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Post by zoograph on Oct 7, 2023 20:30:17 GMT 5
Episode 7
“Flooded World”
Oh wow, our first underwater episode. Kind of sad we didn’t get one for 5 MA with a closer look at Gannetseals, but it is what it is, I guess.
After a brief explanation of why these shallow seas had expanded so much, we meet Ocean Phantom. It’s an underrated creature inspired by a similarly alien (to us vertebrates) Portuguese man o’ war. The only problem it has is that even experts call it jellyfish, even though in reality only some of these units are medusoid (gonophores and nectophores to be precise). Yet they still call polyps like that, even on a modern animal. Sounds as weird as calling caterpillars butterflies, but it’s probably just a minor nitpick.
Reef Gliders, seemingly inspired by a fish-like marine gastropod Phylliroe, is also an interesting fella. Even though their rise may be slightly controversial (as I said, big groups are unlikely to completely die out, we had no drastic extinction and fish need to survive at least until flish rise), some niches might’ve been opened somehow, allowing these majestic slugs to thrive. Overall, not the worst idea creators had.
“Instead of corals, these strange plant-like structures cover the seabed. When there is a great change, corals are one of the first groups to disappear”
I’m afraid there is a little misunderstanding. Coral REEFS die out, but not anthozoans themselves. They persist in such manner for 535 million years, surviving the deadliest Permian extinction as whole and returning only 10 million years later. So, you may mourn the reefs, but not the creatures that create them.
“Well actually, red alga had made reefs before…”
And they still do. Order Corallinales is the main Mediterranean Sea reef builder, and some rock huggers are nearly cosmopolitan. But even if they completely displaced corals somehow, they wouldn’t look like a recolored stereotypical kelp depicted here. Hell, they don’t even look they’re solid enough to make a reef (except for weird small rocks they’re attached to).
“Now the algae are flowering algae… and the Reef Gliders feed off these flowering structures”
Never thought I’d hear that in my entire life. It’s unique, I guess… And somewhat explains how males’ gonads are transported to females.
Spindletroopers are also interesting. I think it’s the first time I see sea spiders represented… in pretty much any media. On that note I will say that this small food chain writers created is nice, as it’s neatly represents how much connected most of the species are.
Final Thoughts. Wow, what an underrated episode. It’s not that unrealistic (aside from reefs, of course), its animals are connected to each other in a nicely represented food chain, animals it discusses are not your typical vertebrates and education material here is very enjoyable (even if some moments like underwater pollination are a little bit too stretched). Never thought I’d say this, but I like Flooded World very, very much.
EPISODE 8 REVIEW SOON!!!
Beware…
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Post by Exalt on Oct 7, 2023 21:57:59 GMT 5
One thing I remember about that episode was that they managed to bait-and-switch me with the Reef Glider, despite having pulled the same trick with Toratons. I also wasn't happy when the young one was eaten, and the adult was repelled.
I'm certainly curious as to your thoughts on a couple of arthropods coming up...
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Post by zoograph on Oct 8, 2023 18:08:28 GMT 5
Episode 8
“Tropical Antarctica”
This segment is not featured in the US version. No real clue why.
Wow, tropics in Antarctica? Are you sure we’re not in Paleocene?
“These birds are immediately recognizable – they’re coming from group we’re familiar with today: petrels”
Uh, what? Procellariiformes are not your typical island colonizers. They’re extremely specialized for foraging oceanic fish and squid (plus some krill and zooplankton), with the only exception being giant petrel who adapted to feeding on carrion and can even hunt penguin chicks. That’s it. Petrels could’ve easily become terrestrial at any point, judging by the fact they often arrive on newly created islands first, but they didn’t. And they definitely wouldn’t become Antarctic hummingbirds – at best they can become bird of prey equivalent due to their carnivorous specialization. Realistically, these niches would be taken by… hummingbirds themselves. Or passerines, considering how numerous and adaptable they are (literally the biggest group of urban birds in species number).
