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On September 10 2012 15:01 Ponera wrote:
Protoss anatomy will be a fun one, it will probably be my longest one as there will be no overlap in concepts.
As for the Hydralisk-effect...it makes no sense to just make things look zergy. If they lose functionality or gain extras that really aren't needed then it actually hinders them. What I find odd especially is that they pick organisms based on traits they have already. For example, infestor was a super organism and roach already had amazing regenerative powers. To make them "more zergy" as a rationale is absolutely retarded; why not just evolved their own strains further instead of take on new ones? Not to mention that zerg strains are meant to be utilitarian. They don't have sexual selection, they don't need to intimidate. They do a job as effectively as possible for as cheaply as possible. At least that would be MY goal if I were to make an interstellar force of biological attack units. Then again, Kerrigan did have biological heels and retained her nice boobs...so...perhaps she put a bit of flare into things? I wonder why she didn't stop conquering and just make a line of biological purses for women to buy? She could take over the universe one hand-bag at a time.
That reminds me, I should do zerg-kerrigan and infested terran stuff sometime.
Thanks everyone! You are all so awesome.
Yes please... Kerrigan... the medic... Banshee... Dropship... Nova... all good candidates for anatomy analysis.
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We should maybe get some pictures of all these at different angles first, so I can appropriately asess their shortcomings or qualities.
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Ah man... This is awesome! Only read the zergling so far. Thanks for the input man :D
Edit: My god! And then another biologist chimes in. This thread is getting better and better. What a birthday treat :D
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
This is the most interesting thread I've seen on TL in months
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On September 10 2012 15:01 Ponera wrote:
Protoss anatomy will be a fun one, it will probably be my longest one as there will be no overlap in concepts.
As for the Hydralisk-effect...it makes no sense to just make things look zergy. If they lose functionality or gain extras that really aren't needed then it actually hinders them. What I find odd especially is that they pick organisms based on traits they have already. For example, infestor was a super organism and roach already had amazing regenerative powers. To make them "more zergy" as a rationale is absolutely retarded; why not just evolved their own strains further instead of take on new ones? Not to mention that zerg strains are meant to be utilitarian. They don't have sexual selection, they don't need to intimidate. They do a job as effectively as possible for as cheaply as possible.
At first, I am neither a biologist or a paleontogist. I am just a nerd who grew up with a lot of science books. So everything I write here has to be seen under that premise.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think all Zerg creatures in WoL that can fight in some way got those claws in some fashion. Some are smaller, like the Baneling's, some are bigger, like the corruptor's, some are separated jaws, like the Hyrda's or Roache's. That means to me that they might have a purpose, because so many creatures have them.
One can say the designers just wanted to make the Zerg look more insectuous/fierce, but as we have infinite interpretation powers, I want to propose two suggestions for those mandibles. Those may have flaws, if someone sees some mistakes I make, do not hesitate to point them out.
#1: Even if the Zerg communicate via telepathy (the Overlords), and pheromones, I do not see any reason why the lower creatures do not have a kind of some primitive sign language, maybe for battle, maybe paired with an acoustic communication form for the ground units (I also propose harvesting coordination between drones).
There is an ant species named Camponotus ligniperdus whose workers warn each other by knocking and drumming on hard ground with their mandibles or their gaster. For the zerg ground units, the creep may help to spread signals. Also there are ants that produce sounds through stridulating with their mandibles and their gaster.
The benefits could be pace and energy efficiency. Pheromones have to spread, and thus are slow, and "telepathy" might cost more energy than some claw movements. Summarized they could be used as some low-level communication between the lowest Zerg creatures.
#2: They are for nutrition. If Zerg eat in some way, those claws would help. They could feed with creep. I remember a picture of a wasp using its mandibles to eat bee honey. Creep may be of similar viscosity. But even if creep can be used as food, they could have the possibility to get other kinds of food, to be sure to be able to fight even if there is no or few creep available.
I want to add that to me the Zergling mouth claws look segmented, making them perhaps a tool for holding something, plus they could be moved in all directions.
As stated at the beginning, these are just some proposals, I am not an expert. Just someone with a ton of sciolism in my head, and maybe some bad use of English grammar, so do not be too harsh, perhaps I can at least point into the right direction.
Also while researching, I, as so often, am astonished of how various and brilliant nature is.
Edit: Happy birthday gronnelg!
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They could be used in some form of communication, but it would need to be something ubiquitous throughout the swarm and not all of the creatures actually have the extra set of mandibles. I don't doubt that there is secondary communication to coordinate zergling packs and whatnot, but to say it's related to mandibles like that...I am just unsure. Really, I don't see how flexible a system like that could be! It would almost certainly have to be audible or perhaps pherimonal to be most efficient.
