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Whittonia descendants

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These are a few possible descendants of a non-player creature in the Mudland evolution game, Whittonia. When an interesting animal evolves (even if it isn't a player), like this one, I like to establish its future possibilities by hashing out some random ideas.

1. The animal Whittonia in its present state. it is a small jet-propelled invertebrate, similar to a nautilus or squid with crustacean hindparts. It has simple camera eyes, dozens of small arms, two large grasping tentacles, a bivalved carapace and a segmented tail like a shrimp. It also has a pair of toothy, horizontally articulating jaws beneath the tentacle ring, but you can't see them in any of these drawings.

2. I realized I hadn't been designing enough tiny planktonic animals, and I really needed to make some more given how critical they are, so a lot of these are microscopic. These animals are analogous to krill, very small and numerous, living in the open ocean and feeding off detritus. Perhaps the long tentacles have been adapted as a filter-feeding apparatus.

3. This one is basically just the original Whittonia with different tentacles and a new paint job, but I find it very interesting. the tentacles are now sensitive antennae, held above the head and lined with fine hairs. They enable their owner to detect danger and dart away rapidly through the reef, perhaps using an improved jet-propulsion system. These things would occupy a similar role to darting fish, a world away from the zooplanktonic niche of their conceptual relatives. It's interesting how many possibilities exist with one body plan.

4. I really like these animals, they take the fish-like concept to an intriguing extreme. I modelled their head shields off jawless fish like Pteraspis, but their back ends are more like oversized shrimp. I imagine them as large, slow, well-armoured bottomfeeders, jetting lazily around the benthos and picking food particles out of the scum with their arms. The long tentacles are even more specialized as sensory organs as well, so it's possible that these "fish" could be descendants of the previous animal, number 3.

5. This one is interesting. The tail has been adapted for clinging and the arms around the mouth have become suberb filters, like crinoid arms. the long tentacles have evolved into antennae, that allow the animal to retract its delicate arms into its carapace at the first sign of danger. It is not sessile, however, as the tail merely grips the its base and does not adhere to it. The animal can detach from whatever it was clinging to (most likely seaweed, coral or some other organic structure) and jet around awkwardly in search of a mate or superior feeding grounds. As a result, it occupies a very weird ecological role, somewhere in between a seahorse and a feather duster worm.

6. This is simply the last animal after several million years of evolution; it has lost any mobility it once had and has essentially degenerated to an alien barnacle (it does retain the long sensory tentacles, however).

7. These were very fun to draw. the plankton strategy was an effective one, and after millions of years the organisms under number 2 have become even smaller and more adept at filter feeding. these animals are ubiquitous and microscopic, akin to earth's copepods in their ecological role. they possess beautiful variations on the design of their antennae, feeding apparatus and reproductive organs (many opt for the dual "egg-string" strategy of the prolific sea louse). I really like this concept for Whittonia; the organisms are realistic, pretty and their is an immense capacity for variation.

8. Like the giant amphipod or Gigantocypris, the plantonic animals discussed above may mutate into massive forms under the crushing pressures of the abyss. This animal hails from the "copepod" lineage, but has become very large, easily visible, and now feeds on hydrothermal vent bacteria it cultivates in its hairy tentacles, in the manner of the yeti crab.


phew, that took longer than I thought.
This gallery makes a lot more sense if you read the description at karkharokles.deviantart.com/ar…
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