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Pinned post for organisation

Avatar Legends

Avatar: the Last Airbender

The Legend of Korra

Pokémon

Fossil pokémon

Minecraft

The Legend of Zelda

Stardew Valley

Wings of Fire

Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon

More coming soon- feel free to request creatures or media!

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The biological inspirations of Avatar: the “fox antelope”

Unfortunately, these wonderful critters have no canon name, so today I’ll be referring to them by their fandom wiki-designated nickname- the fox antelope. It’s a real shame that they didn’t get featured in the Beasts of the Four Nations book that came out recently. They remind me of gondolopes, which were one of my favourite creature designs when I was a kid. If I had a nickel for every antelope-inspired creature with twisting horns standing under a raised train track that came out in September of 2006, I’d have two nickels… which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice!

Let's start with which animal may have inspired the fox antelope’s winding horns. There are three candidates, all of them antelope- and at this point I have to reveal my secret intention for making this post: to blather about antelope. They’re extremely diverse and numerous, with almost 100 species! So it’s a shame that in pop-culture they’re relegated to being, like… a couple species of hoofed mammal that only live in African savannas.

A vastly oversimplified diagram of how antelope are related to other hoofed mammal species. The tree has eight branches, and four of them are antelope!

It’s worth noting that antelope aren’t actually a single, united group of animals, unlike, say, apes or birds. Instead, it seems that hoofed mammals- particularly bovids- just have a tendency to converge on an antelope-like form when given the chance. It’s like carcinisation, but with hooves.

Addax- photo by HaytemBouchri93

The first of our three candidates is the addax. These superb critters live in the Sahara desert, a hot, dry, dusty environment covering most of North Africa. They’re very well adapted to the desert, getting most of their water from grass and morning dew, and expelling very concentrated urine. They typically sleep during the heat of midday and graze at night. They also have wide, splayed hooves like a reindeer, ideal for walking on top of the shifting dunes. Unfortunately, they’re now critically endangered, and locally extinct in most of their former range.

Kudu- photo by StormSignal on flickr

Our second candidate is the kudu, two (less closely related than they seem) species of large antelope found in eastern and southern Africa. They prefer environments with ample cover to hide in, like woodland and scrubland. They’re browsers, which means they tend to eat leaves from trees or shrubs rather than grass. Males are larger than females and sport long, coiled horns. The greater kudu is one of the largest antelope; it and other similarly large species, like the eland and nilgai, are related to cattle and bison, which explains their size.

A male blackbuck- photo by Marie Hale

The animal that I think is most likely to have inspired our friend the fox antelope is the blackbuck. The shape of the horns fits best imo, plus female blackbuck have a similar colouration to foxes. They live on the savannas of India, so they’re the kind of antelope you’d want to take inspiration from for an Asian-inspired fantasy world. They’re just as fast as their relatives, the springbok and other gazelles, and since there are no longer cheetahs in India, no predator can match their pace. Herds hundreds strong are reported to have once roamed India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

An honourable mention goes to the markhor, which also has coiled horns, just not the right shape. They’re also closely related to goats, so aren’t really antelope.

Red fox- photo by Joanne Redwood

When writing for this account, I try to keep in mind that statistically, most of my audience are going to end up being American or European. As far as I’m concerned, foxes are an exotic animal, like deer or squirrels (though I guess to most english-speaking people they’re not particularly exotic either). You might already know all about foxes. I don’t, but I’ll try to keep this interesting for the rest of you.

The red fox is quite possibly the most wide-ranging and numerous fox species, found in the forests, grasslands, deserts, tundra, and farmland of North America, Eurasia, and parts of Africa. They really live up to their reputation as clever opportunists. They’ve even been introduced to Australia, where, along with feral cats and dogs, they’ve contributed to a devastating loss of native fauna. Apparently they dig out burrows to live in, which I think is very cute. Alternatively, they may take over the burrows of rabbits. Like in many animals, offspring will sometimes stay with their parents for a while and help raise their younger siblings. Foxes are omnivores, and like other canids, will eat berries and other plants.

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The biological inspirations of Wings of Fire: the dragon tribes

When designing fictional creature designs, it’s often good practice to take inspiration from real animals. It can help maintain verisimilitude to add hints of realism, and nature is often far more creative than what us humans can come up with ourselves. This is one of the many things I really appreciate about the dragon designs that Tui T. Sutherland and Joy Ang created together. Today, I’d like to delve into some of the real-life animals and adaptations that inspired the dragon tribes.

Let’s start with SandWings. Both they and NightWings have forked tongues, like real-life snakes and monitor lizards. But what are forked tongues for, exactly? And what implications do they have on the lives of SandWings and NightWings?

Rattlesnake extending a black forked tongue- photo by Chris Taylor

Snakes and many lizard species don’t use their tongue in processing food like we do, or in obtaining food or water like chameleons, frogs, or cats. Instead, their tongue is part of their olfactory system- their sense of smell! These animals flick their tongue out to collect smell particles, then draw it back in against the roof of their mouth. This is where they keep a structure called the veremonasal organ or jacobson’s organ, which detects the smell particles on their tongue and sends the information to their brain. In mammals, this organ is in the nose, but most reptiles do not have a hard separation between their nasal cavities and mouths like we do. The tongue is forked so that snakes and lizards can tell whether the scent particles came from the left or the right, the same reason we have two ears.

This heightened sense of smell might help NightWings and SandWings hunt, especially since NightWings hunt at night when their sight is less useful. I wonder if SandWings hunt at night sometimes too, since it’s less hot and many desert animals are nocturnal. A superior sense of smell to humans (which, to be fair, isn’t hard to have) might also make these dragons more tempted to decorate with scents and perfumes than colourful fabrics and jewellry. I think it’s cool that SandWings have dark tongues, similar to the dark tongues of many real-life desert reptiles- a useful adaptation for the searing sun!

Emperor scorpion- photo by Mike Baird

SandWings also have a scorpion-like stinger on the end of their tail. Apparently there’s actually a term for it- a telson. Scorpions use their telson primarily for hunting prey, so I have to wonder if SandWings also use theirs in this way. Some scorpion species, such as the giant deathstalker (very normal name), defend themselves from predators by spraying venom instead of injecting it. They’re believed to direct this chemical attack toward the predator’s face, hoping it gets into the eyes or nose. Scorpion venom generally consists of neurotoxins- molecules which affect the nervous system- and has a variety of symptoms relating to nerves, muscles, and the heart and lungs.

Left: hippopotamus submerged in water, photo by Timothy Lubcke. Right: saltwater crocodile submerged in water, photo by Stefan Mokrzecki.

Let’s move onto MudWings. One really cool trait of theirs which often gets lost in fan designs is that their eyes and nostrils are really high up on their head. Like in real-life hippos and crocodiles, this allows them to submerge the majority of their head underwater while still being able to see and breathe. It’s little details like this that really pushes Wings of Fire’s designs into being some of my favourite dragon designs of all time.

Greater bird-of-paradise- photo by Nik Borrow

The new limited edition of The Dragonet Prophecy revealed that my favourite tribe, RainWings, were inspired by birds of paradise! This makes a lot of sense to me, since we know Tui T Sutherland has often been inspired by nature documentaries (arc 3 was partly inspired by a documentary about a forest in Africa disappearing and giving way to a savanna). Flashy, colourful birds are actually a really cool animal to base a kind of dragon on! As in the image above, there’s even concept art of RainWings with feathers.

Birds of paradise are a small but diverse group of birds that live in the rainforests of New Guinea and Australia. Males of this group are typically very flashy and colorful, and some perform energetic mating dances. Their flair is a result of an evolutionary mechanism called sexual selection; surviving to adulthood is one thing, but surviving to adulthood while being hindered by bright colours and elaborate feathers is ultimate proof of an animal’s fitness. It’s typically the males’ task in nature to develop these displays because the females spend so much energy on growing young. In birds of paradise’ rainforest habitat, where food is plentiful and it never gets cold, they’ve been able to take the principle of sexual selection to its extreme.

Chameleon- photo by mantaphoto

RainWings were also inspired by chameleons. This is probably where they get their coiled, prehensile tail, though those might also have been inspired by the tails of spider monkeys, which are so flexible they’re almost like a fifth limb.

The main trait of chameleons RainWings borrow is their colour-changing abilities. Quite a few lizards are capable of changing colour, but in most species this is rather subtle and happens very slowly. For example, bearded dragons darken their spiky chin to express certain emotions, and anoles change colour to camouflage. Chameleons change colour to communicate with other chameleons, camouflage, or regulate their temperature (since darker colours absorb more heat).

The mechanics of how chameleons change colour is pretty complex; the skin of colour-changing animals like chameleons and cuttlefish is probably the closest we’ll ever get to those sci-fi nano-machines. First, there’s a layer of cells containing sacs full of yellow and red pigments, some of which come from the chameleon’s diet. Then there’s a layer of iridophore cells, which contain microscopic guanine crystals. These crystals create blue and green hues, and chameleons can change their colour by altering which hue is reflected by these crystals. Finally there’s the melanophore cells, which contain sacs of melanin and are responsible for changes in light and dark. When the melanin is condensed in one area of the cell, they appear lighter; when the melanin is spread out throughout the cell, they appear dark. These three layers work in tandem to determine the colour of a chameleon, and presumably, a RainWing too.

