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Disclaimer 1! This is written in a rather experimental format I am trying out. If it's not landing I have prototype versions where the sound effects are described differently which I will put in Scraps if there is demand for it (these will be non-canon versions as some of the edits made for the final version you're about to read may not be in these alternative versions, but you can get a general vibe of what I was going for with the sound effects.)
Disclaimer 2! While the information presented in this story is founded in hastily done research into the real world study of zoology, the author is not a zoologist and is also taking his own creative liberties as to make the story make sense in his own fictitious setting - including information about which species are still alive today as well as information that may appear to intertwine religious and/or mythological thought with scientific thought, and information about the names of species which may have been changed to reflect the lack of real world individuals and place names in this fictional world.
—
Button Presses.
Footsteps.
Dion: *Sigh.*
Short creak, slouch.
Crunching plastic. Flowing water. Gulp gulp gulp. Creak.
D: *Sigh. Tsk tsk tsk*
Knock knock knock.
D: “Come in”
Seat springs. Footsteps. Feathers and fur ruffling.
Pooka: “Hi”
D: “Pooka, yes?”
P: “Yes, uh, sir? Professor?”
D: “Either is fine. Dion works too; it’s what most people call me”
P: “Oh, good. Sorry I’m a little late.”
D: “That’s no problem. And you’re..?”
P: “Thanks. Huh?”
D: “You’re a canid. Of what variety?”
P: “Oh, uh…”
Scratching.
D: “A very unique variety, you must surely be aware. I often see dogs and can swiftly place that they’re a hound or perhaps a spaniel, but you seem to be quite mixed.”
P: “Uh, yeah, I must be? I never really knew…”
D: “Oh… fascinating…”
A pause.
D: “Well, let’s sit down, shall we?”
Footsteps.
P: “Yes, uh,”
Scrape.
P: “Right here?”
D: “That’ll do, yep.”
Knock of plastic. Clothes ruffling.
D: “Alright, let’s discuss your test before we start our first session,”
Paper shuffling. Clink.
P: “Uh, yes”
Zip. Paper flapping. Pencils scattering.
D: “I must say, Pooka, I am very impressed. Have you taken a class before or is this purely a private investment you’ve engaged with?”
P: “Ha ha, just a personal interest”
Scratching.
D: “A personal interest you’ve taken quite far, it seems. Besides some less than polished phrasing issues on some of these answers, and unclearness around specifics in taxonomy, you seem to have a pretty good lay understanding of a lot of concepts in zoology for someone who has never had any formal studying. How do you study this field at home.”
Gulp.
P: “Well, I tend to get curious and go on tangents of searching the internet.”
D: “So it’s like a trivia subject, would you say?”
P: “Yeah, something like that. A bit more dedicated, maybe?”
D: “You keep notes?”
P: “Mentally, yeah.”
D: “This knowledge just…”
Paper ruffling.
D: “Sits in your head and you’re able to just,”
Click.
D: “Pull it out like that?”
P: “Uh… yeah?”
Scratching.
D: “I see…”
Pause.
D: “Well, then let’s get on with it then. We’ll start with some stuff on classification as it appears to have been a bit of a gap for you. I’m sure you’re at least aware on some level that we organise living things into groups upon groups upon groups of all kinds of things. Like we’d call you a Canid or myself an Avian. We may get specific, like saying I am a Rock Eagle Owl or that the founders of our institute were a Megascops Barbarus and a Ninox Rudolfi, or less specific, such as saying that you are a mammal, I am a bird, we are both animals. This”
Ceramic scrape.
D: “is a plant.”
P: “Yes.”
D: “This is one of my specialties; taxonomy. We’ll start basic”
Footsteps. Marker squeaking.
D: “So, we organise life into many categories, are you at the very least aware of what these are?”
P: “I think so? There are kingdoms, classes, families, species’...”
D: “Exactly. How many levels are there, would you say?”
P: “5 or 6?”
D: “It’s actually 8. At the top is of course,”
Tap tap.
D: “Life, which is just the name of the category ultimately, it’s what we’re… taxonomising, I suppose. Underneath that we have Domains, followed by Kingdoms…”
Marker squeaking.
D: “Phylum… Class… Order… Family… Genus… and… Species… We’re of course concerned with this level here, but to give a brief on domains and other kingdoms.”
D: “Domains are… Well there are two or three depending who you ask, but we define them by their biological composition, you could say; so under the idea there are three domains, they’re split into Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryotes. If you’re operating under a two-domain system, Eukaryotes may be included as part of Archaea since they evolved from these, but what’s really important here is that practically all the life that is visible to us at any given moment; that we do not need assistive tools to bare witness to; are eukaryotes. Our cells have nuclei.”
P: “Oh, right, and others don’t. That’s why-… that makes sense…”
Writing.
