Thomastapir’s Xenohox Gazelle

Readers who have followed my Furaha work and this blog will know that I take a strong interest in biomechanics and locomotion, resulting in studies and animations of concepts such as six-legged gallops, radial walks and tetropter flight. There is of course another drive at work, and that is the wish to create something new, something truly alien. Given the immense diversity of life of Earth I used to feel that there probably was not that much that blind evolution had not yet stumbled upon, but later I felt that the limited number of basic animal shapes on Earth does in fact pose limits on the shapes we see, varied as they are. Hence forms such as spidrids and tetropters that I consider among my most original animal schemes. But at heart I am a bit conservative, which is why I hesitate to depart from known and tested body schemes.

Luckily, not everyone lets himself be restrained in this way, and that is why I would like to draw your attention to the work of thomastapir, whose work can be seen at deviantART. Like me, he likes locomotion and biomechanics, and he has produced some truly original creatures. I will only focus on one of his aliens here, but his dinosaurs and mythical beasts are well worth an visit. I will very likely revisit his page one day to discuss the 'Moebius inside out animal'.

Click to enlarge; copyright thomastapir

Xenohox Triphidian
I should perhaps jump right in with the Xenohox gazelle, as starting there will give you the full sense of wonder, but it would need a lot of explaining at once. Starting with this forerunner, here in its original place, has the advantage that its shape can be taken in fairly easily. Now this shape is new. One way to look at body shapes is to smooth the surface of animals until the shape cannot be reduced further, revealing its topology. Limbs, as simple protrusions, disappear, and our own vertebrate shape reduces to a blob with a hole through it, i.e. a torus: our digestive tract forms the hole. Jellyfish have no such hole, and can be reduced to a blob, or probably even a sheet. Thomastapir's animal represents three half tori mashed together.

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

That is what you see above: the blob on the left with a hole through it represents humans and our Earth kin us reduced to our basic topology, whereas the more complex structure on the right is the triphidian. The points where the three half tori join would be natural spots to place the machinery of an animal, meaning its digestive, respiratory, cleaning and neural tracts, along with other odds and ends that need not be universal, such as spleens. The legend on the deviantART page does state that the 'bodies' indeed house the organs. One is called the head and the other the body, which is almost a pity: departing the beaten track should perhaps be accompanied by more original anatomical names as well.

Click to enlarge; copyright thomastapir

Xenohox Gazelle    
The animal above, the 'Xenohox Gazelle', has the same topology as the triphidian. To develop it, we can pull at the surface to produce extrusions, in the same way we can pull at a single torus to sculpt a human or a millipede. The result of this sculpting are three strong limbs. 

You will probably need time to work out how this animal is built, and understanding how it moves will take more study. Thomastapir's remarks on his deviantART page explain how it works. He has chosen to keep the triradial anatomy fully intact. Others -well, me at any rate, see here and here- might have decided to let two of the half tori develop into weight-bearing structures, freeing the other one for other uses such as manipulation. Thomas kept all three as equally functional locomotor limbs, which inevitably leads to the conclusion that the animal must turn along its body axis to bring each limb towards the floor in turn. That is very interesting but also very complex. You will need a good ability to visualise movement in your mind's eye to understand it. This is the task: the animal is running across your imaginary field of vision, its body spinning like a screw as it does so. Each leg rotates along with the body, and when it is pointed downward, it also moves backwards pushing at the ground. When it moves up again it also moves forward. If you manage to visualise that, add the two other legs, of course with the proper phase difference. Got it?

If you did not, never mind, as I prepared an animation to help you see how it works. I am fairly pleased how it turned out, although it seems to move more ponderously than the name 'gazelle' suggests. Perhaps I stumbled along the analogue of a heavy eland antelope instead of a slightly built gazelle. 

I do see one problem with this way of movement, and that is that it adds complexity to sensing the world around you. The eyes turn with the animal, so the visual field continually turns around as well. That cannot help vision one bit. This is very similar to the problem I encountered in 'cernuation'. There was a solution though: the head would turn against the movement keeping the eyes still (of course, after one turn the head would have to snap back to allow a new counter turn). When I mentioned the vision problem to thomastapir he answered the following:  

"On the complication of vision due to rapid rotation about the long axis--it could be a matter of, let's say it has three eyes, that each eye takes a sort of "snapshot" at specific point in its motion cycle--say, when the given eye reaches the top of its rotation.  So then a composite or gestalt image is built up sequentially from those single snapshot images, almost like a flip book or film strip.  The rate of rotation is rapid enough that it should create a fairly smooth, uninterrupted stream of visual information. And certainly it could keep one or more eyes continuously open when it's motionless or walking slowly." 

That would probably work, but is not ideal either, as visual information would be lost some of the time.

 

Anyway, above is another animation with added drama. Nice, isn't it? The topic of how such animals stand still or walk slowly also came up in our conversation, and it appears there are several solutions for this. Would evolution leave the animal this way, or would it evolve towards a simpler 'same side up' form? Would its particular set of hox analogue genes even allow such an evolution? I do not know, nor do I care much, while enjoying the creativity of the Xenohox gazelle and its mode of locomotion. 

Some of Mike Bruinsma's animals

Lately I have given biomechanics much attention, perhaps at the expense of displaying alien animals. Much as I like a good drawing or rendering of a well-designed animal, my interest increases the more attention is given to a biological background. There aren't that many proper worldbuilders out there. Some I could discuss, but, like Wayne Barlowe, are already very well-known (and there are already enough discussions about matters such as the hard-to-believe absence of sight and his odd predilection for elephantine feet).

And now for something rather different. I found the website of Mike Bruinsma rummaging though other sites' links. His site informs me that he is a professional designer and illustrator. Luckily, his interests include 'Character / Creature design', under which heading you will find the following images, and more besides. I have no idea whether there these animals have a common background story or whether they all stand on their own.

Click to enlarge (© Mike Bruinsma)

I like this hunting scene. There might be some common parentage between the hunters and the hunted in view of their jaw design. Then again, the large hunters appear to be bipedal with a basic tetrapod design, whereas the small creatures in fact seem to be running on three legs, as far as I can make out their anatomy. It seems like they have one strong hind leg and two more slender front ones. The front ones move in unison. Well, well, I should have incorporated these when I discussed tripedal walking designs in a previous post.

Click to enlarge (© Mike Bruinsma)

A head... Clearly, Mr Bruinsma has a sense of humour and is not afraid to show it. Too many people take speculative biology too seriously, and then it quickly becomes boring. The whole field is an intellectual exercise, nothing more. Like science fiction it should be entertaining (OK, as well as thought-provoking).

Click to enlarge (© Mike Bruinsma)

Another head. Now this one immediately makes you wonder what the gaudy colours are for. Sexual selection immediately comes to mind. Many things in Earth biology that do not make sense from a simple and austere view of 'fitness' turn out to have to do something with sex, and why should the rest of the universe by any different. I wonder what the other sex(es) look like?

Click to enlarge (© Mike Bruinsma)

I will end with this one, because it is my favourite, not because there aren't any more. There are! It is a bit difficult to say why I like it so much. Is it because of the relative calm of its position or the calm composition? Its well-designed body position? By the way, I suppose everyone immediately saw that we are dealing with a pentapod here: there is one big leg at the aft end of the body and two pairs of legs very close together at the front. One pair of these legs hold the body in position by grasping the branch, while the other pair is held in the air. Are these dextrous manipulators? Is this another example of centaurism? It seems so. I guess I do know why I like this one so much: it's biologically interesting and artistically very pleasing. The only thing missing is more of the same!