Spitting cobra spraying venom from its fangs- photo by Eugene Troskie

RainWings’ venom spraying abilities may be inspired by spitting cobras. Multiple species with the capacity to eject painful venom from their fangs are found in parts of Africa and Asia. They envenomate prey the usual way, but prefer to defend themselves from a distance, deliberately targeting potential predators’ eyes so the venom will enter their bloodstream. This makes me wonder if RainWings are also capable of injecting their venom with a bite, and whether they ever used this to hunt prey. Venom spraying independently evolved in snakes a total of three times, and may have developed as a response to our ancestors’ invention of ranged weaponry (aka throwing rocks).

A comparison between the large, fuzzy real-life Dilophosaurus and Jurassic Park’s small, scaly, frilled Dilophosaurus- art by Mario Lanzas

The specific combination of venom-spraying abilities and a colourful frill makes me wonder if RainWings were at all inspired by Jurassic Park’s portrayal of Dilophosaurus. Even Glory’s colour scheme is pretty similar to it. It’s worth noting however, that Jurassic Park’s Dilophosaurus is very different from scientists’ current understanding of the animal- both because palaeontology has advanced since the movie came out, and because the frill and venom-spraying were always quite fantastical additions. I guess that’s what happens when you mix dinosaurs with frog DNA…

The real-life Dilophosaurus was about 7 metres (23 feet) long, near the very beginning of the Jurassic Period. It lived at a turning point in the history of dinosaurs as a whole. Dinosaurs had existed for a while before the Jurassic Period began, but they had lived alongside and competed with other large animals such as distant relatives of crocodiles (eg Postosuchus & Typothorax) and mammals (eg Lisowicia and Siriusgnathus). The beginning of the Jurassic Period was marked by a mass extinction that wiped out most of the dinosaurs’ competitors. Dilophosaurus was the apex predator of North America at the very beginning of the dinosaurs’ reign, before the herbivores had gotten big enough for giant predators like Tyrannosaurus rex to evolve. Their crests were likely used for display to potential mates, and they may have been partly covered in simple, down-like feathers.

Silkworm and two silkworm cocoons- photo by Sofiaworld

Individual SilkWings are based on all sorts of Lepidopterans- blue morpho butterflies, luna moths, and so on (if people are interested I might do a whole post about the different species SilkWings were inspired by). But I think the tribe as a whole might’ve been partly inspired by silkworms, a species of moth which is responsible for producing silk.

Silkworms are one of the only domesticated invertebrate species, originating thousands of years ago in China. Their caterpillars almost exclusively feed on the leaves of the white mulberry tree. When it’s time to metamorphose, they spin cocoons out of silk! Must be quite comfortable. Adult silk moths can’t eat and don’t live for very long; their purpose is to breed and lay the next generation of caterpillar eggs. Domestic silk moths are reliant on humans to breed, because they’re too heavy to fly far enough to find a mate.

When a silk moth breaks out of its cocoon, it damages the silk. Therefore, silkworm cocoons are traditionally boiled in water to kill the larvae. The silk is then spun like any other thread to make clothing, blankets, and more. It’s this whole process that makes silk such an expensive, sought-after yet hard to obtain material that an entire trade route was named after it. There are interesting parallels between the harvesting of silkmoths and the way flamesilks are exploited by HiveWings for their silk.

Ichneumon wasp- Boris Hrasovec

Speaking of HiveWings! The tribe is inspired by bees and wasps, and individual HiveWings are named after a variety of insect species (again, I might do a whole post about this). But I see similarities with the way Queen Wasp injects the othermind into each HiveWing egg through her stinger and a specific group of wasps: parasitoid wasps.

These creepy-yet-cool wasps spend their juvenile phase as parasites of insects and spiders. Some inject their eggs into a host’s body, as well as a cocktail of venom that may include substances to slow down host growth. Others paralyse the host with a large stinger and lay their eggs on top. Some even inject the host with viruses that are passed down from wasp to wasp. There are thousands of species of parasitoid wasp, and they employ many different strategies. The host is usually eaten through slowly, and then dies.

Some parasitoid wasps even inject their eggs into the cocoons of other parasitoid wasps, making them hyperparasitoids. The giant spider wasp grows up to 3cm (1.18 inches) long and lays its eggs on paralysed huntsman spiders! As adults, parasitoid wasps usually eat nectar and other sweet sugary things. What they do might seem creepy to us humans, but providing food for their offspring is actually quite caring of them.

Brown marmorated stinkbug- Hectonichus on Wikimedia

Finally, let’s talk about a unique ability that some HiveWings possess- the power of stink! Utilised by Lady Scarab, this ability was likely inspired by stinkbugs, which produce foul-smelling substances when they believe they’re being threatened (I don’t recommend having the wind blow one into your hair). There are thousands of species, but most drink sap, piercing leaves and sucking the juices up through a kind of straw. A few species damage crops and have become invasive pests in some parts of the world.

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The biological inspirations of Pokémon: anorith & armaldo

The animals that served as inspiration for these two ‘mons are so ancient that there aren’t many earlier critters you take inspiration from, period. They’re some of the first large animals known from the fossil record- and by ‘large’, I mean still substantially less than a metre long. They lived in the Cambrian Period, an era kicked off by the famous Cambrian explosion and featuring such evolutionary milestones as the first eyes, first fins and limbs, the earliest example of parental care, and the cementing of predator and prey. Anorith and armaldo are based on the most famous animal from this period, and one of the earliest apex predators to ever live- Anomalocaris.

Anomalocaris- art by Gabriel Ugueto

With compound eyes on stalks, sixteen fins on each side of its serpentine body, and twin grasping appendages at the front of its head, Anomalocaris was incredibly weird by our modern standards- though not so weird for the standards of the day. The various species ranged from 10cm (4 inches) to almost 50cm (20 inches) long, and the larger specimens were some of the largest animals on Earth at that time. It was a predator, using its spiny appendages to grab worm-like and bug-like prey.

Sometimes palaeontologists initially discover only one part of an animal, and it takes a while to get a full picture. The first part of Anomalocaris to be discovered were its appendages, which were mistaken for crustaceans- hence its name, which translates to ‘unusual shrimp’. Other parts of its body were interpreted as jellyfish, bugs, or sea cucumbers. It wasn’t until almost a century after the first specimens were discovered that a fossil complete enough to give the correct impression was described. And who could’ve imagined how weird Anomalocaris really was?

Lyrarapax- art by Nix Illustration

Anomalocaris wasn’t a single aberrant species, but one member of a group of prehistoric critters known as radiodonts. These are believed to have been extinct relatives of arthropods, the group that includes insects, crustaceans, and arachnids. Another radiodont predator was Lyrarapax, similar to Anomalocaris in some ways but differing in having pointed, more triangular eyes, a tail consisting of two streamers, and hunting appendages that were shaped like the pincers of a crab! I think the pointed eyes are intriguing, given that armaldo has a similar eye shape, and a related species (Amplectobelua) was discovered before Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire came out.

Aegirocassis- art by Amberghini

At 2 metres (6 feet) long, Aegirocassis was the largest radiodont to ever live, as well as the largest animal on Earth at the time. It lived in the Ordovician, the period directly after the Cambrian. Its appendages were completely useless for hunting large prey, but with a mesh consisting of hundreds of tiny spikes, they would’ve been fantastic at straining plankton out of the water. Aegirocassis was essentially the Ordovician equivalent of a blue whale, a gentle giant with a microscopic diet.

Opabinia- art by Bruce Currie/Paleozoo

Okay, so Opabinia wasn’t a radiodont. But it was a closely related animal, and in my defence, it’s hard to talk about Cambrian weirdos without bringing it up. There’ve been a lot of weird animals in the history of the planet- Hallucigenia and Tullimonstrum, for a couple of examples. But I think Opabinia is right up there as one of the weirdest animals to ever live.

Its body was similar to its radiodont relatives, but Opabinia had five eyes on stalks, a mouth that faced backwards, and a long, trunk-like proboscis with a clawed mitten on the end. Excluding the proboscis, it was only 4cm (1.5 inches) to 7cm (2.5 inches) long! It would’ve swam above the seafloor, grabbing food with its proboscis and passing them to its mouth like an elephant.

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The biological inspirations of Avatar: the iguana seal

Iguana seals are one of my favourite of Avatar’s creature designs, so it’s a shame they only show up in a couple scenes. They are likely based on a real-life species of semi-aquatic iguana that occupies a volcanic island chain- marine iguanas!

Marine iguana- photo by RAF-YYC on flickr

Marine iguanas live on the rocky shores and sandy beaches of the Galàpagos islands. They feed on clumps of algae, scraping them off rocks with blunt three-pronged teeth. There are many subspecies, ranging in size from what you’d expect of a lizard to over a metre long, and varying quite a bit in colour too. Like seals or penguins, they typically live in large colonies with dozens or hundreds of members.

Marine iguana grazing underwater- photo by Dror.gilat on wikimedia

Many marine iguanas wait to feed until low tide, when algae is exposed to the air. Others dive for their food, using their long, flexible tail to propel themselves several metres underwater. But this comes at a cost- since lizards aren’t able to control their own body temperature, submerging in seawater can make them quite cold. The life of a marine iguana is thus a balance between submerging to eat and basking on the rocky shores to warm themselves. Living next to the ocean also means they need large salt glands to filter excess salt out of their blood, a trait additionally found in sea turtles and many seabirds.

