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MickMcDee β Mars Creatures
#alien #creatures #exobiology #mars #extraterrestrial
Published: 2017-06-11 18:38:24 +0000 UTC; Views: 2935; Favourites: 84; Downloads: 17
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Description
Finally hello again!Damn, its been so long since my last ballpen compilation! OK, i was trying to use more colour in my pics, but sometimes I need a bit of nostalgia.
I always wanted to do this compilation, but never had the time or the motivation to finish it. Today I'm gonna show some creatures i imagine to live on Mars.
BTW I'm not sure about the scenario - these critters could live in the far away past before Mars dried out, or in a distant future after humans have terraformed the planet (even if i dont think that this will ever happen). Maybe they are even engineered and made by a higher race to live in the red desert.
Hm, I think I let you decide! Where or better "when" do you want them live? Anyway, lets come to the actors!
First line from left to right:
FEATHER TALE - a small herbivore, it uses its tale to catch flying seeds. It's very shy, but alhough fast and can imitate a rock if it has to hide from an enemy.
OCTO-LEAF - well, that strange thing was meant to be some kind of fish, but i changed the design dramatically. Its the Mars version of tumble weed.
KNIFE HEDGEHOG - looks like the mega-evolution of an earth hedgehog, even if it lives more like a lizard. The thorns are made from bone.
SAND SURFER - this boneless creature slides along the deserts of Mars and catches little animals, but mostly fruits and fallen leafs.
D-REX - the Desert Rex, but i prefer DANCING Rex, is the biggest predator of Mars. Compared to T-Rex its quite small, just as big as a human, but highly aggressive!
Second line from left to right:
SALAMONKEY - the name is only based on the design, it has nothing to do with a salamander or a monkey. Its more like a carnivorous sloth.
DUST CLEANER - a really strange striding creatures. It uses its elongated mouth to catch fruits from the earth (i dont really like it BTW...)
DESERT POTATOE - a huge and really important plant of Mars. Its like a baobab tree but it produces a high among of fruits and feeds a lot of herbivores.
ROCK EEL - this snake-like animal uses acid to break through rock and reach water reservations. The horn on its head is for defence, not for digging.
STORM CLAW - on of the few flying creatures of Mars. Cause of the thin atmosphere of Mars it can only fly and hunt when storms come up. Maybe a little far-fetched...
Hope you like! What do you think? Are these creatures plausible or just pure fantasy? Please comment and keep on watching!
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Comments: 13
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I love your ballpoint art. It was what first attracted me to your work. Your creatures are also very imaginative and these are very good. These would almost certainly have to have come from a Mars that has been terraformed by humans or some other species to have a thicker atmosphere or from a prehistoric that had a thicker atmosphere. That being said, do not despair. I am 54 and will most likely not see man set foot on Mars, even though my father is still very much alive and active and I come from a line of long-lived men. I do believe that my son will see a man walk on Mars just as surely as I saw the first man walk on the moon. As for the plausibility of your creations, well that is only bound up by the limits of the imagination of the person reading your description and viewing your art, now, isn't it? Take your rock eel, for instance; acetic acid or vinegar is strong enough to make limestone and some evaporate rocks easily workable by even a weak creature, so that is easily feasible. An acid that weak could easily be generated in the saliva of virtually any creature without doing harm to itself. If we look to the acids in the stomach of a human, however, we are talking much stronger stuff. Our stomachs contain both Hydrochloric and Sulfuric acids, both of which can effectively eat away at different types of rock and stone depending on their strength. The strength of the acid in your stomach is strong enough to stain unwaxed marble, but not strong enough to do much more than that. Snakes have much stronger digestive juices than we do because they cannot vomit and must eliminate their bowels in the form of a liquid. A rattlesnake can successfully digest 1" diameter steel ball bearings. There may be even stronger examples of acid generation by Earth creatures, I don't know, but all of these examples prove that a creature capable of producing a powerful acid naturally can exist and it can also develop natural ways to protect itself from its own acid. Looks good until we hit one big snag. Silicon dioxide. Glass. None of the acids produced by any of the animals I mentioned will affect glass. Silicon dioxide has another name, quartz. That's right, quartz and glass are essentially the same thing. I got even worse news for you, quartz has dozens of other names, too. Obsidian? Yeah, that's really just silicon dioxide, i.e. glass, aka quartz. Jasper; same thing. Amethyst? Yep. The list goes on and on. Quartz is an important component in lots of igneous and metamorphic rock formations, too. So, our little rock eel would have to go around such formations or find gaps in them in order to breach them unless he carried the only acid I know that will breach glass; hydroflouric acid. That is nasty stuff. Oddly enough, it is sometimes kept in wax containers, because it cannot dissolve wax. Lots of animals generate different types of waxes. Does the rock eel? If it does, then it could bore through virtually anything in front of it and would potentially be more dangerous than your rex even if it was tiny in comparison.
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Sorry, not much spare time π£
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"KNIFE HEDGEHOG" are two words i've never seen together. Small recommendations: the first on the second line looks more like a Lobstermonkey imo. The dust cleaner might work better as a swamp/aquatic filter feeder (assuming those still exist on the Mars in your universe), I really like the design!
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My vote is for them to live in Mars' distant past. The only issue with that would be the question of whether there was enough time for a diverse array of complex life to evolve on the planet before it became a harsh frozen desert world unable to sustain anything except perhaps certain microbes. Though one could quite plausibly speculate that Martian life made the transition from single-celled microbes to multicellular lifeforms far earlier in their evolutionary history than Earth life did, and had a lot of early diversification of said multicellular lifeforms.
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Ok, thx for the feedback π
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Assuming that Mars remains an arid/freezing desert, I'd say these guys are pretty plausible. They all fit into a certain niche, so there isn't much competition with one another (that isn't to say there aren't other species than these, of course), and all seem pretty adapted to their respective lifestyles. Assuming that Mars would still be capable of sustaining life right now (it might again in the distant future, we'll have to see), I'd love to see these guys scampering across the "Martian Outback" on a rover cam somedayΒ Β
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Thats exactly what i wanna see too π
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