How much more Speculative Biology is there? II

Thanks to those who took the time to help prepare a list of other fictional biology systems. I will use the results to update the list of links on my Furaha page. I had hoped that there might be new worlds completely unknown to me, but so far it seems as if we have all found the same sites. Perhaps there is something interesting going on in Japan or China. If there is, please let me know!

Josh was quite right about the beast I showed last time: it is indeed a shallow-beaked Grogan from Venus. You can find it, and three others like it, on the website of the inimitable Dr. Grordbort. 'Dr Grordbort' is a steampunk subsidiary from Weta in New Zealand, the people famous for the special effects in King Kong, The Lord of the Rings, etc. Should you wish to, you can buy marvellous ray guns in steampunk fashion from Weta (although you may find them to be a trifle costly).

Last time I had erased the name of the shallow beaked Grogan from the image, as that would make it a bit too easy. To rectify that, here it is again. I cannot make out the name of the artist, which is a pity, as I would like to give credit where it is due. If you look at the other animals on the site, the number of legs seems to vary. The Grogan seems to have six originally, and the middle one is split halfway. Arthropods on Earth can have a biramous leg design, with one branch forming the walking leg and the other part can be something else, such as a gill. But the split occurs then very close to the body, so the two branches are completely separated mechanically. In the Grogan's case, the split occurs halfway down, which doesn't seem very handy, as the top branch, that seems to be there to grasp things, would wobble along when the animal walks. Still, the grasping legs are intriguing: could this be a Venusian example of Centaurism? (discussed here and here). The neck looks odd as well, but could work, I think.


Next, a lively image of a Grogan hunt. Steampunk adventurers don't go in for conservation, it seems, but prefer to view wildlife lined up in their sights. What ho!


By the way, a Weta is a large New Zealand insect. If you care to look closely at them, you will see has a pair of appendages at their rear end: cerci. In my musings on Centaurism, I wondered whether centaurism occur on the hind end of animals as well. StevenH came up with the earwig, with a pincer at its rear end. Wikipedia treats cerci as being derived legs, so, if that is true, there is 'posterior centaurism' as well. How nice to bring two threads together.

In the hope of uncovering unknown fictional biology from Japan or wherever, I repeat my question to let me know of any unknown worlds. Again, I will whet the appetite asking you for the source of the following image. It's from Weta, but you have to be more specific than that.

Click to enlarge

How much more Speculative Biology is there?

Call it fictional biology, speculative evolution, alternate evolution or call it anything else, by rearranging these words at will or finding others. I like it, and I also like art concerning alien lifeforms (wildlife art in general and palaeontological art are also nice but left out of this blog; it should have some focus, blurry as it may be).

I know of books, documentaries and websites, and some are listed in the links section on the Furaha site, but there may well be more material I never knew about. The excellent work on hypothetical future evolution on Earth I discussed lately (here and here) was completely unknown to me, and I had not seen it mentioned on other sites either. So perhaps there are more sites or books like that. If so, I would like to know about them!

Why not ask you, the reader? I am looking for quality material with preferentially a good visual side to it, i.e. good artwork. If you know of anything good, simply mention it in a comment. I do not care about the form: books, documentaries and films are all acceptable. All languages are good (admittedly, I will need pictures if the language is not Germanic or Romance...).

To see how many experts are out there, I will post a picture of an interesting beast I found on the internet. I will come back to it later, and will then give full credit to its origins and provide the address.

Meanwhile, you can see that the artist knows his or hers business (although the biomechanics contain some oddities). Do you know where it is from?

Click to enlarge

Centaurism II

A while ago I discussed the goumoun, a six-limbed animal. I thought that freeing a pair of limbs for another purpose definitely occurred more than once in evolution, but that this principle sadly had no name. So I took it upon myself to call it 'centaurism'. Do not get me wrong: I am not claiming eternal fame for this invention, nor do I think evolution biology will suffer at all if it does not spread beyond this page.

