Episode 7: The World of Tiny Cannibals
If you could eat one of your friends and absorb their strength and knowledge, who would you eat? That question might seem weird to you, but creatures on this world have to wrestle with that question every day of their lives.
GUESTS
1. Crystal Ng is a marine biologist at Chapman University. You can follow her on twitter at @crystal_a_ng
2. Kylie Holloway is a self-designated "art bitch" and cohost of Nevertheless She Existed. You can follow her on twitter at @kylieholloway_
3. Alie Ward is a science communicator extraordinaire! You've probably heard her voice on her podcast Ologies and maybe even seen her face on Netflix's 100 Humans and Brainchild. You can follow her on twitter at @alieward
TRANSCRIPT
Moiya 0:07
Hello, and welcome to Exolore, a show about facts based fictional world building. I'm your host Moiya McTier. And today I'm joined by an ocean ecologist, a self titled art bitch. She didn't want to call herself an expert, but you'll soon see that she definitely knows her shit, and a general science communicator extraordinaire. Together we're imagining life on a planet around a variable star. I'm honestly so stoked for this episode, and I hope you're ready to hear about some cool cannibals with long tongues. Let's get started. We're going to start off easy with introductions, and so I would like all of our viewers and listeners to know who you are, and Crystal is at the top of my screen. So Crystal, do you want to start by telling us who you are, what you do, and what imaginary worlds you're inhabiting. So like, What are you reading or watching or playing right now?
Crystal 0:58
Oh, okay. So hi, I'm Crystal Ng. I'm currently a postdoctoral fellow at Chapman University, which is in Southern California. And I do research on climate change stressors and how they impact marine communities. So specifically, I'm interested in understanding how different climate change stressors, impact species interactions. And I look at that in more nearshore communities. So I've worked in giant kelp forests. And now I'm kind of transitioning to kind of the intertidal pools that you might see when you go to the beach. Well, so right now, in terms of the last question for the what worlds am I in, I've just started watching Twin Peaks - I'm a little late to the game ... but it is what a world it's a it's a funky world. So that's kind of what I've been watching as of late.
Moiya 2:05
Well, are you watching the original is the new one out yet, with Jordan Peele, I think?
Crystal 2:11
Oh is ... Oh, I didn't know. I knew that there was a reboot. I think a couple years ago. I'm watching the original. I know there's a reboot. I didn't know there's like another one with Jordan Peele.
Moiya 2:21
Unless I'm just making this up.
Kylie 2:22
He did Twilight Zone.
Moiya 2:24
Okay, that's what it is.
Crystal 2:26
Okay.
Moiya 2:28
Awesome. Kylie, do you want to go next? Who are you? What do you do?
Kylie 2:34
I'm Kylie and I am a tour guide at Metropolitan Museum of Art and museums around the country. I also am just a comedian who really loves talking about women from history. I host a podcast called "Nevertheless She Existed". It celebrates the women from history, who should be in your history books who you should have learned about and it is also a live show at Caveat, which is a venue on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that is miraculously still open, not the venue itself, but the business. We're struggling through and I am also the booking manager there, which I don't think will come up in our work today, but it's my day job.
Moiya 3:18
[Probably not] but thanks for sharing.
Kylie 3:21
It's my bio, I've got to do it.
Moiya 3:23
Yeah, and what worlds are you inhabiting?
Kylie 3:27
Um, well, I'm ... my book that I'm reading right now is very much grounded in this world. I'm reading "Assassination Vacation" by Sarah Vowell ... which is, she travels around the country going to sites, sort of the weird tourism that surrounds assassination of American presidents. It's excellent, but I'm also watching "The Great" on Hulu, which is like put it in my veins. It is, like beautiful period costumes like woman talking to bears. It's cool. It's good to watch.
Moiya 3:59
What more could you ask for?
Kylie 4:02
A lot of vodka, which I don't drink. So there you go.
Moiya 4:06
Great Alie, what about you?
