Spore: Creature Video Rampage
We're a week away from the Spore Creature Creator crawling from the sea of development onto the rocky beach of the marketplace. And it seems some people have it already, as the Spore user video channel is starting to recieve little videos of people's monstrous beasts. By my count, nineteen in the last day. No phallus-footage yet, but glancing over these first few births is getting me urge to get demiurgic.
Videos of a few of the best, with some theorising what ecological niche they'd fill beneath the cut. I have to use my Biology degree for something, y'know.
With an enormous bulbous, apparently gas-filled head perched on top of a precariously tiny neck and an ill-gaited, humanoid body, it's difficult to imagine how such a creature could survive. I suspect that's the trick - the head is some kind of decoy, and if a predator sinks its teeth into it, it explodes, scaring away the beast, allowing the surviving part to scuttle away to survive until the next predator arrives and eats it.
This has a somewhat unusual walking aparatus. As well as two forearms, its two main legs are subdivided into what appear to be four smaller legs. Closer examinations reveals that the legs aren't actually motile - in other words, they're mere supporting podia. This makes me theorise they aren't legs - merely toes. This makes me suspect the creature evolved to frustrate and bewilder the makers of shoes. Admitedly, my theory has been critiqued strongly by other biologists, who claim it's "Cobblers".
Complete with enormous antlers, this is fearsome if somewhat gangly bipedal beast. There's one interesting thing - at 0:55 he throws a punch, despite the fact he has these over-developed antlers. This makes me suspect what were once a weapon for the species got involved in an out-of-control Red Queen Sexual Selection situation, and grew to become impractical. However, due to the aforementioned sexual selection, there was no easy way turn back to an earlier state - to that end, alternative fighting mechanisms are developing, in this case involving limbs which I'd imagine were previously used for foraging or perhaps were some kind of proto-nipple.
Frankly, this is disturbing and should be killed if encountered.
A large blue beast with vestigial wings. A distinctly unintelligent face mixes with some quite fearsome claws makes me suspect this is some manner of deceit. You think it's a bit stupid, and then it tears you apart. That it's been designed to induce this impression in the human mind, to my mind, implies some kind of co-evolution alongside human beings to utilise this quirk of our psychology - in other words, its nature has made it to kill you and then feed you to its child, also pictured. Don't trust it. In the end, it's us or them.
Probably worth stressing my Biology degree was weighted towards genetics and evolution rather than anything zoological that'd be relevant..