Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE
Alice Grove MCDT March 2015
mikmaxs:
--- Quote ---The size and long necks were likely a food-driven adaptation - to reach high-hanging nuts, shoots and fruits. The loss of flight was consequential BUT the long neck and large size counter-balanced it, giving them a survival advantage.
--- End quote ---
So, a bird which could fly, grew larger in order to reach food that it couldn't reach? Even though it could fly, it needed long legs to reach nuts that were in trees. Right. And then it lost the ability to fly, because it had to grow larger to reach things which were in the air... Right.
--- Quote ---This is assuming that their habitat is exclusively jungle. Remember that there are also open plains and hilly grasslands near the town. In any case height (and thus the ability to see over undergrowth at nearby and more distant hazards remains an advantage, even in the forest.
--- End quote ---
Height is an advantage, but size isn't. The larger you are, the more you need to eat. Even if they travel out into the plains or grasslands, they live in the forest/a cave, both places where the height advantage would be minimal next to the huge increase in food consumption that they would need.
--- Quote ---Wrong again. This adaptation increases the birds' survival chances as they are no longer specialised to a certain type of food and thus can handle environmental changes. In the real world, specialists (like the panda) always do poorly compared to generalists (like the raccoon).
--- End quote ---
Ignoring your 'Always' to describe an extremely large set of examples, (Pretty much nothing with thousands of variables is 'Always' one way or another,) the problem isn't that they developed a way to eat multiple food sources, but that the developments both hinder each other. One evolution actively detracts from the other, based off of the order that it would have had to adapt in.
How can an Elephant be so huge? How can a Rhino be so huge? How can an Ultrasaurus be the single largest life-form ever to walk the Earth all despite being pure herbivores?
I already brought up Elephants and Rhinos briefly, but I'll talk more about them 'cause why not? First off, they are huge because they actually need to fight off predators. Predators which they actually have, unlike this bird. They grow large enough to fight off predators, they don't grow so large that they are never, ever hunted. They also don't settle down in a single area which they would have to return to every night after roaming for food. Not to mention, their natural environments are one where their size actually does give them a large advantage at seeing threats. Another important note: They have babies infrequently, and not in large quantities. Alice clearly says 'Nesting season' and 'Chicks'. This means that 1, they nest and mate annually and 2, they have more than one chick at a time. Unless most or all of their chicks die every year and they only get a survivor occasionally, (which would be extremely strange,) their size would lead to them having a population issue very quickly. They have no natural predators, they take a lot of food to survive, and they have multiple children every year. It doesn't make sense.
As for the Ultrasaurus, I've read speculation that extremely prehistoric times may have had a higher oxygen content in the air, allowing creatures to grow larger than would be possible nowadays. I don't know a lot about dinosaurs, though, so definitely don't quote me on this, and I can't say a lot else on the subject.
--- Quote ---Real life biological adaptations don't 'line up' either. Real world biology is always messier and less prone to human linear logic than theoreticians would like.
--- End quote ---
And here's where I stop talking about biology and start talking about writing.
There's a rule of thumb for authors when writing a story: Your job is harder than God's. In real life, a long string of coincidences can lead to good or bad things happening. A non sequitor can come in out of the blue, saving the day, and nobody will say it couldn't happen because it actually just happened. The craziest or most insane coincidences can happen, and that's okay. In a story, though, everything has to make sense in a way that the reader can understand, and nothing should come out of the blue. (With exceptions. If you're writing absurdest works or a comedy, it's sometimes okay, but never when it's part of an actual plot or drama. The other exception is when starting your story: Conflict can be started by a character winning the lottery, but it should never be resolved by their winning the lottery.) Plot points can't come out of nowhere, important subplots can't be dropped or forgotten, and what the author says has to make sense. If you want to create a fictional creature, great. Go ahead. If you want to then try and explain the anthropology of the fictional creature, though, it has to make sense. If an author brings up a topic and takes that topic seriously, then they have to be prepared for the audience to take the topic seriously.
An author should never rely on handwaving or 'It's okay because it doesn't make sense in real life.' (Jeph hasn't done this, I'm not criticizing him for it, I'm just saying this as a rule of writing.) Fans shouldn't have to use this defense, either. It's not a large issue here, because I don't think the plot is going to heavily rely on the bird's anthropology or the audience's knowledge and understanding of it, but that doesn't mean it should be defended because we can't explain everything in real life.