Alie 4:08
I gotta get up in that cause I'm very into period costumes and bears so I need to do that. Um, let's see. My name is Alie Ward and I host a podcast called "Ologies" which is a different ology every episode, so it's ... the last one I did was planariology which is about flatworms. So I challenged myself to try to get people interested in obscure topics, instead of like, you know, who's divorcing who in the celebrity world. I'm like, please care about flatworms, and so I do that and then I also am on a Netflix show called "100 Humans" and another Netflix show called "Brainchild", and a CBS show called "Innovation Nation" with Mo Rocca and ... yeah, what I, the world I'm inhabiting are mostly dream worlds of my own horror and making, I feel like I just keep having these ... just absolutely bananas dreams or I'll wake up from them and not know what was real so I've been having some serious isolation dreams but I haven't been watching enough TV and that is partly because I'm just always chasing deadlines with ologies and even still, even in the absence of my other work but I'm trying to think of the what we've gotten into ... and I honestly can't remember the last thing that I got into it's which is really sad actually --
Moiya 5:37
How?
Alie 5:38
I confess ... that I haven't been watching enough television. I've just been having nutty dreams ... which sucks.
Moiya 5:47
Well, maybe after this you can inhabit the world we create. Maybe you'll dream about it.
Alie 5:52
I hope so. I really .... the biggest challenge and all of this has just been trying to find ... trying to make a schedule for myself and I'm finding even without having to be anywhere I still am bad at making a schedule. So, that's a big burden, big thing I've learned.
Moiya 6:09
Same, honestly. Thanks for sharing. So my name is Moiya McTier, and lately I've been reading "Sorcery of Thorns" by Margaret Rogerson, which I did not expect to be good at all. I really didn't. I've never read anything by Rogerson before, and like it's called "Sorcery of Thorns", like it has the title of like a crappy young adult, or like maybe mid-grade romance ... but the writing is really great, and the world building is is like ... sneakily beautiful. The whole thing is about sorcerers who get their power by conjuring demons, but there are these great libraries and like, there are sentient books. It's amazing. I'm in love. That's what I do. Alright, so let's get on to the world that we're going to build. So the world that we're building is a planet that orbits a variable star, and a variable star is one that over time will get brighter and dimmer. There are some really interesting mechanisms for why that happens, but that's not totally relevant to the discussion. All you need to know is that this star gets much brighter over the course of a few years; and so at its brightest, it's about five times brighter than the sun; and at its dimmest, it's about five times dimmer than the sun. Fluctuations in brightness will also lead to fluctuations in temperature, but it's not exactly a one to one match. So when the star is at its brightest, it's also at its hottest and the planet, then will be about one and a half times the average temperature here on Earth ... but when the star is at its dimmest, it's actually still emitting a lot of infrared light which we feel as heat. So the planet doesn't actually get very cold, it just gets very dark, and like I said before, this all happens over the course of a few years. That's the the period for this variability. With that in mind, my first question is always about the physical environment, because that determines the biology of the life that exists on this planet, that determines the culture of the life that exists there. So let's get into the environment. How do we think that this variability of the star would affect things like climate, or plant growth on this planet? Do any of you have any thoughts on that?
Alie 8:38
Would it be kind of like a desert? Like how deserts can get really cold at night, but really hot during the day like very kind of hardy plant life?
Moiya 8:48
Yeah, question mark. Yeah.
Crystal 8:52
Yeah, I was thinking something like, at least with plants, things that can hold water. probably good for those really really hot periods of time 'cause it's interesting 'cause it's not just like one day it's hot, one day it's cool it's this really potentially more prolonged heat spell. So figuring out how to store some of those I guess nutrients or water either in your actual body right of the plant like a cactus or something, or an underground kind of more extensive root system. What would probably optimally you know, prepare you for the really hot.
Moiya 9:37
Kylie, you look like you're deep in thought.
Kylie 9:39
I'm just trying to figure out who - I was talking about with one artist name, but I ... What is ... then what do people eat? Like? Are there catastrophic harvests? I have no - I just have more questions ... but no answers. Are there like, catastrophic - like do all hard like all crops die every few years or do they just eat a lot of carrots like things that can grow underground and root vegetables that are hardy and will be preserved? A lot of things like aloe that can handle changes in light and store a lot of water ... I also have a lot of houseplants that's my only area of expertise.
Moiya 10:17
You do have so many plants I've been to your apartment. It's very green.Yeah, I imagine the ... plants that probably can't handle these changes, most likely won't last very long on this planet. So root vegetables is a good direction and then cactuses, cacti, aloe plants, things like that. Anything else? Any other plants that do really well in like, extreme sunlight and heat.