D: “Uh, right… so… underneath the Eukaryotes we have 4 kingdoms. The 5th Kingdom, at least that we recognise here, is Monera; single-cell organisms with no nucleus. Protists, another kingdom we’re not going to be concerned with much are single cell eukaryotes. Protists include amoeba, which have no cell walls and have entirely free movement as a result, can completely change their shapes,”
Brief pause.
D: “It also includes algae, euglena, and slime mould”
P: *Gasp.*
D: “Yeah? Slime mould?”
P: “Uh… yeah?”
D: “What do you know about that?”
P: “Uh… well…”
Pause.
P: “There’s a lot of it that I’ve seen, in my life… just, like… attached… to stuff…”
D: “Err… right… Well, yes, that’s what it does. For the most part…”
Pause.
D: “Anyway…” *gulp…* “uh- you spent a lot of time in very shady areas? Kind of damp places?”
P: “Yyyyep…”
D: “Interesting…” *tsk…* “Um… The other kingdoms are fungi; that’s most famously mushrooms and yeast and lots of other types of mould. We also have plants, of course, and then Animals, which is what we’re concerned with. Other, uh, kingdoms and domains may come up with regards to how they interact, but for this session, we’re just going to cover types of animals and just ignore how this all might be related to other kingdoms, and we have two examples in the room with us to work off of, of course which we will get to.”
P: “Gotcha,”
D: “So, next under Kingdom is Phylum. What connects different phyla- is quite simply that when you look at animals you are able to notice that some basic traits are present in all of them. In the animal kingdom we have 31 phyla give or take. To use an example outside of us two, Molluscs can include a huge bracket of animals and the word mollusc itself means ‘soft’ which is because the flesh of a mollusc tends to be very soft and plush, but the key take away of molluscs is they are quite muscly, they have mantles which are of high importance to them and contributes to the way they breathe and contains overall a lot of their organs, and as part of their way of eating they have this special organ called a radula with which they can break up their foods for consumption. There’s other similarities, but that’s just an example.”
P: “Interesting. And molluscs are, like…”
D: “Oh, right. Big examples of molluscs are the cephalopods, those are octopodes, squids, cuttlefish. They have gastropods which includes slugs, and helcionelloida which includes the yochelcionella.”
p: “Right I see. I don’t think I’ve met a mollusc before.”
D: “The sapiens molluscs tend to live a little closer to the water. Wild molluscs like to live in damper places, I’m sure you’ve come across a wild snail?”
P: “Maybe like once?”
D: “Oh, that’s it? They come out when it rains a lot more.”
P: “Ah, I spend most of my time in Canines Cave.”
D: “Right, you live there don’t you. Enjoy the peace and quiet?”
P: “You could say that. I like that it's nice and dark too though. The sunlight beats down on me in an intense way,”
D: “Don’t like feeling sweaty?”
P: “Uhh… you could say that I guess? Just not used to the way the sun feels.”
D: “You’ve always lived in caves?”
Pause.
P: “Yyyyes.”
Pause.
D: “A remarkable dog indeed…”
Shrug.
D: “So, when it comes to us,” *Sip* “We are both of the same phylum, chordates. Chordates is also a huge phylum. We have it arranged into smaller phyla , the subphyla, which are tunicata, cephalochordata and vertebrata. The word Chordate means “cord”. All of us under Chordata have a dorsal nerve cord, which in the most lay way possible is”
Feathers ruffling.
D: “We've all got this cord down our backs which is effectively central to everything about us. We have a notochord which we lose during development, but for us particularly we get a spine instead"
Pat. Pat.
D: “thyroid gland, right here. Behind our mouths we have our pharynx connecting to our throats, which for chordates are slitted as part of a filtration system, and we have a post-anal tail. Tails present very differently across us all, including very unnoticeably such as for humans who don’t look like they have one, but it’s just a little nub at the base of their spine, but as chordates we all have them and they’re all located above our butts.”
P: “Is there such a thing as a pre-anal or just not post-anal tail?”
D: “Good question. It depends how you define tail, really, I would say there’s plenty of invertebrates which the tail can’t really be called post-anal, but when we assess that, the positioning of the the tail isn’t what’s different, it’s the positioning of the anus, like in a wild slug the anus is under its mantle rather than at the tail end of their bodies. But even there, defining a slugs tapered end as a tail could be considered dubious by some individuals”
P: “Interesting.”
D: “I’m also aware of some things that just aren’t around the Surface…”
P: “Like, of their bodies?”
A pause.
D: *Gulp* “Um…” *sniffle* “So…” *Gulp* “Uh- nevermind that. Just… so the Chordate Phylum… it’s a little warm in here”
Clothes ruffling.
P: *Whispered* “Oh…”
A pause.
