I watched a documentary recently that focused on sleuthing the reasons for the giant arthropods demise, and the oxygen rule is apparently not as strong as people think. Apparently meganeura (giant dragonfly) species existed all the way into the Jurassic.
There are biologists that put the limit of size for an open circulatory system closer to the size of a dog. Past that a closed circulatory system would be necessary...but there are examples of arthropods independently developing closed systems
While oxygen levels do influence the size of arthropods, even our current atmosphere can support a cat sized arthropod. Coconut crabs are a good example of their potential.
In fact, it was the destruction of jungle habitat and competition with vertebrates that did the giant insects of the Carboniferous. They actually survived a bit into the early Permian.
I must admit.. I was prepared to come and correct you on the basis that insect have a different respiratory system from crustaceans.... Then I realized how stupid I was.... Because their circulatory systems are the same... And the only true problem with the insect respiratory system...is that it's not directly connected to the circulatory system. But that still allows the possibility of growing to something around dog/cat size... And possibly even slightly larger. Don't get me started on how wrong the exoskeleton argument against giant insects is.... So thanks I guess 😁
It might be interesting to cover cattle specializing in insectivory. You’ve only really covered the ones that hunt other cattle, and it doesn’t feel realistic to me to let such an enormous amount of protein go to waste. Loving this series, though! I can’t wait for more.
Cattle already eat a lot of insects. When grazing, that's usually where they get most of their protein. But specializing in it is a good idea once they grow smaller
@@battledome3226that doesn’t work as well as whales are filter feeders which is only possible in water. consuming large amounts of small food on land is way more difficult.
In the last video I hypothesized that, given that there is a thick layer of mycelium in the soil, some plants could evolve a mutualistic symbiosis in which the fungi would become the "trunk" while the grass above could grow and specialize in order to create the "Leaves ". Imagine a forest of palm-like plants that are actually two different organisms. Furthermore, to be habitable, the planet needs geological activity, which would form mountains, rifts and greatly change the morphology of the planet, creating new biomes and new adaptations.
During the time of the dinosaurs, ferns were the major plant. Fern trees existed at this period. So grass trees could possibly evolve. Now, imagine some grasses and/or other plants (such as clover) becoming carniferns. Helping to limit the bug explosions that could occur.
Armored cattle would be interesting. Possible in smaller species that need defense against predators. Something like a cow pangolin or armadillo. Could eventually lead to cow glyptodonts!
Borrowing grasshoppers? The Seeders could have seeded the planet with many generations of locusts like those that swarmed the USA last year. If enough groups are seeded, there could be an annual invasion of locusts, which would compete with cattle for grass, but would also be a source of protein (& other stuff) for the cattle. The ones that aren't eaten will fertilise the fields. One very important thing that is missing are trees. It's important to have places where cattle can protect themselves from the sun, & cows do eat fruits to add more vitamines (& other stuff) to their diet.
Excellent video! If you want more ideas for invertebrate evolutionary pathways: . Krill evolving into a clade resembling Eurypterids . Earthworm, Millipede and Spider clades returning to the ocean . Pill bugs evolving into trilobite-like creatures . Deep-sea gigantism among all of the above . Dragonflies evolving bee-like hive societies
I'd love to see the big spider called "Arctosatitan" Arctosa is the genus for the burrowing wolf spiders and you know what titan means so I think it fits pretty well^^
@@Alien_Evolution i second arctosatitan, or maybe even titanocosa. will you be focusing much more on the invertebrates in the future? there is so much potential for them, like for example corpse feeding insects that set up some sort of pitfall traps for cows by burrowing or specialized spiders that attack like how big cats do, grabbing onto the back of the cow where it cant reach and biting. also a side note, i feel like flying blood sucking insects like horse flys could end up being really successful evolutionarily, as their only real threat was arial predators like wasps and birds, which don't exist on the planet. dragonflies may be able to prey on them but they also need to stay near water sources to reproduce, meaning that they are untouchable when more inland.
@@Alien_Evolution oh nice! good to know that im onto something with the fly thing. other than that, do you have any ideas/future plans for the inverts?
In the last video I hypothesized that, given that there is a thick layer of mycelium in the soil, some plants could evolve a mutualistic symbiosis in which the fungi would become the "trunk" while the grass above could grow and specialize in order to create the "Leaves ". Imagine a forest of palm-like plants that are actually two different organisms. Furthermore, to be habitable, the planet needs geological activity, which would form mountains, rifts and greatly change the morphology of the planet, creating new biomes and new adaptations.
For the grasshopper I propose "Neotitanoptera cicadaformi" Neo: new in Greek, titanoptera: a group of grasshopper-like priedator insects equipped with raptorial legs, cicadaformi: from Latin "cicada-shaped" for the wings and growth behavior.