Kylie 10:46
Um, I think you'd end up with like a lot of really weird forests because you'd have things sort of like what happens to rainforests where you would have like ... plants that can handle like growing up and above. So I'm picturing like just giant cactuses, and I'm not - this is not - I'm not a botanist, but I'm picturing like gigantic cactuses and things that will thrive and then underneath things like ... cast iron plants and bird's nest ferns and things that can grow with low light and a lot of like lush foliage. Yeah.
Alie 11:20
Smart. Yeah, that's a good direction.
Moiya 11:23
Crystal, what about the ocean? That's your main area.
Crystal 11:28
Yeah. Actually, when you said that, it'll be on average one and a half times hotter. I was like, oh, that's gonna - that really sucks for a lot of animals, right? Like, it's, it depends, right? And just like how there's a difference between the poles and the equator on land. There's a difference in the ocean, and depending on how close you are, I guess to your physiological limit ... can determine how much you're able to handle, you know, one degree even two degrees could potentially push you over the edge; or you might be okay. The thing though with the ocean is it's really variable already. There's periodicity, just like we see seasons on Earth, or on land. And so I think there's actually quite a bit of, you know, extreme kind of a life that can live in the ocean because we have a lot of things like, you know, pressure, not a lot of light deep down. We also have kind of marine heat waves ... but I think my biggest fear, I guess, in this world for the ocean animals is ... the ones that are actually the, you know, the conversation is still building on this, but variable animals actually live in a variable environment. It could go one of two ways; you could either be really hardy, because you're used to that variability, so those animals might be able to survive. I know the kelp forest animals that I you know, worked with they are experiencing huge swings in temperature oxygen pH every single day. So they might be a little hardier but then you might have ... but then on the flip ends, they might actually be not super hardy. So we're not sure they might be hardy because of their use of the variability, but they also might not be very hardy because they're close to their physiological limit. So they're being swung around, but one tip in you know, a couple of degrees could kind of send them over the edge they're basically just swinging just within their their limits right now. So it's ... not like there's gonna be a blanket roll to who's gonna die right and who's gonna survive but ... I think the I'm gonna put my money on the ones that are used to variability might be a little bit hardier they might survive the heating.
Moiya 13:52
Okay.
Unidentified Speaker 13:55
Yeah.
Kylie 13:55
What are there - are you telling me there's - the ocean has different seasons than the land?
Crystal 14:00
It's ... so upwelling is one thing that I kind of study, and that's kind of some of my past work is ... upwelling actually happens in the spring, it starts to happen in the spring. So we, if you've lived like in more coastal areas, and you start to see the wind kind of build up, that actually leads to a lot of waves and choppiness if you're just like looking out in the ocean, and I'm looking at the California coast, right? So this is my example of it, but that actually, even though we think of spring as this is the time for things to start popping up - warming, you know, like, great things on land. In the ocean, at least in the California coast, it actually gets really cold, because those waves kind of like move this cold, deep water up to the surface. So it gets really cold, and if you're diving out in like, spring, summer that can be sometimes the coldest parts of the year. Yeah.
Moiya 14:54
What's the hottest time of the year in the ocean?
Crystal 14:56
I mean, okay, so for me, like Northern hemisphere, I would say probably, it depends, again, 'cause the upper - like with me like I think sometimes like the fall was nice, was really nice, you would get kind of flatter days ... warmer temperature like you know, you get to like 60 degrees, 62 degrees Fahrenheit in the water. So it depends, right 'cause not all regions are upwelling regions, and so even though it could be really cold and an upwelling region in the spring and another region, it's perfectly fine like the Atlantic ... closer to you guys.
Alie 15:35
I was raised in the Bay Area and so the notion of just like ... kind of trucking yourself into the ocean for a nice swim was like "no, why's it so cold - it's so cold!" and then so it's really weird on the first time I went to the East Coast ever I was like you're getting in the water and it's just a very different ... very different situation. So yeah, you need like a wetsuit to have a beach day in Northern California.
Crystal 16:00
Yes.
Alie 16:00
I get it. Also, what about dormant periods? Like ... cicadas right like 17 year, cicadas or like a FLOTUS blossom or ... yeasts or fungi that can just lay dormant until the time is right; do you think in a planet that had that - those kind of cyclical changes, would they be regular enough to foster life that was just like, "bye, bye. I'll see you when the sun comes out", you know?
Moiya 16:30
Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, the star is very regular. Yeah, even more regular, I'd say them the seasons here on Earth.