“They’re called tubenoses because they have two small tubes at the top of the nose. We think they use it to measure air currents, but we don’t know that yet”
Modern studies suggest they use it to detect plankton and locate their own nests in colonies instead, but honestly this doesn’t affect the story in any way. Just another nitpick.
Roachcutter is an insectivorous petrel (they call it flutterbird, which I guess means it is descendent from fluttering shearwater or something), which is slightly more forgivable. Still, they waste the model as it’s a flat character only used to demonstrate their hunter. There is also a small, unidentified insect they hunt, but it has even less characteristics.
Falconfly, the creature that hunts these birds, looks a bit suspicious, as if authors don’t really understand insects in the same way as tetrapods (Diptera-looking wings puzzled me the most, though that might be my perception). Still, the model doesn’t really have enough details to know for sure.
“Today, the size of insects is determined by richness of oxygen in air…”
Doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Arthropleura(not an insect, but also breathed with trachea) is now known from Serpukhovian, in which oxygen levels were not as big as they were in Pennsylvanian, and even stranger is the existence of Meganeuridae with 45cm wingspan in Upper Permian of France, when it had mostly drought climate. Seemingly, lack of competition from tetrapods was the main reason of insect gigantism, and so no new big ones will appear until all birds and bats go extinct (which is impossible).
Oh yeah, that’s what I talked about two paragraphs ago. To save time and money, FIV team decided to use real-life larvae for Falconfly. But these kiddos with noticeable faces are beetle grubs, not wasp younglings. It may not matter much to us vertebrates, but just imagine arthropods filming a documentary and using bat cubs to represent offspring of a horse. Not so funny, ey?
Damn, at 15:40 this CGI forest panorama looks so bad. Didn’t stand the test of time at all.
Spitfire Tree’s relationship with a bird is quite a nice idea that shows a chemical-based defense system plus mutualistic relationship. The only problem is the one I said before – should’ve been a hummingbird or sunbird or honeyeater or flowerpecker or something like that. There is quite a lot of potential sensible choice really.
False Spitfire Bird is probably the best money-saving idea creators ever had. Not only it is a free way to reuse the model, but it also helps to introduce and explain Batesian mimicry, which is quite an interesting concept more speculative documentaries need to explore.
Continue with a theme of mimicry, we have our final creature. Spitfire Beetle. And their adaption to hunt birds is slightly confusing. You see, modern mantises and spiders actually face their prey and analyze its movements. But these guys face each other instead and have a harder time watching much swifter actions of flying birds. Also, most beetle we have now don’t really have any weapon to kill their potential prey in a quick manner, instead catching and killing much slower prey (like snails and worms), meaning most birds would easily escape their traps.
Final Thoughts. This episode is certainly quite colorful and nice-looking, and the ecological concepts it presents are captivating. Still, it has two problems. First of all, it treats ornithofauna of Antarctica as a seed world comprised solely of modern inhabitants’ descendants. More plausible is the arrival of northern groups, with modern piscivores still being restricted to seas and rivers (although a case could be made for a hawk-like petrel, which I actually think is a neat idea). Another problem is the insect domination, which for the reasons I discussed above will still stay in the niches we have today. Even with that, I like 100 MA episodes more than 5 MA ones. Let’s see what the last one will offer us…
EPISODE 9 REVIEW COMING SOON!
Beware…
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Post by Exalt on Oct 8, 2023 18:50:11 GMT 5
I had forgotten about the Spitfire beetle, I'm surprised that you didn't remark on the beetle's co-operation (or the Falconfly's method of attack). Is it easier to believe that this behavior could change?
The criticism of the insects rising up to become predators of amniotes was the main note thing I noticed that both you and Infinity Blade touched on, well, that and Toratons.
