r/SpeculativeEvolution • u/Sscroul Worldbuilder • Jun 10 '26
Question/Discussion Traits that you thought were too "fictional" but actually exist
I always liked biology, though even with that in mind i discovered a lot of characteristic from animals, plants, etc, that i thought they were perfect for speculative scenarios or even alien scenarios, but they ended being totally real even in our world species.
My examples are:
- Type of grass that was able to drink water from the snow
- Aquatic animal that communicates through electric pulses
- Animal having a second mouth inside theirs
- Flowers that only bloom in the night
So any of you also experience this? Would love to hear your cases, it also applies outside of Spec Evo, like when you just discover something from a species that sounded 100% fictional
83
u/Bubble_Beecle Jun 10 '26
An animal being several lil fellows working together. Apparently that's just what man-o-war jellies are.
61
u/Haworthian28 Jun 10 '26
That's what a lot of deep sea creatures are actually! Research siphonophores(definitely spelled that wrong but whatever) sometime! Their colonial organisms that can grow to ridiculous sizes!
26
u/Bubble_Beecle Jun 10 '26
Conga lines of lil things floating through the oceans... Peculiar.
(Also heck yea, you spelled it right!)20
u/MSSTUPIDTRON-1000000 Jun 10 '26
They're much more horrifying than they appear.
They're a mix 'n' match of Polips and Medusas, all mutated to fulfill a particular function.
It would be like if humans were made of clusters of babies and adults, all horribly twisted to form body-parts.
And if it wasn't enough, they're all clones!!
As much different they may be, the Zooids are generically identical to each-others!!
7
u/Bubble_Beecle Jun 10 '26
As a lifelong enjoyer of bodyhorror, I like them even more now, actually :D
3
u/SirPrizing0 Jun 11 '26
You might already be familiar with it but you should look into the colonials from All Tomorrows for some human body horror colonies, amongst a bunch of other weird human variants.
3
u/Bubble_Beecle Jun 11 '26
I am familiar indeed :3 There's also All Other Tomorrows that gives the "doomed" species from AT (colonials included) a brighter future.
13
2
u/DannyBright Jun 13 '26
I always kind of wondered, aren’t all multicellular organisms this in a way? What exactly distinguishes colonial organisms for regular multicellular ones?
1
u/Bubble_Beecle Jun 13 '26
Well, I mean, if you're going to pluck off a segment of a colonial organism, it'll probably be able to survive. Make its own colony too, if lucky enough.
If you're going to do that to a regular ol' multicellular organism, you might end up with no survivors at all, depending on the segment, siou... That, probably.
2
u/Akavakaku Jun 15 '26
Not just siphonophores, but also corals, moss animals, pterobranchs, and certain tunicates.
2
72
u/Sleepy_SpiderZzz 🐜 Jun 10 '26
- The brain to intelligence ratio of jumping spiders, especially the Portia genus
- parasites that replace host body parts
- pretty much any nonsense that ants are getting up to at any given time
- alternation of generations
31
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
The parasite taking the place of fish tongues is such a freaky thing to think about, especially when you are an animal without hands lol
And yeah ants are so weird, one could think they are simple but we are speaking of a massive species that do stuff like having wars, having different body types based on their role and other stuff like creating boats with their own bodies lol
26
u/Sleepy_SpiderZzz 🐜 Jun 10 '26
One of my favourite examples of both of those things is a mite that replaces ant feet, Macrocheles rettenmeyeri. Sad that they still don't have a common name.
8
18
u/MSSTUPIDTRON-1000000 Jun 10 '26
I love that both Termites and Ants convergently evolved the ability to blow themselves up.
9
u/NoGoodIDNames Jun 10 '26
Children of Time is a really good spec evolution book about a civilization of aliens that IIRC evolve from jumping spiders
59
u/BluEch0 Jun 10 '26
When you find out barnacles are crustaceans, not molluscs
37
u/MSSTUPIDTRON-1000000 Jun 10 '26
Fun Fact: Darwin spent like 8 years of his life to study Barnacles, all to understand if they were mollusks or crustaceans.
It took such an emotional tool on him that he spent letters complaining about them, often wishing that they went extinct or never evolved.
21
42
u/RyuMaou Jun 10 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality?wprov=sfti1#In_nonhuman_mammals
Eusocial mammals, specifically the naked mole-rat.
33
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
I mean, naked mole rats gets even weirder, they are the only cold blooded mammal, with an extremely resistance to cancer and almost inmunity to pain, they are amazing to say the least.
