#aesthetic inspiration
you know how IRL scientists are always ready to throw hands over certain topics? what I want to know is what kind of stupid arguments Pokemon scientists get into fights over. a heated battle starts in the middle of a conference because someone asked if Slowking’s Shellder could be considered its own separate species or not
*scientist steps onto the stage*
*a photo of a Flygon appears on the projector screen*
*she hits the screen with a pointer stick*
“Bug.”
*entire auditorium erupts into furious shouting*
DEFINITELY BUG
I should clarify I agree that this would be a debate in canon because it is in the fandom, however, flygon is a reptile c:
what dose that make trapinch
Trapinch is inspired by an antlion, but instead of insect anatomy with huge mandibles, Trapinch is a turtle-like reptilian beast.
Flygon is modeled after an adult antlion, NOT a “dragonfly” by the way, which isn’t even an insect name that exists in Japanese.
Vibrava is clearly insectoid, true, but when we look at flygon:
Flygon is literally modeled like a “dinosaur,” it has no segmentation but has stripes on its tail evocative of such. It has false “bug eye” goggles and it’s “antennae” are just horns.
While pokemon exhibit a wild degree of stylization, ALL bug pokemon based on actual arthropods have at least some degree of unmistakably chitinous physiology:
The trapinch line are to “bugs” as dolphins are to sharks. They are bug-like only by evolutionary convergence. It is not an oversight that they aren’t bug type, but deliberately integrated into their designs that they “mimic” bug type.
More good evidence for my theory of Pokemon Species and Evolution.
Trapinch, Vibrava, and Flygon all definitely share a different darwinian evolutionary relationship. Trapinch and Flygon are, as bogleech says, members of a reptilian and dragon clade. This is supported by morphology, since Flygon is closest to Dragonite in body-shape and Trapinch could be either a lizard, turtle, or some other sort of reptile pokemon. Vibrava is, however, most closely resembles bug-types with its two pairs of wings, segmented body, and twig-like bent legs.
Taking into account the theory linked above, the differences between the three make sense. They are all separate species that developed a (pokemon) evolutionary relationship and have slowly (darwinianly) evolved to be closer to one another. Rather than evolving perfectly to suite the ancestral bug-like condition of Vibrava or the purely dragon-like condition of Flygon, they meet in the middle. Flygon evolves head structures mimicking Vibrava’s antennae and similarly diamond-shaped wings, Vibrava secondarily loses its Bug-typing and slowly starts “unsegmenting”. And then Trapinch does its own thing, like in real antlions.
Perhaps Vibrava was a prey animal of some sort to the ancestral Trapinch whose genetics were integrated into its predator via HGT?
unironically, one of my favourite pieces of horror writing is victor hugo’s description of an octopus
[ID: photo of a book. Some of the text has been highlighted. It says “It is a pneumatic machine that attacks you. You are dealing with a footed void. Neither claw thrusts nor tooth bites, but an unspeakable scarification. A bit is formidable, but less so than such suction. The claw is nothing compared to the sucker. The claw, that’s the beast that enters your flesh; the sucker, that’s you yourself who enters into the beast. Your muscles swell, your fibres twist, your skin bursts beneath this unworldly force, your blood spurts and frightfully mixes with the mollusks’ lymph. The beast is superimposed upon you by its thousand vile mouths; the hydra is incorporated in the man; the man is amalgamated with the hydra. The two make one. This dream is upon you. The tiger can only devour you; the octopus, what horror, breathes you in! It draws you toward itself and into itself, and, bound, stuck, powerless, you slowly feel yourself emptied out within that horrendous sack, that monster. Beyond the terror of being eaten alive is the ineffability of being drunk alive.” End ID]
and don’t forget his drawing of one.
Octopus bearing the Initials V. H., Victor Hugo circa 1866:
#this fully rules #like victor my dude octopi absolutely dont do this but this rules supremely
I’ve reblogged this before but I forgot I wanted to add THE REST because what OP posted is only the very end!!!
To believe in the octopus, one must have seen it. Compared with it, the hydras of old are laughable.Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod were only able to make the Chimaera; God made the octopus. When God wills it, he excels in the execrable. And all ideals being admitted, if terror be the object, the octopus is a masterpiece.Its most terrible quality is its softness. A glutinous mass possessed of a will — what more frightful? Glue filled with hatred.At night and in its breeding season, it is phosphorescent. This terror has its passions. It awaits the nuptial hour. It adorns itself, it lights up, it illuminates itself; and from the summit of a rock one can see it beneath, in the shadowy depths, spread out in a pallid irradiation, — a spectre sun.It has no bones, it has no blood, it has no flesh. It is flabby. There is nothing in it. It is a skin. One can turn the eight tentacles wrong side out, like the fingers of a glove.Victor would nod along to this with a single tear rolling down his cheek
Happy Dracones Monday!
Today’s dragon is the stoorwyrm or Atlantic Sea Dragon! I’m really happy with the pattern on this doodled design, but not 100% on board with the body shape - despite researching marine reptiles as a job I’m abysmal at making up fictional ones. I could make my crocodile-dragons evolve into animals similar to thalattosuchians (marine crocodile-relatives of the Mesozoic) but I feel going for a more fantastical whale-serpent would fit the mythology better.
This said, whales swim with up-down undulations whereas a marine reptile would swim with side-to-side undulations, so I may end up pushing a more serpentine or aguiliform shape instead of a whale shape…
The name ‘stoorwyrm’ comes from the Orcadian legend of Mester Stoorwurm, a sea serpent that was menacing Orkney until someone rowed their boat full of explosives into the dragon’s mouth, kaboom!
For more dragons, follow @draconesmundi
I mean, it’s not impossible - mosasaurs *and* crocodilians both adapted similar forms in their evolutionary history, and they were side-to-side swimmers too.
And you had similar setups in the big ichthyosaurs.
When it comes to being huge and aquatic, this seems to just be the ideal way for a reptile to go about it!
Today I learned that the university of Coimbra in Portugal has a great 18th-century library, the Biblioteca Joanina, that maintains a colony of bats to effectively control the population of paper-eating insects called papirófagos. These bats are less than an inch long. They roost during the day behind the bookcases and come out at night. There doesn’t seem to be any English word for papirófago, a cursory search turns up no details about what sort of insect they are, and ngl I am slightly concerned about them as a phenomenon. But I think my overarching point here is clear:
This library keeps tiny bats that look after the books.
I’m here for tiny bats saving books.
Aaaahhh!!
What good and noble tiny flitters!!!! <3
My nayme is Batt
And wen its nite
On sylente wings
I flye to fiteThe lybrarie’s
My battlefielde
Papir’fagoes
Haffe to be killedMy foes emerge
From payper nooks
I eate them allI sayve the books
Drinking cup. Found in Egypt, probably made in Western Asia ca. 1479–1425 B.C. Medium: Glassy faience and gold.
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art