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Post by zoograph on Oct 9, 2023 19:24:13 GMT 5
Episode 9
“The Great Plateau”Before we start the review, I really like the font they use for episode names. Can anyone send me its name? “With peaks of over 20000 meters above sea level, higher than the Himalayas of today…”I’m not a geologist, so I’m not sure if what I’ve heard is correct, but it seems like Mount Everest is a limit for most mountain structures in terms of weight (it can be bypassed by being partially submerged like Mauna Kea, but these mountains don’t look like this Hawaiian one at all). The Great Blue Windrunner, like all birds, is a majestic creature. Fun fact: creators claim that they came up with the idea of four-winged bird before Microraptor was discovered, which if true is impressive in terms of predicting real-life creatures. But as much as this idea seems cool on paper, it seems to be implausible in reality. Modern birds can’t really shift their leg stance to a horizontal one without them popping out of pelvic socket, so it seems like the days of Liaoning are truly gone. “You can’t [fly over this Plateau with normal wings], so Windrunner’s solution is to use the legs as well”Bar-headed goose, who also traverses such latitudes, doesn’t have these adaptions and is not known to have any discomfort. So, their future analogues… would just look the same way as their ancestors, no matter if they’re Anseriformes or something else. “But there’s another problem to face, and it solved that problem by color”www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_qZtLu52nMNo, seriously, why isn’t it black? High levels of melanin are much better at absorbing UV radiation. Still, it wouldn’t matter, as birds can develop gadusol (unlike mammals, who lost it for some reason, with nocturnal bottleneck hypothesis being the most accepted one I think) and protect themselves with no need for these new adaptations. Silver Spiders are also fascinating yet questionable. But before jumping to what made me raise my eyebrow about them the most, let’s start with a first part of a food chain. “Grass Trees are descendant from bamboos…”Bamboos? Plants with a singular flowering in all of their life and zoochoric seeds? Seems stretched, considering how specialized they are and that there might be much more plants that already have anemochoric seeds and regular flowerings, meaning they will be more likely to get to this niche first. Oooh boy here we go… “A Poggle, the last of mammals…”This cute rodent, I suppose, is a reference to Mezosoic mammal stereotype in this “backward-going evolution” (something which was proven wrong by various creatures like Castorocauda or Repenomamus), but this situation can’t repeat again. Just imagine, as I said in the first post, we were to drop a K-Pg-esque asteroid on a modern Earth. Big mammals like proboscideans, specialized ones like aardvark and marine inhabitants will inevitably die out, but others will endure, due to their fast breeding and adaptability. Rodents, lagomorphs, likely even mustelids will reclaim their relatives’ niches (although other groups will try as well) and continue thriving. It’s the same problem like with corals, really – some animal SPECIES are in bad situation, but definitely not all of them. “[Mammals are] not gonna have a competitive advantage they have today because the world warms up…”BULLSHIT! Do you even know about PETM? This was possibly the warmest planet ever got, with lush temperate (maybe even subtropical) forests growing near Elder Things city… oops, I meant South Pole. Still, mammals didn’t die out 56 million years ago. Some seemingly migrated to poles, some became smaller, and many modern clades (like ungulates and primates) even radiated in response to it. Seems like even this reasoning is flawed. “In fact, spiders are farming the Poggles…”By using seeds? What are they going to eat in winter, when they need food the most? The narrator explicitly stated that Grass Tree reproduces only in summer. These are also very high peaks, meaning that not much other food may be available. It also becomes much funnier when you consider that cold-blooded overlords rule their warm-blooded slaves. This means that the former guys will have to hibernate in winter and the latter will be incredibly hungry. Just imagine this picture: a herd of crazy starved Poggles breaking into Silver Spiders’ hibernation chambers and eating them all. That wouldn’t be unusual, since even today rodent can eat animal matter (just look at shrewlike rats…). Honestly, they should’ve included that – I don’t think anyone really wants to see our relatives as total losers. “…hormones of a Poggle stimulate reproductive system of a queen…”I’m afraid hormones don’t really work that way. First of all, they’re going to be digested by a stomach acid, so unless spiders know how to make an injection directly into hemolymph (which I doubt) it wouldn’t work. Also, vertebrates and invertebrates are so different, near-alien in their anatomy, so their hormones won’t be compatible. Just look at Nigel Marven. Did he succumb to Pulmonoscorpius? Yeah. We end the episode with a mass extinction, which is plausible at 100 MA. They still managed to botch it, but we’ll discuss it in the next episode review… Final Thoughts. FIV is often criticized for copying past eras and pasting them into a future. 