Do you ever take real-world taxonomy into account in a fantasy context? are orcs and elves still primates like humans? or are they something different?
Do you ever take real-world taxonomy into account in a fantasy context? are orcs and elves still primates like humans?
No.
ok.
Humans didnt evolve from apes so the entire concept of a primate is moot
>moot
who?
hiro, obviously.
Plus, people can produce offspring with chimpanzees according to Soviet experiments and local accounts of people in Uganda.
No they TRIED but could get any of them pregnant
>Plus, people can produce offspring with chimpanzees according to Soviet experiments and local accounts of people in Uganda.
WHAT
Something different. Making elves and dwarves related to humans because they're similar or I want them to crossbreed feels boring and pointless.
Hearsay and rumor. I don't think we have solid evidence they ever tried, but almost certainly we'd have found some examples at some point if it were really possible.
Also AIDS is believed to have originated from monkeys in Africa. There are multiple ways to interpret that suspicion.
There were experiments where the Soviets tried impregnating a bunch of women by inseminating them with chimp semen and impregnating a bunch of chimps with human semen.
It didn't work, with no pregnancy even getting started. Anything to the contrary is fiction where people are just writing creepy pasta with zero evidence.
>people can produce offspring with chimpanzees according to Soviet experiments and local accounts of people in Uganda.
Sauce? Humans and chimpanzees have incompatible DNA (2×23 chromosomes vs 2×24 chromosomes.)
NTA, but donkeys and horses have different chromosome counts as well, but they can still make mules. This is also why mules are sterile.
what
said, plus we just recently discovered a hybrid between a common dog (78 chromosomes) and a pampas fox (74 chromosomes) and it has 76 itself. Biology is not as simple as counting chromosomes and see if they match.
Genus matter more for reproduction than chromosome count. Foxes and dogs belong to the same genus.
Um, no. Dog is Canis, pampas fox that was referred to is Lycalopex, and garden variety red fox is Vulpes.
Also for the broader chromosome discussion geep exist (Ovis x Capra) with 57 chromosomes rather than the 54 or 60 of the parents - usually stillborn, but not always. By usual zoological definitions of genus and species such hybrids shouldn't, but there you have it - the definitions obviously are not quite right.
Get a downie to frick a chimp then.
Some age regression mtf troony who works for google, noone relevant
He got arrested for grooming a child.
I think he's the guy who bought Twitter.
>Humans didnt evolve from apes
Humans are literally apes.
Ape is a family of primate defined by shared phylogeny. Without a shared evolutionary history both "ape" and "primate" mean nothing
Humans are apes and primates and we have a shared evolutionary history with them.
No, but they share a distant ancestor
humans literally are hominids in the ape clade
humans are apes, anon. phylogenetically, physiologically, they land square in the ape tree. you may as well say lions are not cats or ostriches are not birds.
Modern taxonomy is just the convenience of hacks. Science is collapsing because it is non-rigorous and run by morons. Plus I am a wizard and can kill you with memes.
Interesting. I always thought Neanderthal skulls were much bigger than that. Everything I've read about them makes them sound like walking flesh tanks.
Are you looking at them correctly? The Neanderthal skull looks massive. Also, Neanderthals were still shorter than, or no taller than, contemporary H. sapiens.
(that "archaic H. sapiens also looks massive, but also inhuman)
>I always thought Neanderthal skulls were much bigger than that.
They are, OP's pic is a bad angle: see pic related. A Neanderthal's skull is almost twice as large as a Human's. Maybe even more since I think the pic I have is comparing a Cro-Magnon's skull with a Neanderthal and I know off hand that a Cro-Magnon's skull is larger than a modern Human's skull.
We have tiny little heads with weak little jaws.
Cro-magnon is this dude.
I wish there was a proper to scale side by side here, but no.
>are orcs and elves still primates like humans?
No. They are humans. They can interbreed without reduced fertility. They're races of humans.
Interbreeding and producing viable offspring isn't proof of being the same species. There are all kinds of animals that have speciation within their genus and can interbreed. Crows, tigers, wolves, etc.
This doesn't even get into the weirdness of ring species where two species are genetically different enough that they are unable to breed with each other but can both interbreed with a third species. Is it just one species with 2 subspecies offshoots or 3 different species.
>Interbreeding and producing viable offspring isn't proof of being the same species. There are all kinds of animals that have speciation within their genus and can interbreed. Crows, tigers, wolves, etc.
It literally is which is why those species are constantly getting fricking reclassified. Also I didn't say viable offspring. I said fully fertile offspring. No mules. No only the females are stable.
Phylogenetics is more and more the basis for taxonomy.
>This doesn't even get into the weirdness of ring species
Yeah, yeah, nature doesn't have hard lines. Species complexes make shit complicated, but outside of that specific kind of situation, the interbreeding without reduced fertility rule is a hard one.