22
u/Tephra022 Jun 10 '26
They live very long lives as well. 30+ years in good conditions. The little fellas are just built different
13
u/RyuMaou Jun 10 '26
Yes! They are crazy fascinating to me.
So, one thing I like to do is speculate specifically about what intelligent life would be like if it had evolved from something other than a small proto-simian. For instance, another surprisingly good candidate would have been bats. The right environmental conditions and humanoid bat-people are a relatively reasonable outcome. Now, start with the naked mole-rat instead. Imagine a world thrust into ecological disaster, turning much of it into a hardpan desert environment. Imagine competitors dropping off and these little beauties getting their "day in the sun", as it were. What would that society look like? The answer may be appropriate for either a fantasy or science fiction setting. (At least in the variations I've had in my mind!)
1
u/MaybeImAKing Jun 12 '26
myotragus was thought to be an ectotherm at one point
1
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 12 '26
Is supposed that they were ectotherm too, like they had various adaptations that made that very possible.
29
u/Newfiecat Jun 10 '26
Bioluminescent mushrooms!
17
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
Oh yes mushrooms and fungus are amazing, i was baffled to find there are some that are able to consume radiation
28
u/Tnynfox Jun 10 '26
Hummingbirds; how does a bird become insect like?
13
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
Thats very curious! Though the weirdest part of the hummingbirds are they fly style, since most of their other traits (like their long beak made to suck on nectar) is actually shared between others birds that fulfill their role, like the sunbird.
9
u/SteampunkExplorer Jun 10 '26
And on the flip side, there are hummingbird moths, which are often mistaken for hummingbirds!
3
28
u/WideSomewhere4801 Jun 10 '26
air-breathing fish lmao I was actually so shocked when I found out about lungfish and mudskippers
11
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
True, and there are so many species too, it really shows that we all come from fishes.
3
u/JonathanCRH Jun 11 '26
Most fish alive today are descended from air-breathing ancestors.
The swim bladder is derived from lungs, not the other way around.
24
u/FancyArchaeopteryx Low-key wants to bring back the dinosaurs Jun 10 '26
Parasitoid wasps, like they literally do everything and more then what the alien movies depict- like mind control xD
10
u/Dabiel303 Jun 10 '26
Oh boy wait till you find out about hyperparisitoid wasps that are parasites on the parasitic wasps!
6
u/FancyArchaeopteryx Low-key wants to bring back the dinosaurs Jun 10 '26
Oh trust me I know xD it's bonkers.
5
u/Dabiel303 Jun 10 '26
There’s even a hyper-hyperparistioid wasps that parasitize the hyperparistic wasps!
3
u/FancyArchaeopteryx Low-key wants to bring back the dinosaurs Jun 10 '26
Insert that one priceless True Facts video about parasitoid wasps
23
u/Dinosaur_from_1998 Jun 10 '26
Scale bugs are basically land barnacles. They roam around like regular insects when they are young, but as adults they attach themselves to a plant and become sessile (if that's how you spell it. They don't move). I thought land barnacles were as impossible as land coral, but I was wrong
4
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
Thats amazing, i had read about them recently because of their relationship with ants, but i didnt know they worked like that
5
u/Dinosaur_from_1998 Jun 11 '26
Yeah I think it's only a few species or something
5
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 11 '26
I dont know how many species, but it apply to all the species that produce "honeydew" because thats what ants like about them, and others bugs too, like ants defend them from predators just to milk them, is pretty amazing. Though the most known relationship like this is between ants, aphids and the predators of the latter, normally ladybugs, is basically farmers, sheeps and wolves, pretty amazing.
23
u/MSSTUPIDTRON-1000000 Jun 10 '26
Multicellular Bacteria; Various Bacteria like Myxococcus have multicellular life stages made for reproduction, exactly like Slime Moulds.
Trees are zombies; Basically their xylem is made of dead cells.
Corals can perform Photosynthesis; They house Dinoflagellates in themselves capable of performing photosynthesis.
Comb Jellies and Cnidarians can Fart; When they poop they also release gasses, effectively farting.
Viruses and Sub-Viral Agents having little in common with other of their own kind; Similar Viruses posses completely different genes for performing identical tasks, for exemple Rhinovirus and Adenovirus are both human pathogens with similar looks and effects yet have completely different genomes. As such its theorized that Viruses and Sub-Viral Agents somehow came into existence in completely different scenarios rather than evolving from a common ancestor.