Just treat it as an intellectual game. The original centaurs in Greek mythology had the body of a horse, but where its neck and head should be you would find the torso, arms and head of a human. Ancient Greeks were notoriously vague about the evolutionary history of their mythological beings, so we know very little about protocentauroids. Nothing, in fact. Did they walk on six limbs? The Greeks were probably more inclined towards a form of creationism: 'Poof!', leading to 'here's one I made earlier'.

On Furaha, the ancestors of neocarnivores did walk on six limbs in the typical hexapod fashion. There is nothing wrong with walking on four limbs, as tetrapods on Earth show, and indeed on Furaha. There was therefore ample room for evolutionary experimentation with front limbs in hexapod Furahan animals. They accordingly evolved into clubs, spears, lances, hatches and even nets (in the Microraptoria). If you want to see a few examples, simply travel to the land page on the Furaha site and have a look. Here's one of them:

Copyright Gert van Dijk

But centaurism is not confined to the goumoun or to Furaha. In fact, there are quite a few examples on Earth. Let's start with animals that started with four legs: are there any that stopped walking on all fours and got up on their hind limbs? Definitely; there are ostriches and other ratites, kangaroos, predatory dinosaurs and people, to name the most obvious.

What do they all do with their freed front legs? Some animals use them for grasping purposes at some times but to walk with at other times. Examples are the giant panda, lots of primates, as well as the kangaroo. If kangaroos move very slowly, they move on five limbs: the hind legs swing forwards while the body rests on the front legs and the tail.
Other animals do not appear to do very interesting things with their front legs, such as ostriches. I have seen a male ostrich flapping it to attract females, but that is about it. In fact, some Furahan analogues do exactly that, but, having freed not just two but four limbs, they look even odder (the Grec on the land page is a perfect example). The same probably goes for the front limbs of Tyrannosaurus. I know that its arms were less weak then they look, and am aware of theories saying the beast used its arms to help stand up from a lying position. But all in all these puny arms do not impress me at all. Faced with animals that do not do anything interesting with their freed front legs, perhaps the definition of centaurism should include a new non-locomotory purpose for the freed legs.

That thought reduces the list: primates are still in, as well as those predatory dinosaurs that used their front limbs to do something interesting with. That group goes under the name of Maniraptora. One of the most intriguing examples would be Therizinosaurus, here shown as seen in the BBC documentary 'The Giant Claw', a 'Walking with Dinosaurs special'. Not that much is known about the animal apart from its front legs with their huge claws, so the claws are to the right scale, but the rest is educated guesswork.

BBC Walking with Dinosaurs Specials: The Giant Claw
Click to enlarge

There is no reason to limit the principle of centaurism to animals starting with four walking limbs. Crabs are decapods ('ten-leggers'), but walk on eight legs. The front pair, the claws, are modified legs. In fact, the modifications are not that extensive, as is shown on an excellent animation on the internet from the University of Alberta and explaining how crabs' claws evolved and work. Here is a non-moving fragment to entice you to go and visit the original.

Click to enlarge

There are many other arthropod examples. Here is another one: Amblypygi or whip scorpions are spiderlike, but no longer walk on eight legs. Instead, one pair has evolved into long whiplike sensory organs. The next two photographs are from 'Life in the Undergrowth', another BBC documentary. It has some excellent footage of these animals. The whips are the thin limbs between the pedipalps and the walking legs. If you need more, check up on Uropygids in Wikipedia.

BBC Life in the Undergrowth
Click to enlarge

In conclusion centaurism is fairly common. The modified legs are front pairs in all cases. I have not found any examples of a hind pair of legs becoming centaurised. That is probably because of 'cephalisation': the front end of a body commonly has the most sensory organs, food goes in there, etc. Once you have cephalisation, any manipulatory limb is best placed at the front. But if anyone can think of a sound evolutionary way to free hind limbs from locomotion in an animal that is already thoroughly cephalised, AND that might fit on Furaha, I will consider making a sketch of one.

Future evolution south of Brussels

So they have a Propellonectes on display in Brussels, but on the websites of the artists who designed it is a Calcitriornis.

