#interbreed

[despazito]

>breed population has low diversity with most individuals as genetically close as siblings

> breed health issue identified

> fund research to isolate responsible gene(s) for the disease

> remove affected dogs and carriers from gene pool

> remove aesthetically unfavorable dogs from gene pool

> only let small percentile of animals reproduce

>let favourite sires reproduce a lot

> inbreeding line goes up

> breed health issue identified

> fund research to isolate responsible gene(s) for the disease

> remove affected dogs and carriers from gene pool

> remove aesthetically unfavorable dogs from gene pool

> only let small percentile of animals reproduce

>let favourite sires reproduce a lot

> inbreeding line goe-

[revanisadumbass]

the kanera subplot of rebels season 4 makes a lot more sense when you realize you're watching two people in their late twenties with little-to-no sex ed staring down a pregnancy scare in the middle of a war.

[dairyfreenugget]

There are also a few species of human in my AU, though I am still developing them

Because I went in a direction of speculative evolution for this setting but still wanted to keep some weird traits for certain human species, I've decided that some of their lineages were altered by ancient gods through magic that's been (thankfully) forgotten to time.

Homo sapiens would just be most bugs gijinka equivalent and most common human species. Here called Homo sapiens vulgaris (common thinking man) since they're the most widespread of homo species.

Homo sapiens major (greater thinking man) is a subspecies of homo sapiens that's bigger and has greater muscle mass, making them overall stronger. They also have quite different societal norms, as majority of them are females and generally females are stronger than males, and mostly form matiarchal societies. They're equivalent to ants and termites. Maybe bees and wasps too but I haven't decided

Homo hyperboreus (man from the Arctic region) is a species of human living in the far north region. A direct descendant from the first saphont humans, as humans in this AU originated from the arctic regions. They're very similar to homo sapiens but have way more hair covering their bodies, which also tends to be light in colour. They're also all mostly dark skinned, to protect from the light bouncing off the snow. No bug equivalent, I just thought it'd be cool to have them here.

Homo gracilipes (slender-footed man) is split into two sub-species; H. Gracilipes Pictus (painted slender-footed man) and H. Gracilipes Hispidus (shaggy slender-footed man). They're one of the lineages that have been altered by old gods. They're digitigrade, posess antennae-like feelers on their heads, have sharp ears, and typically are more magically-inclinned. H. Gracilipes Pictus are diurnal and taller, while H. Gracilipes Hispidus are nocturnal, generally shorter, and with more hair on their bodies. Both species don't have strong sexual dimorphism, with the only thing setting the two sexes apart is the fact that male's feelers are usually longer or fluffier. Pictus are equivalent of butterflies and Hispidus are equivalent of moths.

Homo Sapiens Humilis (small thinking man) are a small species of human originating from a small island archipelago, which is what caused their size (island dwarfism). Another species lineage affected by the ancient gods, some of their members grow hard keratin sheets over their bodies. Bug equivalent are snails and slugs.

Homo Silvestris (man from the forest) are one of the modified species. They are a large, strictly carnivorous human with large, segmented mouths that extend down their throat, sharp teeth, pointy ears, and arms covered in hair, with long claws. Bug equivalent are most arachnids.

Homo Silveris Virosus (poisonous man from the forest) are a modified subspecies of the previously listed human. They're smaller with smaller mouths but are highly venomous. They're carnivorous and hematophagous. Bug equivalent are scorpions.

Now not exactly humans, but very closely related species that are still sapient

Anthropotimidus aquaticus (timid man found near water) is a species of homoids adapted to living in humid caves. Their skin is pale, almost translucent, and they lack body hair. They live in matiarchal societies and mostly keep to themselves. Bug equivalent are flukes and flatworms.

Anthronothos (false/wrong human), a large, cave-dwelling/nocturnal hominid species, evolved to feed on other humans. They live in small communities but are highly aggressive to any other species. HK equivalent of the nosk.

Anthronothos grandi, a subspecies of the aforementioned homonid but much, much larger. Because I can't help myself making biologically-accurate giants.

[lizarr7]

Here's the first batch! Deer, as promised. Pretty sure this is actually the first time I have drawn any of the main four, and of course, it was turning them into animals, lol. These are some of the simplest ref sheets I have ever done, but it suited the more cartoony style I went for here, as well as made it possible to do so many, lol (there are more coming). Despite that, I put a LOT of effort into these, really trying to make them be recognizable as the characters! It's been a very fun exercise. (also here's team strq, and ozlem)

[goddessofroyalty]

From the Regional Intel in Rebirth:

Gongaga was settled by descendants of the Centra.

Does that mean Zack has Centra blood in him?

[raspberry-gloaming]

LOOMING AND THE IMPACT ON THE LEVEL OF INBREEDING ON THE TIME LORD POPULATION, AN ESSAY

And how inbreeding is a big issue amongst the Time Lord population, due to their elitism and strict caste system.

[dapurinthos]

*head in hands realization*

aw fuck [redacted] is a metaphor for inherited mental illness that no one talks about.

i played myself. i was re-reading an oresteia and realized i fucking played myself. the curse of the pelopidai is inescapable.

anyway.

“Why do you refer to the hypothetical Chosen One as a banana?” “It’s a joke.” “Really?” “Bananas have low genetic diversity. They only grow in one system and the current cultivar is a clone of a clone of a clone. Every banana is the same banana. It’s a monoculture. The Holocron of Prophecy says that the hypothetical Chosen One will have no father, so they’re basically born parthenogenetically, missing half the DNA that usually goes into making up a person.” “Like a banana. You're right, that is funny.” “Oh, good.” I feel an inordinate amount of relief at the confirmation. “They could just be Dathomiri.” “What?” “Dathomiri reproduce through sexual and asexual reproduction.” “What.” That makes sense, actually. It explains how you get Iridonian and Dathomiri Zabraks. Female Dathomiri are definitely not female Zabraks. Is this because of their magic? A result of some sort of Sith alchemy like the way the Dark Jedi were supposed to have created a way for them to interbreed with the indigenous Tsis population? “I’ll comm Jo and tell her you’ve got a new area of research I’m allowing you.” I’m half-way down the corridor before he finishes. “Thank youuuuuuu!”

