#biotober2023

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Day 3: Vampiric

Personal log of Sc.D. A. Harlow.

My esteemed colleague has failed to properly secure and lock up her specimens. This led to some rather intriguing observations. Two vampiric semiexoskeletal specimens, more armored slug than insectoid, escaped containment. One of the two managed to sting me with its proboscis before I noticed its presence. Within about twelve seconds it was writhing, then died. Naturally I secured it and its still living kin and then accessed my colleagues files. As it turned out, the species was labelled as possessing a highly potent and fast acting neurotoxin, inducing paralysis which can lead to death in smaller life forms by disabling the musculature that circulates blood. I however, felt perfectly fine. After a few tests with the living specimen and cloned mice from our database, I have come to the conclusion that the specimens venom is utterly ineffective against terrestrial, or at least mammalian species. Furthermore, mammalian blood appears highly toxic to the specimen. I 'borrowed' a few more of the slugs and fed them phases of blood separated via centrifuge. They appear susceptible to red blood cells specifically. Further testing with ion labelled hemoglobin led to a broad array of labelled compounds in the specimen's guts, while the hemoglobin itself has vanished without trace. I suspect that it has been metabolized into some compound that displays extreme toxicity to the specimen. Further tests pending, once I find a good excuse for why my colleagues terraria are empty.

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Day 7/8/9: Cancerous/Abyssal/Lure

Personal log of Sc.D. A. Harlow. Earlier today one of our drones has gathered first recordings of aquatic megafauna. The images recorded are impressive and frightening in equal amounts, though it seemed mostly passive despite its carnivorousness. Rib-like structures connect two hardened backbones- with no superficially obvious up and down- and oscillate both in movement and glowing spots on the inside of its throat. This appears to first attract other creatures, then trap them with an inwards pull. Two of our drones are still stuck inside and communicating, allowing us to track its movements, for now at least. Surface level tissue samples taken from this particular leviathan suggest it to be inflicted with some sort of genetic malfunction. Cells that we speculate to be the cause of the bioluminescence are growing outside its throat as well, and are rapidly multiplying, resulting in a gigantic, glowing tumor near its mouth. Our biologist is giddy with excitement and swears that there will be practical applications to this, once the exact process by which the luminescence is produced is determined- a project I will be working on alongside her.

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Days 16/17/18: Extinct/Mutation/Bioluminescence

Personal log of Sc.D. A. Harlow. My colleagues and I unearthed fossils containing traces of either extinct (or very well hidden, though let's be honest, extinct is far more likely) life forms. We were able to isolate and replicate genetic codes of multiple species of flora and fauna and- of course- immediately sent them to cloning. A terrarium was sterilized and prepared for seeding, and promptly filled with the cloned life forms. We studied them for hours before we decided to take a break and turned off the light as we left. It had grown dark outside by then, and we were met with the most beautiful view. Either the cluster we found was a particular outlier, or bioluminescence was far more common on this planet once than it is now; every single cloned species displayed it in one way or another. We are currently trying to date the fossils as well as find more from other locations. Naturally the terrarium was purged to prevent release of species into the ecosystem, but we can always clone new specimens, now that they are taken up into the data bank. It does throw up a lot of questions though. Why are there so few luminescent species by now? Maybe this has to do with the specialized array of optical receptors my colleague mentioned a while ago? How do the spectra the creatures here perceive align with the light they shed? Are they still bioluminescent, merely in and area of the optical spectrum we cannot perceive and thus overlooked? If yes, what caused the shift? Maybe tomorrow will bring answers, for now I hope tonight will bring sleep instead of further questions.

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Day 4: Claw

Personal log of Sc.D. A. Harlow. The geologist on our team has started openly wondering what the local fauna might taste like. I would like to take a moment to point out that - we have received explicit instructions not to eat anything that we did not bring to this planet ourselves* - we were made to read lengthy documents on the matter - we had to sign papers that we did, indeed, read the aforementioned documents AND understood them - we have no idea how the local biochemistry interacts with our own! Remember those vampiric slugs from a few weeks ago? They died from ingesting less than one milliliter of our blood. - it is common sense to not eat things you do not know to be safe. This applies as much here as it did on earth. However, none of this is surprising, considering this is coming from a geologist who believes licking rocks is a valid and scientific method of identification of the same. Someone please save me from the idiots that surround me.

*unless starvation would be the alternative or the substance has been explicitly proven safe to eat after several long term studies and classified as edible via official channels.

