Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Life expectancy.
Solomani are missing Uplifted species
- Thread starter J. L. Brown
- Start date
MonsterX
Emperor Mongoose
Dense atmosphere and/ higher oxygen content allows them to be much bigger, as on Earth in the Carboniferous period. Not quite as big as Them but enough to be very creepy indeed. With ants or bees, even if smaller you can do a hive mind thing.
Even small bugs could have their intelligence increased, though it would be limited by their brain size. Probably it wouldn't be useful for their creators. But if the bugs find a way to make use of their increased intelligence, then it would spread through natural selection.
Tom B
Cosmic Mongoose
Yep - but uplifted species would then not be able to live in normal Earth conditions. Doesn't stop a mad man experimenting though
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
Thranx, baby! Alan Dean Foster made intelligent large insects. Might not be viable really, but they make good play.
Tom B
Cosmic Mongoose
Ginat insect type creatures are fine, you just need to have them have differences to Earth's. They need lungs.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Emperor Mongoose
Alien insectoids not Earth insects. They might have had features not existing in Earthly insects which would allow it. They also colonized the Amazon as I recall as they like hot and humid.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Doesn't it have to do with the surface area and internal volume and body temperature? They wouldn't be able to cool themselves, or support their own weight. Large prehistoric hominids had a similar problem when the climate changed during prehistoric times. Their internal volume was too great for their surface area to radiate heat.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Could do it like fish, but with actual air, instead of oxygenated water.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Emperor Mongoose
Insects have "tracheal tubes" that allow air into the body and they don't move it around with a circulatory system like larger creatures. Their circulatory system is much simpler and circulates nutrients and removes waste.
Your lungs are not just hollow they have the alveoli that greatly increase the surface area for gas exchanges and your blood cells travel through out your body delivering oxygen and removing carbon dioxide. Insects can't match that efficiency without a massive redesign.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
And they are frequently cruel and vengeful. In one case an elephant in a zoo would drop its food near the edge of its pond, wait for the ducks to come close and then stomp them flat. The elephant did that because it was bored.
Elephants on revenge spree, kill two MP villagers
BHOPAL: Two villagers were reportedly trampled to death by wild elephants in two separate incidents in Umaria district of eastern Madhya Pradesh on Saturday mor
Study: Elephants might seek revenge
An increasing number of incidents involving African elephants attacking humans is leading some scientists to believe the animals may be seeking revenge.
Odisha: Elephant attacks woman, returns in the evening to trample her corpse and destroy her house
On June 10, a 60-year-old woman named Maya Murmu from the Raipal village in Mayurbhanj's Rasagobindapur area was attacked and trampled by an elephant in the forest near her village. | OpIndia News
www.opindia.com
I'm not trying to put down your idea, I'm trying to point out problems with uplifting animals in relation to the discussion.
Elephants go into 'musth', which is an unavoidable part of the biological cycle in elephants. Musth is characterized by extreme aggression (even killing rhinos), an increase in testosterone of 60 to 140 times, not percent, times, and significant inflammation pain in the glands in the elephant's head. Imagine being conscious of the inevitability of enduring miserable pain and losing control of oneself for at least a week once a year. Would an elephant sophont dread it? Revel in it? Feel doomed? Ashamed? In despair that he can't escape this humiliating painful inevitable part of himself? Would he take out insurance? Face legal prosecution for all the people he stomped when he was crazy? Would legal prosecution be moral or ethical since the elephant was in musth when he stomped the family to death? Would elephants face social ostracization? Prejudice? When human societies take common sense precautions against the elephant community, is it racism? Discrimination? Would elephants resent it, and would their resentment grow to hate?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musth
Uplifted dogs would form gangs, tear their victims apart, then brush their teeth to destroy DNA evidence while they get their stories straight.
Uplifted cats would stalk and murder for the fun of it. Maybe they'll get a taste for human prey and then lie about it. They'd congregate down the alley screaming and howling at each other when the females are heat.
Uplifted animals would most likely not want owners and want to live their own lives. I think they wouldn't give a damn about human beings, because they're sophonts themselves and they don't need the free food anymore. They would be thinking self-aware people, with all the pride and desire for self-determination of people, and their cultures would probably not be compatible with the cultures of human beings, because they would still have all the instincts and reflexes that are intrinsic to their species. Would they look on the treatment of their ancestors by human with fear and disgust? Would this become hate? Would knowledge of their animal heritage be a shame they can't escape?
All of this needs to be thought through. If not, it's all just furries.
EDIT: Aldair in Albion touches on this slightly, including conversations between predator and prey, and the plight of uplifted sheep who cause injury desperately trying to shear each other with barely capable hands, and uplifted bull mercenaries sailing longships they could never build.
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There is a middle ground between grimdark and degenerate furries.And they are frequently cruel and vengeful. In one case an elephant in a zoo would drop its food near the edge of its pond, wait for the ducks to come close and then stomp them flat. The elephant did that because it was bored.