[adozentothedawn]

Early sketch of a little piece of my new Rogue Trader Carolus

Carolus and Theodora talk, Theodora sees a piece of paper poke out of a pocket and pulls it out, it's a child's drawing,

"My daughter's, Lord Captain."

"A daughter? How surprising. Curious that I did not hear about her..."

"She is a mutant, Lord Captain. I do not mention her often, for her own safety. I took her with me to the Expanse and left her in the care of a mutant colony on Janus. One of your worlds, I hear?"

"Indeed, but do not change the subject. A mutant child then. That doesn't bode well for a continuing of the line."

"The trait comes from her father. We had an... Induced night of passion after which he promptly deceased. Frankly I didn't expect the child to survive and so didn't bother getting rid of it. But she has proven impressively hardy and I cannot bring myself to regret my decision. Besides- you yourself are choosing from the family's distant branches rather than continuing the line yourself."

Smirk. "A cutting answer. I like it. You may keep your cripple child as long as it doesn't interfere with your duties." Hands the drawing back.

[aeide-thea]

WOMAN! when I behold thee flippant, vain, Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies; Without that modest softening that enhances The downcast eye, repentant of the pain That its mild light creates to heal again: E’en then, elate, my spirit leaps, and prances, E’en then my soul with exultation dances For that to love, so long, I’ve dormant lain: But when I see thee meek, and kind, and tender, Heavens! how desperately do I adore Thy winning graces;—to be thy defender I hotly burn—to be a Calidore— A very Red Cross Knight—a stout Leander— Might I be loved by thee like these of yore. Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair; Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast, Are things on which the dazzled senses rest Till the fond, fixed eyes, forget they stare. From such fine pictures, heavens! I cannot dare To turn my admiration, though unpossess’d They be of what is worthy,—though not drest In lovely modesty, and virtues rare. Yet these I leave as thoughtless as a lark; These lures I straight forget—e’en ere I dine, Or thrice my palate moisten: but when I mark Such charms with mild intelligences shine, My ear is open like a greedy shark, To catch the tunings of a voice divine. Ah! who can e’er forget so fair a being? Who can forget her half retiring sweets? God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats For man’s protection. Surely the All-seeing, Who joys to see us with his gifts agreeing, Will never give him pinions, who intreats Such innocence to ruin,—who vilely cheats A dove-like bosom. In truth there is no freeing One’s thoughts from such a beauty; when I hear A lay that once I saw her hand awake, Her form seems floating palpable, and near; Had I e’er seen her from an arbour take A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear, And o’er my eyes the trembling moisture shake.

[gmgray]

The Planet of Pyre

Pyre is the pyrean homeworld in Triple Strike, and while the first two books don't go into much detail about it, Pyre will feature more heavily in later books, so I'm using this as an excuse to talk about the planet itself!

The most noteworthy feature of Pyre is that it's tidally locked to the sun it orbits. Since one side always faces the star, while the other side always faces away, both sides are effectively unlivable without biospheres: one too hot and the other too cold. Life thus developed mostly along the strip of the terminator zone between them, and this zone exists in varying states of twilight having no day-night cycle.

Throughout Pyre's history, life (with the exception of extremophile bacteria) was limited to some distance along this strip of land. And given that the planet's water is mostly locked in oceans of ice on the far side, even this terminator zone supports relatively little life -- its primary biomes being desert, steppe, and mountains.

Another feature of Pyre that falls out from this is that relatively little biomass has accumulated over the millenia. Since Pyre never developed fossil fuels like those of Earth, the first several industrial revolutions of Pyre were solar and wind-based -- two resources the planet has in plenty.

A final feature of Pyre is that, while it has higher gravity than Earth, it also has a denser atmosphere. Thus airships and high-altitude balloons were both more prevalent and earlier-to-appear in the recorded history of pyreans than that of humans. Between this early means of travel and communication, the relatively small planetary footprint pyreans could occupy before the development of biospheres, and the pyreans' nomadic tendancies, the tribes of Pyre did not culturally diverge as much as humans did on Earth.

Human xeno-anthropologists speculate that this, along with a lack of natural resources, are part of why the pyreans have no formalized concept of war. That said, skirmishes and raiding were certainly common practice throughout their history, and these activities reaching their bloody peak during what the Merdael call the Dark Times.

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Thank you for looking into this!

Sorry, everyone, looks like your bougars are more anecdotal than this post suggests.

However I have to add just one thing: domestic cats and servals/caracals are even further relatives of each other than pumas and bobcats, and their fertile hybrids are well-documented. So in itself, in theory, it's not impossible. Their size difference is significant, too, comparable to the bobcat-puma difference:

(And i found that the chromosome counts of these species are all 2n=38? With only the Leopardus genus having 36 in Felidae.)

Please, don't get me wrong: i do not debate that there's no proven example of hybridisation between puma and bobcat, or that the cat above is a pure bobcat. I'm just saying a hybrid like that isn't outright impossible.

Bougar

[mylordshesacactus]

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

[miscellaneousfeline]

I wonder how breeding even works between amalgamations and mono-species folk.

[koivulehma]

I played so much Sims today

[beaniebabs]

i think that koopas and goombas should get gay married to each other

[beeapocalypse]

bit rough but i do like this idea