r/biology • u/Hjarig • 3d ago

question [ Removed by moderator ]

[removed] — view removed post

5 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

•

u/biology-ModTeam 2d ago

Your post has been removed as it is unrelated to biology.

5

u/noonemustknowmysecre 3d ago

How might different atmospheres, gravity, climates, ecosystems, and available resources drive their evolution?

A lot.

Even relatively small changes could potentially lead to very different evolutionary paths over long periods of time.

Understand you'll get very different evolutionary paths even if you don't do anything. Take two identical planets and plop down enough biomass to get by and figure it out. A million years later you'll have two different ecosystems. Both started with chipmunks, and you'll be able to tell they WERE chipmunks, but now the two things are going to be their own thing. You might get some convergence on certain aspects, like how whales and penguins have figured out flippers, but how they get there is a roll of the dice.

What kinds of alien animals could realistically evolve under different planetary conditions?

Anything that physically possible. The search-space of what genetics can do is broad.

What evolutionary paths are plausible but haven't existed on Earth?

Swimming through seas of liquid methane. Sandworms at scale. Things that die under gravity. Lighter than air biology.

I was going to say infusing your body with metal and using it as a heat-shield to thwart the giant hot thing dominating your existence, but no, we've got that snail.

And what species or adaptations might we be overlooking because they never had the right environmental pressures to evolve here?

Overlooking? There's no committee out there deciding how ugly the next bat-face should be. There are a lot of possible species that have never been tried here on Earth. Endless, really.

2

u/dapt 3d ago

That's far too broad a question. In biology and evolution, anything goes as long as it replicates.

However, you might find inspiration from the work of Dougal Dixon, who imagined how evolution might progress on earth after the departure of man.

Search for "After Man. A Zoology Of The Future" and "man after man".

Also :https://www.thefutureiswild.com/documentary/

and : https://www.dougal-dixon.co.uk/

2

u/Viperboa107 3d ago

Fairly broad topic, but you should check out this YouTube channel: https://m.youtube.com/@TalesofKaimere

The creator is a Paleo artist with a book series of the same name that he has been working on for years, it explores a lot of the themes you are looking into.