These iguanas are actually the only marine lizards alive today. That hasn’t always been the case- during the Age of Dinosaurs, there was an entire group of ocean-going lizards called mosasaurs which grew up to the size of a whale! They were so well-adapted for ocean life that they were warm-blooded, and gave live birth like a mammal so they didn’t have to crawl onto land to lay eggs.

A colourful pink-and-blue marine iguana, apparently typical of the subspecies hailing from Española island- photo by Benjamin444 on wikimedia

Marine iguanas are far from the only remarkable animals native to the Galápagos Islands. This island chain was formed by volcanic activity and has never been attached to any continent, so animals must cross an entire ocean to get there. There are plenty of marine animals, like seabirds and fur seals. But there are also land animals that wound up there by accident, either being blown across the ocean by a storm or rafting on mats of tangled vegetation. Once established, they would’ve had to adapt to their new home.

Because there were few other land birds on the island to compete with them, the local finches underwent a process called adaptive radiation where they rapidly evolved into multiple new species with different diets. Galàpagos tortoises grew much larger, filling the island’s large herbivore niche in the absence of deer or cattle. And some of Galàpagos’ terrestrial iguanas started eating a brand-new, untapped resource: algae, eventually becoming the marine iguanas that we know today.

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The biological inspirations of The Legend of Zelda: the great-horned rhinoceros

Going through Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom’s fantasy creatures again for this blog has given me a new appreciation for the amount of work they put into those games. I love the fact they weren’t afraid to take inspiration from prehistoric creatures! Hmm, does this mean Hyrule might be experiencing an ice age?

Coelodonta antiquitatis, also known as the woolly rhinoceros- art by Julio Lacerda

The great-horned rhinoceros is an almost direct reference to the real-life woolly rhinoceros, one of most famous ice creatures- right up there with the woolly mammoth! They lived in Europe and Northern Asia from ~500,000 to ~11,000 years ago, disappearing just as the ice age ended and humans started to build larger settlements. We know from mummified carcasses frozen in permafrost for thousands of years that they were covered in thick brown fur and had a shoulder hump made of fat reserves. They were roughly the same size as the largest living rhino, the African white rhinoceros, but they were most closely related to the smallest living rhino, the Sumatran rhinoceros.

Woolly rhinoceroses lived on the mammoth steppe, a now-extinct ecosystem that once stretched from Spain to Alaska and beyond. It was a veritable ice age safari, inhabited by mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave lions, cave hyenas, saiga antelope, and large camels. But it also contained animals you might associate more with a northern environment, like wolves, bears, bison, horses, reindeer, and giant elk. Joining this eclectic collection of species were humans, whose cave paintings give us clues to the life appearances of many of the animals they lived alongside.

Elasmotherium sibiricum, also known as the Siberian unicorn- art by Beth Zaiken

Aside from the classic woolly rhinoceros, there were several large, shaggy ice age rhinos, each with their own range and horn shape. I don’t think any species encapsulates this diversity better than the Siberian unicorn. It was a fellow inhabitant of ice age Eurasia, but unlike the woolly rhinoceros it was the size of an elephant and entirely lacked horns! Traditionally, it was believed to have one, long horn, possibly an extraordinary 2 metres long, hence the nickname of ‘unicorn’. But there is actually no fossil evidence of a horn- if it did exist, it would have to be entirely made of keratin- and the bony core on its face doesn’t seem to have been able to support such a large structure. Instead, it probably supported a hard boss that may have sometimes grown large enough to resemble a short, stumpy horn.

The ice age was an interesting time in the history of our planet. The last extended cold period was about 280 million years ago, tens of millions of years before dinosaurs entered onto the scene. During the age of dinosaurs and the early stages of the age of mammals, there was a long hot period where the planet was so covered in forests that even Antarctica had them! It wasn’t until the last few dozen million years that the earth started to cool, prompting grasslands to spread across the planet and Antarctica to freeze over.

The ice age, beginning two and a half million years ago, was the culmination of this trend. But it wasn’t just one long era; it was a series of cycles, of longer glacial periods where the ice crept south and shorter interglacial periods where it retreated north. The cold period often called the ice age never actually ended- we’re just in a warm interglacial period, where the ice has temporarily retreated. Unless we humans royally mess up the climate, the ice age should one day return. It’s just a shame animals like the woolly rhinoceros won’t be there to see it.

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The biological inspirations of Dungeon Meshi: the giant frog

The inspirations of Dungeon Meshi’s fantastical creatures would really be better explored by someone interested in folklore or tabletop games. No, seriously, someone please do that. At least I was able to find one monster worth making a biological inspirations post about!

Red-eyed tree frog- photo by Geoff Gallice

With its climbing habits, large toe pads, red eyes, and vertical slit pupil, the real-life frog species that the giant frog resembles most is probably the red-eyed tree frog. Usually when I make a comparison like this I’m skeptical that the creator(s) actually referenced a real animal and didn’t just draw a frog, but Ryoko Kui has sufficient attention to detail and the red-eyed tree frog is famous enough that I’d be surprised if this was just a coincidence.

Red-eyed tree frogs dwell in the rainforest canopy of Central America. They are excellent climbers thanks to the sticky pads on their feet. Research on tree frogs more broadly has found that these pads produce an adhesive liquid substance that works in a surprising way. Basically, water molecules love sticking to each other (cohesion) and to other molecules (adhesion), and when water is contained in a narrow space such as a tiny straw- or between a frog foot and a plant stem- these forces can grow so great that they overcome gravity. Trees use many tiny straws to transport water from their roots to their branches, and the thorny devil uses narrow channels beneath its scales to transport water from the ground to its mouth. All of these plants and animals are basically hacking physics!

I have to wonder where Dungeon Meshi’s giant frogs raise their giant tadpoles- the dungeon isn’t exactly a pristine wetland- and rainforest frogs might give us some clues. Even though the red-eyed tree frog lives in the canopy, they still stick close to ponds and wetlands; maybe this is why the giant frog is found so close to the lakes on the fourth floor. Perhaps the water drips down into the stairwell where the giant frogs live and form pools at the bottom. Other rainforest frogs lay their eggs in pools of rainwater trapped by plants like bromeliads. Maybe there are tentacles or carnivorous dungeon plants which collect water in this way.

Clownfish swimming through an anemone- photo by Nick Hobgood

A conclusion me and other people have independently come to is that giant frogs are also based on clownfish. This isn’t just evident in its colouration, but its relationship with stinging tentacles. The artbook lists tentacles as anthozoans, the group that includes coral and anemones. Just as clownfish have a symbiotic relationship with anemones, cleaning them and protecting them from predators in return for shelter between their stinging arms, giant frogs also have a symbiotic relationship with tentacles, protecting them from the swords of adventurers and receiving shelter in return. I just have to wonder- of all the animals that Ryoko Kui could’ve chosen for this symbiosis, why frogs?

Even aside from the unique relationship with anemones that they’re most famous for, clownfish are remarkable fish. They inhabit coral reefs of the Indian and Pacific oceans, and eat plankton as well as parasites and food scraps from their host anemone. You may have heard that clownfish are capable of changing their sex! Their social groups consist of one male, one female, and several nonbreeding clownfish with undeveloped sex organs. If the female dies, the male will become female and one of the nonbreeders will become male. Like many other fish, clownfish start out their life as microscopic larvae, comprising one of the many types of plankton that larger marine animals feed on.

Only a few of the ~30 species of clownfish actually bear the famous orange with black-and-white stripes colouration. Other species are light orange, yellow with black-and-white stripes, entirely black and white, or pink. I’d like to imagine there are many species of giant frog, each with their own unique colour.

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The biological inspirations of Pokémon: kilowattrel

Based on the wing and tail shape, distinctive hooked beak, and brightly-coloured gular pouch, kilowattrel is likely based on frigatebirds. Seabirds as a rule are remarkable- including huge albatrosses, dive-bombing gannets and streamer-tailed tropicbirds- but even by their standards, frigatebirds are pretty dang cool!

Magnificent frigatebird- photo by Peter Cavanagh

Frigatebirds are five species of large seabird found throughout most of the world’s tropical oceans. The biggest and most well-known species, the magnificent frigatebird, can attain a wingspan more than 2 metres (7 feet) across!

Unlike many of their relatives, they’re poor swimmers and lack waterproof oils in their feathers, so instead they fly above the ocean and pick off small fish and squid that come too close to the surface. They thus benefit from marine predators like dolphins driving shoals of fish upward. Frigatebirds supplement their diet with the eggs and chicks of other seabirds, and with a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism- stealing food from other birds, either directly from their mouth or by harassing them until they regurgitate it. Yuck!

Frigatebirds are excellent fliers, soaring on thermals and staying in the air for days at a time. During these long flights, they sleep very little. They are capable of sleeping on the wing, but do so in short bursts, and they will even stay aware of their surroundings by turning off only half of their brain at a time, like dolphins!

Magnificent frigatebird- photo by Matthew O’Connor

The most famous feature of frigatebirds is indisputably the males’ red gular sac. This is a throat pouch, like that of pelicans- except in frigatebirds, it can be inflated like a balloon! It’s used in dramatic mating displays, wherein a male dances and clacks his beak together to attract a female. Inflatable air sacs like these are found in a surprising number of animal groups- such as birds (greater sage-grouse), apes (siamangs), seals (hooded seals), and frogs (many species). They’re typically used in display, but are sometimes also used to amplify an animal’s call over long distances.

