Let's Meet Kotk

This is something I wrote up for the background of a story I am writing. The story may or may not ever see the light of day. I am doing this for stress relief. Rockets and skynet and life have been...rough.

Let’s meet Kotk.

Kotk is one member of the species that I have been imagining as the witness to the end of their world via the snowball earth scenario. After all, a novel hangs together better there is someone that you can identify with. Kotk will do.

She is a she! She is also a member of the quattid species. Quattids are sorta vertebrate bipeds derived from an ancestral hexapod. They have two legs, two arms and two limb derived antennae. Sorta.

The basal hexapod (is there a better name? While tetrapod works, hexapod makes me think insect, which is entirely ill-fitting) that pulled itself out onto land is something roughly analogous to a vertebrate. Vertebrates of the quattid world have bones are rather different than our own. They are more lattice like than ours. Theirs are tubular with fluting to allow for attachment inside and on the surface. Think of it as a partial way to an exoskeleton, but not too far. As a result, they are stronger than the equivalent mass and muscular terran critter. They also tend to be faster as well. Not

blindly faster, but faster and stronger all the same.

The basal hexapod also had taste, touch, smell and even moderately good vibration and something not all that different from a lateral line system on all its feet. When the basal hexapod’s umpty grandkids became fully terrestrial, the organs for most senses atrophied in the our of the six ‘feet.’ The remaining two became more like antennae derived from arms. They had would become ‘furry’ to taste and smell with. The ability to hear would come from something not all that different. If you can imagine to arm like antennae sprouting from the back of, say a horse, that could fold up on its back, you are not too far off. Yes, they would be used in displays. Yes, they’d get a bit elaborate because of that. Yes, they are waved slowly while animals are grazing and whatnot to listen and smell for predators. Often they are also used for touching in meeting ceremonies amongst animals. On quattids, these have migrated upwards from the central back up to between what you’d call the shoulder blades.

Part of the reason that taste is not in the mouth is because the quattid world (have a suggested name?) vertebrates do not have a jaw.  They have a masticular apparatus that is more reminiscent of Anomalocaris. Rather than one set of sheering discs, like the anomalous shrimp, it has rows of them for sheering and then different ones for mashing. All closing in radially. All down the throat towards the gullet. In purely carnivorous species, they have  developed something like shark teeth for the first set, followed by sheerers and then mashers. Chewing for quattid worlders is more like a sped up peristalsis. Their mouth is more like a sphincter than a jaw then.

The breathing apparatus is separated from the digestive tract unlike on terran animals. There are actually two sets of lungs. The larger ones further within the thorax or torso region, but also a pair of secondary lungs that were placed within inflatable airsacks on the sides of the head. These are, too, used in displays in most animals. They also make the world sound like a combination of frog chorals and howler monkeys or gibbons gone wild and baritone. The normal and even active breathing is more like the monitor lizards’ throat breathing than a mammalian tidal or archosaurian airsack system. Speaking is through manipulating the airsacks out through their ‘nose’ for a quattid.

The eyes are placed atop the head and are forward facing. The head itself seems somewhat serpentine. With the ‘throat/mouth’ dominating. The eyes do face forward and the ‘nose’ atop the head and behind the eyes. The brain is at the back of the head and situated that from the front, you would need to break a lot of very hard teeth to get to it

or through the skull and ‘nose.’

All vertebrates have an eerie reproductive cycle. This even extends to the quattids themselves. Its closer to the anglerfish than anything, but not even exactly like that. In the anglerfish, all large adults are female. The males are born very small and swim up to

and bite into a female. They then dissolve the skin and then become parasites on the female, except that the brain and most everything other than the gonads become atrophied. Using a unified circulatory system, the composite anglerfish lays eggs and has a male that is readily available. Its speculated that this arose terrestrially because of the difficulty of finding mates. On the quattid world, that’s true, but it was because of a nasty period 450 million years prior when the hexapods had evolved but not taken to the land whereby a number of volcanoes made an ongoing, rolling mass extinction like what the Permian was originally supposed to have been. Twenty million years of misery, but the hexapods exploded into new niches when it was over and that included pulling themselves onto land.

It is NOT as extreme as the anglerfish, but one or more males, depending on the species, will permanently mate with a female. They bite into the female and burrow into her in multiple ways. Its less destructive than it sounds. The mouth and phallus are the normal points of permanent penetration. The arms and legs atrophy and fall off. The armtenna are kept though almost universally. The nervous systems connect, but the circulatory systems become more or less unified. There are distinct “minds” still present and the new males minds cannot control the female body. However, they do interact and can pay attention to different things than does the main controlling mind.

This is taken even further with the quattids. The males do ‘parasite’ like the other animals, and at a younger age than the females, but they are fully aware and remain so after the absorption into the female. Only two males are able to unify with a given female. The legs of the males’ limbs atrophy as per the other animals, but on the quattids, the arms remain active as are the armtenna. The female bares live young. The female germ line cell is only fertilized by one male, BUT the second male’s germ line cells are encased and kept encysted not unlike bacteria if the next generation is female. The reason is that if there are no males left, the female can self fertilize with her nongermline “father.” Once she mates, her body absorbs the nonbiological father germline cells that were saved since conception. The baseline sex ratio at birth is approximately 2:1 in favour of males.

Males are generally smaller, yes. Males do NOT have to mate to survive. However, their lives are not as long as those that do join into the matings. In fact, they live half their mated life spans. Unmated males are second class citizens. They do have their niches though and often band together to found societies to support themselves and for goals.

The mated female/male triads have quite interesting conversations. They are thought based, emotional and hormonal in nature.

Almost all terrestrial animals of size are quadrapeds with their armtennae. Quattids are not. They are bipedal and they are derived from climbers. They did not come down out of the trees though. They were vertical climbers on cliffs and edges of glaciers. They would raid the nests of the nonvertebrate fliers (there are NO flying vertebrates on this world) and eat what grew near or on the cliffs themselves. The ancestors of the quattids were not creatures of the forest whatsoever.

When they did come down off the cliffs, they were already vertically oriented with differentiated arms and legs. They in turn took to the ever-desiccating, ever-chilling world on the plains and tundras. Here they would become what the running community loves to think human beings are: cursorial hunters, but not hypercarnivores.

From here they developed animal husbandry and became herders. The original settlements were at favourable spots for wintering or growing food. The majority of the population moved but needed to return to the refuges ever year come winter and with the ever-worsening winters, this is how the cities came to be.

Unfortunately, the cities have largely collapsed. There are two great cities left. One is on the cusp of collapsing itself and has lashed out in an effort to conquer the other to get the resources it needs to survive. If they did not, they would end up like the wild ones to the

north and south past the last forests, the ones that live on the last plains and the cold tundras. The one that has not collapsed and not in immediate danger has access to the sea year round. Its very dangerous access, but there is a lot more protein pulled which is making all the difference. There are villages that are tributary to the sea city as well which is in turn even more helpful. The near collapse one was inland and lacked the resource network to survive the worsening conditions for any time period.

I am NOT giving anyone permission to use the quattids or Kotk.