5 MA, for example, is pretty much supposed to be a stereotypical interpretation of an Ice Age, with terror birds and sabretooth predators. 100 MA, on the other hand, is supposed to Mesozoic, which is especially noticeable here (well, Toraton aside). Windrunner is supposed to be a “1990s azhdarchid”-like crane (which is insane, considering they killed most currently thriving mammals but left rapidly declining Gruidae alive), while Poggle is, as I said, stereotypical primitive mammal. Oh, and Silver Spiders are Morlocks (glad to see Welles enthusiasts on the team). Another problem is that while ecological interactions are fine, each individual chain is completely fantastical, something we’ll see a lot in 200 MA. With that said, we’re going to open the Pandora’s box now… beware. EPISODE 10 REVIEW SOONThe nightmare is here…
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Post by Exalt on Oct 9, 2023 20:50:43 GMT 5
I was going to bring up the PETM if you hadn't. So much of the blowback on this episode is based around the poggle being the last mammal, and being farmed by spiders, that I'm kind of surprised by how the rest of this falls apart.
The mesozoic comparison is interesting because...you could say that dinosaurs go extinct here...
Edit: I think that the most surprising thing about both reviews is that in a weird way, child me is validated, because the things about this that I didn't like seem to be the most criticized parts. Well, there's one organism that I want to ask about that most don't...
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Post by creature386 on Oct 9, 2023 21:42:19 GMT 5
There we are. We have finally arrived at Mordor and I have to grind my axe. Final Thoughts. FIV is often criticized for copying past eras and pasting them into a future. 5 MA, for example, is pretty much supposed to be a stereotypical interpretation of an Ice Age, with terror birds and sabretooth predators. 100 MA, on the other hand, is supposed to Mesozoic, which is especially noticeable here (well, Toraton aside). Windrunner is supposed to be a “1990s azhdarchid”-like crane (which is insane, considering they killed most currently thriving mammals but left rapidly declining Gruidae alive), while Poggle is, as I said, stereotypical primitive mammal. Oh, and Silver Spiders are Morlocks (glad to see Welles enthusiasts on the team). Another problem is that while ecological interactions are fine, each individual chain is completely fantastical, something we’ll see a lot in 200 MA. With that said, we’re going to open the Pandora’s box now… beware. Given the sheer frequency at which this happens, I think this is a feature rather than a bug. I recently wrote a small essay in our General Nature and Paleodocumentary discussion thread where I mused on the nature of paleo documentaries (and, more broadly speaking, speculative documentaries in general). I argued that a lot of them, are to an extent, allegorical because the focus is rarely on the animals themselves, or even on factual accuracy, as much as it is about conveying underlying scientific principles. (Except for Dollo's law. That underlying scientific principle has to be butchered 10000x times to make any of this possible.)
Under this lens, a lot of TFIW's creatures could be seen as allegories for creatures that already exist and evolutionary transitions that already happened. The swampus is an allegory for the conquest of land. The toraton is gigantism personified. The spitfire bird represents evolutionary radiations. The silver spider and the falconfly stand for the giant insects of bygone eras. The poggle is perhaps the most extreme example in the entire documentary of this. It's a very heavy-handed vehicle for the message that no dynasty lasts forever and even a once-dominant group can go extinct, as the dinosaurs demonstrate... Except dinosaurs are still around us and survived the K-Pg impact much better than TFIW's mammals survived some hot air.
It also a weird perspective flip. "Mammals (humans) once mastered farming, what if we become the farming equivalent instead?". (Funnily enough, TVTropes compared them to the Eloi from The Time Machine for that reason. Those are also part of our lineage and livestock for the world's new dominant creatures.)