If the previous sentence makes no sense to you whatsoever, please read the entry dealing with this subject first. In effect we are talking about an exposition in Brussels that includes some future animals. I had been using Google to find out more, but need not have bothered, as the material I was looking for is available on the websites of Marc Boulay and Sylvia Lorrain. The three sites contain largely the same material but are not identical, so it pays to visit all three.

Click to enlarge
© Marc Boulay / Sylvia Lorrain - ADAGP Paris 2000-2009
© Jean-Sébastien Steyer - CNRS 2000-2009

I will just show you some images of 'Benthogyrinus' to make you curious. What you see here is a poster-like image with some explanatory text. This states that we are looking at the very last amphibians, descended from the frog genus Xenopus. The species now is an ocean dweller, filling the niche whale sharks once lived in. The animals have developed a salt-excreting gland allowing them to cope with their salty environment. They do not actually look much like frogs, but there is a good reason for that. They are neotenous, meaning that they become sexually mature while formally still being in a larval stage. In effect, they are giant tadpoles. Very giant tadpoles, as they measure up to 20 meters. The males are two or there times smaller than the females and are shaped differently. The next two images illustrate all this nicely.

Click to enlarge
© Marc Boulay / Sylvia Lorrain - ADAGP Paris 2000-2009
© Jean-Sébastien Steyer - CNRS 2000-2009

Click to enlarge
© Marc Boulay / Sylvia Lorrain - ADAGP Paris 2000-2009
© Jean-Sébastien Steyer - CNRS 2000-2009

By the way, if you see a heading 'demos' on their websites, do click on it, as it will lead you to some 'exe' files that provide a slide show with music showcasing their work. Those are definitely worth taking a look.

Nice as all this is, it does not explain why Calcitriornis is the same as Propellonectes. Calcitriornis predates Propellonectes, as is evident from the copyright dates on the images. The answer is given in one of the interviews, and if you want to read it, there is a link on Boulay's site. Here is part one, en here is part two if you need a shortcut. The interview dates from 2006 and mentions a plan for a park on evolution, and that was to contain a section called 'Demain; les animaux du futur' ('tomorrow; the animals of the future'). The same protagonists were involved that we encountered in the Brussels expo: Steyer, Boulay and Lorrain. I do not know whether Dixon was formally involved, but the text makes it clear that they were in contact. That probably explains the traces of his 'Zoology of the future'. Unfortunately for those of us who like such things, nothing came of the plans.

That is sad, but at least it explains the history behind the Brussels' beasties: they were part of an earlier attempt to create a new future. I wonder whether we will hear and see more of the plans from this trio. I hope so.

Oh yes: Jean-Sébastien Steyer has written a book on life before dinosaurs; compared to the dinosaur era that is a time that deserves more attention, and the book looks very good. It is in French, and here is a link.

The Diary of Inhuman Species II

How to discover an astonishing monster a day? Easy; just visit Stan's website, where he publishes one each day. You can also order his book, which I did. It is small (16x16 cm), but is quite heavy for its size. That is not surprising, as its 416 pages are printed on good quality paper, and except for the introduction almost every one has one of his monsters on it. So you can probably just visit his site, but the advantage of a book is that you leaf through it at any moment you please, and you cannot do that with a website, can you? What is the story behind all this? Well, it turns out that poor Stan is a victim of aliens; he is one of those abductees who were carried aloft and away. In his case, memories came back afterwards. The foreword of his book tells the story in a much more interesting way than I could, so I will simply quote it. By the way, the text in the book is provided in French as in English, so take your pick. I'll quote the English version: "Although it has never been proven that Stan had a 'close encounter of the fourth kind', there is no doubt that he suffered an intense psychological shock that day, some sort of psychological trauma that locked him into a daily ritual, a compulsive need to give form on paper to these supposed visitors. At precisely the same time each day, he lapses into a near-hypnotic state as though his hand were acting as the cosmic mouthpiece of some invisible force." The message is clear; poor Stan, compelled to retrieve near-hidden images of these aliens from memory, has to make one drawing each and every day. The book contains the ones from March 5, 2007 to March 4, 2008.

