I was also thinking about them evolving to look more salamander like and then fill the niches of large semi-aquatic ambush or fishing predator in fresh water, usually occupied by crocodilians. They would probably evolve to resemble animals like koolasuchus or prionosuchus in my opinion.
Another iconic “pond” creature I think of is the garter snake, which I think could perform quite well with the abundance of invertebrates, minnows, frogs, and rabbits
Yeah and they actually usually get the uno reverse card and get turned into a chalk outline by the frog they were gonna eat so that way they don't kill everything
great point. And they might radiate/ diversify into python and sea snake analogues. The fake pythons would have to be big to compete with the size of the barely predated rabbits, which would get bigger due to either island gigantism or dodo effect. Rabbits might also develop venom immunities, causing selective pressure for constrictor hunting methods and loss of their weak venom. The fake sea snakes would develop a potent venom (like neurotoxins and blood clotting ones) to disable fast swimming fishes' mobility. They might also develop this as more of a defensive mechanism along with bright color scales on their underbelly. Their vibration sense can be honed as a warning system for predators underneath. Their heat "vision" could be honed or co-opted into detecting bioluminescence and faint red wavelengths to help with hunting in deeper depths. They might loose their sense of smell completely to facilitate the development of one or multiple new super senses I mentioned above. sorry for the essay lmao, I get crackhead tunnel vision.
Pondea. That's the name. To see gigantic filter-feeding minnows would be pretty cool. And a catfish with prehensile whiskers to catch its prey. Maybe even a catfish evolving to fill the octopus-like niche.
What about giant ducks! Ducks are already filter feeders, after all Sure, they would be restricted in size due to needing to return to land to lay their eggs, but there are definitely ways of getting around that
Actually maybe they could evolve to eject there stomach acid, there's already a species of baby bird that does this and if it hits any unfortunate predator tryna eat it they gonna get some big boy burns
@@deadchannelagainaeeerrrrrr6047 well combine that with the fact that they do have teeth and that their beak can become hardened and fire proofed... you got dragon right there if the puke is caustic and flammable enough
I think a good idea for the evolution of frogs would be for them to become more arboreal. They could start climbing the mangrove trees to avoid the fish, turtles and other creatures and when the trees start flourishing more they could become less amphibious and more arboreal. They could diversify much more once forests form(if you want them to). Maybe you could have them gain kind of a chameleon niche and prey on the flying insects or just make them very agile and basically become monkeys.
Meanwhile the funny little crocodyliforms in the corner of the ponds. Oh and also i think that salamanders or newts should be in this project too. Also a name suggestion: Kinedvede, based of Kis nedves eden which is little wet eden in Hungarian
For the Giga ponds, maybe we could see a frigate bird like heron morph, and I think kingfishers would be a good introduction to the pond world if they arent to similar to herons
"They are just tundras but with more water" I don't know if you've seen a tundra but its actually already a very soggy place with lots of standing water, its already a perfect fir for this world.
I am IMPRESSED, this is awesome! I do think you did the rabbits a little dirty, though. They barely changed while the herons and turtles evolved so much already! Anyway, good job
How about a “pet store” planet? (Hamsters, budgies, macaws, Amazon freshwater fish, ball pythons, geckos, finches, hermit crabs, and the typical reef fish)? Dogs and cats optional, but I omitted them because they’d take over
I can't help but wonder what keeps the forest in check. With an abundance of water, light, and wide open meadows.. this entire world should be forested
Chickens would evolve into many types of species (Flying, Terrestrial, Aquatic, & Burrowing). Snakes would only evolve into: - Aquatic - Burrowing - Terrestrial
Could be cool, but I think it takes away some of the creative freedom as we already know how terrestrial crocodiles would probably evolve and look like, as we have many terrestrial crocodilian or similar archosaurs' fossils as examples
Crocodiles already did this multiple times before, during and after the dinosaurs. They essentially become upright crocodilians with dinosaur-like heads reaching length of 6-7 meters(20ish ft) and the mass of about a ton. Saurosuchus, Razanandrongobe and Barinasuchus are three species from completely different times and yet they all look alike. Barinasuchus is pretty fun. It's Cenozoic, mammals dominate most megafaunal niches, and this reptile straight out of Triassic period shows up, dominates the ecosystem as an apex predator and becomes the largest land predator in the whole Cenozoic Era.
