BY LETTER
Anurans
Provolved and highly tweaked amphibians | |
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| Many Anurans resemble giant frogs and toads, often with a vaguely humanoid stance | |
Description
Provolved Terragen frogs and toads from the order Anura. Their pre-uplift ancestors were both predators and prey. This gives them a degree of caution but also boldness. Frogs and toads were small animals that were extremely vulnerable to environmental changes because of their permeable skin. However, they were also highly diverse and adapted to many different environments. This has led to many Anuran clades likewise adapting to countless different lifestyles and locales, spreading out as much across the Terragen Sphere as possible to safeguard their continued existence.In the present the Anuran clades exist in a multitude of forms adapted to different environments. Extreme reshaping of their bodies has fallen out of favor; instead they simply switch to a pre-existing one that is more appropriate.
History
Many species of frogs and toads were independently provolved by different organizations after the First Federation.Early on in their history, when Anurans were still finding their footing in the Terragen Sphere, they settled in places that were the most comfortable for their physiology, generally warm and humid, forest or freshwater environments. Akilaspek Trees were especially popular since they were perfectly suited environments for the Anurans without much need to modify their environment or themselves.
At this point the Shepbra Clade had already started to make its mark on the galactic community. Anurans sometimes favored living in Shepbra creations like Noovleann Trees and Akilaspek Trees, as their base environmental needs were similar to the Shepbra. This led some to say that the Anurans were imitating the Shepbra and living in their shadow. While most Anurans paid no attention to these comments, several groups took offense. An unnamed transapient Anuran destabilized several of the Shepbra's Noovleann Trees, presumably in retaliation, causing the trees and the planet beneath them to be evacuated until they could be destabilized. A few were permanently decommissioned. Then in 10352 there was a nuclear attack that destroyed the first Akilaspek tree, Shakti the Great Mother. It was suspected that an Anuran group was responsible but none ever took credit and perpetrators were never caught.
It was after the downturn in public opinion related to these events that the Anurans began to move to the Periphery and adapt to new environments.
Habitat
Even though modern technology, such as utility clouds or moisture-retaining nanotech fabric, allows Anurans to live in whatever environment they desire, many still live in places with larger amounts of accessible freshwater, warm temperatures, and high humidity.This is considered more of a psychological need than physical. Some clades intentionally defy this expectation and have chosen to live exclusively in dry climates, using genemods and/or technology to adapt to non-traditional environments.
Early on, many Anurans settled on the planet Trees. Different Anuran clades live in different vertical ecosystems on the skywrack trees. As their clades grew in size and diversity the Anurans continued to expand into different habitats and environments.
Presently, Anurans often live in engineered biological habitats, often organic ones, such as orwoods (especially tree frog derived clades), yggdrasil bushes, large noovleann trees, dyson tree variants, and under canopy plants. They are also found in bishop rings, various dyson megastructures, and suprajovian and suprastellar rings and shells. Some clades have expressed interest in colonizing the deepwoods. One clade has traveled inward and uploaded themselves into the Gridwood virchworld. The Anurans are rarely found in entirely artificial environments that are strictly drytech.
Physiological Adaptations
Bipedal vs Quadrupedal
Most Anurans walk upright on two legs, though some smaller specimens (<50 lbs) have remained quadrupedal. These individuals usually come from high-gravity worlds. The denser atmosphere allows for skin based respiration and reduced lung function. They often have branching, prehensile tongues and utilize hand tech. Their preferred handtech designs are robotic insects (synsects), often flies (Diptera). They typically store them in recessed nodes inside their large mouths. They find this to be a humorous play on their ancestor's past depiction of eating flies.Integument
While many Anurans keep their ancestral water-permeable skin and use utility fog, moist environments, and/or water-tight nanotech garments to keep their skin moist, some clades have opted for biological solutions, having chosen to forgo standard amphibian skin for waterproof skin. These options are popular with prim, low-tech, or Luddite communities.These individuals are often referred to as Dry Frogs. A popular choice that is not truly 'dry' is an exterior resembling the tough rubbery skin of a Terragen Cetacean. The skin still needs to remain moist but greatly limits the risks of dehydration. Another popular integument choice is reptilian skin. Many Dry Frog clades choose the soft flexible skin of a gecko; this allows for the flexibility they are accustomed to, though a few have chosen an armored crocodilian hide for greater protection. A rare few chose mammalian skin, complete fur or hair. They derogatory term Fur Frog is sometimes used to describe them.
All of these options prevent individuals from respiring through their skin, as all amphibians are able to do. Therefore, their lungs are upgraded to meet the body's respiratory needs.
Respiration
Frogs can breathe through cutaneous respiration, allowing gases to diffuse across their damp skin, as well as breathing with their lungs. The larger the individual, the less efficient cutaneous respiration becomes and more dependent on their lungs due to the square-cube law. Frogs do not have ribs or a diaphragm, so they do not breathe by the expansion and contraction of their rib cage but instead engage in buccal pumping. This requires them to use their mouth and throat to pump air into the lungs. This is not an efficient system for a large individual. As a result, many groups have simply opted to have ribs and diaphragms added for ease of respiration and protection of organs.Others employ a wide band of muscles around the lungs that contracts and relaxes to force air in and out of the lungs, similar to a ribcage.