As for the mammal extinction, I don't think I have much to say that you didn't tell us already. Unlike with the humans, at least we've got some handwave-y explanation, but it (along with the next extinction) was solely added to pave the way for our Terrestrial Cephalopod Overlords. That, or maybe they really didn't want to model CGI fur, so mammals had to first.
Curious to your take on the next extinction. That one is arguably worse than the other two. Human extinction was mandated by the premise and mammal extinction at least had the excuse of 2003 CGI limitations.
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Post by zoograph on Oct 9, 2023 22:06:46 GMT 5
There we are. We have finally arrived at Mordor and I have to grind my axe. Final Thoughts. FIV is often criticized for copying past eras and pasting them into a future. 5 MA, for example, is pretty much supposed to be a stereotypical interpretation of an Ice Age, with terror birds and sabretooth predators. 100 MA, on the other hand, is supposed to Mesozoic, which is especially noticeable here (well, Toraton aside). Windrunner is supposed to be a “1990s azhdarchid”-like crane (which is insane, considering they killed most currently thriving mammals but left rapidly declining Gruidae alive), while Poggle is, as I said, stereotypical primitive mammal. Oh, and Silver Spiders are Morlocks (glad to see Welles enthusiasts on the team). Another problem is that while ecological interactions are fine, each individual chain is completely fantastical, something we’ll see a lot in 200 MA. With that said, we’re going to open the Pandora’s box now… beware. Given the sheer frequency at which this happens, I think this is a feature rather than a bug. I recently wrote a small essay in our General Nature and Paleodocumentary discussion thread where I mused on the nature of paleo documentaries (and, more broadly speaking, speculative documentaries in general). I argued that a lot of them, are to an extent, allegorical because the focus is rarely on the animals themselves, or even on factual accuracy, as much as it is about conveying underlying scientific principles. (Except for Dollo's law. That underlying scientific principle has to be butchered 10000x times to make any of this possible.)
Under this lens, a lot of TFIW's creatures could be seen as allegories for creatures that already exist and evolutionary transitions that already happened. The swampus is an allegory for the conquest of land. The toraton is gigantism personified. The spitfire bird represents evolutionary radiations. The silver spider and the falconfly stand for the giant insects of bygone eras. The poggle is perhaps the most extreme example in the entire documentary of this. It's a very heavy-handed vehicle for the message that no dynasty lasts forever and even a once-dominant group can go extinct, as the dinosaurs demonstrate... Except dinosaurs are still around us and survived the K-Pg impact much better than TFIW's mammals survived some hot air.
It also a weird perspective flip. "Mammals (humans) once mastered farming, what if we become the farming equivalent instead?". (Funnily enough, TVTropes compared them to the Eloi from The Time Machine for that reason. Those are also part of our lineage and livestock for the world's new dominant creatures.)
As for the mammal extinction, I don't think I have much to say that you didn't tell us already. Unlike with the humans, at least we've got some handwave-y explanation, but it (along with the next extinction) was solely added to pave the way for our Terrestrial Cephalopod Overlords. That, or maybe they really didn't want to model CGI fur, so mammals had to first.
Curious to your take on the next extinction. That one is arguably worse than the other two. Human extinction was mandated by the premise and mammal extinction at least had the excuse of 2003 CGI limitations.
