Lavabender's Zone

An excerpt from "exclusion zone", a little comic about villagers resettling in an abandoned bunker complex - up in color on the patreon next month

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology…

A 2023 illustration of the growth rate of Apatosaurus, from DINOSAUR BEHAVIOUR, by Prof Michael Benton (published by Princeton University Press). 50% off this book here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691244297/dinosaur-behavior?srsltid=AfmBOorpoQzM-Ovm9VJ-kQ3jSl60ruPWRNrwcegG3fmvTOFQonrHkldS

Just a busy, little furry friend very hard at work.

Drew this late in the evening (yeah he's surfing, forgive the shit rendering)

scientists: oh hey we found a new species of deep sea feather star, neat :)

the news: TERRIFYING and ALIEN creature with ONE THOUSAND ARMS discovered LURKING in the DEEP ABYSS of the sea

the public: omg im never swimming in the ocean again!!!

the animal:

Another peek into the world of Monoculi, with a sort of mostly arboreal leech. Compressible, elastic spines and muscular extensions of the respiratory system give them a spring-like speed for seizing prey and hopping around. These animals comprise a diverse family of mouse to housecat sized predators, and are known by an equal array endemic names, with meanings like “vine which bites”, “snapping worm” or “flying tree-branch”. Most live in tree canopies or within the branching “roots” of bio-caves, a habitat type unique to this planet’s biome.

Giant spiders, by which I mean like human-sized, are really common in fiction, so I got to thinking about how one would actually look. I referenced arthropods that actually achieved this kind of mass in the paleozoic, especially hibbertopterids. A lot of these giant bugs existed when oxygen levels were unusually high, and it does seem that oxygen is a limiting factor on the size of insects, but the very biggest arthropods weren’t insects, and some of them existed before or after the highest oxygen levels. What I’m getting at is that maybe only insects are limited this way, and arthropods that breathe differently could get huge even at present oxygen levels. Of course, they don’t, but that may have to do with competition with vertebrates, or being unable to keep up with faster-paced nutrient cycles.

So let’s say this giant spider lives on an isolated landmass, or in an alternate timeline, where vertebrates aren’t a problem, and ecosystems move slowly. It’s descended from tarantulas or related spiders that exclusively use book lungs to breathe, unlike most spiders that also have insect-style spiracles and tracheae. To efficiently move that oxygen to all of its tissues, it’ll use copper-based hemocyanin like a horseshoe crab, making its blood bright blue. The sprawling posture of a spider isn’t the best at bearing 100 kilograms, so its legs are short, and attach close to the midline of the body. The abdomen rests partially on top of its carapace to help support its organs. Being so bulky, and having a slow metabolism, it can’t sustain high activity, so actively chasing prey won’t work. But its caloric needs are also high enough that sitting in a burrow and waiting for food to come along is risky. Instead, it slowly roams like an eight-legged tortoise, “grazing” on whatever is too slow or oblivious to get out from under it as it rummages in the leaf litter and soil of damp forests with shoveling forelimbs. Insects, worms, snails, carrion, even fruit, all get shoveled between its grinding maxillae, mixed with saliva, and sucked up into its stomach. This kind of small prey is most abundant near water, so I imagine they would be shoreline animals.

Another struggle giant arthropods face is molting. It’s a long process, and it takes even longer for the new exoskeleton to harden. This giant spider would dig a burrow to molt in, and then remain dormant underground as its exoskeleton fully tans. It would emerge from its den weeks later, ravenously hungry, like a bear after hibernation. Lastly, sexual dimorphism is often more extreme in larger animals, so the males of this species would hardly grow bigger than the largest real spiders. They would still ambush prey from burrows like the ancestral tarantulas, but would also go on long journeys to find female partners. Like real tarantulas, once a male reaches adulthood, the sexual organs on its pedipalps prevent it from safely molting again, capping their lifespan at around 10 years. The females however are so large that they take 20 years just to reach maturity, and can live past 80.

Birrin studies to nail down anatomy for the book project.

Their forefoot claws are excellent at sensing infrasound through the substrate. Indeed, some of their alarm systems are more like thumpers than terrestrial sirens.

Absolute unit of a robber fly found by eldoia87 on Reddit (posted with permission)

This beauty is a Beelzebub bee-eater, Mallophora leschenaulti

Found primarily in Texas and Mexico

you have been seen you will be eaten

knuckers are my favorite dragons

Available as prints and other merch formats!

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Antarctic Expedition, Escape from the Bergs, 1842 by Richard Bridges Beechey (1808-1895)

HMS 'Erebus' and HMS 'Terror' escaping from icebergs, 13th March 1842. This painting is a seascape depicting two ships in a stormy night surrounded by icebergs.

taking art comms btw... dm me if you're interested, and i'll give you price estimates (chances are, most of them will fall between 20 or 40 bucks, depending on the complexity). here's some examples of my art work so far

sweet beast

welcome to the holocene little one, we’ve waited so long for you

hello chat, i have provided Fish Lore for this fine evening

Salmonids are a kind of fish in the Mollusc Era, and they differ radically from inkfish both physiologically and culturally. For example, they have an entirely different gender system, compared to the average cephalopod's nonexistent one!

Most Salmonid cultures have two primary genders, which for now I've dubbed as "Silver" and "Red". All salmon are born Silver, with the males turning into Reds (and only for the breeding season, after which they will become Silvers again). Females stay Silver for their whole lives.