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How do you measure time on a tide locked planet?
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[QUOTE="DaveC426913, post: 6833393, member: 15808"] This is worth repeating, and I think should fundamentally inform your thoughts about these alien critters. You can't start in the middle. You can't start with an analogue of an advanced, complex mammaliesque critter, drop him on a planet with no day-night cycle, spice it up with a few changes, and expect to get sensical results. Your critters have evolved without day, night or seasons from the time they were from [I]single-celled organisms[/I]. They [I]might[/I] have evolved eyes but, if they did, they would have a billion years of evolution centred around the particular monotonous light and heat level of your planet. No pupils, no retinal sensitivity-range, etc. They wouldn't have evolved fur or any other temperature-adaptive traits - they'd just be perfectly suited to the constant temp. Also, no specialization for nocturnal vs. diurnal hunting - no circadian rhythm at all. They would not sleep - except like Cetaceans, who sleep with one half of their brain at a time.** Same thing happens with the planet's entire ecology. Nothing dies off in one season or blooms in another. What does that do to the flora? And the fauna that live off it? If not winter, what [I]does[/I] recycle flora and fauna back into the organic resource pool? But think even bigger... In the absence of [I]externally [/I]changing factors, what will take the place of an evolutionary driver? What advantages could [I]the first multi-cellular organism[/I] gain over its competitors that will drive its success? Here's one idea: the biggest external factor on this planet is the difference between hot and cold regions. To thrive, life will have to push the frontiers of the uninhabitable regions in find food. This suggests that one of the primary drivers of their evolution - even before heat and cold tolerance - will have to be locomotion. Getting to a survivable habitat (and possibly back again) will become a primary driver even in the earliest organisms. Now, what does a [I]billion[/I] years of evolution on top of that early start do to the divergence between Terrestrial life and life on OneFace? **Or would they evolve to have sleep/wake-mates? Like, rather than sexual partners, they might evolve to have a social bond - or even a physical connection with partner or partners that has the opposite sleep cycle. A OneFacer "animal" is really the conglomeration of two subunit-critters, each of which have a sleep cycle that is out-phase with its mate. Intelligent evolution [I]really[/I] took off with the mutation of the [U]three[/U] subunit animal - allowing them to sleep longer and have more than one mind awake at a time, leading not only to complex and abstract thought - but the early invention of internal and then external language. [/QUOTE]
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