I mean, as you probably saw in the previous posts, I actually like the idea of animals being ecological allegories, I just feel that the effect would be greater if these animals were more plausible than just "BIG TURTLE SAUROPOD COOL 100% REAL". You can accomplish all these allegories with giant rodents of Paleoloxodon size, passerines and less so mangrove fish (sadly wouldn't work for insects though). The only reason they did it is because these animals are awesome to think about, but effect from a realistic prediction might be just as cool. |
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Post by theropod on Oct 9, 2023 22:20:13 GMT 5
I’ve seen it suggested that one of the limiting factors on mountain height on earth is the elevation of the snow line, and the glacial erosion that takes place above, so theoretically, depending on the location and the global climate, that limit might be somewhat relaxed in a hothouse climate compared to current levels: www.nature.com/articles/nature08263That would fit in, considering the +100 Ma scenario on Future is Wild was envisioned as such a hothouse world, with higher global temperatures, and thus a higher snow line. However there might be other factors more related to the overall mass of the mountain massif and the resultant subsidence of the crust, and to the strength of the rocks making up the mountain to begin with, which might impose further limitations BTW the elevation they mention on the future is wild (at least what I think is the original version) is actually 12 000 m, not 20 000, which seems a lot more reasonable to me. youtu.be/O-wpyBZOWLI?t=80Also, apparently there are 10 000 m tall mountains on Venus (similar mass and gravity to earth), so I’d be cautiously optimistic that the 12 000 m peaks from Future is Wild aren’t totally out of the range of possibilities at least as far as limitations imposed by material strength properties are concerned. 20 000 (close to the height of Olympus Mons, which exists on a much stiffer lithosphere without plate tectonics, in a thin atmosphere with very little erosion, on a planet with just a bit over a third of the gravity) I’d consider less plausible, and even if it were possible from a geological perspective, the atmospheric pressure up there would likely be too low for macroscopic life to exist (20 000 m is far higher than the highest flying birds ever recorded, and if even birds cannot survive up there, then mammals or spiders sure as hell couldn’t either). But once again, 12 000 m makes it much more plausible, as that is actually quite similar to the highest recorded birds (although I’d still have my doubts on whether the much less respiratorily efficient mammals, let alone the spiders, could survive up there). Even for Microraptor, I’ve seen people question this based on the implausible hindlimb posture it implies, and also the fact that it likely wouldn’t even need the hindlimbs to generate sufficient lift for gliding, or even powered flight. My personal guess is that the feathered hindlimbs were held more vertically and would have rather functioned of a control surface or rudder than for generating lift, a role that in pygostylian birds would later be taken over by the tail. What I found amusing about this episode is that they mention all the challenges of living at such a high altitude when it’s about the windrunner, which (barring the weird secondary wings) is indeed the most plausible creature in this episode, especially the most plausible to actually live at that elevation. But then, when it comes to the spiders or the poggle, or even the vegetation, they immediately forget about it, just as though now that they had shown the windrunner can live up there, the rest are assumed to be able to do it too. I suppose it’s possible the stuff shown on the episode isn’t actually supposed to take place at exactly 12 000 m, and that that’s just the elevation of the highest peaks, but even so, it’s clearly implied to be record-shatteringly high up, higher than the highest mountaintops in the extant world, high enough to force even the birds to develop special adaptations to function at that altitude (which would imply that this should be higher up than what extant birds routinely do, to warrant such extreme adaptations). So why do we have tree-analogues, spiders and mammals up there? We don’t have trees or tree-analogues in localities above the snow-line today, let alone at elevations beyond the highest known occurrences of vascular plants (although I suppose this might be more limited by temperature than atmospheric pressure, but still). According to this, the highest permanent populations of spiders and mammals are at ca. 6700 m, so why can the silver spiders and poggles survive at altitudes implied to be much higher than that? pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34097498/In fact, in a warming planet, while the limitations imposed by temperature that far up may be more relaxed, the limitations imposed by insufficient oxygen supply are going to be even more problematic, as a warming atmosphere will mean the air will contain more water vapour, and thus, less oxygen, relatively speaking. Since it’s likely mammals and arthropods are limited by respiration (at least mammals have no problem surviving in equally cold environments in the arctic and the antarctic ocean, and arthropods if anything have less efficient