Alie 16:40
Oh, okay. So maybe, maybe there would be little critters that would just go like have a period of quiescence? Isn't that I learned that word literally yesterday, so that's a lot of bang for your buck.
Moiya 16:56
Oh, absolutely. Cicadas have always freaked me the fuck out.
Alie 17:01
Yeah.
Moiya 17:01
I remember when I was little, seeing their little bodies on the trees that they left behind, and I genuinely thought that it was like the locusts coming and that God was punishing everyone because that was back when my parents were still sending me to Sunday school .... It was bad.
Alie 17:17
I love those. I love those. Those are called "Exuviae" if you ever need to know what they're called, but it's just like this ghost that you left behind and I almost named - I had to come up with a name for my company and I almost called it Exuvia because I thought those little shells of like, this is what I used to be were cool. Anyway.
Moiya 17:34
Kylie, you had a second question?
Kylie 17:36
Oh, it's gone, but I do have a question for you ... How this is more, because it'll impact culture. How long are the periods like between the swings?
Moiya 17:47
Yeah. Every three years the star is at its hottest.
Kylie 17:52
Oh, okay. Okay, because if it was like 20 years you get - and things were dormant those things that would be dormant that would then come up would be like luxury goods when they did, but if they're coming back every three years or so, that's a different story.
Moiya 18:08
I think three years can still make something a luxury good. I like the idea of these bugs or these creatures that come back. cyclically being delicacies.
Alie 18:19
Yeah, like a little shrimps or something like, oh, let's see, it's kind of like seafood season here. You know, everyone gets excited about lobster fests and such.
Moiya 18:31
Mm hmm.
Crystal 18:31
That's true, actually, with the warming, especially if it's not like, bam, it's warm it could actually lead to different distributions and species. So even though we might not be able to catch some fish, you know, in Southern California, because it gets warmer here, you might actually get some ranging expansion of some species. So that yeah, I think that that could be like, ooh, on my menu, something's popped up that could be available, you know like two years ago.
Moiya 19:02
Nice. Alright, so I like that we're talking about a lot of different types of creatures that would exist on this planet because obviously that's the case, right? Earth doesn't just have humans on it. There are millions of species? I think ... there are lots of things here, but I would like to try and focus in on the type of species that we think might become dominant on this planet. So the human equivalent, even if they don't look anything like humans, but the most powerful species here. So what physical traits do you think would lead a species to just like dominate over everything else on this planet?
Alie 19:44
Maybe smallness? I don't know.
Crystal 19:47
I actually thought that too.
Alie 19:49
Or I you know, I interviewed a thermal physiologist on "Ologies", and he was talking about sizes of creatures and now I feel like he was saying, the bigger - the colder it is, the bigger the creature.
Moiya 20:04
Hmm, because that makes it easier to hold on to heat?
Alie 20:08
Yeah, so I wonder for thermal regulation? That's a great question. I don't know.
Unidentified Speaker 20:15
It's unhealthy.
Crystal 20:15
Yeah, I guess ... So there is a pattern that basically at the polls, you tend to get big, and then the equater is you get smaller. And I also think I mean, I'm also not a physiologist, but I think it also has to do with like, your, the surface area of your body to the volume or whatever is big and so you actually can expand and evaporate heat pretty quickly. If you're smaller, and there's also the idea of fat storage. If you're bigger you're holding probably more fat.
Moiya 20:52
Mm hmm.
Kylie 20:53
So, how much does the temperature fluctuate Moiya, or is it more about light?
Moiya 21:00
The brightness definitely fluctuates more than the temperature. But the coldest it gets is just like how cold it gets here on Earth. But it will get much hotter. So ...
Kylie 21:12
Oh yeah.
Moiya 21:13
One and a half. Yeah. Yeah. I like little. All right, all right. Um, what other traits? Like? What would their skin look like? If they have skin?
Alie 21:30
Probably something that was ... I'm either thinking like an exoskeleton that could retain moisture, or something super permeable to off like to ... be able to get rid of heat. So I don't know those are. I feel like those are polar.
Moiya 21:52
What if we had a cold-blooded thing? I feel like I remember reading when I was young, that cold-blooded creatures, because they like take on the temperature of their surroundings. Maybe they can deal better with extreme temperature swings or maybe that's totally wrong. Do any of you know?
