the world of Avatar because of how they're based on the Native American harmony with nature popular concept but the whole noble savage notion is outdated thinking and really by now extremely fake. Even if by chance some species comes along that gives things up for the good of others it still has to benefit from the actions in a significant way or somebody that cheats that system is going to come along sooner or later and in cheating they will prosper more than everyone else, and we all know which of these natural selection is going to favor.

[Supermikhail]

Okay, I guess I'll have to get on 3-dimensionising octobrachius (at the same time cursing James Cameron for showing me what some computers and hands can do). I imagine that it has jets in the rear, pushing it from behind. I don't know why you keep insisting on bottom-jets (in 2 creatures thus far). Probably because, at this point, having gained quite some mass, it's going to sink without upward propulsion. I hope it can manage on the example of squids.

I've been thinking about the new generations of donutsaur (most of the time fruitlessly). There are several things that could stabilize the spaceship one - first, not fully utilizing the spaceship idea. That is, developing a vessels system to circulate gas... Hey, wait a second. Why does it need to have gas close to its extremities? The gas it has in the donut isn't oxygen - its mostly waste gases, and they aren't used for much but flotation. At least that's how I think it works. So, hm...

I've just realised what Na'vi reminded me of. One of the biggest failures of the Avatar's creators is that after all their research and careful cat manipulation they came to a little more than a detailed Pixar character. Bug's life. Or was it DreamWorks' Antz? I'm not sure.

[Shoku]

Because there is no back that I can make out. There's a top, bottom, and eight sides. If you turn it sideways with the arms all together are they the back or is the opposite end of the body the back? Does that mean it has jets on top?

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It needs to be near the extremities because it's no longer a gas but a liquid. The idea was for the gut to just send more of the nutrients and things into there so that they would travel to the rest of the body instead of having to have intestines always near everything.

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I consider DreamWorks to be the one without any real spirit to it so let's go with that.

[Supermikhail]

Okay. A schematic representation of how Octobrachius looks in my mind - Youtube video

[Shoku]

With jets like that why doesn't it flip end over end?

[Supermikhail]

What? Why? If it's about the sucker in front, it's a rudiment used mostly for better attachment to the prey. And for reproduction. And if not... I've got some difficulty properly assigning the center of gravity to it in my mind, but I thought, squids have got jets backwards and at an angle... And the "tentacles" could serve as directing fins, too. At least in folded state. Of course, its overall shape still needs some work.

[Shoku]

Yeah but with squids head is up and tentacles are down so this puts their jet pointing down, the same direction as the mouth and the same direction as the tentacles if they're not splayed out. So for swimming they actually do flip over on their side to swim. This guy is set up with jets basically facing backward so instead of controlling for direction the arms would need to be aerodynamic instead of just increasing their profile a bit to steer in whichever direction. I could still see it like standing on the bottom or a rock and turning itself so the jets were facing just right for one burst to take it to the prey so the layout would still have its uses.
Probably gonna want eyes to make targeted attacks like that though.

[Supermikhail]

First I wanted to answer, "Yeahaw! We've got "go" for eyes". Then I watched some Youtube and realized that I made a squid (minus some... well, a lot of complex physiological systems) only of somewhat different shape. And eating with its tentacles. Obviously, so far squids win all the races. I guess, I've got two options now - either imitate squid shape and locomotion, or frantically try to steer away from this direction, take your ambushing predator idea, although I imagine it would work better if we had some actively moving, grazing prey. But, you know, from lying in wait on the bottom it's not far to sitting there all the time, like a sea anemone.

[Shoku]

The plants prompt is still sitting around untouched (for grazing animals.)
*come to think of it life cycles didn't really take on any complexity besides "they start small and end up leaving the parent somehow." A lot of underwater life does it more like insects with some eating growing stage and then a metamorphosis into some sexing stage. Plus things like baby jellyfish that just gradually grow into the adult shape start out with very little resemblance- well, I'll just get a picture for this example.

The shape makes a little more sense when you know jellyfish anatomy but still- this flat disk thing is waaaay different from the bubble dome and dangling tentacles shape.

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Don't worry too much about it being like a squid. If you break things down into categories (jets, tentacles, shells) you're always going to bump into an animal that's got a few of the same things checked off the list and like I've said before, it's not like I can help doing that either. But here I think we have a good opportunity for you to be on the other side of it after I've let the idea roll around in my head for awhile- I think I've already got some good ideas for taking it in a different direction (in a bigger way than the ambush behavior thing.)

With the way I imagine the feeding tentacles working the animal would probably do pretty well like a sea anemone or similar creature. Just anchor on some rocky edge with a bit of water flow and dart the things in and out grabbing at little things that go by (I'm not really sure which animals of that sort "grab" things or are just mildly sticky.)

[Supermikhail]

So, where were we?... After a short break, one may become overwhelmed by the amount of work this project needs from just two people.

What if one octobrachius becomes a sea anemone (which lurches at its prey from a secure shell, and then takes the prey back with it); and another becomes an ambusher (which grabs its prey with its large tentacles, poisons it, then holds it with its front sucker while digesting it externally with the smaller tentacles).

  I don't really know how to approach plants. Mostly because I've got very little interest in them (part of the reason I didn't try to enter a biology department). Maybe we could replace them with something more interesting? Or I'll have to get another book, now on botany.

[Shoku]

Well if you've got a nice current and feeding bits shaped a bit like a comb you can get a comparable amount of food to chasing big things down and chomping on them. To do it well though the feeding parts need to basically be unarmored and dangling out, which is why so many anemone type things roll everything up and pull them into the body-area or such when prodded by something large.

If you've got something lunging out of an opening that at least blends in with the surrounding rock then there's another eight legged creature to look at though- spiders. That's pretty much what they did before they worked out the whole webs thing.

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No, the plants thing isn't about making any of them. I was just going to up and declare new sorts of plant-things available for eating. In "the plants prompt" I said that there were little plants scattered about and I pictured something sort of like a lily pad but I'm not sure if I gave enough detail to convey that vision. Obviously they're smaller than actual lily pads but still a good chunk of food for anything able to actively move to them.

[Supermikhail]

So, you don't have to be a botany PhD to declare new plants?
I'm having trouble connecting the image of lily pads with "chase".

[Shoku]

Yeah, but they're up near the surface of the water and after you've swallowed one you can't just wait for another to come in reach. We've got couch potatoes and things with heavy shells that use jets. Not very dangerous to something resembling a lily pad. They could still end up in danger on rare occasions where the waves work out just right or that sort of thing but most of them would die of old age before they ended up the jaws- well, not "jaws" since nothing's got anything like that- of the predators there are now.

Plus they ought to cast a decent shadow that would be a good reason to want to have some simple sight capability. The first creature that has a good way to just skim the surface could do fine blinding hoping to run into the things but once the plants are being eaten they'll naturally be less densely packed and pinpointing them would be a bigger deal.

[Supermikhail]

Hm. I assume you can't just suck a lily pad dry, like you would do an animal, if you were an Octobrachius? Or just consume them by the means of fagocitosis, like the rooted fellow would do? And do they have that hard - I'll venture a guess and call it - cuticle that would require real jaws to puncture?