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[Shoku]

So four species in the ocean and it's time to move onto land? Uh uh. We need to have fish and eels and crustaceans. Well, not THOSE but that kind of variety.

So that one that sank to the bottom hasn't had any attention for awhile~

[Supermikhail]

Time for a tea break.

Would you agree that "evolution" is just a useful scientific approximation, aimed mostly to help at the comprehension of the past, not the greatest law of the Universe, or the scientific justification of the dominance of man on Earth? And that the definition of success of an organism derived from this approximation is just another approximation? If you agree with me on that, then you must agree also that there isn't a clear winner between an animal that's lived a long life, has defeated all its opponents, has never been ill, but hasn't had any descendants, and another animal that died at a young age but left many children.

My imagination just can't produce so much unique stuff. You know, what, trisgea flimus that lives near the bottom and is a film of slime and shell, has discovered that a particular kind of shape is favourable for hydrodynamics and sucking minerals.

Namely:

trisgea X-wingus


It has 4 sort of "wings". It either connected with another of flimuses, or two layers became separated, and there is a sort of hard rod in the middle, keeping it together. Now it can wave the wings around, sucking nutritious minerals and bacteria between them where they stick and get digested. Also, floats around with unseen before grace.

[Shoku]

Given that any particular arrangement of atoms is non-permanent those that make more of themselves are the only ones that will last. Given limits to total building materials and those that make copies better (more of them or longer lasting ones) will be the only ones that stick around. Evolution is just that simple fact on top of how life doesn't make exact copies 100% of the time.

So is that a head on the front of it all of a sudden? Does it have a shell as well? Without eyes or a mouth what goes on the head?
*If you just wanted to give the clam shape some wings it could get by with little short things on it's sides. Why did this go straight to such long ones?

[Supermikhail]

It's not a head, it's a useful thickening. And yeah, the wings could be shorter, imagination explosion.

Although, you know, at this stage, the head could already have something. Like the organs of smell, because it prowls around looking for all those nutrients, and it goes kind of head first, and it could use a muzzle.

[Shoku]

It has had an overall round shape so far- if it was going to smell wouldn't it have done so in every direction? (As in the cells that grab things from the exposed sides would all have the ability.) Why just up and remove almost all of that?
I think it could work well with a square shape though- with smell at just the corners it could still get a ton of directionality and with little undulating fins on the sides it would have lots of easy movements. If they all point their waving in one direction it would go that way, if they did it clockwise or counter it would spin, and if they alternated it would stay in place but push a bunch of water around possibly kicking up useful foodstuffs that had settled into the sand.

[Shoku]

Not feeling the square organism?

[Supermikhail]

I've been trying to figure out how much and what there is in the world. Lost myself somewhat. And I've come up with the following:


Not to scale

Apparently, I overestimated the abundance of lifeforms here.

I like xwingus very much even though the way of its evolution is not apparent (I got confused).

There's a thing against a square organism - hydrodynamics. Also, I can't reconcile fins with trisgea burger's water propulsion drive.

However, I propose that square turns into diamond shape. Then squirters only stay on the two rear sides. The front feeding thing grows in size somewhat. The two side corner feeding things grow a kind of fishing nets. The rear corner devolves in everything except nervous tissue... Uh. Yeah, about that. I guess, as this organism has attained some receptors and reacts to stimuli, it has to have nervous tissue to better transmit signals.


Trisgea Rhombus

Also, the shell in the front evolves to somewhat resemble a beak, to direct water with nutrients toward the feeding thing.

[Shoku]

Well of course it wouldn't be hydrodynamic. The early modes of movement aren't all going to be very fast. Plus down in the dark maybe they don't want to move very fast- could be lots of jagged rocks and things they'd smash into without more sense organs.

The kind of fins I was talking about make a sine wave while little portions go up and others go down. It would be a way of pulling themselves through the water so they could just have jets pointing straight down in case they wanted to pop up a ways to get off of something they couldn't just glide around on top of.

That picture reminds me of an issue with the symbiotic one though- photosynthesis needs a lot of water pressure. That's why the plants all went with hard cell walls for every dryer place (moss is pretty soft but has to be almost in water,) instead of having a bunch of green backed animal-things roaming around the countryside. The shell could help with that here but maybe they'll want to focus on keeping enough water as they go further inland.