Alie 22:11
No, oh my gosh they're ectothermic. Oh, I learned this from Shane it's "ectothermic poikilotherms" or maybe they're I think it's "poikilothermic", but I'm absolutely fact check me but ... that's like when ... you can adapt - you can kind of adjust your own temperature. I feel like it's "poikilotherms" and I don't know, but ... doesn't "poikilotherm" also sound like a Greek appetizer? Like I'm going to get a feta poikilotherms?
Moiya 22:47
Oh, well it does now.
Alie 22:50
I'm looking it up - am I allowed to look it up?
Moiya 22:52
Yeah, absolutely.
Alie 22:53
"Poikilothermia" ... that's the inability to regulate one's body temperature.
Moiya 23:02
That's the opposite of what we want.
Alie 23:04
Yes, yes, and "homeotherms" can keep the same temperature, and we are endothermic and "ectothermic poikilotherms" cannot regulate their own temperature, and those are like amphibians and reptiles and stuff. So now we know "poikilotherms", "exuvia", and "quiescence". You're welcome.
Moiya 23:26
I'm gonna have to keep track of the new vocabulary words, gonna be great.
Alie 23:30
That I keep mispronouncing Yeah, the worst.
Kylie 23:34
So the homotherms you said are the same ... homeo
Alie 23:38
"Homeotherms" ... we are homeotherms because we can do homeostasis, and our temperature is kind of the same. And fish, invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians, those are poikilotherms, where they can't regulate their own, so they kind of need their environment to help regulate their temperature.
Moiya 24:02
So we want a warm blooded thing that can very easily regulate its body temperature., under these changing conditions?
Alie 24:11
Probably.
Moiya 24:11
I feel like especially with the with the brightness, it might be really advantageous to be able to change your skin color. Like to be able to manipulate the amount of melanin in your skin to protect you from from these environments. Are there animals that can do that here on earth?
Alie 24:31
Squid, right? Octopuses [can] really well, they have ... these little packets, right? You would know -
Crystal 24:41
Chromatophores.
Alie 24:41
Chromataphores?
Crystal 24:42
Yeah, with the squid too. Yeah.
Alie 24:44
So maybe they're having that then you can also just change depending on what the fashion is.
Moiya 24:53
Yes.
Crystal 24:53
That's awesome ...
Moiya 24:55
Small, warm-blooded creatures that can change the amount of melanin in their skin to adapt to the environment. Anything else?
Kylie 25:04
Do they sweat?
Crystal 25:05
I think sweating is gon' be really imperative. Just like thinking about us, like if we couldn't sweat ... bad news.
Alie 25:16
Yeah, or they'd have to have like, uh you know how dogs ... dogs I think don't sweat but they're able to pant through it and I think ... even alligators will regulate their temperature by just cracking open their mouth and ... so I think big huge chunks. Also important either sweaty, you're going to be sweaty or you're gonna have your tongue hanging out?
Moiya 25:38
Why not both? I like both. I'm picturing just like sweaty messes with like giant tongues like that Pokemon - Likitung, that's what I'm picturing for these people? So we covered environment and some of their bio. I really like to to focus most of the episode on culture; so how do we think their behavior would be different between the bright times and the dimmer times?
Crystal 26:11
I think it also, it depends on kind of your institutional memory too, because if you're like, if you haven't generation time, like a human, you're going to experience so many of these phases in your life, that that could really impact the way that you view, the future planning, those kinds of things. But if you're an animal that has a short generation time, that doesn't even hit the net, you know, within that three year period, you're not even knowing that it's, you know, basically it gets hot and you're dead, or it doesn't even have to get hot and you're already dead. You lose that institutional memory so you're gonna make decisions in a very different way potentially, thinking that there's more time. So I think it's it's good depend on the generation time.
Moiya 26:58
Yeah, that's a really great point. I mean, I've always thought that if a ... Allie?species is going to become dominant in a space that they probably have to have longer lifetimes, otherwise they just can't build up enough intelligence and enough of a society to make much of a difference. What do you think?
Kylie 27:20
I like assuming that they have longer times, just because I think that's more fun to play with, in terms of like, what kind of culture they'd actually build ... that's my instinct, do you think Alie?
Alie 27:31
I'm ... thinking of, like nocturnal being versus being diurnal, because I feel like maybe, I wonder if in periods of more sunlight, if that's kind of more than a rest period? And so they're, they do more kind of on they're more like, almost seasonally productive during the darker times. And, you know, with like bigger eyes and that's kind of their that's their daytime. And then, you know, from a large kind of perspective, every couple of years, it's like okay now is like their - almost like their summer vacation where things go [gasp], you know?