Looks like an interesting concept. With the massive swarms of mosquitoes described, maybe some creature evolves to filter-feed on them? Also, kind of missing willow trees as typical pond flora
Are there any lizards on the planet? Also i have an idea for a planet where velvet worms are on all continents and only 1 isolated continent has tetrapods, the only tetrapods on the continent are tuataras and crested geckos. Guppies are the only other chordate and are found everywhere except the polar regions. Mealworm beetles, fruitflies, springtails, bristletails, and cockroaches are the only insects there. And there are no arachnids or myriapods on the planet. And all classes of molluscs are there, but bivalves will have the most species, having 50 species introduced to the planet.
For the beginning of a seed world or a seed world like spec evo project it is important to remember animals and want an easy life, so will not be try-hards with a sigma grind-set for no reason. So that means in the initial stages genetic 🧬 drift and sexual selection will dominate. Genetic 🧬 drift leads to pure chaos so it is probably best to skip the earliest stages as they won't really conform to logic and neatness. A major factor is there might be breakaway lineages of disabled organisms separated by sexual selection, whose disabilities mean they have to settle for a lifestyle most members of their species don't do because it is more miserable. This could end up being an evolutionary advantage in a low competition setting, as it means they can avoid competition, leading to niche partitioning. For example, birds who cannot fly have to settle for a life of chasing down prey on foot most birds would find too distasteful/cumbersome to catch. This could lead to them mating with each other more as organisms are more likely to mate with organisms with the same lifestyle as it is more convenient to do and they seem more like them. This could lead to lineages of flightless birds, even if being flightless serves no purpose other than making the organisms more desperate, thus exploiting resources with less competition.
Since you mentioned sharing ideas that we had, I made a predatory mole species in my fantasy world These moles are covered in thick fur, almost blind, have massive claws able to cut through stone, long trunks that give them a keen sense of smell, and have long tusks they use to compete amongst thier colonies. These moles prey on almost anything they find and bring them to thier small colonies of 7 to 12 individuals and even have been known to prey on humans and even thier dead. I love these guys and thank you for letting me share off this idea
What about a world where magnets are built into its inhabitant's bodies? Predators could catch their prey by opening their magnet filled mouth and sucking them inside.
I think that realistically pond-skates are heavily disadvantaged and would suffer extreme pressure to adapt, perhaps into a filter-feeding megafaunal crustacean-like arthropod? The second clade of these pseudo-crustacaens entirely unrelated to the diving beetles? (much like pinnipeds and cetaceans who spec'd into different niches and evolved from different kinds of mammal) The skates first adapt into "yeti-bugs" evolutionary pressure: the murky green waters of the smaller ponds can quickly become choked with algae, thick green clouds preventing the pond skates from accessing their prey in these environments. adaptation: the skates evolve huge filaments from their mouth and legs, descending beneath the pond-scum and allowing the animal to feed off of zooplankton beneath the waves. This would also allow them access to a more lucrative source of prey, allowing them to grow bigger and no longer be preyed upon by ducks/frogs HOWEVER the pond skate is STILL at a disadvantage. In the larger gigaponds and betaponds, large vortices of undercurrents would create turbulence, reducing water surface tension and ensuring that yeti-skate populations stay relatively small despite their new-found access to an enormous food source. AND they are still preyed upon by the herons. adaptation: and so, perhaps the yeti-skates to escape their food scarcity, and their predators, reduce their apility to skate on the water surface tension, and use their hydrophobic limbs to create air-chambers, collecting oxygen for use beneath the waves. And their filamentous hairs spread out, funneling zooplankton into a body that, to escape predation by fish, evolves to be larger with each generation. Leading to an enormous arthropod, using its legs to store air to make up for a lack of lungs (or perhaps its hind legs partially subsume into the thorax to create hydrophobic pockets that store air to diffuse into the body, prototype lungs) as well as with an enormous conical mouth partially formed of filaments used to feed on plankton I can see these creatures becoming the first "whales" of the world much more easily than, say, animals like the duck or the diving beetles who are relatively safe in their niches within this environment and so are not encouraged to explore further. Whereas an animal like the pond scate is forced to shed their niche that would be unsuccesful and highly contested by animals like the duck, relegating the pond skates that do not adapt, perhaps not to extinction but to scavenging their meals in a hostile environment surrounded by predators.
