Headscratchers / The Future is Wild

• Why are there howler monkey calls in the Tentacled Forest? Are those noises intended to be Squibbon cries?
  • Probably just generic jungle noise, like Jungles Sound Like Kookaburras.
• So why exactly do ALL mammals die out by 100 myf except for the Poggle? It would make far more sense had they all been wiped out in one fell swoop by a mass extinction, but apparently they were just outcompeted in all niches by...bugs, reptiles, and birds?
  • By that point, there have probably been several mass extinctions.
  • When something is the last of its kind it probably has been that way for several million years prior. Trilobites were barely hanging on long before they finally died out 250 million years ago; in this case maybe most of the mammals had died out long before and the poggles (and a few other straggling relatives) would be the only ones hanging on by then.
• How exactly do the Gannetwhales move on land? Their hind legs are too proportionately small to even scoot around on their bellies like loons do.
  • They push themselves along with their wing-flippers, like seals do.
• So the Ocean Phantom reproduces by...riding storms and getting itself torn to shreds. Not even a more reliable form of asexual reproduction, like budding or releasing larvae?
  • It's never said that this is the only way they reproduce, just that if they are torn apart by a storm, each piece will grow into a new Ocean Phantom.
• What particular benefit would most Terabyte castes losing their legs possibly give them? If anything, it makes them less efficient at performing basic tasks without help from transporters.
  • My guess is that with them devoting less energy and mass to legs as well has general movement they are able to produce and replenish their various secretions in much greater quantities.
• Why didn't fish take over land instead of cephalopods? One could picture an amphibious fish, similar to a mudskipper or lungfish, becoming fully terrestrial and becoming a whole new clade of land vertebrates, similar to the tribbetheres from Serina.
  • I believe the terrestrial cephalopods are implied to be the evolutionary descendants of amphibious cephalopods like the swampus, as they would have already had a head start they would have been able to take over sooner than the fish could.
• The Swampus is said to be the ancestor of the Megasquid and Squibbon...except that the Swampus is an octopus and the Megasquid and Squibbon are squids, right down to the two terrasquids having ten limbs while the Swampus only has eight.
• The Flish are shown squawking and screeching like birds, even though fish have no vocal chords?
  • Fish actually are capable of producing a wide variety of sounds with their swim bladders, so it's not unreasonable to imagine them developing their swim bladder into some sort of larynx, especially since they no longer need it to swim.
• Wouldn't fish have a terrestrial intermediate before developing true flight, instead of going from sea to sky directly?
  • Not necessarily. Plenty of fish can already leap considerably out of the ocean or lakes to consume bugs and evade predators, some even use their fins to help direct them once in the air. At least on paper it would make total sense for them to get better at directing themselves and develop the ability to last longer outside of water progressively until they were straight out flying without needing a land based intermediary.
• How do Toratons regulate their body temperature? Tortoises are cold blooded, and a tortoise that big would take forever to warm itself up or cool down.
  • It's entirely possible that they have developed Gigantothermy, this is actually how some paleontologists think larger dinosaurs maintained their body temperatures.
• So the Silver Spider queen requires poggle hormones to breed? Aren't arthropod and mammal biochemistry different enough for this to not work?
  • They don't necessarily use the poggles' hormones in the same way that a poggle would. Female mosquitoes need the blood of larger animals to breed, but as a nutritional supplement rather than for use as a body fluid.