I found this series recently when I was craving some seed world content and it's really been able to scratch that itch. Great work so far with this project! Can't wait to see where you take it :)
For the spider genus: Buculovenator: 'Calf hunter' For the Grasshopper genus: Legiogryllus: 'Legion Grasshopper/cricket', a reference to it's mass emergence behaviour.
The foot long spiders could be called cowlions (like ant lions, which dig burrows and hunt ants, but these hunt cows so you know) Their scientific name could be neopalpares, meaning new ant lions
I think their family would be short-lived. They'd have an early advantage to grow and specialize, but while they get large to hunt larger, some cattle would become small to hunt smaller. Much more efficient cat-sized predatorial cattle would out-compete them eventually on most scenarios, with competition normalized, all the same weeknesses that prevent massive invertebrates to take up that niche on Earth would eventually apply to Apollo.
Here are my picks for the names: Deinoscelis (terrible legs) for the giant spiders, and Trypanogryllus (burrowing grasshopper) for the huge locusts Also, I could see coleoid cephalopods like squid or cuttlefish moving into the niche left by fish (assuming they were among the plankton or aquatic life seeded)
I suspect several of those plants would evolve into tree, megaherb, and bamboo forms. And now I imagine arboreal cows. And flying squirrel cows. And flying cows. And burrowing mole cows.
@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana Alternatively have one of their stomach chambers grow extra large and fill with hydrogen produced by symbiotic bacteria giving us balloon cows that fart-jet through the sky.
Please discuss how the plant life of this 'Cattle World' will evolve. I'm guessing...*GRASSES* will evolve some sort of defense to deter cattle from munching on them too much, maybe some 'Serrated grasses' will become common? or grasses that can grow back very fast? Or what about some Grasses that will slowly evolve into 'Aquatic Grasses'.
This really makes me want and root for humanity to conquer the stars and become interstellar...only because I want a planet to become like this and see what happens lol
Well, if we presume that pillbugs are brought to the planet, it could be likely that species of pillbugs along the coastline could fill in coastal niches and grow to much larger sizes (akin to terrestrial crabs or the close cousins; deep sea isopods).
i suggest the mega spider genus to be Caroficedula "latin for flesh eater" or possibly gigantarachne "from gigantic and the greek mythological figure arachne"
The giant grasshopper i don't have a name for but the giant clawed spider could be"dienoaracnae" with a certain species of it being "megacarnoaracnae ferox"
A thought occurs to me... With enough time would there be a possibility of tree analogues forming? And would there be a possible elephant, giraffe or even sauropod like cow that could feed on them?
This is such a cool series! I really like the idea of the grasshoppers being the major population of insects in a cow world. A lot of species of grasshoppers have the tendency to transform into locusts during rapid changes in the enviroment and when there are a lot of grasshoppers around at the same time. The planet is probably reigned quite a bit by the locust presence, since swarms of locusts can easily devour entire forests. Also, depending on the size of the grasshoppers, their predators (mainly the spiders) must be huge in comparison. Maybe some species of spiders later specialize in a carrion heavy diet, it would probably be easier to eat carrion than to hunt grasshoppers. Maybe some species of spiders evolve into a symbiotic relationship with some species of cows, helping manage pests (like gadflies, mosquitos, etc) and the cows provide places to live and help distribute their species across the regions. There's so many possibilities, I just find this project very interesting! Especially if you start bringing bugs into this world, bugs are just so endlessly fascinating and there are just so many niches they can easily fill (to help or compete against the cows) Can't wait to see more!
i could imagine that the crickets have a mice like niche as nymphs and the name could reflect that: Caelimures, this means like "heaven mice" in latin and comes from the scientific name of the crickets.
For the spider: Gigarachne ushioni, after the Japanese spider demon with an ox head For megafauna: a shout-out to Dougal Dixon's gigantelope with massive horns used for digging up roots, and an indricothere-like cow with moose lips for eating giant tree-like grasses
5:20 uhh greater arachnophage? 5:31 forfexus can be the family name and mmm Bladed locust? Also AMAZING WORK!! I still dont understand how people draw bugs 😅 Btw when you talked about big insects and showed a grasshopper i immediately had flashbacks to jurassic world dominion _So that was fun._
Didnt know people did it like this. I always had the idea of only leaving the weirdest mammals reptiles and birds(other groups remain unchanged) on earth. Sloths, echidnas,anteaters,kiwi,koala,American opossum,platypus, lake Baikal seal,tuatara,giant tortoise, alligator snapping turtle, colugo, kakapo, all penguins, all bats, hummingbirds and pandas I think that would be a sick scenario. Imagine penguins moving inland into an Africa devoid of predators while another group moves into the seas permanently
AHH this was so good!! Loved it so much man❤❤❤ look forward to more!! Do you think the predators would evolve leaner forms if rabbits or deers were introduced maybe even moose?
next video should dive on seeing how plants start evolving in this world, like some evolving defenses around their leaves, or some of them starting to evolve to fill the niche of trees
I think that invertebrates in water could grow to be truly giagantic. We already have fairly large aquatic invertebrates right now with no competition they could be larger and they have gills as well.