respiration than them), we shouldn’t expect to find these taxa at higher elevations in a future hothouse scenario compared to the extant world, at least not unless oxygen levels have risen significantly. ALso, why the hell does the windrunner need four wings to fly, but the spiders can effordlessly float across canyons by clinging on to fluffy seeds? That doesn’t make sense. If there is sufficient atmospheric pressure for a not-very-impressive-looking seed to float extensive distances, even with a sizeable spider attached AND the added drag that comes from the filament the spider is producing simultaneously, then surely the birds should have no problem flying with just their normal wings. These are some of the things that made me think this episode had a fun concept and some interesting ideas, but was pretty sloppy in terms of thinking things through to their logical conclusion and making the narrative fit the facts they were trying to present, rather than the other way around. Otherwise they could have realized all of those issues and come up with something more scientifically coherent. Want to have an episode set at 12 000 m above sea level? Fine, but then maybe don’t put arthropods and vascular plants there. I suppose it’s possible the spiders collect a supply sufficient for the whole year in summer, and the poggles then feed on it through the rest of the year… Agreed, this was a bullshit argument indeed. It’s not as though in past periods with hothouse climates the world was suddenly dominated by ectotherms, or as though endotherms only exist in cold climates and are dominated by ectotherms in hotter ones. I mean, of course there is a greater diversity and abundance of ectothermic animals in the tropics than in temperate or cold climates, but there is also a greater diversity there overall, and it’s not as if endothermic animals didn’t do well there at the same time too. It was fairly warm (by modern standards) throughout most of the mesozoic, and yet numerous lineages of reptiles independently evolved endothermy during that period, and totally dominated both terrestrial and marine biomes during that time. Based on the logic from this series, that should never have happened. I suppose it’s possible that they were still of the opinion that "dinosaurs=reptiles=ectotherms", and that this proved their point. But that was still several decaded too late for that to still be excusable. |
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Post by zoograph on Oct 9, 2023 22:45:38 GMT 5
I suppose it’s possible the spiders collect a supply sufficient for the whole year in summer, and the poggles then feed on it through the rest of the year… I also thought about it, but it generally depends on the information we weren't really provided - number of spiders in a colony, Poggles in a herd, seeds trees produce, timespan in which Grass Tree disperse their seeds etc. If any of these elements are not ideal problems will arise probably. |
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Post by creature386 on Oct 9, 2023 22:57:09 GMT 5
I mean, as you probably saw in the previous posts, I actually like the idea of animals being ecological allegories, I just feel that the effect would be greater if these animals were more plausible than just "BIG TURTLE SAUROPOD COOL 100% REAL". You can accomplish all these allegories with giant rodents of Paleoloxodon size, passerines and less so mangrove fish (sadly wouldn't work for insects though). The only reason they did it is because these animals are awesome to think about, but effect from a realistic prediction might be just as cool. That's certainly true. Those Paleoloxodon-sized rodents might have an additional benefit. It'd be easy to explain why they'd lost their hair (elephant-size, the world is hot), so, if it's true that the difficulty of animating mammal hair was a reason for the early exclusion of mammals (as some suggested), that'd be a way to keep them around for a longer while. Maybe that'd be something for that VR game that's apparently in development. |
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Post by theropod on Oct 9, 2023 22:58:01 GMT 5
As for mammal and tetrapod extinction, I can’t really think of any case in the phanerozoic where a single clade with as much diversity and disparity as them, went completely extinct in a single event with no surviving lineages whatsoever (and in fact even across multiple events, that seems extremely rare, if at all possible. If anyone can think of anything that can compare, let me know, but it just really doesn’t seem to be something that actually happens. There are a few highly diverse groups (maybe, and I stress the maybe here, as or more diverse than mammals at their acme) that did go completely extinct, but rarely that quickly (it took the better part of the Paleozoic for Trilobites), and it never seemed to happen to groups that simultaneously had a degree of ecological disparity as great at mammals, let alone tetrapods. For example Ammonoids and Ornithischians were both really diverse clades that went extinct quite suddenly at the K/Pg boundary (though I’d argue that it’s hard to objectively test if they were as diverse as mammals are today, and certainly they aren’t comparable to all of tetrapoda combined), but they were comparatively quite specialized ecologically. Ammonoids were mostly nectonic carnivores, and ornithischians were almost exclusively terrestrial herbivores, mostly quite large ones at that. So obviously it’s much more likely that a group like that could go completely extinct due to a mass extinction than that a group like mammals, which includes everything from flying to fully aquatic, from hypercarnivores to omnivores to high-fiber herbivores, and from bats and shrews to blue whales. Not even to mention all of Tetrapoda, which includes not just all mammals, but various other groups that each have their own massive diversity and (perhaps more importantly) disparity that would all have to disappear simultaneously.  