Elephants on revenge spree, kill two MP villagers
BHOPAL: Two villagers were reportedly trampled to death by wild elephants in two separate incidents in Umaria district of eastern Madhya Pradesh on Saturday morwww.newindianexpress.com
Study: Elephants might seek revenge
An increasing number of incidents involving African elephants attacking humans is leading some scientists to believe the animals may be seeking revenge.phys.org
Odisha: Elephant attacks woman, returns in the evening to trample her corpse and destroy her house
On June 10, a 60-year-old woman named Maya Murmu from the Raipal village in Mayurbhanj's Rasagobindapur area was attacked and trampled by an elephant in the forest near her village. | OpIndia News
I'm not trying to put down your idea, I'm trying to point out problems with uplifting animals in relation to the discussion.
Elephants go into 'musth', which is an unavoidable part of the biological cycle in elephants. Musth is characterized by extreme aggression (even killing rhinos), an increase in testosterone of 60 to 140 times, not percent, times, and significant inflammation pain in the glands in the elephant's head. Imagine being conscious of the inevitability of enduring miserable pain and losing control of oneself for at least a week once a year. Would an elephant sophont dread it? Revel in it? Feel doomed? Ashamed? In despair that he can't escape this humiliating painful inevitable part of himself? Would he take out insurance? Face legal prosecution for all the people he stomped when he was crazy? Would legal prosecution be moral or ethical since the elephant was in musth when he stomped the family to death? Would elephants face social ostracization? Prejudice? When human societies take common sense precautions against the elephant community, is it racism? Discrimination? Would elephants resent it, and would their resentment grow to hate?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musth
Uplifted dogs would form gangs, tear their victims apart, then brush their teeth to destroy DNA evidence while they get their stories straight.
Uplifted cats would stalk and murder for the fun of it. Maybe they'll get a taste for human prey and then lie about it. They'd congregate down the alley screaming and howling at each other when the females are heat.
Uplifted animals would most likely not want owners and want to live their own lives. I think they wouldn't give a damn about human beings, because they're sophonts themselves and they don't need the free food anymore. They would be thinking self-aware people, with all the pride and desire for self-determination of people, and their cultures would probably not be compatible with the cultures of human beings, because they would still have all the instincts and reflexes that are intrinsic to their species. Would they look on the treatment of their ancestors by human with fear and disgust? Would this become hate? Would knowledge of their animal heritage be a shame they can't escape?
All of this needs to be thought through. If not, it's all just furries.
EDIT: Aldair in Albion touches on this slightly, including conversations between predator and prey, and the plight of uplifted sheep who cause injury desperately trying to shear each other with barely capable hands, and uplifted bull mercenaries sailing longships they could never build.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
By furries I mean uplifted animals being nothing more than people in fur suits, as in the trope of aliens being nothing more than people in rubber suits. I mentioned degenerate furries once in a prior post regarding the book The Architect of Sleep, and in that context I meant degenerate furries, not uplifted animal characters being nothing more than people in fur suits.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
But seriously your post made me think that I should clarify what I meant, since the aliens as people in rubber suits idea wasn't stated directly anywhere in the discussion, people might not gather what I was alluding to.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
We do domesticate other species, and eat them.
I like bananas.
Marking territory may have become more sophisticated.
I like bananas.
Marking territory may have become more sophisticated.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Sometimes.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Emperor Mongoose
Tool use, promiscuity, non heterosexual sex, revenge, compassion, planning a lot of similarity with non uplifted chimps.
MonsterX
Emperor Mongoose
True, but there are a lot of inhabited planets in Traveller that have dense atmospheres. Once those giant spiders figure out how to build space ships, there will be lots of places for them to go, where they can find delicious humans to eat. With the WBH you should be able to calculate pretty precisely whether they'd be able to breath well enough, in case your players start complaining about being eaten by scientifically inaccurate giant spiders.
Humans and chimpanzees have about 5 million years of separate evolution, so lots of time to each evolve into different patterns of behavior - genetically, but also culturally. Uplifted species don't have that - the scientists tweak whatever genes they tweak, and the uplifted animal might get socialized according to some human-designed program, or not. So depending on what the scientists decide to do - and also on what the unintended consequences turn out to be - a lot of things could happen. Some behaviors might remain - or at least the instinct for those behaviors. A now rational animal might decide not to do those things, but also might still want to do them. Sedentary humans know they shouldn't eat jelly donuts. Still, jelly donuts do tend to get eaten, and this tendency to want this kind of food is based in genetics - our bodies evolved to want high-calorie food because it used to be useful for us to want that. Our minds reward certain behaviors, which might or might not be things we rationally should do, and these have evolutionary roots. With uplifted animals, these behaviors might get removed or not, by intention or by accident (genes sometimes do more than one thing,and changing one thing can have unintended side effects)
In short, the point is that there are lots of potential outcomes from uplifting - particular behaviors could change from the original animals, or not. Adding intelligence would definitely change their behaviors overall - but we still might see behaviors of the old species.
