I’m sitting in my little home office, bored, killing some time before I eat copious amounts of turkey and relax for the afternoon tryptophan induced food-coma…
I was wondering, if you could invent a planimal what would it be?
For me, I would have a huge hairy oak tree that could walk and chill in a herd/grove, and move about where ever it saw fit.
I have often thought that a science-fiction iceworld could have an ecology based on what I call “windplants”. It works like this: in animals, muscles are organs that convert chemical energy into motion. A windplant would have organs that convert motion into chemical energy. The living part of the windplant would be buried either underground or deep within a highly insulated trunk. Fronds or tendrils would catch the wind and the movement of their tugging and flapping would be transmitted to the heart of the plant. Part of the energy would be converted into chemical energy for the plant to grow and the rest would generate heat to keep the heart of the plant from freezing. It would reproduce mainly through it’s root system, extending shoots to establish new colonies. Provided the wind blew steadily enough, such plants could grow in a permanently below-freezing environment, something no solar-dependent plant can do. They would provide food for herbivores, the herbivores for carnivores, and so forth.
One version of the result, the Whomping Willow, would be a good guard plant, as shown in Harry Potter. Another might be an apple tree that could harvest itself. And throw fruit at interlopers.
You might also get trees that could change colour at other times then in the fall.
Come with me son to the
Magic zoogarden, where
Flora and fauna commingle and mix
The beasts can have bark, the trees all have hair
And maybe the flowers will do a few tricks.
Beware my dear child, when
The tuliphant trumpets
To wake up her mate in the zoogarden wild
The aniplants there will stampede with a jump – it’s
No place for either the meek or the mild.
See how the pandaisies
Eye us suspiciously
The crocusodiles and the marsh-mallowhale
Talk over the question of just how delicious we’d
Taste with a garnish of parslemur tail.
The kangarose travel in
Herds of a dozen who
Notice not tall leafy cabbagiraffe
(Call him camelliapard if you want to
But I think that’s being too clever by half).
Bravely we’ll hunt the marine
Hollyhocktopus
Pet a peacocklebur; ride a phloxcart,
If we have time we shall fight badgeranium
And catch a tomatoad, ere we depart.
Come with me son to the
Magic zoogarden, where
Flora and fauna combine by a stream
Come with me quickly before we’re too old to share
Fables and follies and foolish daydreams.
I’d like to see a sort of simple algae/social insect thing - small individual planimals that club together to do cool stuff as a colony. Actually, there are probably things a bit like this already - slime moulds, for example - but I’d like them to be a bit more motile.
I’d like to have a Venus cattrap. Not that traps cats; one that is a cat. It’d be all purry and sweet unless you hit its whiskers twice, and then look out! Solve your bug problem, just keep it watered.
Discovery Channel had something like this on their Alien Planet special. It was a swarm/school of very tiny (water flea sized) aquatic creatures. When food got scarce they would form a sort of blob that could extend pseudopods out of the water and eat/dissolve any creature that came too close.
Ticks and a variety of flowers: carnations, roses, irises. They’d be living parasitic corsage/pets that don’t wilt and die. You’d have to have a few to rotate through during their “fall off and digest” phase, though.
Crossing a cone snail with something cute and fuzzy…like a kitten or a chinchilla or gerbil would be fun in a sadistic sort of way.