>Yeah, yeah, nature doesn't have hard lines. Species complexes make shit complicated, but outside of that specific kind of situation, the interbreeding without reduced fertility rule is a hard one.
There is also a massive amount of wonkiness with the genetics of second gen hybrids. I've heard (for at least the Equus and Panthera genuses) while most female hybrids are fertile, the children they give birth to are genetically closer to being a maternal half sibling match than they are to being a child match.
If I remember right it wasn't a bunch of women. It was one woman volunteer and all the "testing" was done before invitro fertilization was developed or widespread. The "testing" seems to have been the Soviet "Scientist" and his female assistant fricking a bunch of chimps and orangutans and/or smearing semen samples in various human/chimp/orangutan veganas. It was not really scientifically rigorous and was closer to Mad Science.
>It was not really scientifically rigorous and was closer to Mad Science.
It's Soviet Russia. They probably never even actually did the experiment at all. They just cooked up some story about breeding ape human super soldiers while slightly more drunk then usual while pocketing the research funds.
I dunno, when you look at the Russians there's a lot of quite compelling visual arguments for the idea of Soviet apemen having integrated into the population.
Or it could just be FAS and steroid usage, but still.
>Captcha YAK XNS
I think I'm onto something here
Midwit. Buffalo and cows are two completely different species, and yet they interbreed. It's not an end all be all.
I generally prefer Magical Nonsense to support taxonomy-maiming biological alterations such as the Drow or Drays, but it remains useful for cross-referencing subsets and
Very little material covers generations after the first or wider fertility rates, and there exist counter-examples like the Muls of Athas who explicitly possess mule-like sterility.
And given that fertility is measurably worsened in interracial relationships in the CRUSHED modern human gene-pool (only around 1%, but still), it's far too strict a standard due to your own example failing it, let alone interbreeding between what scientists are willing to recognize as subspecies with the horrific calculations on the first-generation Sapiens-Neanderthalensis crossbreeds.
realistically if various fantasy races can sire fertile hybrids, you would see a gradient across the map. EG, if humans and dwarves can make fertile babies, there would be varying degrees of dwarf/human hubrids living between the humand and dwarven kingdoms, looking more dwarven or more human depending on how close you are to either. you can't make the argument "they're too physically/culturally different for them to want to frick that often" because that has literally never stopped any human society ever irl.
you ever notice how east europeans look like the midpoint between wet europeans and middle easterns? oh how Africans get lighter the closer you get to europe? same principle applies.
It's far easier to just say hybrids are either infertile mules or just not possible without magical or alchemical intervention.
The full classification of the Great Dragon is
>Euraryota, Animalia, Chordata, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Hexapoda, Dracae, Dracus, Draconis Rex.
The family Dracae includes two extant genus, Wyvernes and Draces, referred to as the Wyverns and the True Dragons. True Dragons are characterized by the fire-lung, a lung like structure in the chest cavity Specialized bacteria in the intestines break down food and produce acetylene, which collects in the fire-lung. This acetylene can be exhaled under the dragon's conscious control via an opening leading to the esophagus, where it can be ignited by a spark produced by the dragon's iron-rich teeth. Extant members of Draces include Draconis Minoris, the candle-lizard, as well as Draconis Rex, the great dragon.
Debate over whether the elephant-and-mammoth eating Great Dragons and the whale-eating Cliff Dragons represent separate populations, subspecies of Dragconis Rex, or two separate species is ongoing.
How the frick did hexapoda sneak in to that taxonomy?
I make sure to actively avoid real world taxonomy, actually. It's not something I want to bother with when I'm making both playable races and enemy monsters.
No. Every time someone asks a question like this I go down a rabbit hole and consider making something autistic like a novel calendar system with two moons. My setting just is.
I have a high magic setting where everything was directly made by the gods, no evolutiin involved until humans came along, having 'evolved' from apes by a curious younger deity making tweaks and experimenting until they created an intelligent race. About a third of all races/species are just human hybrids, like elves can result from either human-sidhe or human-pixie pairings, and you can tell pretty easy which are which, though all elves use the same stats. Same for dwarves being humans crossed with gnomes or trolls, and orcs from goblins or ogres, and so on.
My other setting is sci-fantasy and the races do have different evolutions, like the 'elves' of one planet evolving from something akin to arboreal deer, while those from a different one evolved from snakes.
Not even the real world works like that. There are several crab-like species that are entirely unrelated to one another.
What about that body shape causes it to keep evolving then? They’ve got to be doing SOMETHING right.
Wait, whoa, WHAT?
>that are entirely unrelated to one another
Aren't those crustaceans?
while i agree with you and find the idea funny.
All the animals in your picture, as far as i can tell, are related.