Moiya 28:13
I love that, I'm picturing like how people in Spain will have long siestas in the afternoon in the summer 'cause it's just too hot to do anything.
Alie 28:21
Yeah, or kind of like Ramadan ... where it's like the sun sets, and then it's time to gather and eat and in the daytime is ... kind of more of like a fasting resting. So something like that would be it'd be interesting to also think about that culture that's flipped, where the sunlight and the heat is what is a threat as opposed to human beings who at night our vision isn't so great, and we're like, is there any tigers out there? You know?
Kylie 28:55
I did have a question sort of related to that of - are we assuming that the periods of sort of at either end of the spectrum are great periods of shortage? Like ... is there famine? Is there drought? Like what? What do people - what resources do people actually have access to on either end of the spectrum?
Moiya 29:16
Yeah, there probably will be drought, when it's very hot. And then in the middle, it'll be pretty rainy when it's temperate ... I see Krystal nodding. Maybe you should be the one answering this question.
Crystal 29:34
Um, I think that's ... my guess to I mean, I think once it's really hot you would have, I think drought would be very, very common. And then ... the thing is, is that it's not actually really decreasing, it's not like we're having really cold spells either -
Moiya 29:51
Right.
Crystal 29:51
It's just like our normal cold that we could get.
Moiya 29:55
It's just dark.
Crystal 29:57
It's just dark. So ... it's really tricky, right? 'Cause I feel like ... initially I was like, oh, well, maybe in the hot times, we become more nocturnal. So every couple of years, we become nocturnal, and then once it cools down again, it's just like this abundance. Like we're just like, time to go out. We're, you know, living life to the largest because everything is now not super hot, and I can actually do my things during the daytime; but it depends, right? Because if it's dim during those colder times, you're also not really going to have crops, depending on depending on how much light there actually is. You might not get crops during that time, too. So the society might actually be used to really not having a lot of abundance.
Moiya 30:51
Unless they behave, unless they, like, model their behavior after that. So maybe they stockpile food or maybe there's a whole community shift to foods that don't rely on sunlight either ... night growing plants, those are a thing I'm pretty sure, or they develop more of a meat based diet during the dim times.
Alie 31:17
If you think about our winters ... there's not shit to eat and a lot of places, you know, you've got a whole bunch of snow and some twigs. You're like, "ugh," but people have gotten used to it by storing things and then also culturally, you know, like the Hygga type of indoor, light a candle. Everyone's close, everyone kind of has to bond because there's not a lot of resources. So maybe those periods of dark times are a period of like cozy overindulgence almost. It's funny because in winter, where there's not a lot of crops is when we in America eat the most. It's like ...
Moiya 32:01
Yeah.
Alie 32:01
No one's pants fit in the winter. It doesn't make any sense. There's not a fruit but we figure it out. So I don't know maybe they're dark time is just like, you know, eating -
Moiya 32:12
I'm picturing lots of stews, stews or things that you can make with food that you've stored up like salted meat and vegetables that you've stored away.
Alie 32:21
Yeah, dried fruits ... just you know, like things that have stored, canned - situations. But I wonder if that would be a time of just very like cozy hunkered.
Kylie 32:31
I also think it's a time of like, greater equity if we're thinking about like, culturally because it's a time where most people will have access to the same. I don't know, I'm trying to think of like when there'll be the greatest disparity and like access to resources or not people or creatures. They're not humans. But yeah, I mean, does that happen more in times of darkness or times of lightness or is it a constant, but that just means different things. I'm just thinking about a more of like how that's going to translate to art 'cause like rich people determine what art we watch ... we look at. Yeah.
Moiya 33:11
Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think to get there, we first have to think about what they value as a society; and that can be both, like characteristics like traits that people have, like, loyalty and honesty or material possessions. Like how a lot of people think that crows really like shiny things, which isn't true, but like, we still think that so what do we think that this society would value?
Alie 33:37
I had a dark thought, but I'll go there. What if, enterntain it, what if they become cannibalistic in the dark? What if they become cannibals and whoever can outrun each other, and whoever has the gumption to eat, their friends are the ones who continue on so it's just this brutal, tiny creatures who are the -
Moiya 34:05
With their tongues -
Alie 34:06