Again, if Jeph had just written: They're harmless, don't worry about it, then the setup would be fine because it'd be clear that their evolutionary history doesn't matter. Because he brought it up, though, it's fair game to talk about.
BenRG:
--- Quote from: mikmaxs on 19 Mar 2015, 14:09 ---
--- Quote ---The size and long necks were likely a food-driven adaptation - to reach high-hanging nuts, shoots and fruits. The loss of flight was consequential BUT the long neck and large size counter-balanced it, giving them a survival advantage.
--- End quote ---
So, a bird which could fly, grew larger in order to reach food that it couldn't reach? Even though it could fly, it needed long legs to reach nuts that were in trees. Right. And then it lost the ability to fly, because it had to grow larger to reach things which were in the air... Right.
--- End quote ---
Right. Flying, especially if it involves taking off from ground level is higher-energy. No animal would do that if it couldn't reach. Once again, adaptation insists on a lower-energy solution.
--- Quote ---
--- Quote ---This is assuming that their habitat is exclusively jungle. Remember that there are also open plains and hilly grasslands near the town. In any case height (and thus the ability to see over undergrowth at nearby and more distant hazards remains an advantage, even in the forest.
--- End quote ---
Height is an advantage, but size isn't. The larger you are, the more you need to eat. Even if they travel out into the plains or grasslands, they live in the forest/a cave, both places where the height advantage would be minimal next to the huge increase in food consumption that they would need.
--- End quote ---
Nonetheless, this is what RL animals do. Larger size provides advantages of its own, including reserves of fats that enable the creature to survive lean and dry periods for longer.
--- Quote ---
--- Quote ---Wrong again. This adaptation increases the birds' survival chances as they are no longer specialised to a certain type of food and thus can handle environmental changes. In the real world, specialists (like the panda) always do poorly compared to generalists (like the raccoon).
--- End quote ---
Ignoring your 'Always' to describe an extremely large set of examples, (Pretty much nothing with thousands of variables is 'Always' one way or another,) the problem isn't that they developed a way to eat multiple food sources, but that the developments both hinder each other. One evolution actively detracts from the other, based off of the order that it would have had to adapt in.
How can an Elephant be so huge? How can a Rhino be so huge? How can an Ultrasaurus be the single largest life-form ever to walk the Earth all despite being pure herbivores?
I already brought up Elephants and Rhinos briefly, but I'll talk more about them 'cause why not? First off, they are huge because they actually need to fight off predators. Predators which they actually have, unlike this bird. They grow large enough to fight off predators, they don't grow so large that they are never, ever hunted.
--- End quote ---
Wrong. Adults are never hunted. Young and juveniles are. Just like the birds.
There is such a thing as being a nit-picker. Can't you just accept that this is what these creatures are and this is Jeph's justification for their characteristics? I don't consider it implausible. Maybe I'm guilty of not knowing enough about RL biology and zoology. However, there is a point where over-thinking it just ruins enjoyment, as it clearly is for you.
mikmaxs:
--- Quote ---Right. Flying, especially if it involves taking off from ground level is higher-energy. No animal would do that if it couldn't reach. Once again, adaptation insists on a lower-energy solution.
--- End quote ---
But increasing in size wouldn't assist with gathering food unless it was an extreme increase. And now you're arguing that a massive increase in size over the average bird would use lower energy than being small and requiring extremely little food to eat.
--- Quote ---Nonetheless, this is what RL animals do. Larger size provides advantages of its own, including reserves of fats that enable the creature to survive lean and dry periods for longer.
--- End quote ---
Please, name a real-life bird that is eight feet tall and has bulky muscles and thick limbs. Larger sizes do provide advantages, but you're acting like being large has no downsides. Also, reserves of fat don't seem particularly important in the forest environment that we've seen, where dry periods wouldn't be as bad as they might be in more barren environments.
--- Quote ---Wrong. Adults are never hunted. Young and juveniles are. Just like the birds.
--- End quote ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ZW0EvMzSM - Go to about the 5:45 mark to see a pride of lions take down a fully grown Elephant. I realize that the lions in the video are especially hungry and this isn't an entirely common occurrence, but there's a reason that Elephants travel in large herds, not all alone: They'll get hunted and killed otherwise, because they do have predators. (Also, these birds don't look large enough to fight off most real-life predators of large animals anyways. I'm assuming that there's something equivalent of a bear in the forest, or a pack of wolf-like beings, and I see no reason why they couldn't hunt these birds.)