Click to enlarge

Here is an example of a double page; the gray bit in the centre is where the two pages come together (I will not break a book's back to get a better scan). The little rectangle at the bottom of each page contains some data on the species. The Labeet on the right is 'U A T'; that means its sex is Unidentified, its mood is Aggressive, and it is Terrestrial. Half of the book is in colour, and I have chosen a few of those. Here are two more; I am not certain why, but they are among my favourites.

Click to enlarge

Except from the abduction background story told in the beginning of the book, there is no story connecting the various aliens. But there are some sketches in the back, and I did find an intriguing page that does seem to tell a story. Here it is:

Click to enlarge

We see some heavy-duty worker types with four arms. Great!; they must come from hexapod stock, and clearly exhibit the principle of centaurism, freeing not just two but four limbs from locomotion. They seem to carry a brain on their back, but the bottom row shows that this is a creature in its own right, looking like a grumpy brain on cute little feet. Stan, what is the story here? As I wrote before, Stan's remembered aliens are not the kind that call out for detailed criticism of their biological likelihood. It may be Darwin Year, but let's not judge these animals against the demands posed on them by nature red in tooth and claw. It would not be fair to attempt to determine the survival of Stan's aliens in terms of whose genes will get past along by being fit in the conventional evolutionary sense, and whose will sadly get stuck in the evolutionary doldrums. They should perhaps be measured with a different yardstick; I say that we should apply the degree to which they tickle a sense of humour to measure their fitness. Then they will not just survive, but live long and prosper.

Just an aside on 'the future is wild'

I suppose that people with an interest in 'fictional biology' are among the readers of this blog. I do not think I will have to introduce the TV-series 'The future is wild' to them, so I won't. However, something that may have escaped attention is a theme park in France called futuroscope. It has the animals of 'The future is wild' parading in front of you, in what is 'enhanced reality': you look through goggles at a stage set with rocks etc., or so I gather. The image of the animals is then cleverly added to the image you personally see, thereby allowing you not just a personal vision of the scene, but to interact with the animals. They also have a bit of software you can use at home to try this out, if you have a webcam.

The techology is very intriguing. The site appears to be in French only, but if you wish to see what it looks like to have a squibbon jump on your hand, select 'le blog' and watch the videos. Intriguing, but odd.

Future evolution in Brussels

The February 2009 issue of the Flemish magazine Eos, focusing on the popularisation of science, has as its cover theme 'De dieren van de toekomst' ('the animals of the future'). Now that is an interesting theme! Anyone with an interest in the subject will immediately think of Dougal Dixon's book 'After man, a zoology of the future' (see my installment on 'Why there's no walking on tentacles' for a glimpse at one of his other works). Eos' story is about a new exhibition in Brussels' natural history museum, in which a new evolution gallery opened on February 12 2009, the 200 anniversary of Darwin's birth. Apparently the museum people decided not to let evolution simply stop right in our age, but to leave the clock ticking for another 50 million years into the future. This period is called the Dixonian, so it's clear the people behind it have done their homework. Congratulations Dougal!

The page of the museum website is in Dutch, French and English (but not in German, which is odd, as it is spoken in Belgium and the main museum page does have a German version). It is frustratingly devoid of images of future lifeforms. A bit of internet searching led to a site promising a video of the animals, but at the time of writing the video did not work; I will include the video link here in the hope that it will work later on. So all I had to give you some more information was the magazine. Pick it up, if you can (and can read Dutch).

© Marc Boulay / Sylvia Lorrain - ADAGP Paris 2000-2009
© Jean-Sébastien Steyer - CNRS 2000-2009
Click to enlarge

Above is an image taken from the cover; it shows five of the to-be-evolved animals with their names.

© Marc Boulay / Sylvia Lorrain - ADAGP Paris 2000-2009
© Jean-Sébastien Steyer - CNRS 2000-2009
Click to enlarge

This is a close up of Neopyghoscelis, a penguin descendant reaching up to 4 meters in length. I wonder whether the image shows a young animal, as the size of the eye seems much too large for a 4-m bird. Eyes don't usually increase in size at the same rate as overall body size.

