Speculative Zoology - Blog Posts

Dwarves!

Here’s a little bit of info about the Dwarves from my fantasy world

I love answering questions, so please ask if you have any! Lmk if you want a part two, and what you would like me to include there!!

Strider Saddles

Response to @mesmerizms !:

In the initial art I did, I was a bit lazy with the saddle drawing, but I’ve made this to clarify some things!

Here’s a strider without a saddle, a strider with only a saddle blanket, a strider with a blanket and a saddle, and a strider with reins.

There’s lots of room for different colours and patterns on the blanket, including tassels like the one in the picture! There’s now a saddle horn and reins to hold onto (although I’m not sure how feasible they are), as well as stirrups.

Keep in mind, I’m basing this off of my prior knowledge + some cursory research. I’ve never ridden a horse or any other animal 😅

Minecraft nether chicken lore 😭

Finger lickin’ good

The Green Sky of my Xenoplanet

The original reasoning for making the sky of my Xenoplanet green was so it would contrast against the magenta plants. This worked for me at the time, but now I realize that green is not a natural color for a sky to be, even on an alien planet. The solution to this problem? Sky Plankton!

The atmosphere is filled with photosynthetic microorganisms that have the ability to float in the air.

They do this by having an extremely large (relatively speaking) surface to glide on. They also have a very low mass when compared with other microorganisms due to the small size of their “body”.

Members of this microorganism species tend to be about 120 micrometers long. There is little variation among the species as their balance in the air is extremely delicate. The slightest change can result in them toppling to the surface. Notice how small the body is, taking up almost a sixtieth of the total area. This makes them much less complex than waterborne microorganisms. Also, that is not a nucleus in the center of the organism, as this is a prokaryotic species. Instead it is the one and only photosynthesizing organelle.

To perform cell division the single parent cell begins to thicken its gliding surface and body. It also duplicates its photosynthesizing organelle. Soon after this, the cell will perform mitosis. The cell will horizontally split in the middle, ensuring that both of the daughter cells have a sufficient gliding surface. This process is fairly unreliable and will potentially result in the parent cell or one/both of the daughter cells tumbling to the surface. However, this method is their only option. This species has not gone extinct because the amount of bacteriophages and other predators of the organism are extremely infrequent in open air when compared to water. Because of this, the net reproductive rate is positive.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope you enjoyed it! Also, sorry I disappeared for a bit. Virtual school just started and it has been a rough adjustment. I’m doing okay though, thanks to my glorious friends. How many? Four :)  Do they text me often? No :)  Ugh, I need to stop whining. Sorry for venting; if you stopped reading here I do not blame you.

Next time I’m planing on creating more flora and fauna for the surface of my planet. I’m very excited to talk more about these microorganisms in the future, especially how they impact the environment of the planet. I think it will be extremely interesting to talk about how the surface organisms respond to the constant “snow” of dead and living sky plankton, which represent a source of energy. However, in the meantime I’m going to focus on smaller stuff (well, not literally). Please feel free to comment. Thank You and Goodbye :)

The creature seen above inhabits the grasslands of my alien world (seen here). I’ve been informally calling them “hoppers” but they don’t really have an official name. I’m probably going to keep up the trend of having nameless creatures in the future as I’m awful at naming things.

Anyways, back to the hoppers! They are a unique species that has several adaptations to allow them to survive and thrive in their expansive environment. Four of these adaptations are listed and explored in further detail below. I hope you enjoy reading about these creatures :)

1. Size- Excluding antennae, most adult hoppers are about the size of a large rabbit, however they are more upright. The length a hopper’s antennae average at about half the height of the hopper, however antennae length varies wildly among different members of the species.

When hoppers are born they only weigh a couple ounces, but they grow fast. Most hoppers become full fledged adults in about 15 months and they tend to live for about 9 years in the wild.

2. Locomotion- Another similarity hoppers have with rabbits their mode of movement. They take bounding leaps with their back pair of legs and use their front pair of legs to catch themselves. This allows them to achieve remarkable speeds to escape predators.

3. Diet- Hoppers almost exclusively feed on the near limitless grass of the plains. To eat it, they pull several blades of grass out of the ground with their strong front pair of legs. They then pass the grass into their arms and then their mouth. The mandibles on either side of a hopper’s mouth help move grass into the mouth while also tasting the grass to ensure it isn’t rotten or filthy. This will leave the mandibles dirty, so hoppers will frequently clean them with their arms.

4. Antennae- The two pairs of antennae found on a hopper’s head are very sensitive to movements in air flow, however each pair detects different things. The shorter pair on the side of the head are more sensitive to sound waves. This allows the hoppers to hear loud noises around them, however their hearing isn’t very refined as they don’t have an eardrum (or ears). The longer pair are more sensitive to wind and humidity. This allows the hoppers to detect coming storms. This ability to detect storms is so accurate (and storms on this planet so dangerous) that many other species have evolved to flee areas when they see hoppers doing so, making the hoppers an important warning system in many grassland ecosystems.

Thank you for taking the time to read all this! :D  Please feel free to ask questions about the creatures or planet, I’d love to answer them! I’m probably going to take a break from creating creatures and get back to more traditional art, however I still have many ideas for my planet that I hope you’ll enjoy. Also, please tell me if the writing is hard to read or if there are any typos. Writing is not my strong suit.

Added some creatures to my alien planet, so I guess it’s an official thing now. I should probably give the planet a name, I got no ideas right now though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ However, I do have a lot decided about the creatures’ biology. I’ll probably make a follow up post with a few more illustrations. For now, I hope y'all enjoy this. Please feel free to comment, thank you for stopping by. :)

We love an alien ecosystem in this house. We also love giving deer spine spikes to defend against big birds and making fungi trees will bioluminescent spore pods. Image Id under keep reading.

Image Id: An astronaut in a pale blue space suit sits beneath a dark green tree with heavily textured bark. At its base, same green shoots point up towards the astronaut and the branches which have glowing oblong blue pods at their tips. The astronaut has black boots, pants with pockets on inner and outer calf and thigh, and a gray belt with many pouches. Attached to the belt is a knife in a black sheath. She wears a gray oxygen tank like a backpack and  gray tube threads into a hole on the chest of her suit. Her helmet screws into her suit in a gray ring at the neck. It is stylized with an ear level blue circle that is surrounded by a gray ring with a stem that connects to a triangle at the based of the helmet. There’s a blue patch on her shoulder. Brown hair frames her smiling face, eyes wide with delight and wonder. She reaches with a black glove with gray bending fingers and a blue stripe across the back towards blue floating glowing spores. The background is a field of red grass beneath a dark blue sky with a flush of yellow at the bottom. The blue is filled with stars the same color as the spores. A herd of strange deer with spines on their back graze in the distance. One looks at the camera. One walks towards the left. One eats with its head buried in the grass. Beneath the stars their is a city  of green and blue cylindrical buildings with rounded tops and spherical protrusions. The lights in the windows are blue like the spores and stars. Orange lights hover in the sky. A translucent blue dome with a hexagonal pattern near the top surrounds the city. /End Id