I don't doubt many claws have been added to the swarm, it's just the hydralisk derp jaw I am not a fan of.
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Infestor (cause I do what I want like a teenager on Maury)
![[image loading]](http://www.ther4g.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/infestor.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100401052444/starcraft/images/7/72/Infestor_SC2_DevHead2.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://thesavvygamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/infestor.jpg)
Good morning children! I am just listening to some Pat Benatar and thought "I have 30 mins, why the hell not."
So the infestor is derived from a superorganism. For those that don't know, the unit itself is actually a mobile colony of a bunch of different organisms all functioning as one. Think of it like an ant colony combined with a slug. They appear to have horridly bad frontal sight, which is just fine and dandy as having peripheral vision is important for such a defenseless blob. Presumably it will be behind the front line, so it doesn't exactly need to see in front of itself. The front of the head has an armoured plated which has a bunch of Zoidberg-like tentacles hanging down from it. These presumably mask some sort of orifice and would be used in feeding, but how knows. Perhaps this creature has no specific mouth as the original animal could very well have subsided on food brought in by its smaller counterparts that live inside (and out) of it.
Moving back up the body, it looks like it has that same segmented armour we saw on a mutalisk, overlapping like Roman standard. Each segment apparently has a set of eyes as well for a total of 8. You can see some tubes, 6 in total, that stick out just under the eyes. These are actually very similar to insect spiracles, which is how they would breath. It's a passive breathing method whereby there is limited amount of intake of gases for respiration.
The limbs are armoured in the front as well and there are 6 of them. The reasoning as to why there are bits that stick up from the lime itself makes sense- they protect the limbs behind, allowing for one shot to not completely destroy all the limbs at once (unless it's a really lucky/good one.) To ease their movement, they do make a nice slime trail like a slug. What a charming adaptation.
Under the armoured plates is where the symbionts/other aspects of the super organism would be held. Presumably we don't know everything all that is in there, but we do know that it has a neural parasite that comes from it's rather muscular anus. I don't know what it is about a nice, muscular anus that the zerg favour, but it's definitely seeming to be a trend. Use what you have to work with, I guess! This is also where the fungal spores in the insidious fungal growth are launched from. Along with that, they have infester terrans they can shoot out with abdominal contractions. What's even more charming is that when they are burrowed the only thing that sticks out of the ground is the anal opening along with the three anus claw things. Imagine stepping on one of those. They seem to be lacking in armour behind the frontal plates, which makes a lot of sense for something not made to take a beating that also needs to expand its abdomen for infested terrans. So that makes three separate creatures that live within the infestor, which suggests to me that there are others that help maintain these and the infestor as a whole.
And don't forget the other boy in the band: ![[image loading]](http://www.sc2blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/InfestedTerran.jpg)
Infested terrans pretty much just have the armour cracked open to reveal the soft nougat terran inside and have all kinds of lovely growths.It looks like it's somewhat random, with the exception that the face gets zerged up and the claws are added on the back. What's neat is that it seems to use the powered suit as a platform for expansion biologically rather than using the frail human form. Certainly these growths feed and help keep the infested terran alive, but as we know they don't last too long outside of the infestor. This is probably because they are very volatile and are basically a patchwork retrograde infestation, making their biology very unstable (as supported by how explosive they were back in BW)
:D
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Actually the marines just get control back. It's not that they don't last, it's that they shoot themselves in the head when they manage to take control.
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Ah, yeah that still supports the volatile nature of the infestation they have. :D
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Super late to the party here - re: Roach acid:
Hydrofluoric is unlikely; while it is a highly reactive species (it etches glass!), it's actual acidity is quite low compared to many other "strong acids." Hydrochloric acid is appropriately strong, but you'd need a lot more chlorine than is reasonable to get to manufacture enough HCl to then throw at enemies during battle.
Sulfuric acid is an option, but again, sulfur can be hard to come by. So, my guess is nitric acid! High concentrations are pretty strong (not to the level of sulfuric acid, which is effectively a superacid [technically it's the acid by which superacids are defined], but definitely strong enough to cause damage), and nitrogen is often plentiful. Our atmosphere is ~70% nitrogen, so there would be more raw material than for HCl or H2SO4.
edit: Having thought about it some more, they COULD generate sulfuric acid via advanced proteolysis. Some amino acids (e.g. cysteine) contain a sulfur, so with the right diet/enzymes they might be able to harvest enough sulfur from protein intake to generate sulfuric acid.