Anyway, one of its more interesting features is that it redeveloped teeth. Looking at the image I thought that these were pseudoteeth, i.e., bumps developing from the rim of the penguin's beak, but the text suggests that the teeth are the result of the genes for teeth, dormant in present birds, having become active again. I wonder if that event is more likely than reshaping the rim of the beak, but either 'solution' would do the trick, I guess. The text says 'Creative with Darwin' in Dutch.

© Marc Boulay / Sylvia Lorrain - ADAGP Paris 2000-2009
© Jean-Sébastien Steyer - CNRS 2000-2009
Click to enlarge

And this is a Propellonectes (remember that name!). The legend says that is a descendant of a present-day petrel, that has lost its wings and swims with much enlarged feet. It is about 1 metre in length.

Very nice work. I will keep an eye on the museum site to see if more material appears. The magazine story is largely about how evolution works, but also provided some names on the people who thought all this up. It looks like a very interesting set of people. Jean-Sébastien Steyer is a palaeontologist working in Paris, and I guess he's the one responsible for coming up with biologically sound lifeforms. As an aside, I think that that particular activity could with reason be described as 'creationism', to be defined as thinking up animals based on sound biological principles. It's a pity that the word seems to be in use already, in a rather less entertaining setting...

Then two people come in to breathe life into the designs (I think I had better be careful with my metaphors here, but in Darwin week some leeway is allowed). The first is Marc Boulay, who does 3D computer sculpting in Z-brush, and just looking at his page makes me wish I had chosen to go into creative work in my life rather than pursue an academic career; oh well, I admit it, perhaps I am just a tiny bit envious...

© Marc Boulay / Sylvia Lorrain - ADAGP Paris 2000-2009
© Jean-Sébastien Steyer - CNRS 2000-2009
Click to enlarge

The image above should whet your appetite for more. Dixon lovers will recognise this as one of his creations, a Tetraceras. But if that isn't enough, the task force also included Sylvia Lorrain, and her website tipped me from just containable envy after seeing Boulay's work into a feeling of deep inadequacy; they are that good. She combines 3D models with photographs to produce realistic depictions of animals, which is very tricky as it soon becomes tacky. She pulls it off.

© Marc Boulay / Sylvia Lorrain - ADAGP Paris 2000-2009
© Jean-Sébastien Steyer - CNRS 2000-2009
Click to enlarge

This particular bird is something I found on her site. Be certain to visit their sites, as there is more to see there. Obviously, this is a diving bird, and it's called a Calcitriornis. Hang on, that is the same bird shown in Eos as a Propellonectes! What is going on here? Calcitriornis evolving into Propellonectes? I think I will try to find the story behind this matter another day.

Now it's back to Brussels, so to speak. The team so far had everything it took to depicting 3D animals, but in 2D! The museum apparently wanted 3D items to display; ironic, in a way. The sculptor Yves Gaumetou did the final job of putting flesh on the digital bones. It's probably modeling clay or something similar, but the results can be touched and you can walk around them, and that was the point. His site contains excellent sculptures of present day animals in life-like poses.

I definitely think I will have to go to Brussels one of these days.

-------------------------------------------

Remarks added in December 2010: Seeing that Darren Naish of Tet Zoo directed some traffic to this old post, I looked at it myself, and found that some links no longer worked and that the post is behind the news. Here is an update.

Marc Boulay is now here: http://www.marcboulay.net/
Sylvia Lorrain is still here: http://www.sylvialorrain.net/
Sébastien Steyer's page has moved as well: http://www2.mnhn.fr/hdt203/info/steyer.php

Other newsworthy items may be that Sébastien has written a very nice book on early vertebrate evolution, available in French and Dutch (as far as I know). Marc and Sébastien are working on a book on future evolution on Earth; you can read more about it on Marc's site.

Finally, I later wrote some more on the Brussels expo and on Marc and Sylvia's work. If you want to read it, here is a post that links to the other posts.

Sigmund Nastrazurro

PS. I still haven't seen the Brussels expo myself...