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Description
Two organisms living in the sky of Erebozoic Earth: a tiny spider that forms vast floating swarms, and a gliding raywing that feeds on them. Neither of these creatures ever touches the ground.
a: detail of Uranopteryx head.
b: airborne egg of Anemophorus, in scale with the main picture.
c: Anemophorus, actual size.
a: detail of Uranopteryx head.
b: airborne egg of Anemophorus, in scale with the main picture.
c: Anemophorus, actual size.
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X. Life Above the Clouds (part 2)
Even though raywings are the only living creatures capable of true flight, they're not the only inhabitants of the sky. Aeroplankton is a loose collection of organisms that float around in the air, such as unicellular algae, fungal spores, protozoans, weedtree pollen and bacteria. It was inevitable that something would move to exploit such a source of food.
The silver silkwing (Anemophorus argenteus) is a minute spider - never more than half a cm long - that spends its entire life adrift in this environment, at once microscopic and immense. These creatures hatch from windblown eggs, and before ever touching the ground they secrete long silk filaments from their abdomen. With adept legs, they weave these filaments into a sort of parachute. For the rest of their life, they will lazily pick and eat any organic particle that gets stuck to the silk strands with the comb-like chelicerae.
The numbers and biomass of silkwings are enormous, for the standards of aeroplankton - possibly thousands above each square kilometer as global average - but they're still extremely diluted in their environment. Even though they can live for several years, most of them never meet their kind; the few that manage to mate spread to the wind hundreds of eggs, covered with feather-like growths like dandelion seeds. To maximize the efficiency of mating, silkwings are hermaphrodites, and both partners fertilize each other.
The numbers and biomass of silkwings are enormous, for the standards of aeroplankton - possibly thousands above each square kilometer as global average - but they're still extremely diluted in their environment. Even though they can live for several years, most of them never meet their kind; the few that manage to mate spread to the wind hundreds of eggs, covered with feather-like growths like dandelion seeds. To maximize the efficiency of mating, silkwings are hermaphrodites, and both partners fertilize each other.
The prevailing winds tend to concentrate the aeroplankton, including silkwings, in vast impalpable swarms, and dragged by updrafts above the clouds. These conditions are perfect for the cloudsifter (Uranopteryx bouyeri). This giant raywing routinely flies above the cloud layer, up to the edge of the troposphere. Since it lives in such thin air, it has narrow wings that span a total width of over nine meters, and a powerful flow-through lung that fills almost half of its whole body. Despite its size, the whole animal weighs less than 50 kg.
The scales have a silvery-blue coating that reflects UV light. The legs are connected by a thin web that almost turn them in a second pair of wings; after all, the cloudsifter never has to touch the ground (and if it ever tried, it would be killed by an atmospheric pressure far too high for its lung). Cloudsifters mate in flight, much like their preys, and still in flight they give birth to a few fries that immediately unfold highly developed wings. Merely a few days after birth, the fries jump from their mother's back and fall in the wind, never to be seen again.
The lifestyle of these creatures doesn't grant nor require a large amount of energy. Cloudsifters silently glide over winds and updrafts with their wide mouths gaping, ingesting all the spores, pollen and silkwings they find. Their sight is very poor compared to a more typical raywing, but their olfaction is far more acute, and they have a deep instinctive knowledge of the global air currents.
The only time cloudsifters ever touch the ground is when they die, after over a century of peaceful filter-feeding - or hit by lightning. As soon as the huge corpses crash into the rock or the dirt, swarms of scavengers rush to consume it, until all its organic matter returns to the soil. There it will pass to plants and fungi, and their pollen and spores will be blown by the wind in the upper troposphere, where it will feed new generations of sky dwellers, minute or immense, as they soar silently above the alien beauty of Erebozoic Earth.
The scales have a silvery-blue coating that reflects UV light. The legs are connected by a thin web that almost turn them in a second pair of wings; after all, the cloudsifter never has to touch the ground (and if it ever tried, it would be killed by an atmospheric pressure far too high for its lung). Cloudsifters mate in flight, much like their preys, and still in flight they give birth to a few fries that immediately unfold highly developed wings. Merely a few days after birth, the fries jump from their mother's back and fall in the wind, never to be seen again.
The lifestyle of these creatures doesn't grant nor require a large amount of energy. Cloudsifters silently glide over winds and updrafts with their wide mouths gaping, ingesting all the spores, pollen and silkwings they find. Their sight is very poor compared to a more typical raywing, but their olfaction is far more acute, and they have a deep instinctive knowledge of the global air currents.
The only time cloudsifters ever touch the ground is when they die, after over a century of peaceful filter-feeding - or hit by lightning. As soon as the huge corpses crash into the rock or the dirt, swarms of scavengers rush to consume it, until all its organic matter returns to the soil. There it will pass to plants and fungi, and their pollen and spores will be blown by the wind in the upper troposphere, where it will feed new generations of sky dwellers, minute or immense, as they soar silently above the alien beauty of Erebozoic Earth.
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Very nice!