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Day 6: Invasive

Of course it would be rats. If someone had asked me before launch "Dr. Harlow, what species do you expect to be the first to be introduced to your assigned exoplanet's ecosystem and threaten to utterly devastate the same, in spite of all company directives warning you to not let this happen ever?" I would have said rats. We are still trying to figure out who exactly is to blame here and how it happened, but *somehow* a large group of cloned rats was released into the wild. My money is on someone leaving the genetic printer on over night. The worst part is that, since the printer draws randomly on a large database of sequences each time it spits out a rat to improve reliability of tests, the rat population created is actually viable and can reproduce without issue. And those little critters are thriving! They don't mind the craggy terrain and have no issues squeezing into narrow tunnels and feasting on the local faunas eggs. The good news is that, since their biology is so different from that of the fauna around them, it should not be too difficult for me to find (or in the worst case develop) a pesticide that kills rats and only rats. Not exactly what I wanted to spend my precious time on this planet on, but here we are nonetheless. I will have to file it under toxicological studies and hope my employers agree that there is value to that research.

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Day 2: Metamorphosis

Personal log of Sc.D. A. Harlow etc. etc.

When the scans reported high amounts of copper in the biosphere I certainly did not expect... this. We have spent multiple months setting up base and running general tests. Atmosphere breathability, water purity and the like. The atmosphere here is rich on oxygen, though thankfully to a breathable degree, but also rich on various sulfur compounds, which is why I prefer to wear a respirator outdoors anyway. Throughout that time I have found multiple non-vegetative lifeforms and taken blood samples from all that I dared to approach. Oxygen appears to be as essential to them as us, and more curiously, they appear to all use varying hemocyanins for oxygen transport. None of the hemocyanins match those found naturally on earth, but the core of it remains the same. Odd, considering that hemocyanins perform not as well as hemoglobins, generally speaking, but I assume that in this case the selectivity was facilitated by the abundance of copper in the planet's crust.

Furthermore, I have only found exoskeletal and molluscoid non-vegetative life forms so far, nothing resembling a mammal or bird. So far I split into three categories, exoskeletata (those who are fully enveloped by an exoskeleton, not unlike insects and arachnids on earth), semiexoskeletata (those who have an exoskeleton, but only covering parts of the bodies, usually along the ridge of the back, head, and limbs, and are otherwise covered in skin), and askeletata (those without). These terms are crude, but then again I am not the biologist on the team, I am sure she will think of better terms in time. And be utterly insufferable about it.

Ah, an additional thought: Life here is... bigger. Probably related to the lower gravity.

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Days 25/26/27: Infected/Symmetry/Camouflage

Personal log. It is unsurprising how teeming this planet is with diseases and microscopic life forms. Ours is as well, after all. And luckily so far, none of them seemed to have affected us at all, likely due to our incompatible biologies. Well, we found the outlier that proves the rule. Some sort of... no, I cannot categorize it, that is- that would have been our biologist's job. She brought the specimen in, a bug covered in what appeared to be some sort of moss-like growth. Natural camouflage, we decided at first. But then another teammate noted they had seen plenty of those, but never with that growth on them. Microscopic analysis showed it to be some sort of starfish-shaped parasite. According to the data she recorded it drifts through the air, is inhaled by a host, then takes root within its body. There it begins to consume the host while multiplying. Instead of spreading throughout the body though, they cling together and begin to form strands that eventually grow out of the body like hair, the tips of which are supplied with nutrients by those who eat down at the root. Once grown enough, the ones at the tip split of the chain and reenter the atmosphere. It is allegedly a slow process, the specimen had been living almost fine for week. Well, that didn't seem to apply to her. We sealed the room and sterilized it. Despite all purification protocols, we are still unsure how much of them we others inhaled. We hope our contact time was short enough. I hate this place.

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Days 22/23/24: Aerial/Timid/Resilience

Personal log of you know the drill. We finally began investigating the volcanic regions of the planet, a task we so far have successfully avoided. (Un)fortunately (depending on who you ask) we cannot avoid this task much longer since they do cover a rather large percentage of the non-aquatic surface of the planet. The stone here is especially rich in sulfur and sulfur-copper compounds, the air is filled with toxic fumes (large portions of dihydrogen sulfide, which is unpleasant) and we cannot build an outpost due to the constant tectonic shifts. There are lifeforms that appear to thrive here though, most notably some winged bug. We tried to capture one, but they avoid all attempts of approach and we cannot bring projectile weapons because of the explosive gasses. Still better than those beetle-like creatures that spray acid everywhere as soon as they perceive you coming closer. Or those things that purposefully cause cavern collapses and landslides to bury you underneath. Or those other things that sneak into your camp at night and drill a hole into your geologist's full body suit's glove, then dig into the hand underneath and infect it with some fast acting toxin forcing us to amputate. It has been... a couple of days. I cant wait to go home.