Don’t mind the mammals looking so diverse here, their diversity is a bit inflated in the Paleobiodb due to mammal bias and mammal people being splitters, but it should bring the point across in terms of diversification trends. If it took (ecologically comparatively more limited and exclusively marine) Trilobites 250 million years to decline from their acme (which, for mammals, is probably just about now ± a few ma, if not even in the future), then I don’t see mammals having declined to just onespecies in 100 ma’s time, nor do I see all tetrapods (that seem to generally be doing ok at 100 ma) suddenly going extinct in a single extinction event, if Ammonoids survived 3 big five extinction events, and Trilobites survived 2 before being wiped out by the third. So I can’t help but come to the conclusion that the way tetrapods go extinct seems pretty much impossible. At least, it’s not something that has happened with any extinction in the last 380 Ma, so it’s unclear how much worse an extinction could and would have to be in order to extinguish all tetrapods completely, especially if it was all at once, the way hypothesized on TFIW. A gradual extinction over many hundreds of millions of years may be more credible (at least for major tetrapod subclades such as mammals or birds), but even that seems quite unlikely, at least for all tetrapods. Either way I share your suspicion that this whole thing is unrealistic, e.g. the viability of this whole feeding system seems quite doubtful. Considering resources would no doubt be sparse, and the inherent inefficiency of using these resources to farm poggles instead of just feeding on the seeds directly, how plausible is it that a spider would evolve in coevolution with poggles, instead of the poggles just living and feeding on the seeds independently, without the spiders, or, if we absolutely have to, with the spiders filling the role of a normal predator that feeds on the poggles without farming it and having to provide it with food (necessitating a comparatively large population)? There are reasons why even humans didn’t invent agriculture in the first 300 ka of our existence, during which resources were sparse and climatic conditions either very cold and dry, or very unstable and hot. Evolving such a complex symbiotic relationship without it being of an obvious advantage to either taxon just isn’t very plausible, as fun as the whole eloi-morlock-reference is. |
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Post by Exalt on Oct 9, 2023 23:09:04 GMT 5
I was thinking earlier: this show creates a scenario where tetrapods have been gone for 100 million years...and makes no giant arthropods. They would likely point at the oxygen level idea, but I don't recall of this series ever talks about oxygen levels.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 9, 2023 23:12:33 GMT 5
Interesting thing is that even the recent paper that suggested a large reduction in terrestrial mammal range by the next supercontinent assembly had a model which suggested that there would still be some amount of habitable area left for land mammals. This is particularly true at the northern and southern continental poles (see e and h below) ( Farnsworth et al., 2023). So even if this simulation's predictions actually come true, mammals aren't completely screwed.  |
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Post by creature386 on Oct 9, 2023 23:15:05 GMT 5
Since we're already discussing the tetrapod extinction, I think I need to throw this one in:  Do you see this Spinosaurus-lookalike abomination. That's a Titan dolphin, a carnivorous land dolphin (!) that lives 200 million years in the future and preys on garden worms and has its eggs eaten by terabytes (!). It's from a planned virtual reality game called The Future Is Wild VR. This game is being produced under the creative control Joanna Adams who is the creator of the TFIW franchise as a whole, so it isn't some weird kind of fanfiction or anything. It has exactly the same biomes and creatures as the show (so, the megasquid still exists), but the extinction of mammals, let alone tetrapods, has been completely retconned. Not only that, the extinction of modern marine mammals that allegedly occurred in the near future has been retconned, too. I am not sure how to interpret this. It is possible that the creators eventually realized how absurd the mammal/tetrapod extinction is, but didn't want to give up on the cool animals/biomes they created, so now they're planning to keep them + absurd future mammals. (Maybe criticizing a game that doesn't exist yet is a bit low, but I just wanted to share this. The less is said about the plausibility of a Titan dolphin itself, the better.) |
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