I am working on it as a side project, but I am looking to make a spec evo video series about future Australia, and how the wildlife; both native and invasive would go onto to evolve alongside each other. How do the invasive species reshape and change Australia? Which native animals would be left once the post human population boom of all wildlife ends? What niches will what species (native and other wise) come to fill? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the idea.
This is one of the most original piece of spec evo in recent years. Seed worlds have been done to death, but you ended up making the entire planet a single biome (sort of). I’ll definitely be returning to this.
Can’t wait to see what you present in the future And for some ideas: A world with only pigs 🐖 A world with only camels 🐪 🐫🦙 And some ideas that aren’t spec focused but interesting ideas that you might like to do and give a spec breakdown What if humans vanished, and speculative future for zoo and farm animals The speculative future of Pleistocene Park mega fauna Planet of the Jurassic park Dinosaurs Spec (fictional or real life counterparts)
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated soda S-O-D-A, soda I saw the little runt sitting there on a log I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said, "Yoda" Y-O-D-A, Yoda Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo-Yoda Well, I've been around, but I ain't never seen A guy who looks like a Muppet, but he's wrinkled and green Oh, my Yoda Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo-Yoda Well, I'm not dumb, but I can't understand How he can lift me in the air just by raising his hand Oh, my Yoda Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo-Yoda Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo-Yoda Well I left home just a week before And I've never, ever been a Jedi before But Obi-Wan, he set me straight, of course He said, "Go to Yoda and he'll show you the Force"
I would've added foxes and mustelids to prey on the rabbits, some more amphibians like salamanders and caecilians, swans, geese, shoebills, loons and maybe some more species of reptiles like snakes and lizards
You should make a planet that is inhabited by various crustations, squids, insects(giant mosquito) and lots of plants and many carnivorous plants. it would be a very warm planet the main biome would be like jungle like the amazon there would be lots of volcanic activity lots of small islands planet would have only two Techtronic plates that split almost at the equator this would be where most of the land would be but on the top and bottom it would almost only be ocean.
For a small spec evolution world I thought of. What about a world that is mostly inhabited by Quilled rodents? Like Porcupines, Hedgehogs, Echidnas, Tenrecs and so fourth. I imagine that there would be a variety of plants and small invertebrates like insects to provide food for the starting animals, but the main population and focus of the seeded world would be mammals with quills or quill-like hairs. Just an idea I came up with.
GIANT fully aquatic salamanders Huge "fields" of duckweed With Aquatic rabbits with flipper feet to keep them on top of the duckweed to feed and also helps them swim, could probably do a whole ecosystem around the expansive duckweed "fields" floating over the water Arm sized predatory leeches hunt the rabbits Dragonflies that get a case of neoteny and live their whole lives as huge nymphs or at least most of it until its time to reproduce before they die... Kinda like cicadas... Or diving beetles that stay as nymphs because of the advantages of staying aquatic... Plus the nymph stages are way more freeky, if you dont know look it up lol. The moisture of the planet would also be great for fungus The semi aquatic predatory Whirly gig beetles begin to move twords a hive structure, building nests of mud on the shores of ponds Extreme sexual dimorphism in ducks occurs because of lack of predators, so far that one gender becomes completely land dwelling/predatory/aquatic/flightless, something like that. Leeches evolve to only travel in huge gooey lerch swarms and decimate certain areas of small animal life Giant aquatic snails and or predatory snails maybe keep leaches and frogs in check A species of fly re evolves gills or an oxygen diffusion method and begins to undergo carcinization in its semi aquatic environment, think bat fly but in the water. possibly also they begin to form a hive structure like bat flies have begun to do. Tadpoles that never turn into frogs and are biologically immortal. frog fish that live under the duckweed and munch lettuce all day like round little slimy guinea pigs Looking forward to the rest of the series
🐍How about a seed world ruled by snakes? You can add their prey, like rats, mice, frogs, fish, small lizards, and birds. As well as the plant diversity within it. Not to mention, the diverse environments the snakes can live in. Snakes can be explored to see what will happen, if they were the top predators. 🐍
Oh an interesting idea. 9:36 Oh spec evo ideas One I had was a simmilar conzept to a seed world but more along the lines of a time travel story. "What if we dropped Venus flytraps into the early Carboniferous?" They have much mroe efficient photosynthesis, root systems tissues etc. compared to contemporary plants so they would very likely outcompete them even outside their highly specialised niche, but also can grow in nutrient poor soil. Something that would be very common at the time as life has simply not traveled very far inland yet. Of course there's also my own spec evo project which is on hold for now until I got more free time again, which is about life starting and evolving a highly radioactive world.
