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Do you want shoggoths? Because this is how you wind up with shoggoths. Seriously though, if the trend of species 'remembering' old genes and becoming more agil
by leggomylibro 10y ago
Do you want shoggoths? Because this is how you wind up with shoggoths.
Seriously though, if the trend of species 'remembering' old genes and becoming more agile in throwing them into the mix continues, could we wind up with monstrous horripilating beasts capable of directing their own morphology? Or as Lovecraft put it,
"It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter."
- gliese1337 10y agoProbably not. At least, not in "real-time". It makes for good horror and sci-fi, but in reality the energy costs of constantly reforming yourself like that would be, shall we say, prohibitive. (Incidentally, at the risk of slight spoilers, this is an issue that is addressed, if slightly obliquely, in Michaelbrent Colling's horror novel _The Loon_.) There are plenty of organisms that have extremely free body plans that can be altered as they grow, however (notably, most plants and fungi), so it's less of a stretch to imagine a creature that could consciously direct changes in its own morphology over long periods of time- equivalent to how long it would take the new structures to grow anyway, if they were a set part of a normal animal's morphology.
- syntheticnature 10y agoHorripilation refers to hair bristling, or more colloquially, goose bumps. So beasts with... goose bumps?