Male frigatebirds might have flashy displays, but females are significantly heavier on average. This phenomenon where male and female animals of the same species differ in size, colour or other physical traits is called sexual dimorphism, and while it’s relatively common in birds (think peacocks, birds-of-paradise, cardinals), it’s rarely this pronounced in seabirds. The only other example of such pronounced sexual dimorphism I can think of in flying oceanic fish-eaters isn’t in birds at all, but pterosaurs like Pteranodon and Nyctosaurus.

In light of the extreme sexual dimorphism of frigatebirds, I thought it was interesting that kilowattrel doesn’t have any gender differences. That said, it’s Scarlet and Violet pokédex entries do reference both the frigatebird’s ability to soar long distances and its lack of protective waterproof oils. I do appreciate when the devs add such easter eggs to pokedex entries!

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The biological inspirations of Avatar: crab spirits

This is my second and final post on the creatures of the Forgetful Valley- here’s the first. For those unaware, this is a location in the Avatar comics home to the mother of faces, a powerful spirit who creates all the faces in the Avatar world. Heralding her arrival in the story are a variety of delightful spirit creatures with human-like faces placed somewhere on their bodies. And the brief appearance of these crab spirits was perhaps one of my favourite moments in the comics, because for a location themed around faces in an Asian-inspired fantasy nation, not a single animal could’ve been better inspiration for a creature design than the remarkable samurai crab.

Heikegani- photo by Lonmelo on flickr

Heikegani, or samurai crabs, are a species of East Asian crab famous for the face-like structure on their back. It is uncanny how much this “face” resembles an angry samurai or demon from traditional Japanese artwork. There’s a lot of Japanese folklore and history surrounding heikegani, but face-bearing crabs are by no means unique to the region. Heikegani are only one member of the crab family Dorripidae, many other species of which bear angry faces on their back, including the urchin carrier crab and leaf-porter crab. You might be lucky enough to catch a Dorripid crab if you live in East, South, or Southeast Asia, East Africa, Northern Australia, or the Mediterranean.

It’s been suggested that these face-like structures were caused or exacerbated by the action of humans. As the legend goes, those crabs with less face-like backs were caught and eaten, while those with greater resemblance to human faces triggered some concern or superstition that caused the fishermen to throw the crabs back. Thus, only the crabs with more human-like faces survived to reproduce. This is a good story, but it has little basis. Heikeganis’ supposed resemblance to humans is more likely a result of pareidolia, a phenomenon where humans see faces and hear voices in non-human sights and sounds. We’ve essentially evolved to become so good at pattern recognition that we’re now capable of seeing a human face in two dots and a line- or the back of a crab.

Okay, but what causes the distinctive pattern on heikegani shells? What we’re looking at here are muscle attachment sites, or entheses. Where muscle attaches to bone- or, in the case of crabs, their chitinous exoskeleton- the hard material can evolve a distinctive shape to better allow the muscle to pull on it. Sometimes, muscles can also wear on bone, causing them to scar and change shape throughout an animal’s life. This is useful to palaeontologists, who can use the shapes and textures of fossilised bones and shells to glean information about the muscles that once attached to them. The distinctive muscle attachment sites of heikegani appear to be an exaggerated version of regular crab anatomy, and this exaggeration has also evolved independently in other crabs, causing similar face-like structures to develop in species such as the European masked crab.

Heikegani- photo by Zhanghair on iNaturalist

So much online discussion of heikegani surrounds their human-like faces that it’s difficult to find any information on their diet, habitat, or other aspects of their ecology. I tried my best, but… it seems there isn’t much written down about this stuff, period. I suspect there’s more documented on the Japanese side of the internet, but I unfortunately don’t know how to read Japanese.

Heikegani live in shallow muddy seabeds in Japan, Taiwan, and eastern China. Researching their diet was particularly thorny, but multiple sources imply that they’re detritivores- animals that eat dead animal and/or plant matter and recycle it back into the ecosystem. They typically have pincers which are identical in size, but I found a few photos of heikegani with asymmetrical pincers. This could be for a number of reasons, including individual variation, but it’s also possible that these are photos of other Dorripid crabs misidentified as heikegani.

Speaking of other Dorripids, many species carry around various organisms on their back for camouflage and protection. We’re talking leaves, sea urchins, sponges, shells, starfish, and sea anemones. These crabs only walk around on four of their eight legs; their other four are small and flexible, and used for carrying objects on their back. You’ll notice that heikegani have a similar leg arrangement; do they also carry objects? I couldn’t find any information on this one way or the other. I think it’s neat that Dorripids carry objects over their face-like back- it’s almost like they’re trying to wear a mask. Rather poetic, for a group of crabs that inspired a creature in a comic with such a focus on masks and theatre.

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The biological inspirations of Minecraft: ocelots

For me, ocelots are one of the most memorable aspects of old Minecraft. I spent a lot of time searching for these guys and painstakingly taming them one fish at a time. But what of the real-life ocelot? Where do they live? What do they eat? How similar are they do their in-game counterpart?

Ocelot- photo by João Carlos Medau

Ocelots are one of the most famous of the several dozen small wild cat species that live around the globe. That’s not to say they’re small, necessarily- they’re usually around 80cm (31 inches) long, compared to the 45cm (18 inches) typical of domestic cats- but they’re tiny compared to the jaguars that share their habitat. They live in jungle, wetland and dense scrubland habitats across the tropical parts of South and Central America. They also used to roam the southern parts of the United States, including Texas and Louisiana, but are today almost locally extinct there.

Ocelots are all-terrain cats! They’re capable swimmers, and will climb trees in the pursuit of prey. They’ll hunt a variety of animals- rodents, opossums, birds, rabbits, armadillos, monkeys, iguanas, fish, crabs, tortoises, and occasionally much larger animals such as young peccaries, anteaters, and deer. In turn, they’re preyed upon by jaguars, cougars, and snakes. Like most wild cats, ocelots are very solitary. Individuals claim their own territory and rarely interact with others outside of mating and raising young.

As with many a decision made by game developers, I have to wonder why ocelots? If you’re going to add in a wild cat that can be tamed and made into a pet, a much better option would be the African wild cat- the real-life ancestors of domestic cats. This may be because of my personal lack of knowledge with anything over that side of the Pacific (I’m Australian. I grew up thinking groundhogs were mythical creatures like a bigfoot), but I don’t know if I’d even know what ocelots are if not for Minecraft. So are ocelots well-known enough in other parts of the world that they’d be an obvious choice to add? Were the developers googling around for jungle cats they could add to the game, and there’s an alternate universe where we got margays or jaguarundis instead? Yet another question I’m never going to get an answer to…

Ocelot- photo by Giles Laurent

In 2019, Minecraft’s ocelots were changed in a major way. When they were originally introduced, players could tame them with fish, transforming them into domestic house cats. But now, ocelots can’t be tamed and cats can only be obtained from villages. This was an understandably controversial decision. But while like most players I was disappointed at the time, I’d now like to defend it.

The game mechanic of taming ocelots reinforces a common misconception- the idea that individual wild animals can be domesticated. Domestic animals like house cats are created by thousands of years of evolution and naturally thrive in a domestic setting. Some wild animals can thrive as pets within enclosed tanks, like lizards and snakes. But for wild animals with complex dietary, habitat, and social needs, like macaws, small monkeys, sugar gliders, and yes, wild cats, the home is not a suitable environment. This is despite the fact that many animals are still being taken from the wild to sell as exotic pets- and when baby animals are taken, their mothers are often killed in the process. It’s despite the fact that videos of wild animals in people’s homes frequently go viral for being “cute”, and commenters will flock to defend the people involved for buying an animal they can’t reasonably care for. “Big floppa” is all that many people will comment when seeing a picture of any caracal, and that’s a meme originating from photos of a large and destructive wild cat being kept as a pet alongside domestic cats.

Yes, Minecraft isn’t real life. But it’s one of the best-selling videogames of all time, and a generation of children was introduced to ocelots by the game. With such an influential platform in mind, I think removing the ability to tame ocelots was an entirely reasonable decision for them to make.

Also, cats are way easier to obtain now.

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The biological inspirations of Pokémon: Aerodactyl

Pokémon’s design philosophy has evolved a lot over the years. Nowadays, ‘mons are more likely to be inspired by research into some aspect of culture and biology than they are to be abstract monsters drawn from the developers’ design sensibilities. Aerodactyl is a great example of this older design principle- it’s just as much a wyvern or gargoyle as it is a real extinct animal. Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t take a look at the marvelous critters that partly inspired its design.

Pterodactylus- art by Gabriel Ugueto

Pterosaurs, often informally called ‘pterodactyls’, are a group of extinct flying reptiles that were also the closest relatives of dinosaurs. They thrived for over 150 million years during a period known as the Mesozoic or ‘Age of Reptiles’, but were wiped out 66 million years ago by the same asteroid that took many other living groups. This era was generally characterised by a much warmer climate and higher sea level than today’s world.

Pterosaurs were remarkable animals. Only three vertebrate lineages in the history of life on Earth have ever evolved flight, and pterosaurs were the first. They were also one of the earliest animal groups to have an active warm-blooded metabolism and a fuzzy body. This fuzz was typically structurally simple, like mammal fur, but a few pterosaur fossils have been found bearing more complex fibres similar to the protofeathers of early dinosaurs.