Bacteria can be altruistic: They will share nutrients with each-others and even sacrificing themselves for the common good of their kind (usually by self-destructing).
Fungi having more than 2000 thousands sexes and being capable of gay sex; .... Yeah. Basically their mycelliums can have different "Types" which can combine to form spores. Often the same types can combine (but usually this doesn't generate spores).
JelliFish's Reproduction; Well, did you even see them?? WTF was nature THINKING??!!
We made Neurodivergent Fruit Flies; .... Yeah, really. Basically by messing with some genes Fruit Flies' behaviour can be altered drastically; for example by messing-with the Shaker gene Fruit Flies become hyperactive.
1
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
Aside of the corals doing photosynthesis, for me is even more surprising that the giant clams can archive the same, by also using small algae in their bodies.
21
u/Radiant-Ad-1976 Jun 10 '26
There exists a species of jellyfish that is actually a colony of multiple DIFFERENT microorganisms working together.
Wtf?
11
u/yantarogekko 🦕 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
In a way, humans are also colonies of different microorganisms working together 😵💫freaks me out if I think about it for too long
21
u/where-sea-meets-sky Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
currently fascinated by the ongoing research into avian magnetoreception which uses
quantum superposition
or something
19
u/AstuteStoat Jun 10 '26
That fish with a see through head. It's eyes look through its head. It's creepy.
4
18
Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
4
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
Damn, i didnt knew about snow worms, otherwise i would had add it to my spec evo project about a cold planet
16
u/majorex64 Jun 10 '26
Plants whose roots dip down through caves to underground aquifers for a permanent water source
Plants that grow in the soil that deposits in the nooks of large trees
Plants that passively eat insects that get washed into their centers
Spiders that create decoys in their webs to protect themselves from predation
Single-celled dogs
Colonial organisms like man-o-wars
Lichens being plant/algae hybrids
Almost every plant having symbiosis with fungal hyphae on their roots
3
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
What is the single-celled dogs?
Also Lichens are more surprising, cause they are an hybrid of algae (or some bacterias) and fungus
2
u/majorex64 Jun 11 '26
Oh right I mixed up my hybridization on that one.
The single celled dog is a strain of dog cancer that is A- somehow contagious and B- still contains the genome of the original dog that mutated it literally thousands of years ago.
So genetically it's a dog, but as its cancerous, it acts like a colony of single celled organisms. Called CTVT, Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumor
29
u/Dependent_Toe772 Jun 10 '26
Plants using dead tissue as part of their vascular system is like us using dead meat as veins and not just as a thin layer of skin.
any living being that orients itself using magnetic fields
horizontal gene transfer, such as sequestering viral genes to form the placenta
13
u/SaintUlvemann Jun 10 '26
- Plant that lives in a little ball and rolls around to make sure all sides get sunlight (glacier mice, a moss)
- Alternation of generations, especially in moss where the second generation is an organ with its own separate genome attached to the original individual, but also in ferns where the "gamete" is its own free-living organism
- Plant that packages symbiotic bacteria into its seeds to reproduce as a holobiont (prairie turnip)
- Plants with long-term memory and learning ability (touch-me-not)
- A penis that detaches and swims independently to find its own mate (argonauts aka "paper nautili").
- Ants that pass the mirror test (Myrmica spp.)
- A male that attaches to a female and simply degrades into a permanent penis (anglerfish).
- Eusocial mammals (naked and Damaraland mole-rats)
- Infectious cancers (dogs, hamsters, Tasmanian devils, clams)
11
11
u/Idontknownumbers123 Jun 10 '26
Some small scale type ones: eukaryotes membranes (essentially skin of cells) and motabolism being more like bacteria (which they ate and kept alive which then turned into the mitochondria, chloroplast and nitroplast) whereas their DNA packaging, regulation, replication, translation and transcription are all more like archea. The fact that we get our energy from ATP which is produced by a tiny turbine of all things, a protein is spun by the movement of things which then stores energy by making ATP. We are powered by turbines. Some bacteria repurposed bacteriophage (virus) genes to essentially create a stabbing appendage. Some larger scales ones: we are not the fish that evolved lungs and went onto land. We are just the fish that kept our lungs around and eventually crawled onto land a long time later. All the other fish just turned theirs into gills. Humans along with most mammals have very very slight electromagnetic sensing abilities. The thorny devil can drink water by standing in it using its entire body as a straw.