--- Quote ---There is such a thing as being a nit-picker. Can't you just accept that this is what these creatures are and this is Jeph's justification for their characteristics? I don't consider it implausible. Maybe I'm guilty of not knowing enough about RL biology and zoology. However, there is a point where over-thinking it just ruins enjoyment, as it clearly is for you.
--- End quote ---
I'm not the one who brought up the issue of anthropology, Jeph is. I can't accept his explanations for the characteristics when the characteristics don't hold up or make sense. As I said a few posts ago, this is something I think about a lot because it's something I have to focus on when I'm writing, so this is an issue that stood out to me pretty obviously. I didn't have to overthink it at all, I just read the comic and was immediately struck with the problem. Something else I've said a few times: If Jeph had just hand-waved it I wouldn't care, it's only because he explained it poorly that I have the issue.
Consider this example: In the original trilogy of Star Wars, the Force was never explained. Nobody even tried to touch on how it worked, but that was fine. Nobody cared, it was just a thing that existed, and it was cool. In Episode I: The Phantom Menace, however, they try and explain that the Force is a microscopic life form called Midichlorians, and everyone hated it because it was an explanation that nobody wanted, didn't add anything to the lore or universe, and didn't make sense. They could have just as easily had Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon say that 'I sense a great power in him' or something and it would have worked fine. It's okay to leave things up to the reader's imagination when it's not something that they need to understand. When the fix to an issue is as simple as 'Don't bring it up,' it leaves me wondering why the problem was included at all, even if it's pretty minor.
BenRG:
@Mikmaxs
Do you even know what 'anthropology' is? It's the study of human social behaviour.
Anyway:
Size: It would have happened this way - neck length and probably leg length to assist in gathering food, making flight difficult or impossible. Size bulks out as the species becomes more and more reliant on ground locomotion. As said before, the neck muscles (and, by structural necessity, the body muscles) bulk out to increase the tearing power of the bird's beak.
Your insistence that I provide an example of a 'real world bird' like this is needlessly restrictive. Still, okay; how about the iguanadon? They have broadly the same body plan and likely, dietary requirements. They are even larger!
Predation: You admit that this is an extreme example. I'm sure that quite a few of these giant birds have been taken down by desperate group hunters. You're taking Alice's statement as an absolute when she's merely giving a general rule - In normal circumstances, local predators can't handle them. Because of this, they are not a particularly aggressive species unless their young is threatened. This is true of elephants too.
Here's the thing - I thought that Jeph's explanation was neat and plausible. We're at a YMMV situation. Just because you don't like it doesn't meant that the explanation is invalid.
mikmaxs:
--- Quote ---Do you even know what 'anthropology' is? It's the study of human social behaviour.
--- End quote ---
Well now I feel a little silly. Zoology. Zoology is what I meant. :P
--- Quote ---Your insistence that I provide an example of a 'real world bird' like this is needlessly restrictive. Still, okay; how about the iguanadon? They have broadly the same body plan and likely, dietary requirements. They are even larger!
--- End quote ---
The Iguanodon doesn't have the same body plan at all, though. It has four legs not two, and while it could stand on its hind legs it was mainly quadrupedal. It also has teeth, a long tail, and it's head/neck are of a different shape. Not to mention, lived in a totally different environment, and more importantly: It wasn't a bird! Dinosaurs may have evolved into birds over millions of years, but that doesn't make them the same thing in the slightest. You might as well compare these birds to the elephant again.
--- Quote ---Here's the thing - I thought that Jeph's explanation was neat and plausible. We're at a YMMV situation. Just because you don't like it doesn't meant that the explanation is invalid.
--- End quote ---
Here's the thing - I thought that Jeph's explanation was unnecessary and implausible. I don't like it because the explanation doesn't work under scrutiny, unless you make a lot of assumptions of very unlikely things happening in succession. It makes it obvious that the birds were designed first and explained second. It doesn't automatically make sense just because people don't care one way or the other. I'm not saying the comic in general is bad because of this, I'm not saying that Jeph is a bad writer, I'm saying that this one comic has an issue and I'm pointing it out because it's something that matters to me.
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