They just arent related to crabs (other than beein crustaceans)
Yeah Carcination is one of those reddit "I fricking love science" things that people keep parroting because they saw a popsci article or a youtube video that neglects to mention that it only applies to crustaceans.
Character creation in modern ttrpg systems should begin with rolling for skull morphologies.
Assuming that all the humanoid races like Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Dwarves, and Halflings are all related to themselves and Humans (not counting races like Lizardfolk of course), how might they have diverged and changed from one another? Especially if they’re still close enough to each other to produce fertile children. See picture related for instance.
I have an extensive ethnography developed for my setting to the point that I have successive waves of migration charted and a whole ethnogenesis for every ethnicity. It gets more fun when fantasy races are involved tbh because it's just another layer on top of the cake.
I.E., Orcs and Ogres went extinct in the bronze age because they just couldn't keep up with agrarian societies, but orcish remains are still around because of their bone density, and are prized because necromancers can make tougher skellies out of them.
In my setting mermaids and seafolk are actually mammals that evolved convergently with warluses seals and such, dwarves are basically Neanderthals and elves evolved from marsupials
the closest thing I did for this was making up a new branch of six-limbed animals that emerged from the sea around the same time as othet chordates did, and evolved into dragons and salamanders and a few other amphibian/reptile-like animals
dark sun's muls are a great example of this done well. that said, does anyone know if female muls are a thing that can happen? I recently read the prism pentad books and recall maybe one passing female mul character, but everything about them (see: name) screams only males are possible
>(see: name
Do you think that there are only male mules?
the name makes me think the etymological roots are in the word mule, so I was assuming. I know in the SSI games you can't play a female mul. haven't read any 2e dark sun material besides the novels
"Mul" is absolutely from "mule", but there's mules of both sexes.
Maybe you're confused because mules only come from male donkey + female horse?
You don't know. If you ask the man on the street, he said god must've made them that way. If you asked a learned man, he'll probably talk your ear off about spontaneous generation and that hill trolls are probably a species of mold.
Yes.
Orcs, elves, humans, and dwarves all have the same ancestor species.
Thousands of years ago, the world was united under the control of a single empire which wielded powerful magitek. Their structures pierced the sky and they had begun to establish footholds upon adjacent spheres. However, their reach exceeded their grasp. Their ambition had attracted the attention of monstrous creatures of keen intellect and insatiable greed. Dragons quickly scorched their the fledgling settlements on foreign horizons before coming to burn the world that had been their cradle. The war was long and bloody. The dragons were forced to end the assault, succumbing to the vice of sloth on an isolated continent, but the once grand civilization was in tatters. Populations once united were cut off from one another, and the same stray magics which distorted the wildlife took its toll on the people as well.
In once luxurious mountain manses, the people succumbed to malnutrition, inbreeding, and the whispers that bubble up from the darkness of the earth. Possessed of singular mind, these industrious creatures dig deeply and produce fine crafts, but the spark of divinity has been smothered. They are the dwarves, and they're digging a hole for whatever entity has consumed their souls.
In the wild jungles, people came under the influence of the plant minds, pledging their loyalty in exchange for safety. Despite their beauty and cunning, they've given up much of what it means to be a person endowed with a soul's agency to become the elves.
Across the great realm, there are countless villages and cities fortified against roaming monsters and one another. They pursue simple lives not so dissimilar from their ancient forebears, but have long forgotten the civilization that was their birthright. These humans are numerous and may with time unite to form a new empire.
At the heart of the ancient forebear's realm, the land was blasted by terrible magics. Ruins, strange crystals, and empty wasteland define the continent. Citizens of high standing were reduced to fighting over scraps. Warped by magic and discord, their nomadic lifestyle is short and brutal. Passed down orally by the shrewd shamans, only these orcs possess a memory of the glory that once once. A cruel reminder of how far they have fallen, as human ships sail the coast in search of slaves.
my elves come from cats
Made for BUBC.
Technically, they're still all humans. homosexual Sapiens Sapiens, even.
I more or less based my setting on this
Humans, dwarves, and elves are all different species within the genus homo, descended from a common ancestors but adapted to different environments (elves in forests, dwarves in mountains, and humans in river valleys/coastal areas)
Orcs are similarly evolved, but from the genus Gorilla, and goblins from the genus Pan (I think. I'm still unsure ultimately what to do with my goblins)
Anything else means one of those fricked something they shouldn't have
For me, the races were all created by the gods of my setting, they contributed a small portion of their power to shape a base "template", and then two or three gods would team up to shape that template into an actual mortal race. For example, the god of Fire and the god of Earth made Dwarves.
I figure easiest way to explain different races is by saying that human bards have existed for a long time and there's magic that fixes incompatibilities and birth defects.