Amazing series! Love it every time you upload. I'd love to see some spec evo on the plants of this world, eventually. Without any major covering plants (aka trees) and with multiple examples on Earth of grasses evolving tall, tree-like structures (palm trees an example of this I believe) it's a completely open niche they could probably very easily exploit. With how relatively-uniform the planet's climate is across differences of latitude, I can imagine that, without bark-consuming animals (which would not have been imported since there were no trees for them to eat, with any sneaking their way on losing the trait or dying of starvation), you'd get a similar situation to the carboniferous period, with gigantic forests and nothing to digest them. I wouldn't be easy, since there's no way that would all happen without some interference from the post-bovine (and some of the larger post-arachnid) species, but it would still be possible.
why do I feel like megafaunal hypercows would evolve their horns to point forward and serve the same purpose as elephant tusks? Maybe I just want to see cows evolve into elephants. Well the next logical step would be to extend the cow's already pretty strong upper lip into a psudo-trunk. Maybe the nose extends allong with it and becomes a real trunk making a horn-tusked, hoof-footed, small eared pacowderm which could be called Ceradon Loxomimus? Horn-tooth that looks like an elephant.
About insects i would like to see what praying mantis have evolved into (since they were introduced). They look soo cool like little aliens! On a planet with almost no competition they could take trully alien shapes! Also about insectivore cow i think that something in between anteater and pangolin could work (long tongue, elongated face, somewhat armoured head so insects cant fight back, large hoofs made for digging in the ground and smaller size than a typical cow). I trully love the concept of seeded worlds and this one is really unique!
Imagion Large Cattles swapping from grass to evolving large and long sticky tounges for swipping at large swarms of prey! Maybe they even evolve to squat on their hind legs and stand on them. focusing more sturdiness in their hind legs and evoling long scuer like horns for fighting off certain preditors. They could be able to easily crush large spiders with their giant feet which might evolve extra toes for stronger grip on the ground. and their front hooves evolve into knuckle walking claws~
I have always found it interesting how gravity effects life forms and their maximum size before the square cube law starts killing creatures. But I would mostly be interested in the plants if they had lived in a low gravity (let’s just say the gravity of the moon) it would allow creatures and plants to get a lot bigger
i would like to point out bamboo, Sonchus palmensis, and scalesia these are ALL very close to the plants listed above YET all looks like tree or act like trees, I would suggest that the plants diversify and evolve into these large tree like structures, this forces the cattle to evolve into megatherium/Paraceratherium. Also i would imagine a lot of the plants could evolve tuber/shoots/roots that become dense with nutrients that support a species of subterranean wombat like cattle
I'd love to see giant crab shrimp! Also, what would happen to these grasslands over millions of years? Would any develop into forests? It would be cool to see an arboreal cow species evolved for climbing trees! I think accounting for massive environmental shifts over the eons means that you might even see deserts, tundras, and other biomes form. A cow living in the desert might even begin to tunnel under the sand to escape the heat and find roots and water, eventually becoming subterranean! But yeah, very cool series thank you!
Given that burrowing is a natural way to escape predation it would be awesome if we could get an insectivore cow that digs around in the dirt with its horns. Sorta like the Gigantelope's antlers in After Man. Maybe they even shove their long straight downward facing horns into holes and then lick them clean with an elongated tongue. Sort of an anteater niece but they specialize in grubs instead of ants.
To get most of the diversity, you would probably need the cattle 🐄 to first evolve into small niches, as they tend to be a lot more flexible than the large ones. I think for most of the big changes, you need to decide on one or a few cow lineages that evolve into a small generalist. Which is then the ancestor to a wide variety of stuff down the line. Also, plants constantly evolve into trees 🌲, so adding multiple trees in would be a good idea.
I think the spider could be called Thesearachne, again a creature named after Theseus since it hunts small cattle and Theseus slayed the half-bull Minotaur.
I’m curious as to what the cows will look like when they evolve into humanoid species! In my head im picturing an entire race of intelligent Minotaurs!