Vocal Sac
A large expandable pouch of skin under the mouth that is used as a resonating chamber for vocalizations in baseline ancestors. They are now a popular form of visual expression. Smart tattoos and chromatophores are used by some individuals to display colors, patterns, pictures, symbols, and words when inflated.Vocalizations
A unique feature of Arunans is that they use their vocal sac as a resonating chamber to create a loud call, sometimes called a croak. In larger individuals their croak can be so loud and high frequency that it can be used offensively or defensively. It can cause injury, disorientation, and/or loss of consciousness in unprotected individuals.Torpor
Anurans have their baseline ancestors ability to enter a state of hibernation called torpor when environmental conditions were unfavorable, such as during cold or dry conditions. Suspended animation is easy to accomplish through a variety of modern technologies, but most Anurans require only minimal physiological adjustments to do it naturally.There are entire cultures that enter torpor during cold seasons instead of trying to store enough supplies and remain warm. Those living on Trees will bury themselves in the group and enter torpor during the dry season to avoid forest fires.
Long Sleeps
Anurans that enter torpor for extended (non-travel) periods of time with technological support are called Long Sleeps. They will awaken from their hibernation, spend several years learning about the state of the galactic community and their people, then return to torpor. They can remain in torpor for decades, centuries, or potentially millennia. They exist like time travelers who can only move forward, acting as living depositories of their people's history and culture.Reproduction
Anurans mostly reproduce externally through a mating process called amplexus, where one individual lays the gelatinous eggs, then another individual fertilizes them. The eggs are kept in a moist environment until they hatch into tadpoles. Some groups use natural or artificial bodies of water while others keep their eggs in an incubator creche. The tadpoles are non-sapient and continue to grow until they metamorphosize into froglets.Some Anurans have a physical structure to transfer genetic material into the egg carrier's body, fertilizing the eggs internally. The eggs are then retained within the body until they hatch; the tadpoles are then given birth to. This is known as ovoviviparity. Some groups skip the tadpole stage and hatch as froglets, and some groups can carry their eggs and tadpoles around on their backs in between depositing them in water or even wear their eggs as a necklace, protected by a clear, durable exterior.
Eggs
Most groups retain the gelatinous eggs of their baseline ancestors but some have chosen to use leathery reptile shells or hard avian shells to give their young additional protection against the environment if they are not incubated in an artificial environment. Some take things a step further and use carbon nanotube eggshells. These eggs must either be removed by the parent or dissolved by nanotech when it is time for the offspring to hatch.Reproduction Customs
One clade has shifted to using an r-reproductive strategy where they lay many eggs and provide no care for their offspring so that only a few survive.They lay their eggs in birthing pools that are adjacent to nearby rivers, separated by earthen dams. When the eggs hatch into tadpoles, the dams are broken and the tadpoles are released into the river. They will live and grow larger in rivers and lakes until after several years the surviving tadpoles return to the pools where they hatched. Then they complete the metamorphosis into froglets and join their community. Individuals do not know who their biological parents are and the method of distributing the young frogs to be raised and cared for varies depending on the community.
The r-reproductive strategy allows for a degree of natural selection/survival of the fittest in their offspring, who are not yet sophont.
Great Pollywog
In one community, a tadpole returned one year but did not metamorphose into a froglet. Thinking that perhaps it simply returned a year too early it was released back into the river. It returned each year, growing larger in size each year, becoming much larger than the other tadpoles. When it was given a medical examination to determine the cause of its condition it was discovered that it had been injured during its first year, possibly by a predator. The injury had damaged its hypothalamus, which produces the hormones necessary to trigger its transformation. The lack of proper hormones prevented it from transforming into its adult form, keeping it as an overgrown juvenile. The Anurans decided to release it again.It continued to return every year and continued to grow even larger. With its increased size it had gained pre-sapience. It was observed defending young tadpoles from predators and helping to dislodge ones that became stuck or trapped.
It was named the Great Pollywog. This Anuran clade decided to adopt the 'Great Pollywog Model' to help increase the number of offspring that returned successfully.
Genemods were introduced to the population that denied about one in every thousand tadpoles the hormones necessary to metamorphose into a froglet. These individuals were also provolved to be full sophonts and given a maternal, protective instinct. Functionally, they were a drone caste.
They developed their own society and help organize annual meetings in the larger lakes. Eventually, some Pollywogs decided that they did not simply want to be a caste with limited options in a greater society. They had themselves tweaked to become neotenous, so that they would become sexually mature as Pollywogs and could lay and fertilize eggs that would hatch more Great Pollywogs. After this they became the Great Pollywog Clade, living separate lives from their Anuran ancestors.
Appears in Topics
Development Notes
Text by Josh Taylor
expanded in March 2025 from an original short article by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 08 October 2001.
expanded in March 2025 from an original short article by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 08 October 2001.