Arguably the coolest anatomical feature pterosaurs had is one they share with their cousins, the non-avian dinosaurs and birds. This is a system of internal air sacs that makes them far lighter than a mammal of similar size, and grants them a unique, highly efficient ability- one-way breathing. Yes, while us mammals have to empty our lungs of carbon dioxide before we take the next breath, pterosaurs and kin have a racetrack-like respiratory system that forces air down a singular, looping path. This allows them to exhale carbon dioxide and extract oxygen from their lungs at the same time! If you want an animated explanation, Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong has this excellent youtube short on the topic. Their remarkable adaptations allowed the largest pterosaurs to grow to heights of 5 metres (16 feet) and wingspans of 11 metres (36 feet)!

Caelestiventus- art by Nix Illustration

Between the robust, toothy mouth and the long tail with a diamond-shaped tip, aerodactyl most closely resembles earlier pterosaurs like Dimorphodon and Rhamphorynchus. Later pterosaurs largely abandoned having teeth and long tails, because dropping extra weight can make flight easier. A similar process happened in the evolution of birds!

Pteranodon- art by Julio Lacerda

The shape of aerodactyl’s horns may have been inspired by one of the most iconic pterosaurs, the legendary Pteranodon. This animal lived around 80 million years ago, out on the inland sea that bisected North America at the time. They were some of the largest pterosaurs; some males attained wingspans of 6 metres (20 feet)! Females were much smaller, with wingspans closer to 4 metres (13 feet). Fish bones have been found inside Pteranodon fossils, indicating they were kind of like giant prehistoric seabirds.

Tapejara art by anthon500, and Nyctosaurus art by Julio Lacerda

But horns and crests were pretty common among pterosaurs, and it’s hard to talk about pterosaur horns without bringing up the more bizarre examples. Tapejara (left) lived 115 million years ago in what is now Brazil, and had a small bony horn that supported a much larger crest or “sail” of soft tissue. This was probably a display structure, like the tail of a peacock, hence the bright colour that artists often give it. Tapejara’s pointed chin also reminds me a little of mega aerodactyl’s chin spike. Probably a coincidence, but it makes me wonder why mega aerodactyl was given a chin spike?

The gold trophy for weirdest pterosaur horn definitely goes to Nyctosaurus (right) and its two-pronged antler-like horn, which is so large that it makes you wonder how it could have even flown without crashing into the ocean. It was actually a relative and contemporary of Pteranodon, but had a much more reasonable 2 metre (6.5 foot) wingspan easily surpassed by many modern seabirds. Despite the incredible diversity in pterosaur ornamentation, there is unfortunately no known pterosaur sporting twin horns like aerodactyl.

Kunpengoperus art by TheMeepLord

Aerodactyl also has a few design features that aren’t found in any real pterosaur. Up until just a few years ago, this included its pronounced fingers and opposable thumb; most pterosaurs had proportionally tiny hands, and some lacked them entirely. But in 2021, palaeontologists discovered Kunpengopterus antipollicatus, a tree-climbing pterosaur that evolved thumbs long before our monkey ancestors did!

K. antipollicatus lived 155 million years ago in what is now Liaoning Province, China. Despite it often being given the moniker of ‘monkeydactyl’, it almost definitely didn’t eat fruit. This is because fruit hadn’t evolved yet! A closely related species was found fossilised next to a fish, but like… they were encased in shale, so that’s not particularly surprising (“possibly regurgitated fish” my ass, Wikipedia). K. antipollicatus is commonly depicted eating small tree-dwelling animals like bugs and mammals, which isn’t substantiated (to my knowledge) but does make a lot of sense.

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The geological inspirations of Stardew Valley: iridium

At this point, using a rare metal or mineral to upgrade your tools is a videogame staple. But the pick for which material each developer chooses for their game is often so random that the why becomes a tantalising mystery. Unfortunately, I don’t have answers to that today. But I do have trivia! Where iridium comes from, what it’s used for, and even the time it helped scientists solve a 66 million-year-old murder mystery…

Iridium- photo by images of elements

Iridium is an element on the periodic table with 77 protons in its atomic nucleus. In its pure form, it’s a tough, silvery metal. It might’ve been chosen for the final upgrade of Stardew Valley’s tools because of its strength. It’s extremely dense, highly resistant to corrosion, and has a melting point of over 2400°C (4400°F)! However, its properties go both ways- in real life, the farmer’s furnace probably wouldn’t be capable of reaching high enough temperatures to manufacture iridium bars.

In our world, iridium is also too expensive to bother making pickaxes and swords with. That’s because of its rarity- iridium is so dense that most of Earth’s supply sank deep down below the surface a long time ago, so we humans have access to a comparatively small amount. Asteroids tend to have far more iridium in them than the Earth’s outer layer does, which is probably the inspiration behind the iridium-rich asteroids that periodically rain down on Stardew Valley’s farm.

But with the power of modern manufacturing, iridium has been made fit for a variety of uses, such as spark plugs, electronic devices, satellites, and spacecraft. Its high melting point also makes it a great crucible, or container that substances are heated within, since it can withstand extreme temperatures without melting or breaking.

A rainbow of iridium salts- photo by science made alive

Iridium is named for Iris, the ancient Greek goddess of rainbows. This is because of iridium salts, which can turn a variety of vibrant colours when heated and/or mixed with other substances. This is the only possible explanation I could find as to why iridium in Stardew Valley is a bold purple instead of silver.

You’ve probably heard by now that the elements humans are made of were forged inside of stars. But even the cores of the largest stars are too weak to create elements as heavy as iridium. Instead, scientists believe iridium is the result of neutron star mergers. Neutron stars are already incredibly extreme objects- they’re the shrunken corpses of giant stars, with insides so densely packed that atoms splinter into their base components. When two neutron stars collide, these atomic components are blasted apart and given the chance to recombine in new and exotic ways. This is how we get elements like xenon, bismuth, and iridium. It’s no wonder it took 13 billion years for a planet as chemically complex as Earth to form when so many elements can only be forged by rare random events like these!

This thin, white stripe of rock contains unusually high levels of iridium and marks the boundary between the age of reptiles and age of mammals. Photo by Joanne Manaster.

These days, the cause of the dinosaurs’ fate is so well-known it almost seems self-explanatory. An asteroid wider than Mount Everest is tall, tearing through the atmosphere and colliding disastrously with our planet. But as recently as the 1970s, scientists had no clue that such an asteroid even existed. So how do you forensically investigate a 66 million-year-old murder mystery?

The answer actually lies in iridium. Remember how I said that it’s pretty rare in the Earth’s crust and comparatively common in meteorites? Well, there’s a thin layer of iridium in the Earth’s crust that spans the whole globe, and was laid down 66 million years ago- the same time that the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. It’s believed that as the asteroid struck the Earth, it disintegrated and flung rock and dust high into the atmosphere, spreading the iridium across the planet. The hypothesis was later confirmed with the discovery of the Chicxulub crater, a massive asteroid impact site located on the Yucatán peninsula and dated to 66 million years ago.

Iridium in Stardew Valley is basically a fantasy metal. Still, given that its fantasy form is still so abundant in asteroids, I have to wonder what implications there are from the fact that the Stardew Valley world has so much of it. Is it evidence of regular asteroid strikes? Might this fantasy planet’s star system lack a large planet like Jupiter that can keep asteroids away? Or perhaps Stardew Valley’s planet has rings that contain high amounts of iridium and regularly rain down on the planet’s surface. Maybe the planet is so dense that iridium is unable to sink down beneath the crust, though I can’t imagine what the implications of that would be. I’ll have to ask the resident geologist when she gets back from the wilderness.

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The biological inspirations of Wings of Fire: RainWing names

As a kid reading this series for the first time, RainWings were undoubtedly my favourite dragon tribe. So when I decided to delve into the real-life biological inspirations of the dragons’ names, of course I’d do the RainWings first!

But before I start the post proper, here are some other cool tropical plants and animals I think would make good names for RainWings, for all your OC creation needs!:

Fiddlehead, Bamboo, Kapok, Fig, Hibiscus, Papaya, Cacao, Taro, Lychee, Pomelo, Mangosteen, Pleco, Cichlid, Arapaima, Tegu, Gecko, Anole, Iguana, Monitor, Boa, Gaboon, Mamba, Arrau, Caiman, Cassowary, Sunbittern, Kagu, Quetzal, Astrapia, Parotia, Hornbill, Hoatzin, Macaw, Eclectus, Lorikeet, Toco, Aracari, Tanager, Treecreeper, Cotinga, Hutia, Paca, Agouti, Pacarana, Tamandua, Colugo, Angwantibo, Indri, Tarsier, Marmoset, Capuchin, Uakari, Saki, Muriqui, Guereza, Colobus, Langur, Lutung, Bonobo, Coati, Cacomistle, Olingo, Fossa, Tayra, Otter, Binturong, Dhole, Civet, Linsang, Jaguarundi, Ocelot, Margay, Peccary, Babirusa, Chevrotain, Okapi, Rusa, Muntjac, Saola, Banteng, Gaur, Bongo

Purple morning glory flowers- photo by Evgeniya Vlasova

Let’s start with Glory. I’m not sure her name is a reference to any living creature, but if it is, it’s probably the morning glory. This is a large and diverse group of plants known for their gorgeous trumpet-shaped flowers, which come in shades of pink, purple, blue, and white. They’re often cultivated for these flowers, but their creeping and climbing growth patterns have unfortunately caused several species to become an invasive pest in some parts of the world.

Different species of morning glory bloom at different times- the moonflower even opens at night! But the group as a whole is named for those species which open in the morning and close as the sun gets lower in the sky. If Glory is named after these flowers, I think it’s a very fitting name- she is rather like a flower who never got the chance to bloom until she saw the sun.