For the large spider (this is more of a meme than anything serious) they could reference the sea scorpion genus thought to be a giant spider (Megarachne). Maybe Eumegarachne (true great spider), Pseudomycterops (false-Mycterops, type genus of the family that included megarachne) or Eurypterimimus (sea scorpion-mimic) Also Grasshoppers could diversify further, adopting niches of its relatives like crickets and katydids as detritivores or even predators
I myself am an artist as well as a hobbyist reseatcher who love Zenobiology and world building and studies all the sciences for fun, I would be glad to discuss me helping with the series
Wonderful video! Thank you for the opportunity to make some illustrations for this one (the spider and the color of the grasshopper). I cant wait to see what’s in store for the future!
Size increase in invertebrates could be achieved via a developments of lungs, which isn't a total impossibility in the game of life. Name ideas: Spider: Arachnoterrent (Spider-Scare) Grasshopper: Cimexurit (Burning Bug)
Megafauna is my favorite, but isn't the planet on an early stage yet? I don't think we have enough food to sustain megafauna yet... there's basicaly insects and grass (and other cows), maybe focus on the plants and aquatic life for now, and leave megafauna for a later stage of evolution? Again, just throwing some thoughts...
As a food source, grass shouldn't be underestimated. Not to mention there'll be a few million years between the seeding and the next episode, giving plants enough time to also make some major changes
One thing I recoment for when you go back into the carnivorous cows is to look into mesonichids. They were a group of ungulates sister group to cows, pigs and whales that had a lot of omnivorous to carnivorous members, and their carnivorous members would range from pig presenting, to super nimble pig presenting (think indohyus), to canine and even civet presenting carnivores or insectivores with sometimes not even just claw like hooves but their hooves reevolved back into claws. And they didn't go extinct because of modern carnivoran competition but climate change killing their prey and/or themselves. So have fun with that!
And yeah, thinking about what pressured would make cows make their hooves smaller and redevelop fuctionality on their back toes, it's the water. Since hooves add drag to swimming and more fingers make better paddles. Perhaps perhaps branches of either or both aquatic cows had relatives that when straddling the line where land movement isn't too cumbersome radiate back into land as more hippo esque hoove using all four fingers cows that can not only be quieter and more steathy on land if such traits forced them down to digitigrade if not even plantigrade walking, but also with smaller modification like they taking more claw like forms allow them to exploit the niches of grass trees that rise up. I think hoofed would still likely have the advatage of being better endurance runners than these though, and if anything they could force them to be small and insectivorous. If the pressure to just move well on a inland radiotion isn't enough somehow, catching fast nimble insects could be the ultimate presure for them to slowly morph into almost carnivoran presenting animals for the job.
I am loving this series, do you think you'll do a video on how the plant life would diversify? The plants would also be attempting to develop ways to avoid being eaten by the cattle and insects.
I have some questions about this world 1. you have said there are numerous large seas but does this produce enough rain for continuous plains all around? Because if not, I wonder if there are deserts, or I wonder if there was a sprinkler system of some sorts introduced to keep the whole world wet? 2. I assumed there was no trees, so only plains, marshes, etc. would exist? 3. closer to the poles, what would happen? did these scientifically advanced humans find a way to keep the temperature similar to the equator near the poles? or are there more tundra like environments? or polar seas?
1. Initially the humans set up a system to keep the whole planet watered. I haven't decided what it is yet, but it will grow less stable as time progresses 2. No trees yet 3. I'm thinking Apollo will quickly become hotter than modern Earth. The poles may be cool but won't have any permanent ice
5:11 Four great options to name the spider: 1- Theraphosaltis (jumping Tarantula) 2- Oryctaranodinos (terrible spider rabbit) 3- Aracnolepus (spider hare) 4- Theraphovulpes (tarantula fox)
I'm liking the sound of "Giganlupus" for the giant spider, translating to "Giant Wolf". I noticed how you intended the spiders to possibly be descendents of Wolf Spiders, so I thought the name would be fitting
I think flies,buttlerflies and some dragonflies can evolve into niche birds. And other dragonflies could evolve into the lizards' niche. crickets in mice niche
Im surprised you didn't mention on possible Aquatic Invertebrates on Apollo. Because if Marine Cattle can exist. I'm pretty sure the largest Arthopods would begin to evolve in the oceons 🤔
If the spiders ever evolve into water-dwellers to eat the water-dwelling bovines, I'd call them "Giganthalarachnids" simply meaning giant sea spiders. Edit: So, when will there be cows acting as scavengers like the Hyenas?
Eventually an interesting scenario to explore in this project would be the shipwreck of a group of human refugees on the planet. The low plant diversity would make survival with limited resources a challenge.