Board Thread:New on Galactic Crucibles/@comment-5135903-20141008164704/@comment-5135903-20141113182443

Considering the worms are only exposed during the few minutes it takes to squirm from the chest to the navel, and they will be covered by the pycnofibres, it would be a huge challenge for any predator to grab one. After finding a Khoikapek at the start of its pregnancy, they would have to wait for days for a worm to emerge (which I assume they spot under the pycnofibres using some sort of super-accurate ultrasound echolocation). After grabbing the worm and prying it from the pycnofibres (a task slightly easier than getting gum or blu-tack out of your hair), their reward is a few grams of worm meat, which doesn't seem worth the effort.

I don't quite get how washing the fluid off a Khoikapek's chest would kill them. The fluid only appears temporarily during mating in order to exchange genetic material. Considering Khoikapek evolved in a swamp/river delta environment, it may make sense to give the fluid hydrophobic (and sulphuric acid-repellant) qualities.

Marsupials are only found in Australia and the Americas because they only really evolved in Australia and South America. When you look at how competition proceeded, the picture is much less clear than 'marsupials good', 'placentals bad'...

North America and South America were unconnected when marsupials first evolved in South America. When the two continents became connected, some groups of marsupials went extinct due to competition with placental animals. However, other marsupials, notably opossums, thrived and spread right up to Canada. As for Australia, it was originally thought that marsupials were so successful because there were few placetal species to compete with them while they gained a foothold; evidence from the Murgon fossil site now shows that placental species were already around when the marsupials were still evolving, and marsupials just out-competed them.

This seems like a good time for a speech from our Chauvinistic Speaker...

"In some places on Tobano, you can find species that fully contain their children within their bodies, usually in fluid. Once the child is at a sufficient level of development, they emerge from the parent's body in a curious process called 'birth'. Don't worry, the parent usually survives the process. Some have suggested that these 'placental' species could, but for evolutionary chance, come to dominate Tobano. I find this highly unlikely.

"The placental reproductive system leaves both the parent and the child highly velnerable. This is beacuse, storing the child inside their bodies, rather than just carrying it in a pouch, the parents are left considerably less able than when not bearing a child, especially since they must support all of its bodily functions at the same time. After birth, the child itself is vulnerable, as it has only just developed enough to survive outside it's parent's body - easy, helpless prey for any predators. Once Khoikapek abandon their children, they already have experience from 'visits' to the outside world, and are soon ready for"

"Some placental species on Tobano compensate for this by giving birth to dozens of offspring in their lifetime, but even at when it comes to this, we marsupials are superior. The placental reproductive system allows for just one stage of development to take place at a time, usually followed by a recovery phase for the parent. We marsupials can be rearing children at the same time as developing others in our pouches and growing more worms on our chests for future offspring! And with a fraction of the fluid and nutrient requirements of the placental system!"

" There's a reason why marsupials are one of the most successful Bakoyda groups - indeed, groups, period - in the world and placentals are more or less extinct everywhere but Muopa."

My advocacy of such divergent evolution is based on places on Earth such as Socotra Island. Socotra has been separated from the rest of the world for about 36 million years. In that time, extraordinary plants and animals have evolved there dissimilar from anything else on Earth. If Earth life in an exotic environment can evolve like that in a few million years, imagine how alien life in a completely alien environment would evolve when it has no evolutionary connection to life on Earth at all!