Anonymous asked: So in the light of the ridiculous "Titan Dolphin" from the TFIW remake I decided to make "aerocetes" and turn the flish and birds into flying dolphins.

cheetahtrout:

alphynix: so disappointed. …I hadn’t heard about a new Future Is Wild project, and now I’ve looked it up I’m sodisappointed. Because the “titan dolphin” makes no anatomical sense. [source: The Future Is Wild VR] It appears to have been designed purely for looks, with no real regard for how either dolphins work or just animal anatomy in general. (Or, worse, it looks like somebody drew an “alien dinosaur” concept and then just slapped the “dolphin” ancestry onto it after the fact to try to make it more interesting.)

Why is its vestigial tail fluke vertical instead of horizontal? Why do its teeth seem to go right around the corners of its weird-looking lips? What possible use are such long thin fragile fangs? Why does it have lizard scales? Why is it so lumpy?

And where are its organs? If its legs are derived from forelimbs, then the “body” around them has to be pretty much entirely its ribcage. This thing is literally just the front half of an animal with no space for a digestive system! No wonder its mouth is stuck open in a perpetual scream.

This infuriated me more than it should have, so I gave the titan dolfin my own try at a hopefully more reasonable redesign: At first I focussed on its bipedality, trying to figure out if it was at all possible. As you stated, the GUTS would prevent it from a dinosaurlike stance. It would constantly fall over backwards, no matter how string the arms where. But What if it didnt turn its tail into a thin useless rope of scales and instead developed its strong muscles further and use it as a third “leg” to stand on. Its fluke growing thicker and more stable, providing additional stabilities to the sides.



Thats how I could see it walk bipedaly. Or rather bimanaly. It couldnt run fast. It could throw itself into water real quick, but a cheetahlike chasescene wouldnt be possible. So I guessed it returned to its very early roots and became a herbivore once more, living in water but feasting on land plants like a hippo nowadays. After all, whippomorpha (dolfins and whales) are very closely related to hippos and a little less closely with pigs and even cattle and it wouldnt be the first time a carnovorous lineage became herbivorous again ( looking at you therizinosaurus).



I dont know how well a melon would work outside of water. I assume it wouldnt, in wich case I guess the echochamber would become more hollow and turn into a trumpet for the dolfin to create booming calls towards its brethren.



As for the dorsal fin…. I have no reason for it. Its purely eastetical, I admit.



So anyway. thats my take on the creature. Im still sad they trash this series with such shitty designs, but working on this calmed me down a bit.



Oh, that’s a really neat take on it!

I’ve been thinking about how I’d do my own version of a “land dolphin”, too, and I actually ended up taking it in a pretty similar initial direction, using the tail for weight-bearing.

(I just… might have gone a bit weirder with it.)



Their ancestors are dolphins who develop the behavior of driving their prey up onto the shore to catch it, beaching themselves in the process and then wriggling back into the water – similar to the way some modern dolphins beach themselves while hunting fish, along with how orcas hunt sea lions.

They gradually get better and better at maneuvering themselves on the shore, going from flopping to a more sea lion-like bounding motion using strengthened and more flexible flippers and their powerful tails. Instead of just beaching fish they start outright preying on terrestrial animals on the shore, too, in a sort of ambush predator niche.



Eventually they start using their tail as a tripod pseudo-leg, curling it beneath themselves so they can use it to propel themselves forwards. They don’t really run, instead leaping along in an almost frog-like motion to chase terrestrial prey.



They’re still semi-aquatic at this point, spending most of their time lurking in the water, but from here they can become more and more terrestrial.

Their melons reduce because echolocation doesn’t work as well for hunting in air, but they keep the dorsal fins for now as visual display structures. Instead of regaining separate digits their limbs develop tough hoof-like keratinized pads, and they take the vestigial hairs they still develop as embryos and fully grow some sensory whiskers.

They grow some big tusks, too, because they’re bad-tempered pig-like things that like to fight each other.

Then some of them reactivate the genes for body fur, and get kinda hairy, too. They develop elaborate bony crests on their snouts (like a more ridiculous version of some extinct beaked whales), and so their dorsal fins start to become less prominent.

With longer limbs and stronger hooves, they end up as big carnivores somewhat convergent with entelodonts.



…And that’s how I accidentally turned a dolphin into a unicorn. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