Kinkajou- photo by GraceStanley

Kinkajous, also known as honey bears, are an enigmatic relative of raccoons and coatimundis which inhabit the tropical forests of Central and South America. They are carnivorans, a member of the group that contains cats, dogs, bears, and many other carnivorous mammals. Despite this, they primarily eat fruit! Another quite fitting name for a RainWing character. Kinkajous also eat leaves, flowers, and nectar, their long tongues allowing them to reach deep inside flowers. They live in the treetops, and are excellent climbers- they’re one of the only carnivorans to have prehensile gripping tails, like a spider monkey!

Left- golden lion tamarin photo by Bob Jansen. Right- bearded emperor tamarin photo by Brocken Inaglory.

Tamarins are a type of tiny, squirrel-like (and rather cute!) South and Central American monkey. In many ways they’re pretty similar to the stereotypical monkey, dwelling in trees, and eating fruit, flowers, and small animals like insects. But like other small New World monkeys, they add something interesting to their diet- tree sap, which is obtained by cutting holes in trees with their incisor teeth or claws. Unlike most primates, tamarins more often than not give birth to non-identical twins. There are dozens of species, but my favourite is the emperor tamarin, which has a giant mustache! Who said humans are the only primates to have facial hair?

Left: mangrove forest dominated by Rhizophora trees- photo by James St. John. Right: the surreal mangroves of Daintree National Park in Far North Australia, photo by yours truly- just one example of the less stereotypical mangrove plants that exist around the world.

Let’s now get into some of the more minor characters, starting with Mangrove. Mangroves aren’t actually a single group of plants, but multiple lineages which have convergently evolved similar features to deal with an oceanic habitat. One such common adaptation are “aerial roots”- roots which stick up above the ground, better anchoring the plant and making sure the roots don’t drown in the waterlogged seafloor. Mangroves also need to make sure they don’t take in too much salt, which they do by preventing salt from being absorbed into their roots or expelling excess salt from pores in their leaves.

Propagules of the red mangrove- photo by Coral Morphologic

The most famous mangroves are those of the genus Rhizophora. These have another remarkable adaptation- propagules, which you’d probably heard of if you’ve played Minecraft sometime in the last few years. These mangroves have seeds that germinate and grow roots & leaves while still attached to their parent tree. These sprout-like propagules then drop off and float across the ocean until they find a beach to grow on, allowing Rhizophora to spread between islands and even continents. Mangrove ecosystems are crucial, both as nurseries for young fish to grow up in where they can hide from large predators, and as protective “buffer zones” to mitigate damage done to land from powerful waves and ocean weather.

Epiphytic Phalaenopsis orchids in the wild- photo by Rebeca Mello

Now onto Orchid, Mangrove’s beloved. The most well-known orchids are several species in the Phalaenopsis genus, native to tropical forests in Southeast Asia. These are common houseplants, and a variety of colours and patterns have been bred. In the wild, they are typically epiphytes, meaning they grow on top of other plants instead of sprouting from the soil. Rainforest canopies are usually dense and don’t allow much sunlight to reach the forest floor, so growing on tree trunks and branches enables epiphytic orchids to take up more sun without wasting energy on growing as tall as a tree themselves!

Left to right, top to bottom: flying duck orchid by Ockert Le Roux, Adriatic lizard orchid by Amadej Trnkoczy, white egret flower by Motohiro Sunouchi, and bucket orchid by Powell Gardens

But in truth orchids are an incredibly diverse group, containing thousands of species! Unfortunately, I can only fit a few examples of weird and wonderful orchids in this post.

The bee orchid uses a bee-like petal and the scent of female bees to lure in male bees, which attempt to mate with the petal and pollinate the flower in the process.

Bucket orchids (bottom right) have a bizarre symbiotic relationship with orchid bees. In order to attract a mate, male orchid bees must collect a scent produced by bucket orchids. But while gathering this scent, they may become trapped in the orchid’s liquid-filled “bucket”. They must climb through a different part of the flower to escape, wherein they’ll become covered with the flower’s pollen. A very convoluted take on the age-old bee-pollinate-flower…

Coralroot orchids are one of the few kinds of plants that don’t get most of their energy from photosynthesis! Instead, they take nutrients from the fungal network that branches through the forest floor. Many coralroot species are a reddish colour, because they lack the green pigment chlorophyll that plants use to photosynthesise.

Unbeknownst to me before today, some orchids are actually used in food! The most famous culinary orchid is vanilla, a tropical vine that grows long, bean-like fruit.

Left- Wax apple photo by B Navez. Right- Jambu fruit dove photo by Charlie Ryan.

Let’s now talk about Jambu, Glory’s brother, whose name might be a reference to several different things. There appears to be a fascinating linguistic rabbit hole here, but I don’t know enough about linguistics, Sanskrit, or Southeast Asia to comment, so I’ll stay in my lane and talk about the plant and animal that probably inspired Jambu’s name.

The word jambu seems to be used for several different types of plants, most notably fruits of the genus Syzygium which are referred to in English as rose apples or wax apples. They’re native to tropical Asia and far north Australia, but have since been introduced throughout the tropics. As well as food, they’re used as ornamental plants and in traditional medicine. I think Jambu’s name was most likely inspired by these fruits. They look temptingly delicious, by the way- does anyone have a favourite way to prepare them?

There’s also the jambu fruit dove, a resident of Southeast Asian mangrove swamps, rainforests, parks, and gardens. Like other fruit doves, they primarily eat fruit! Males and females are green and white to blend in with the canopy, but males have a bright pink spot on their head, reminiscent of rose apples.

Several winding lianas- photo by Rhett A. Butler

Finally, there’s Liana. Her name isn’t taken from any group of plant or animal, but a growth pattern which has evolved repeatedly in rainforest plants. Lianas begin their lives on the forest floor, and extend a woody vine towards a nearby tree or shrub. By winding themselves around trees and branches, they can grow all the way up to the canopy and access precious sunlight without having to support their own weight. While they don’t steal nutrients from their host trees like other parasitic plants, they do burden the host plant and even block out sunlight. For such a diverse type of plant, there’s an unfortunate lack of research and documentation of lianas.

Whew! Long post. Please let me know which tribe you want to see me do next! Minus NightWings, because they unfortunately don’t name their kids after plants and animals.

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The biological inspirations of Avatar: flying lemurs

First… what are lemurs, anyway? Imagine the primate group as a branching tree of lineages. While monkeys form the upper canopy, the lemur lineage branches off closer to the base or root. In evolutionary terms, they split off from other primates earlier than monkeys did, and are anatomically more similar to their ancestors. We thus call them basal primates, in reference to the base of this evolutionary tree.

The reason that lemurs split off from their relatives is that they became isolated on the island of Madagascar. This is believed to have happened between 50 and 66 million years ago, when a small group of African primates were caught in a storm and drifted out to sea on a raft of vegetation. Eventually they washed up on the shores of Madagascar, and gave rise to a diverse and remarkable primate group.

The winged lemurs in The Legend of Korra are known as ring-tailed winged lemurs, and are based on (no surprises here) ring-tailed lemurs. I won’t go in depth about them here, because everybody already knows what they are (and because, as much as I hate to admit this, I don’t think they’re that interesting). Personally, I think Momo’s inspirations have a bit more potential for discussion.

Coquerel’s sifaka- photo by Elizabeth Barret

Momo is likely based on a unique group of lemurs known as sifakas. And I have a hunch I know exactly which sifaka he’s based on. Not what species, but which individual sifaka.

There are many sifaka species, but Momo’s colouration most closely matches the Coquerel’s sifaka (shown above). Only a few years before Avatar’s first season aired, a Coquerel’s sifaka named Jovian became somewhat famous in America as the star of the hit show Zoboomafoo. I’ve seen a few people jokingly suggest that a Coqueral’s sifaka should play Momo in the live action, but to my knowledge nobody online has pointed out the possible inspiration here, which actually shocked me given how seemingly obvious the connection is in hindsight.

Since I originally queued this post I decided to better illustrate my point by making this montage of comparisons between the Coquerel’s sifaka and Momo’s canon design & concept art. The bottom photograph is by the Duke Lemur Center. The artbook additionally confirms that Avatar was in production no earlier than 2002; Zoboomafoo aired from 1999-2001.

Unknown bat species- photo by Ann Froschauer

The biggest difference between the Coquerel’s sifaka and the flying lemur- besides the wings, of course- are the massive pointed ears. These could be inspired by cats, as the artbook confirms that Momo is partially based on Bryan Konietzko’s childhood cat. But I think they’re more likely to have been inspired by bats. The artbook shows some concept art of Momo featuring bat-like ear ridges; I believe these were later stylised into the stripe pattern on the inside of Momo’s ears. Flying lemurs are thus essentially hybrids between lemurs and bats.

Sifakas might not be able to fly, but boy can they leap! Far from the jungle that primates often live in, many parts of Madagascar are sparser woodland environments where leaping from tree to tree is an extremely advantageous ability. Some sifakas are able to clear 10 metres (30 feet) in a single leap. They’re so specialised for this climbing that they’re rather awkward on the ground. The above graphic by Terpsichores doesn’t fully do their strange hopping motion justice- I recommend a video like this for the full sifaka experience.