[Supermikhail]

Fins like that?

There's another problem, maybe psychological. I just can't imagine it evolving the fins. I feel that it's in another direction, that it would have to be a completely different creature. Maybe if it went there step by step, but like that, the shell, the multidirectional propulsion, and the fins... Just don't go together for me.

[Shoku]

That motion yes. Small critters don't need a lot of wing type contact area to get a good push off of it. Things like ants actually have enough surface area on just their body that they don't have to worry about falling to death- they've got a really low maximum speed in air. In water you have to push sooo much less that- well even human sized things can push themselves around awfully fast just by kicking. Imagine how little it would take for something the size of a penny.

But if it's no good with jets then these just dismantle the jets and use the spare parts for the fins.
*I generally expected the stages people came up with to not show every transitional step. Trying to always just take one tiny step would be a nuisance and I didn't really say how big a step was at any point.

[Supermikhail]

I considered a smoother evolution arc, and came up with the following:

Remember about the thinning of minerals in the water, and how the creatures had to lose some shell or get closer to the sources of minerals? I think I've come up with an alternative solution, starting with trisgea burger, again. It involves splitting the shell into tiles, which I think for some reason would make it lighter and less expensive, and slowly growing those fins that now have space for increase in flexibility. I haven't come up with the graphic yet, because I fear to imitate trilobites to much. Also, the jets retreat into the body and form a primitive circulatory system. Also also, I think we're on the verge of creating a first serious predator.

About trisgea symiotum. I confess that my great plan for it is to be a dead end of evolution and always stay half in the water, towering lumps of flesh, slime and green things. I had this idea an awfully long time ago, like ten years, and now that it spontaneously evolved to this state, I'm not gonna just let go of my childhood dreams coming true.

Also, why do you refuse to call these things their true names? It's a perfectly valid scientific classification I've devised here.

[Shoku]

Because scientific classification schemes always came from us looking back at the record of life. They would be so much easier to follow if we had built from the ground up along with the organisms they name.

-

Before you can have a circulatory system you need to have some kind of body fluid to circulate. This kind of inclination is the sort of thing I wanted to avoid here. We're not just plugging in all the parts we know we know Earth life has got. Any time you think "this is the start of a _ system" you're trying to give these things something that will be useful later instead of right now. Very unevolutionary.

So while I've been asking you all these why questions about the bacteria colonies I've sort of thought up an animal-
Sort of an upside down teardrop shape suspended in the water. At the tip there are three small round bulges that are the gate into the digestive tube. They are sort of teeth and sort of stubby fingers for drawing free floating cells in. Inside the gut branches out into a web of little tracts that snake upward through the body before at last descending just a bit to form exit pores. Above all of this lies space that can hold gases from digestion which serves as the cause of the buoyancy.

The gas is not all that well sealed in so if they are not actively eating much they sink lower. This is not good as the pressure of deep water is deadly but on the shelf this is no issue so they are subject to the whim of currents that sweep them out into deeper water. They do not have any means of horizontal propulsion at this stage.

[Supermikhail]

Valid points.


Probably not my best landscape, I'm only a beginner at pen drawing. And an amateur at drawing in general.

[Shoku]

Pen or not I can't ever scan things in with a decent white balance across the page.
Keep at it though~
-
Flip it over so the mouth is at the bottom and a little smaller.
I didn't do the sense of scale very well though. You know the first scene of the old Star Wars movies where this ship flies by and then that massive cruiser takes a long time to fly by? So far the bacteria colonies have been able to feed at the edges of the shell or whatnot and have nutrients just make their way in to the middle well enough but this animal has an internal cavity to constantly put the food near any other group of cells. It can have distances close to the width of one of those shells just between two lengths of intestine(-type organ.)

But even with a step up in scale like this the actual size compared to humans or even the animals we're used to dealing with remains quite tiny.

[Supermikhail]

Tiny like a flea, or more like a tadpole? Also, whichever way, I think we've got our first predator, even if I find it impossible to imagine its evolution.


It's probably hard to judge on the size, but I drew with all, but the obvious one in the background, at the same distance, and for some reason everyone except the bulbous one turned out to be approximately the same size. Again probably should say, not to scale.