(I am a molecular biologist grad student with an undergrad background in organic chemistry and biochemistry, for reference)
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This thread is so cool, I love how people with different angles, and different knowledge bases like chemistry, and genetics, can comment and expand upon Ponera.
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This guy could do some work for blizz's design team.
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What about carbonic acid or perhaps another sort of carbon rich acid? (Lol acetic)
On September 11 2012 06:31 CrazyF1r3f0x wrote:
This thread is so cool, I love how people with different angles, and different knowledge bases like chemistry, and genetics, can comment and expand upon Ponera.
This was the goal when I started this, to get others involved so everyone could have some fun with it.
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On September 10 2012 15:01 Ponera wrote:
As for the Hydralisk-effect...it makes no sense to just make things look zergy. If they lose functionality or gain extras that really aren't needed then it actually hinders them. What I find odd especially is that they pick organisms based on traits they have already. For example, infestor was a super organism and roach already had amazing regenerative powers. To make them "more zergy" as a rationale is absolutely retarded; why not just evolved their own strains further instead of take on new ones? Not to mention that zerg strains are meant to be utilitarian. They don't have sexual selection, they don't need to intimidate. They do a job as effectively as possible for as cheaply as possible. At least that would be MY goal if I were to make an interstellar force of biological attack units.
You need to keep in mind the lore though, when the Xel'Naga were creating the Zerg, they were striving to ensure that they had a "purity of essence" in contrast to the "purity of form" that the Protoss possessed. That purity of essence is why the assimilated creatures adopt a "Zergy" appearance, they are suppoesd to in order to show how the original host species has been fully assimilated into the Swarm. As to the fact that Zerg assimilate organisms for what they already bring to the table, that's also established in the lore as their modus operandi. The Zerg can enhance and modify what is already there, but they can't create new and interesting gene sequences ex nihilo so they grow by looking for the most "evolutionary advanced" (however that is supposed to be defined) organisms to assimilate and eat everything else.
If anyone is interested and doesn't have or can't find their SC1 manual, here's a link to a pdf from Blizzard. If you look at the picture of the larva there, the mandibles it sports is likely what ends up becoming the Hydralisk-like jaw that everything seems to end up with.
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Do you think that Kerrigan kept canon to that philosophy though?
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I am thinking queen might be next, but the queen presents some unique challenges to the zerg which makes me want to think about their morphology a bit more. On the roster for "next" now that I've had my selfish fix are: Drone, Overlord, Larvae. Thanks for indulging my selfish fix this morning, I know I said I'd do what you guys request most and then talked about swarm host...but yeah. Got the urge!
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Nice work again Ponera. I bit of a feedback: compared to the other units, you didn't take a critical view of the interstor. I missed that. I really enjoyed reading about what was plausible/unplausible, and why. Please re-incorporate that into your next dissection? 
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I feel the same way about the infestor. It really doesn't have much morphology to work with, sadly! I walked away from it feeling bad about it. The infestor is hard to be critical of because, to be quite frank, it's really modest. REALLY modest. All that is infester is housed in that bloated abdomen. While speculation is fun, I am trying my best to look at what is there and then (at most) make one assumption based on each aspect. I could go on and on, as could anyone, about the internal structures of the infestor and how each and every bit works. Ultimately, I realized it would be fruitless as people would assume I am right (which I am not) or fight me to the bitter end (which they would be right to) and so I talked a bit more about ecology of the infestor (ecology as it fits within the zerg structure, that is.)
My apologies! I have actually been working for about an hour on queen, creep, hive structure and a few other things just to understand them as best as I can, which is the most significant single investment I've made to this project as far as time goes. The queen is going to be a hard beast to tackle, as is the creep, and giving details on a blob of purple goo really is hard if you are trying to stay canon or at least dance with canon as best you can.
I also feel that the infestor is actually rather smartly designed and as such, with what I was given to work with, I couldn't find much in the way of "this makes me annoyed" as I try to rationalize or explain things. I was bothered a bit by how it can move underground or even burrow. The limbs are TERRIBLE for digging even if the abdomen can contract. Moving forward while underground is baffling...it's hard enough to fathom with a roach, nevermind something like an infestor.
I'll do my best to work harder on the next one and be the biggest jerk I possibly can to the organism in question! Nah, I'll try to pick something that has meat on the bone, so to speak, so that means larvae is kind of a terrible choice. Thanks for the feedback though. I do appreciate it very much.
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I made a really subtle joke there about meat on a bone, yet infestor and larva are all meat with clearly no endoskeleton. The irony is palpable. Just ruining it for everyone.
![[image loading]](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100702150415/simpsons/images/6/6a/Mr_Burns_evil.gif)
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EPT