Sifakas climbing in a Karst forest- photo by Stephen Alvarez

My favourite fun fact about sifakas is the lifestyle of those that live in the Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park, a landscape straight out of a fantasy world like Avatar. Like some monkeys in East Asia, the Tsingy de Bemaraha sifakas adapt their climbing and leaping abilities to an entirely different environment: karst forest. These formations are caused when soft rock like limestone is eroded by water, creating incredible shapes like these jagged spikes.

Funnily enough, I even saw a comment on a pic of this region comparing it to the place where Aang fights Ozai in the finale. (…Is it a karst forest? A really weird mesa? I’ll have to ask the resident geologist if she knows what it’s supposed to be.)

There are two other animals that might have provided inspiration for flying lemurs, though admittedly the connections here could just be a coincidence.

Climbing colugo photo by Francis Yap, gliding colugo photo by Tanto Yensen

First up is.. well, the flying lemur. Also known as colugos, these are animals so specialised for gliding that it’s hard to believe they can’t actually fly. Contrary to the name, they’re not lemurs- they don’t even live in Madagascar. Instead, they’re the closest living relatives of primates, and they inhabit the forests of Southeast Asia. Colugos have some fantastic teeth! Their incisors are comb-like, and used to groom their fur. Also, females create a pouch-like structure for their young by folding their rear patagium, which is very cute. It’s possible that these real-life flying lemurs provided the initial inspiration for Momo… but they share virtually no anatomical similarities with him, so personally I doubt it.

Japanese dwarf flying squirrel- photo by Joel Satore

The Avatar fandom wiki suggests several possible origins for Momo’s name. One is a shortened form of the momonga (モモンガ), the Japanese dwarf flying squirrel, which looks like it was engineered in a lab to be adorable. I wasn’t aware that some squirrels could glide (I’ve seen squirrels twice in my life), but apparently they can. The momonga lives in Japanese boreal forests and uses lichen to make its tree holes more comfortable (d’awww!). Also, I’m somewhat suspicious that every other photo of this animal online is of a different species of flying squirrel, which is driving me slightly insane.

While I was working on this post I found this dope artwork of some fanmade species of flying lemur, and I desperately need more fanworks like this. So… here are some cool lemurs that I think would make good inspiration for more species of flying lemur. I’d draw them myself if I had the motivation…

The aye-aye- photo by John Eppler

Let’s get through the most famous one first. This is the aye-aye, and while they eat a variety of foods, they are incredibly specialised for hunting one prey type in particular: wood-boring insects. They find these animals by rapidly tapping on tree branches and listening out for hollow spaces within the wood. Then, they use a set of continuously growing rodent-like incisors to chew through to the insect’s tunnels. Their most remarkable adaptation is their thin, flexible middle finger, which has a ball-and-socket joint in it- the same kind of joint that gives humans and other apes such flexible shoulders. This finger is what they use to, finally, fish the grubs out of their holes and eat them.

The fat-tailed dwarf lemur- photo from the Duke Lemur Center

This is the fat-tailed dwarf lemur, named for the tails that they use to store fat reserves for hibernation. Yes, hibernation. They are the only tropical mammal, and the only primate, known to hibernate through the winter! It might not snow in Madagascar, but drought can occur during the dry season, especially in the seasonal forests this lemur is native to. Given that flying lemurs in Avatar inhabit high, snowy peaks, I think the ability to hibernate and store fat in their tail would be a very useful adaptation. The only downside being, the air nomads' pets would spend all winter asleep…

The bamboo lemur- photo by Rachell Kramer

Bamboo is often associated with Asian cultures and ecosystems, which I think is odd given that it’s found on five of the seven continents. Pandas are far from the only animals to have evolved to consume bamboo; among them are the Ethiopian bale monkey, the Asian bamboo rats, and, as shown above, the Malagasy bamboo lemurs. (Also, it’s worth noting that red pandas and giant pandas evolved their bamboo-eating habits independently- red pandas are more closely related to ferrets than to bears). There’s a good reason animals that eat bamboo tend to evolve specifically for the task- not only is bamboo a kind of grass, which any cattle will tell you is rather difficult to digest, but some bamboo species also contain high amounts of cyanide that animals like the golden bamboo lemur neutralise so they don’t get poisoned. Personally, I think a flying bamboo lemur would be perfect for the Avatar world!

Megaladapis by Roman Uchytel, Palaeopropithecus by Gabriel Ugueto, and Archaeoindris by Van Hoang Dao

Finally, there are several species of extinct lemur which are much larger than their modern counterparts. They were still around as little as a thousand years ago, and were tragically driven extinct by habitat destruction. I think these guys would be great inspiration for flightless flying lemurs- perhaps a group that found themselves on an isolated mountain or plateau that predators aren’t able to reach, and were able to grow large and flightless due to the absence of threats. This is what happened to birds like dodos and takahēs in our real world, albeit with islands instead of mountains.

That’s all for now! Sorry for the extra long post. As always, feel free to send me suggestions for creatures or media I could talk about in the future!

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The biological inspirations of Avatar: the cat deer

The very first avatar’s animal companion was always going to be a challenging design to get right. And as per usual with my judgements, perhaps I’m just a sucker for ungulates- but Mula the cat deer has stolen my heart and ran off with it!

Contrary to the name, Mula isn’t inspired by any kind of deer. Perhaps they wrote the script first and designed the cat deer later? The early concept art of Mula is quite a bit more deer-like. Or maybe “cat-antelope” was a bit too unwieldy a name. Regardless, Mula’s primary inspiration is actually the pronghorn, a very unique and interesting ungulate species.

Pronghorn- photo by BGSmith

The pronghorn is unlike any other hoofed mammal on the planet. They inhabit the plains and deserts of North America, living alongside prairie dogs and bison. They’re one of the fastest land animals on the planet, and can maintain speeds of more than 50 miles per hour (80 kilometres per hour) for much longer than other similarly speedy mammals. This is despite the fact that North American predators like wolves and cougars can’t sprint after it. Their branched horns resemble the antlers of deer, and are shed yearly. It’s sometimes said that the difference between antlers and horns is that antlers are shed and horns aren’t, but pronghorns are an exception to this rule!

Pronghorns are often referred to as antelope. I wouldn’t necessarily call this wrong, but deer, sheep, and bison are all more closely related to any species of “true” antelope than the pronghorn is. The pronghorn is on a different branch of the ungulate family tree altogether, most closely related to giraffes and okapi. Yes, the closest living relatives of a North American species are found in Africa. No, I don’t know how this happened.

Extinct relatives of the modern pronghorn. From left to right, top to bottom: Ramoceros by Nix Illustration, Tetrameryx by Nic Bushell, Merriamoceros and Coronatus by WillemSvdMerwe

The unusual nature of the pronghorn starts to make more sense if we wind the clock back to prehistoric times. They’re not actually a single, highly unique species, but the last remaining member of a whole family of ungulates known as antilocaprids. Many extinct relatives of the pronghorn shared its bizarre traits, and some even had their own things going on- like Ramoceras with its asymmetrical horns, Merriamoceros with its intertwined narwhal-like horns, and Capromeryx, a genus of dwarf pronghorns, some of which were only 60 centimetres (23 inches) at the shoulder. A few species were still around when humans first reached North America during the last ice age.

Miracinonyx chasing the extinct pronghorn relative Stockoceras- art by Mauricio Antón

The pronghorn’s unusual speed may be a result of the open environment it lives in. However, it has also been hypothesised that it was caused by a different selective pressure- by a predator which is now extinct. Meet the American cheetah Miracinonyx! Between mastodons, pronghorns, American cave lions, and now a cheetah, the American Great Plains of the last ice age had a surprising resemblance to the African savanna. Just like the pronghorn, the American cheetah also seems to have evolved its speed independently from African cheetahs.

Caracal- photo by Marie Holding

Based on Mula’s facial markings and ear tufts, his secondary inspiration is probably the caracal. These mid-sized predatory felines inhabit savanna, scrub and woodlands in much of Africa and parts of Western Asia. They’re typically active at night, and hunt a range of prey, including rodents, hares, monkeys, and small antelope. They also use their strong hind legs to hunt birds by springing into the air! They’re widely reported to be capable of jumping up to 3 metres (9.8 feet) high, but as usual with this kind of flashy statistic, I wasn’t able to find a primary source. I’d be surprised if the peer-reviewed articles I tracked down repeated that claim uncritically, but still… always take such numbers with a grain of salt.

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The biological inspirations of Pokémon: crabrawler & crabominable

Pokémon’s newer designs are sometimes criticised by older fans, but one thing I really appreciate about them is that it’s clear copious research of real animals went into many of the new designs. Today, let’s explore two ‘mons that you probably never realised were based on real animals! I know as a young teen, I definitely didn’t, so researching this post was very rewarding!

Coconut crab- photo from US fish & wildlife HQ on Flickr

Crabrawler is almost definitely based on coconut crabs. Also known as robber crabs, these are giant relatives of the hermit crab which inhabit tropical beaches. They’re found across the Indo-Pacific- except Hawaiʻi, which is slightly ironic given that crabrawler is native to Alola. They’re also the largest land-living arthropods (the group that includes insects, arachnids, and crustaceans), and while they do come in a variety of sizes, they have been recorded weighing up to 4 kilograms (9 pounds)- about the size of a house cat!

They typically eat fruits, and will climb trees to get to them. This is presumably why crabrawler is usually found in the berry pile underneath a berry tree. These crabs have been recorded pinching with a force of up to 1,765 newtons, and use their incredible strength to open coconuts. But they are also omnivores, opportunistically eating carrion, and hunting other crabs, birds, and even rats!

