https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
This may explain why highly intelligent lifeforms from other planets appear to be humanoid. It could be a preset within evolution where humanoids appear eventually in highly intelligent lifeforms. Convergent Evolution is the best argument for Grey Aliens being from other planets yet appearing the same as us (outside of the hybrid theory)
edit: please don't try to make me justify this theory. its just one of many possible theories to muse on. not one i subscribe to or hedge any bets on. its just another angle that this problem can be looked at from to broaden our thoughts
Carcinisation is the real world phenomenon of non-crablike organisms evolving into ones resembling crabs. I have a theory that this in part signifies that Roshar is old enough that literally all native species have undergone advanced carcinisation. Has anyone else (particularly Brandosando) spoken to this being the reason so many species on Roshar are crablike? I've often wondered if the few avian and mammalian species were brought to Roshar more recently by humans in an ark-like situation. Indeed, my first suspicions that humans aren't native to Roshar was the revelation that while most creatures are crablike, there are some rare examples of other types - are there any WOBs that speak to that?
Edited: elaborated a bit on my own suspicions/theories
“Shell the survivors, too! Shell ‘em all!”
Lieutenant shouted out to us with a cheek full of stim-Cal. He stood atop a mound of crabs, E-tool wedged between its disgusting face and its umbrella sized shell.
Me and the platoon, what remained of us after several attempts at overwhelming out encampment by the rushing crabs, wearily, but dutifully rammed our own E-tools into the faces of the crabs and pried off the stick shells. I can’t say I know much about the crab anatomy besides what it takes to kill them, but their innards are like a natural glue, which made sticking a fresh crab shell to the barricade that much easier.
Our bullets and lances can’t get through the shells, but neither can their claws or picks.
Still, their claws and picks were plenty effective on us, especially in our light-duty armor. Maybe the heavy-duty armor would have held up better to the crushing pincers and piercing picks, but they also would have sunk into the sandy muck, a lesson we learned from the half-drowned remains of the first platoon to land here.
As I trudged through the heaps to shuck and fetch more shells for the barricade, numb to the constant screeches of a half-live crab meeting its crustaceous maker via the tip of a lance, I did my best to also scoop up any severed limbs or loose viscera of my comrades. Lieutenant says to burn all remains, because the crabs can smell our meat.
Bullshit.
They probably smell their own, top shell ripped off, guts and brain exposed, innards strewn about and sinking back into the muck.
With no other resources to harvest from, our encampment was almost entirely built from the carcasses of our enemy. A floor of shells kept us from sinking when the loose ground became looser with rising ground water. The walls provided something to hide behind and the crabs seemed to have trouble finding foothold, made hitting the scuttling freaks in the face and soft underbelly a little bit easier when they had to raise up and clear an obstacle.
It was a macabre display of our military might and ruthlessness.
I hate them though.
Closer to the barricade, I saw live one struggling to burrow back through the noxious silt. I caught his back leg with my lance and dragged him back out. I popped him over on his back to finish him off at the belly. Scared out of his wits, he cranked his head towards me and seemed to beg through its dark, black eyes and quivering, white lips. It splayed its claw digits out for mercy, but I'm not allowed any. The shrill a
... keep reading on reddit ➡
The non selected one died yesterday, I do wonder if they ever fully recovered from when they got too warm. Either that or the genetics of this second generation are just poor and I unknowingly made a bad selection in the first generation.
I'm reluctant to continue with this lineage. If I were to continue this project I would rather start a fresh using a different lineage. I still have all of Gertrude's eggs. She developed into a very pretty green colour variant of the German T. cancriformis, and she lived for 133 days.
So, do I continue this project using some of Gertrude's eggs, or do I scrap this project and select for the green colour and long lifespan of Gertrude's offspring?
Might be late to the game on this one but I just realized that the Reapers are supposed to reproduce using the genetic material of the biologicals they wipe out and end up looking something like those biologicals, so we have the human reaper in Mass Effect 2. But almost all the Reapers we see look the same, I would always describe them as insect-like but that's not it at all. They are crab-like. So many of the Reapers look like that because over and over throughout the history of the universe intelligent life has started to look like crabs, the Reapers wipe them out and makes more crab looking Reapers.
Regulusest Absurdus, or grotesque clawed one
This evolved to be faster than it's ancestors, so it can easily escape the Rutrum Turpis. Since it moves to the side, it can be facing toward or away from the Rutrum Turpis and not have to turn to escape. The claws are for snapping the trunks of the tresfolium and bringing it to the mouth (idk the complete face anatomy of the palamkaputists)
Side note: Yes I know there isn't any plates but this is long overdue and the file with plates keeps getting corrupted or I forget to save or whatever else
I've found several references to this concept on two different posts:
On r/TierZoo: New meta?:
- Relevant game guide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation (link)
- The crab build is so perfect that lots of species seem to spec into it independently (carcinization) (link)
- Everything must return to crab. Even fish. / Carcinisation is an S-tier tactic, always has been. (link)
On r/PhilosophyMemes: just a lame meme:
- Returning to primordial soup would give us a good chance of ending up as crabs (link)
Have there been any recent references in any famous media?
Thanks
For my bayou is finally starting to boil.
From what I am reading there seems to be alot of missing genes among birds and bird genomes can be rather short, there also seems to be purely bird genes discovered inside their vast family that is not found elsewhere. Song birds apparently are the quickest to change and mutate, while birds of prey the least likely. So I think multiple kinds of Therapods (predatory dinosaurs that had lizard hips or later evolved bird hips) and ornithischians (bird hipped dinos like Stegosaurus and Triceratops and Stegoceras) basically had various smaller arboreal cousins who could glide... these guys in turn evolved into birds.
https://preview.redd.it/9gruif7s47261.png?width=1717&format=png&auto=webp&s=0cfa63f2883d9c67146cc7124a59ebe619113b7f
