Animula, latin for a piece of soul or life, is another sanctuary for life; a planet quite similar to earth, but due to evolution's randomness in establishing traits, is home to creatures awe-inspiringly different superficially, behaviourally and fundamentally to life on earth, down to their very cells. When humans, in in midst of a new foray into space by means of wormhole genesis, discovered this amazing life-filled planet, scientists had at last found conclusive evidence that life did indeed exist out of earth, and not just tiny extremeophilic life; life that was multicellular, sophisticated, intelligent, and all the more astonishing (and massive because of Animula's lower gravity).
The first motile exoanimals in Animula's oceans, who evolved from motonatamycotans around 2850 myai, these strange, brainless creatures could be described as nature's "experiment": a lack of predatory and competetive pressure drove these creatures to adopt a whole menagerie of completely different forms, thanks to their quick asexual reproductive abilities and high mutation rate, allowing them to produce up to a hundred generations a year. Each form was successful enough in its own right during the Betagene era, until about 2907 myai, when Primiduritizoans evolved and started outcompeting and devouring the slow, brainless cascainanizoans. In present day, the Cascuinanizoans are represented only by the near-immobile filter feeding Inanizoans.
Time and Timescale measurement in Animula
1. Animula has 328.5 days a year, and 21.6 hours a day, equating to 7095.6 hours a year, as opposed to 8760 hours a year on earth.
2. However, for simplicity, we will measure time based on earth years. Timescale is measured by the amount of years it happened in after the impact of Sagittaan Cluster, with the abbreviation "yai" (for years after impact) used after the number. Contrastingly, "ybi" refers to years before impact.
3. For instance, oceans were mostly fully formed at around 800 myai (million years after impact).
Cascuinanians, and indeed all Exoanimals, most likely evolved from neonatal forms of Motonatamycotans. Motonatamycotans were rather dull looking blobs of parasitic Motoplants on Parenids as adults, but in larval form, they were highly mobile worm shaped creatures, filtering nutrients out the water and finding (bumping into) a suitable place to latch onto the ground and degenerate into a simple blob, thereby known as an adult motonatamycotan. Eventually, the larval form evolved to be more and more suited to its form and life, developing a complex muscle system and a simple visual sense, degenerating into an adult only to produce progeny. These were, at least according to most astrobiologists, the first exoanimals and the first Cascuinanizoan Vermiformids. In a flash of evolutionary time, the adult form overtook only part of the body, allowing the Vermiformid to keep moving and absorbing; until what was once the "adult"'s morphology remained a medium sized lump at the top of the Vermiformid's front end.
The first Appendagids probably were small vermiformids who had mutated to have their tail gene be able to duplicate the tail, drastically highering the chance of multitailed Vermiformids appearing. Some of these mutated vermiformids were very successful, and they reproduced and diversified, adding limbs and digestive ability at the limb bases.
How the cylindiformids evolved is less clear. Though it seemed most obvious at first that cylindriformids evovled from superficially similar Vermiformids, fossil records show that cylindriformids actually evolved from motile appendagids: the central body that connects the tentacles together in appendagids also once contained the hoselike mouth, but because appendagids use their tentacles to catch food, a comparatively inefficient absorbing tube was unnecessary; in some species, the hose instead extended throughout the whole central body, forming a whole from front to back, which allowed water to flow through the central body, instead of having to go around it. Eventually a few small tentacles twisted inwards to catch plankton floating through this hole, and basic peristalsis in this hole evolved to push water and plankton through to get caught on the tentacles. These were the first cylindriformids, and from then on the path was simple: larger, more powerful tube, less outer tentacles, more and more internalized inner tentacles, etc.
Clades (as of 2904 myai)[]
Vermiformidae ("Vermin Fauna")[]
Vermiformids, collectively called the Vermin Fauna of the Primizoic, have changed very little from their Motonatamycota larval ancestors. They retain a long, wormlike body that wriggles to move through water; a jawless hoselike mouthpart to suck in food, such as planktonic Parenids and other smaller Cascuinanizoans; and a simple internal anatomy composing of only a digestive chamber, tail muscle, skin, and in some species a simple light-sensitive depression. They are essentially drones, reacting to stimulus based on nothing but instinct, but this serves them very well, as any sort of brain would hinder both nutrients needed and reproductive speed. Some basal species, similar to their Motonatamycotan ancestors, at the end of a Vermiformid's life of a few days, it degenerates into a lump which produces hundreds of progeny (it is disputed whether these should even be called exoanimals, not just derived motoplants); the vestige of the adult form in the Motonatamycotans, now functioning only as a way to produce offspring. More derived species temporarily convert their rear ends into a similar offspring producing factory, whilst the front end continues feeding to fuel their production.
Despite being the most simple and basal Cascuinanizoans, these are by far the most common in the primizoic, and most are planktonic, feeding on anything they manage to swim into. The Vermiformids, due to their adaptability, survive until present day as microscopic protists.
Appendagidae ("Tentacled Fauna")[]
The appendagids, composed of several tentacles branching off from a central bulb, each of which pulses for locomotion, well earn their name; many species can have hundreds of these tentacles. The tentacles are mainly used as a way to absorb and catch plankton as food, and in some immobile species can include tiny strands that stretch up to hundreds of metres long.
Appendagids are generally divided into the motile and nonmotile appendagids. Motile appendagids use their tentacles not only as a way to catch food but also as a locomotion method, during with the tentacles pulse inwards in unison to move vaguely in a forward direction. Nonmotile appendagids have once again given up mobility: they attach themselves to the ground, and stretch out tens or even hundreds of tentacles like nets, filtering out plankton. Venomous species can even kill Cylindriformids.
A vid from youtube, with a good animation of peristalsis.
Cylindriformidae ("Peristalsis Fauna")[]
The cylindriformids have by far the most unusual form of locomotion among the Cascuinanizoans, and possibly among all life on earth and Animula. Imagine an esophagus by itself. To deliver food from the mouth down to the stomach, a series of muscles squeeze the space behind the food whilst opening up room in front, forcing the food down the esophagus. A cylindriformid looks much the same (like a hose) and locomotes much the same way: squeezing water at high speeds in from the front end and quickly out the other. At the front end of the exterior of the body is a depressed ring of light-sensitive cells. Within the tube are also filaments which catch food whilst floating through its body; usually floating parenids, Vermiformids, or parvi. When a filament catches onto something, it contracts into a gland of concentrated acid to dissolve it, whatever it may be. Cylindriformids are the apex predators of the Betagene epoch, despite being mindless filter-feeders sifting planktonic Vermiformids and Parenids out of the seawater; like baleen whales, some species, combined with a much simpler body, can reach huge sizes up to ten metres long and half a metre wide.