Unlike most crabs, coconut crabs are very well specialised for life on land. They have an excellent sense of smell, as well as special organs called branchiostegal lungs, which are kind of like an evolutionary middle stage between gills and lungs. Unfortunately, evolving to live on land means that adult coconut crabs will drown if they stay underwater for too long. They must thus rely on their tiny aquatic larvae to expand their range from island to island. This made me wonder… there are no saltwater amphibians these days, but might our ancestors have passed through a stage where we dispersed from island to island as tadpoles? Something to ponder…

Yeti crab- photo by Alexis Fifis

Yes, crabominable isn’t just a bizarre idea dreamt up by a Gamefreak employee. It’s likely based on the yeti crab! Unlike crabrawler, which has a lot in common with its inspiration, crabominable is really only a yeti crab in concept only.

Yeti crabs don't live in snowy mountains, but in the very opposite environment- at the bottom of the sea, thousands of metres below the waves. Their preferred habitats are hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, which are like oases in the dark, barren deserts of the deep. Here, warmth and chemicals spew out of vents in the seafloor, bubbling up from the molten interior of the Earth. This chemical soup feeds chemosynthetic bacteria, which in turn supports an entire ecosystem of worms, crabs, and other critters.

To my understanding, the diet of yeti crabs is still a topic under investigation. But at least one species is known to “farm” chemosynthetic bacteria! The crabs’ setae (that’s the technical term for the hair on their arms) houses colonies of this bacteria, where it’s protected from other predators. The crabs are known to wave their arms around, possibly to ensure nutrients from the hydrothermal vents reach the bacteria!

Interestingly, yeti crabs are like coelacanths in that their extinct relatives were discovered before they were. In this case, Pristinaspina was discovered in 2000 and the yeti crab was described in 2005. So, maybe crabominable could be made capable of learning ancient power? I think that would be cool.

You’ve probably heard of carcinisation. It’s the idea that crustaceans keep convergently evolving into crab-like animals, which has turned into the joke that animals keep evolving into crabs. So, I thought it was amusing that neither of the “crabs” we’ve discussed today are actually true crabs- they’re both products of carcinisation. Given the existence of so-called convergent pokémon, as well as ‘mons like parasect which heavily resemble crabs, I have to wonder if carcinisation also exists in the Pokémon universe…

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The (speculative) biology of Stardew Valley: the ancient fruit

Here’s the question I’d like to try and answer in this post: how ancient are these fruit, exactly?

Ancient fruit- graphic from this article by TheGamer

Before I start wildly speculating, can we narrow down the time period by looking at the different places you can find ancient seeds? For starters, the artifact spots aren’t any help. From them you can get rusty cogs and spurs that can’t be any more than 2500 years old and trilobite fossils that can’t be any less than 250 million years old. (I don’t know if rust-covered artefacts can even last for 2500 years, but my thing is biology, not archaeology). That’s not exactly a useful time window.

Ancient seeds can also be found from plant and monster drops in dungeons. This is… interesting, given they have the description of “by all appearances, it’s long since dead”. So I don’t know why you would find it on or in a living plant or animal.

They can also be found in artifact troves, which contain various archaeological relics but no dinosaur eggs or fossils. This implies that ancient seeds are “ancient” in that they were farmed by ancient civilisations, not that they are prehistoric.

Yet, the fact that ancient seeds are obtainable from fern-like plants in so-called “prehistoric floors” which also feature Stegosaurus-like dinosaurs prompts the question… could these seeds be truly prehistoric? How ancient could this plant be?

The fossil plant Montsechia. At 130 million years old, it is one of the earliest known fruiting plants. Photographer unknown; sourced from this study.

Ancient fruit is, well, a fruiting plant. It thus must belong to a group of plants known as angiosperms or flowering plants, which includes all plants with fruit or flowers, such as oak, laurel, eucalypt, grass, and frankly most of the plants we see on Earth today. All crops and most forage plants in Stardew Valley are angiosperms. But for a group which is so diverse and relevant to modern ecosystems, angiosperms have a surprisingly recent origin.

Picture it: the world as it was 130 million years ago. The Jurassic period had ended about 10 million years ago, giving way to the early Cretaceous, an age of warm forests and abundant seas. Jurassic dinosaurs like Diplodocus and Stegosaurus had disappeared, and Late Cretaceous dinosaurs like Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus had yet to evolve. There were no forests of pink blossom trees, no bees or butterflies pollinating wildflower meadows. Instead, conifers and ginkgo trees formed the canopy, and ferns and cycads dotted the forest floor. In the shadow of all of these ancient plants were a few newcomers, in the form of pond weeds and perhaps small shrubs- the first known angiosperms.

Angiosperms diversified greatly during the middle to late Cretaceous, spurring the evolution of pollinators like bees. Many competing plant groups were heavily affected by the Chicxulub asteroid that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, and angiosperms continued their global takeover. During the age of mammals, the Earth began to cool and dry out, creating the perfect conditions for grasses to diversify and form new ecosystems like grasslands and savannas. Today, some 80-90% of all plants are angiosperms.

In my opinion, the earliest possible emergence for ancient fruit is during the mid-late Cretaceous, 100-66 million years ago. This is to give them time to develop the modern characteristics that the earliest angiosperms appear to have lacked. It is rare for an organism to survive 100 million years without turning into something new, but ginkgo trees have existed virtually unchanged since the Jurassic, so there is precedent.

So, maybe these are plants from a bygone prehistoric era which survived just like Stardew Valley’s dinosaurs in caverns deep underground. But… I don’t know. Two things draw me away from this conclusion. One is that the ancient seeds found in the prehistoric floors can be obtained from multiple different plants, one of which is clearly a fern and doesn’t look much like the germinated version of ancient fruit. When it comes to plants, ferns are just about the furthest away you can get from fruit-bearing plants and still have a stem or leaves. Combined with the fact that all ancient seeds look “long since dead” even if you get them from a living plant, it seems to me more like these ancient seeds just happened to end up sitting on an underground plant than they are the seeds of the plant itself.

The other thing that draws me toward a more recent origin for ancient seeds also comes with a couple caveats (which does tend to happen when you apply real-life logic to a videogame). This is that there’s no way the ancient seeds you find from artifact spots have been sitting there for 66 million years. If they had, they would be fossils, with no DNA remaining- you would need some kind of Jurassic Park-esque sci-fi technology to revive them, which very well might be possible in the Stardew Valley universe, but at the very least I doubt the farmer is carrying it around on their person.

Now, if the ancient seeds you get from the dungeon levels are in fact the seeds of the plant you get them from, you could say that maybe the ancient seeds you find in artifact spots have somehow been transported out of the dungeon levels and just aren’t able to germinate in surface soil without the crafting recipe. Dinosaur eggs are also found in artifact spots, so they’ve clearly somehow been transported out of the prehistoric floors. This is a valid alternate interpretation.

Personally, I prefer the idea that ancient seeds are relatively recent, not prehistoric, in origin. This is because 1) aforementioned spiel about the fact underground ancient seeds are found on multiple different plants one of which is a fern, 2) aforementioned fact that they are found in artifact troves which don’t contain anything older than human civilisation, and 3) dinosaur eggs are only found in more specific locations in and around caves or in recently-placed treasure chests while ancient seeds are found in a bunch of places, including treasure chests dating back to ancient times. To me, it just seems like a simpler explanation.

Okay, but if you can’t revive seeds from 66 million years ago, then would it even be possible to revive seeds grown by an ancient civilisation? Well, you don’t need sci-fi technology for this one. It’s actually been done!

Left: a campion flower grown from 31,000 year old plant tissue. Photographer unknown; sourced from this study.

Right: Methuselah, a date palm grown from 2000 year old seeds. It’s now reported to be over 3.5 metres (11 feet) tall. Photo by David A. Sonnenfeld.

The most ancient plant ever revived is Silene stenophylla, a tundra campion which has lived in Siberia for at least 31,000 years. However, these specimens weren’t grown from seeds- instead, they were nurtured in vitro from tiny fragments of fruit. Interestingly, the revived campion had slightly different anatomy and growth patterns to their modern relatives.

More relevant to our discussion are the seven date palms which have been grown from 2000-year-old seeds. (Yes, there is a 29,000 year gap between the most ancient plant ever revived and the second most ancient plant ever revived). A rather interesting genetic analysis found that significant mutations hadn’t occurred within the palms’ genomes. Despite laying dormant as seeds for about 28 human lifetimes, the plants hadn’t really aged. This may be due to the region’s tame environmental conditions, the unique genetic repair mechanisms that seeds possess, and/or potential adaptations for seeds remaining dormant in the dry local climate. One or more of these factors could very well also apply to Stardew Valley’s ancient fruit. Other seeds from past civilisations have successfully been revived, including a 1200-year-old seed of a sacred lotus from China.

So, in my opinion, the most likely origin for ancient fruits is that they were grown by an ancient civilisation that once inhabited Stardew Valley. Maybe they date all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs, and perhaps this ancient society first discovered them growing in the region’s prehistoric caves. I think it’s likely that these plants have some kind of adaptation to stay dormant for long periods, increasing the probability that their seeds will stay fertile for more than a thousand years.

…Is it a fool’s errand to apply real-life logic to a game where you can use dark magic to turn your children into doves? Probably. Even so, I hope you’ve learned something interesting from this post!