So the name of this thread is pretty self explanatory. When I was younger I would always run around pretending to be some antelope or big cat or something similar. At one point I invented a whole ecological region in the mountains of eastern Europe, home to...the Transylvanian Tiger. Basically it was a Siberian Tiger that lived in the mountains and hunted an assortment of other creatures that I made up. For example the "Goombabuk" which was a mountain Wildebeest that was prayed on by the Transylvanian Tiger.
I still make up animals as an adult, have you heard of speculative evolution? Basically it's is a niche artistic hobby that involves designing how life would evolve in the future, if circumstances in Earth's past were different, on alien planet or in convoluted settings such as if someone took an empty planet and colonized it with specific Earth plants and animals, then let them evolve without competitors for millions of years.
No I haven't but as someone fascinated by space and potential extraterrestrial life I do imagine how organisms from other planets would appear. Although my primary interest is theorizing how dinosaurs would have evolved if they had never gone extinct and/or the extinction had been smaller or happened earlier.
The “no Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event” scenario is definitely one of the most common ideas in speculative evolution. Dinosaurs in general are are really popular subjects among speccers. By the way, did the “Goombabuk” happen to resemble an angry, bipedal mushroom?
I made up a centipede type creature when I was younger that had iridescent scales but was fossorial and had suction-type blackberry-shaped feet. Man I was a weird kid.
I wasn't technically a kid, but when I was a senior in high school, I took a zoology class as an elective. Our final project was that we had to create an animal. I ended up creating a fake bird-of-prey called the Marmohawk. I can't remember too many specifics other than the fact it only ate pygmy marmosets. At one point I actually used Photoshop to combine body parts from different birds of prey to create a likeness of it. My teacher happened to see this during class and he just started laughing and said, "That's fantastic. I love that." I believe I got an A on the project.
I made up a few when I was a little kid, often they were based on toy animals I had. “Pygmy leopard”— similar to the clouded leopard but found in Africa as well as Madagascar. “Long-tailed deer”— exactly what it sounds like, found in North America and Asia. “Waterguide”— ibis-like bird occurring around water sources throughout the tropics of the world. An entire taxonomic family I invented was the “simons”. Mustelid-like omnivorous mammals occurring across the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa. The smallest was the Amazon simon, the biggest was the three-foot giant simon. ...yeah, I was (and really still am) one strange kid.
I didn't really make up animals as a kid, but I did make up a few interesting animals that were basically amalgamations of existing animals late last year. Here's the three I'm most proud of: "Pig-Faced Antbully": A stout, fossorial, insectivorous mammal with a foul stench and a bad temper. Resembles a mashup of an aardvark, a sloth bear, a honey badger, and a wild boar. "Greater Gullevult": Imagine if a southern giant petrel and a lappet-faced vulture had a revolting child the size of an albatross. Feeds on the sick, dying, and dead. "Subterranean Troglodile": This one is basically just if a Prionosuchus was an olm, with minor gharial and river dolphin influences. The babies are called "Pollitrogs" for whatever that's worth.
So, so many. One "species" I was particularly attached to were "mudrunners" which were large, spotted felines with impressive running abilities that lived in fairly cold, muddy, swamp like areas. Basically a lot like cheetahs but with longer and thicker fur and I normally drew them with jaguar-like markings.
I made up so many strange and bizarre animals in my childhood that they could take up a whole thread. But then again, most of their drawings are lost to time, and I have to rely on my memory for all of them. I'll just mention the more interesting ones; if I mention every awesomebro one like the elephant with 5 pairs of tusks or the lion with Wolverine claws, we'll be here forever. These are some of the curious creatures I made in my very earliest iterations of speculative evolution. - Spereon; a large semiaquatic marine mammal, kind of like a dolphin with sea lion-like flippers, with a conical beak and (of course) razor-sharp teeth; it would shoot up from the depths to jump right through ships, punching holes through them so they sank, so being able to devour the sailors. - Cryte; a burly ungulate with a wide, tusked mouth like a hippo, two horns on its nose like an African rhinoceros and, most bizarrely, long and thin drooping rabbit-like ears. - Kryena; a large hyena-like animal with four shortened legs and... Two goddamn wings growing from its shoulders. Like an edgy version of Pegasus. - Pink Panther; a large, arboreally oriented cat, very similar to a clouded leopard, with a fabulous bubblegum-pink coat with dark purple blotches. - Angler-otter; a muddy-brown otter with an anglerfish lure on its head. Not much more to say. - Fish parrot; a large, long-tailed parrot which has a very long, seagull-like snout with which to catch fish, along with a stark white-and-cyan coloration. - Hawk Sparrow; a descendant of the sparrow which has become a medium-sized raptorial hunter of small lizards and rodents, among others. Its wicked black-and-red plumage doesn't make much ecological sense, but it does make it look more badass. - Golden swamp rooster; a rather beautiful species of swamp-dwelling pheasant. - Neotegu; an emerald green member of the tegu/whiptail family which is about 2.5m long, and has evolved into a predatory niche, acting like a cross between a water monitor and a small crocodile, laterally flattened tail and all. - Antegoat; domestic goats which evolved into a much more agile, long-legged gazelle-like animal. - Mara-marmot; Gophers which have become long-legged like Patagonian Maras - Turkiller; Six-foot tall killer turkeys which are a poor imitation of The Future is Wild Carakillers. - Gigoose: a huge, more terrestrial descendant of geese which reaches up to 5m tall, with a large head reminiscent of the Gastornis. Luckily for everyone, it's a rather even tempered herbivore. I may list some more later down the line.
Dude, Serina is awesome. Love your artwork. I'm a fan of spec evo as well and did some drawings on dA.
Ok, here's some more animal concepts that I've had for a while: "Paramonkey": A gliding monkey (looks like a cross between a Francois Langur & an Angolan Colobus, but bright orange with a gliding membrane). Hops like a sifaka when on the ground. "Mermaseal": A slow-swimming marine mammal that looks like a cross between a walrus, a manatee, and a monk seal. Both sexes have large air sacs around their neck to help them float while sleeping. Unsure if they'd be a tropical species like a monk seal, or an arctic species like a walrus. "Goofy A'aa": Definitely the silliest animal I've created . This is a medium/large flightless bird that looks something like a cross between a goose, a cassowary, a helmeted curassow, & a takahe. Its most prominent feature is the large, hadrosaur-like casque on its head. This casque allows the Goofy A'aa to produce a manner of loud, comedic sounds. Its most iconic sound is a territorial call that sounds like the "HAUUGHHH" snoring sound effect. Their alarm call when they see a predator sounds like cartoon running, and their mating call sounds like the "Ahooga" car horn. (Why did I put so much effort into a borderline joke animal?)
I did actually make up a whole ecosystem on two hypothetical islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with foodchains, ways of adaptation and all that stuff. The background story is that about 12 million years ago, some aliens arrived to Earth and used these vulcanic islands as the center of their missions. The previously empty islands were inhabited with a lot of plant and animal species from different parts of the planet by the aliens. Because of some kind of disease or disaster the aliens died or went back to their original planet, and the animals started to evolve... Even a whole civilisation took place, made by the descendants of a little dasyurid. These clever animals are called marsupial dogs. I made the whole thing up about 3 years ago when I was 13. It aged quite well, I think. I made a lot of descriptions and drawings, I can upload them or even make a whole thread if you want.
I invented one... the Capyrat. Basically a fusion of a Capybara and a Rat with varying fur colors. The weird thing is it didn't get it's size from either of these animals... it was the size of an Amur Tiger