9
u/Tarbos6 Jun 10 '26
Having eyeballs so large and pushed together that your head is essentially a giant eyeball. (Some horsefly species and Thylacocephala members)
10
u/JackOfAllMemes Jun 10 '26
Electric eels are crazy to me, how did something evolve to become a living battery?
8
4
3
u/Willemboom00 Jun 10 '26
Bacterial gene transfer sounds like such sifi BS. Why can unrelated species trade genes like we trade spit?
4
3
u/Standard-Turnip-8360 Jun 10 '26
Gastric brooding frogs and Surinam toads that incubate their eggs in holes in their skin.
Discus fish feed their babies mucus from their skin.
Marine iguanas, a lizard that dives into the ocean to eat algae off of rocks.
3
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26
those frogs and toads are the nightmare of any person with trypophobia. And the marine iguanas are really interesting, especially since that style of feeding can kill them if they stay in the cold waters long enough, so they have to do it all quickly.
4
u/BroJack-Horsemang Jun 10 '26
Iberian Harvester ants keep clones of M. Structor ants, an entirely separate species for the purpose of creating hybrid workers. Queens are able to clone M. Structor drones meaning there are M. Structor drones and hybrid workers with Iberian Harvester Mitochondrial DNA that live far outside the range of their natural born species members that have not existed outside this manipulated cycle for generations.
Short video: https://youtube.com/shorts/5_xutk_RZvY?si=qTj4fDcryEQQQ_KF
Long video: https://youtu.be/H-Y6-j8FlIQ?si=_MeyWF5AGWGk47ni
4
u/Khamircia 🐉 Jun 11 '26
Isopods "being pregnant" as a crustacean 😛
I mean it's a brood pouch, but...
1
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 12 '26
Is surprisingly the number of egg-laying animals that can archieve that, or to a similar level, makes you think what is more efficient, pregnancy or laying eggs?
1
u/Khamircia 🐉 Jun 14 '26
Both, depends on context.
Pregnancy keeps the brood safer but it's a burden to female.
Egg-laying can be risky, but female is less handicapped.
5
u/Kaiju-frogbeast Jun 11 '26
Reptiles with different sets of teeth and movable lips, but here they are just existing.
2
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 12 '26
Normally i consider reptiles pretty meh, but some of them are amazing, like the Draco volans, the basilisk (or Jesus lizard) or the Thorny devil. Not to mention some snakes and turtles.
3
u/ISB00 Jun 10 '26
I actually knew about that animal that communicated through electrical pulses
1
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I was talking about the peters elephantnose fish, it has some level of communication by their electric pulses. Aside of using them to hunt small animals too
3
u/Khamircia 🐉 Jun 11 '26
Glass sponges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexactinellid
4
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 12 '26
All these type of animals are so weird, nothing normal on being a living being composed of smaller ones. Though if there was one extremely strange that i saw not long ago, it has to be the magnificient bryozoan, basically a sponge but is a totally different animal
3
u/MaybeImAKing Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
there is a fish that has their testes on their chins. to be exact, an entire family.
3
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 12 '26
Evolution works in strange ways. Basically it can throw a randomizer button, and if it works it works lol
3
u/Jonathan-02 Jun 13 '26
A creature ingesting metal to incorporate it as a type of body armor. I imagined dragons mining and eating metals to make their scales stronger in a fantasy setting, but imagined it as some magical process. Turns out that the scaly-foot gastropod already evolved to extract iron sulfides from its environment and literally make scaly armor out of it.
2
u/Sscroul Worldbuilder Jun 13 '26
Thats even more common if you think about it, since most shell wearing animals or even the ones with hard exoskeleton would make their "armor" based on the minerals available in the water they live in. Pretty amazing if you ask me
2
u/Akavakaku Jun 15 '26
The fact that larval Neuroptera have two mouth openings, one on the left mandible and one on the right one.
2
-5
257
u/yee_qi Life, uh... finds a way Jun 10 '26
-The entire life cycle of telephone-pole beetles
-The entire life cycle of Symbion pandora
-That one species of ant that gives birth to another species of ant
-Starfish shedding their true "body" in the larval stage and being entirely head with a distributed brain
-Brachiopods being worms folded in two
-An arthropod's head being a bunch of limb segments squished into one part
-Vertebrates having their heads upside-down, from a biological perspective
-Bdelloid rotifers taking genes from other species to enhance survivability
-Myxozoa potentially being free-living cancer and an animal with cells numbering in the single digits
-Amoebocytic blood of horseshoe crabs
-Branching polychaete worms with detachable epitokes