Thaumaptilon

She/Her • Wonderful Transbian Arboreomorph • I love my inner child 🦋👒

[thaumaptilon]

If you stumbled upon my account and thought it was kinda neat maybe you'd find this community kinda neat too

https://www.tumblr.com/communities/ancient-invertebrates?source=share

[thaumaptilon]

[thaumaptilon]

I find it funny how you can consistently make far more alien creature designs than what you see in 90% of exterrestrial spec evo projects just by taking an IRL earth invertebrate and simply modifying its anatomy to make it fill the ecological niche of a standard vertebrate

Perhaps these images are not the best demonstration; they're supposed to be descendants of polychaetes but I've yet to fine-tune many of the more subtle details of their morphology (especially for the body)

(This isn't to say that I find most alien spec evo creatures to be "bad" by any means, they can and usually are still very wonderful and creative and innovative, it's just that if someone's goal is to make creatures that are as unearthly as possible while still working within the known rules of nature, then... I think a lot of people restrict themselves to vertebrates, especially tetrapods, when it comes to their creatures designs)

[dungeonofthedragon]

You might have heard about the recent puberty blocker ban in Aotearoa New Zealand. It's a cruel move against some of our most vulnerable rangatahi. Fortunately, The Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa is taking legal action to try and reverse the ban before too much harm can be done.

A few ttrpg designers from Aotearoa have put together this bundle to support PATHA. $19.99 NZD gets you supplements for D&D, Pathfinder, MOTW and Stewpot, as well as a collection of stand alone games. All for a really important cause!

Rpgs not your thing? Don't have twenty bucks spare? You can also donate directly to PATHA here.

Reblogs are greatly appreciated to help get more eyes on this! We're grateful for help in whatever form it takes. <3

[chiropterearcanique]

@crabussy

[thaumaptilon]

Art from yesterday. Nothing you'd see at the museum, but it was fun anyways

[thaumaptilon]

I think the cutest thing ever that would be my dream cosmetic would be a cute little bowtie where the tie is made to be the wings of a dragonfly

[thaumaptilon]

I lowkey lack the knowledge or expertise to understand 99% of what this paper was saying

All I know is. Bryozoan mandibles. Apparently bryozoan mandibles are a thing. Like excuse me what the fuck

I don't even know what this actually entails like if it's arthropod jaws type mandibles or some secret second Fucked Up thing.

God I need to read that textbook and maybe figure out what kind of diabolical schemes these evil devilish colonial invertebrates are really up to

[thaumaptilon]

[kiabugboy]

The Crinoid hat video is finally up on my Youtube channel! it'll help if you can like or comment on it so that the algorithm won't yeet it into the shadow realm

[thaumaptilon]

Omg my goat is on tumblr

[thaumaptilon]

Oh yeah. So uh. About those recursive animals.

Basically the rough idea was that, very distant in Earth's future, the zooids within a bryozoan colony will each become so remarkably specialized that they basically end up turning into cells/organs of one single animal. Zooids for stuff like muscles and circulation and communication would evolve. Each zooid wouldn't individually feed with a lophophore and instead the whole recursive animal would have a mouth, gut, and anus made up of specialized zooids. Stuff like that.

This drawing is months old and was merely concept exploration. I didn't actually know much about bryozoans at the time, let alone how their morphology and colony structure should dictate the design of such a recursive animal. I still don't really know a whole lot. But one day I hope that I do and I can actually make well informed designs for recursive animals.

This little guy in the drawing was specifically supposed to be a "basal" recursive animal, only a half centimeter long or so, which would crawl along the seafloor in search of any detritus to rake up with its rasping apparatus. Said apparatus, plus the numerous spines jutting out its body, being made of "defensive zooids" that are basically just hardened spikes. It would have a rather simple musculature that let it slug its way around. I hadn't thought much about sensory features, though I imagined it being a deep water organism that makes it homes around hydrothermal vents, so eyes weren't much a concern. The last thing is that, immediately behind the body spikes, are numerous "conventional" looking lophophores--but, rather than collecting food, they aid in respiration thanks to the increased surface area they provide. Rather foolishly, I used the horseshoe-shaped lophophores of phylactolaemata, even though this would definitely be a marine species, and moreover one with calcified cystid walls. As for whether this recursive animal would instead descend from gymnolaemata or stenolaemata, or perhaps even something entirely novel, I have no clue at this point. I don't have enough knowledge on bryozoans to make that sort of decision right now.

I hope I can explore the idea of recursive animals a little more at some point. Probably not right now unfortunately. But I've been practicing a lot of self-care recently, maybe eventually I can find the motivation to finish reading my bryozoan textbook and be more confident with this concept

[thaumaptilon]

Hello chat

I don't really know what I want this account to be or what I want to use this website for. All I know is that all my friends said that all the transbian kinkposters hate transmascs for some reason. What a shame...

Anyways, I like strange creatures. The stranger, the cooler. If it has a spine, it's not strange enough.

The ediacaran biota is probably the peak of strangeness and therefore is my favorite earth timeperiod. What can I say, the fronds and quilts are just kind of neat. I think the fronds are generally cooler than the quilts but I couldn't really tell you why. Kind of ironic that my favorite frond is one of the few that didn't live in the ediacaran.

I think like. Well ok I don't think I can just make a "top 10 awesome gals" list but like. Thaumaptilon and ventogyrus and frondophyllas and cephalonega and Literally Any Carpoid and leanchoilia and vetulicola and schinderhannes and Kimberella and aegirocassis and cristatella and selenaria are all pretty awesome and pretty gal.

There are lots of other cool creatures too but I gotta think and remember them and stuff

I like other things too but I'm too burnt out all the time from depression to meaningfully engage with them.

I wanna make a spec evo project but I simply lack the energy to actually get something done and I'd probably make things too complicated for myself as I tried to design things with as much intention and detail as possible. I don't think my recursive animals will be ready until I've finished reading my 500 page bryozoology textbook (over 6 months and only 7 pages in 💔)

I wanted to learn more about strange creatures in college but then I dropped out only like 4 months in. I guess that's what happens when you have no community or mental health support. But things are getting better. One day I'll take another shot.

I have a lot of trauma that has resulted in me developing an inner child. Her name's Renee.

My fashion sense is pretty underdeveloped. I don't really know what to wear 90% of the time and I struggle with seeing the "bigger picture". As in like, I buy clothes that look neat by themselves but don't consider how they'll go with all my other clothes. And even if I tried to it's hard to remember all the other clothes I have and it's hard for me to imagine how my clothes will go with a new piece of clothes without trying it IRL and in general I'm just not very familiar with what clothes go well together or what I can do with clothes in the first place.

All I know is that overalls are pretty awesome. I like them a lot. If overalls were the only kind of clothes in the world I'd be a happy camper. I think Renee likes overalls even more.