If any giant herbivorous ducks show up I vote to name them pseudoanatosaurus (meaning false duck lizard, in reference to anatosaurus, a junior synonym for edmontosaurus, which is a genus of giant herbivorous dinosaurs.)
you should have the frogs evolve to be colonial hugger tree dwellers. And able to glide like flying squirls in the high winds to start new colonies on far away mangrove clusters. My rational is that they would evolve more "terrestrial" lifestyle to avoid the overwhelming number of predatory fish species, but cant transition well onto land due to mainly herons. But this can also be due to opportunistic predation by turtles and ducks in the shallow. They would function almost like a geographical barrier.
Rabbits taking up a capybara esque niche as a large herbivores, with the Terron in an arm race against the rodent. Mud skipper behaviours from fish The water skippers could of taken on the krill or microbiology niche in the giga lakes, and bamboo like variations of that brown water reed Flies that evolve to feed off of venomous flower nectar gives you dart frogs. A huge, ankylodon sort of turtle might be a possibility in the far future Frogs having a bulkier, more predatory toad niche, as well as some gliding frogs for the more tropical areas, I can see old forests of hugging trees being bastions of biodiversity with even some exclusive species to different forests. Colony behaviour from these trees may result in interesting gigantism Deep sea gigantism would be in full effect on the fish, and more tadpole shaped frogs may live in the giga ponds too. An eventual smaller version of the Herron built to eat insects may occur, as would parasites from the flies and water Beatles
Love the idea and the adaptations you are showing but I have just one question? Are these massive ponds supposed to be saltwater or freshwater? And if they are freshwater how do they keep themselves like that without becoming salty?
How about an Antarctica that could still maintain life? Maybe not necessarily green like in the Eocene but say a coastal forest and an inland tundra and or steppe. Native animals like Notiolofos and Antarctodon or possible new arrivals like monkeys, aquatic sloths, and marine otters would all be an excellent point of potential.
can you name the semi-terrestrial fly you mentioned at 7:29 “armatusaqua”? it’s a combination of the word for armored/armed and the word for water (both in latin).
Awesome video maybes in the giga ponds you could have the carnivorous plants bladderworts and waterwheels act as sessile predators, bladderworts closer to the shallows and the waterwheels adapt to float freely in the outcrops and the open.
Sick project dude maybe you should start at the bottom of the food chain and work up like start at the carrion eaters and plants (id like to see some other birds that are not herons or ducks maybe crows? )
Spec Evo Idea: A Taiga Planet. With traditional taiga woods in the mid-north and mid-south hemisphere, barren stripped arctic lands in the far north and south and more temperate taiga around the equator
I was thinking, what about a world in which the only terrestrial vertebrates are the domestic cat (to be exact, the European Shorthair) and the Field Mouse? (Also one or two species of fish, but I'll leave which ones to use up to your choice)
What if you do a spec evo project on mudskippers? Like think about it Mudskippers are already pretty similar to ancient amphibians that crawled up on land. And even have a few other ideas like Caterpillars , taking the niches of maggots or larvae. And stuff like small bushes, taking the niches of trees. I would love to give more details if this comment ever gets picked up
This project is very interesting! I love the development of it, and the fact it basically takes organisms we often see in ponds, and turn them into something else! Can't wait to see what else is there to offer! Side note: as far as other spec evo ideas go, what not one where microbes (bacteria, fungus, archaea, protists, and even viruses) are the dominant lifeforms? Microbes in general are very, very, *VERY* underutilized in spec-evo, and are extremely underrated.
I would be interested in seeing a world where all the smartest non-primate animals(Elephants, Octopi, Ravens, etc.)from Earth were put on it to speculate if any would become sapient. Love the video looking forward to whatever you make next.