D: “Chordates,” *breath* “have 3 subphyla, like I said. Tunicates are like… if you’ve ever heard of sea squirts, the ascidians; tunicates are very unique beings, they’re marine creatures only and very tubey, but they still have all the relevant traits fitting chordata. The Cephalochordata are lancelets, these are also exclusively marine and they’re vital to our understanding of fish. If I explain further than that we’ll get distracted and I’ll ramble on about lancelets all day. Vertebrata is where both of us lie as well as all birds, mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians.”
Writing.
P: “And are the wild equivalents also classified this way?”
D: “Yes indeed, the core difference between sapiens and non-sapiens species anatomically speaking is that at some point, sapiens directly diverged off their standard evolutionary paths to follow these traits. It’s still a huge mystery to us how that happened, but fundamentally there is something about this particular structure that wins out and humans are a bit like the lancelet of all sapiens as the “wild human” is not a thing that exists today; all wild humans became the humans as we know them today.”
P: “And we really don’t understand that?”
D: “Well, what would you propose?”
P: “I thought it was two separate paths, like it split off at a much earlier level so that all animals could, like, become a sapiens at a more fundamental stage and beneath that they all just evolved the same species under both”
D: “Well that’s an older idea that’s existed, but what has ultimately gone against that is that the DNA is far too similar and rather than all sapiens going back to a joint sapiens ancestor, all the evidence we have points to the individual species dating back to their non-sapiens or ‘wild’ counterpart.”
P: “And why are they all sapiens and not something like ‘human-form’?”
D: “It’s ultimately the main thing that connects all of us - wisdom and our brains. The actual form itself is a much bigger mystery because take, say, the wild Rock Eagle Owl like the wild form of what I am; a wild bird doesn’t have hands like these, their phalanges at this point in their wings are hidden and don't work like hands, and quite notably, the wild Rock Eagle Owl is roughly 53cm tall where the average height for us Sapiens Rock Eagle Owls is 173cm. And rather than liken us all to humans, the community has been arriving at words like ‘personly’, ‘anthropomorphic’, or adopting the term ‘mankind’ since it already somewhat describes it, but that’s not an adjective so it’s also being rejected.”
P: “I see.”
D: “But we’ll have a lesson rounding up the traits and differences between sapiens and wild species at another time.”
P: “And is there other mysteries like that?”
D: “Well…”
Scratching.
D: *Breath* “the, uh, bulk of mysteries come from a field that isn’t exactly encouraged…”
P: “Oh… and, why is that?”
D: *Sigh* “it’s uh… considered a little… beyond fringe, we’ll say, to be invested in. Often feared in the world…”
P: “Ah… I uh…”
Brief pause.
P: *I think I get it”
D: “Since,” *ahem* “We’re moving past phyla now to get to Class and we’re both vertebrates, we shall start by leading down to the divergence in our paths. So, parts of the taxonomic ranks can be divided by clades. Cladistics is simply the categorisation of species on the grounds of where we think common ancestors lie. There are two major branches, called infraphylum, to consider first, and we’ll make this a little game where you guess which path we’ll follow to find our species. The infraphyla are Agnatha and Gnathastomata. I will give you the information that “stomata” means mouth, but both infraphyla still have mouths, so these terms are just describing a property about their mouths that is common between those under the umbrellas.”
P: “Well, I at least know that if A is at the beginning of another word it usually means ‘not’ right? Like ‘apolitical’?”
D: “That would be correct.”
P: “So, ‘gnatha’ would mean it has a gnatha and ‘agnatha’ would mean it doesn’t?”
D: “Right.”
P: “Like teeth?”
D: “Not teeth. Teeth are denticles.”
P: “Right…”
Pause.
Wet sound.
D: *Giggling* “Think a bit more outside of the mouth.”
Pause.
P: “Lips?”
D: D: “Bit further out”
P: “Jaw?”
D: “Yes, so we would be…”
P: “Gnathastomata”
D: “Correct. This is a huge category. Gnathastomata consists of every vertebrate with a jaw. The jawless vertebrates are much rarer and it’s those with jaws that persisted the most throughout evolutionary history. The most persistent agnatha are the cyclostomi; those are lampreys and hagfishes. Ultimately, going back to the gnathostomata level we’re pretty entrenched in marine life and that’s where the evidence points to the animal kingdom's very beginning, it’s sea creatures.”
P: “Everything has evolved from sea creatures?”
D: “Precisely. We’ll get to the split off soon, but next under gnathostomata are the Chondrichthyes and Osteichthyes. Uhh, Ichthyes is fish, so we’re still in the ocean at the moment, but we have formally reached the stage where everything is a fish, and what I will give you is that we’re talking here about structure.”
P: “Like, internally?”
D: “Yes.”
P: “Skeletons.”
D: “What about them?”
Pause.
P: “Number of bones?”
D: “You’re going too deep there, peel back…”
Pause.
P: “Peel back?”
D: “Think… how the skeleton is made…”
P: “Oh, like… types of bone?”
D: “Not… exactly… so think like… ribs are bones. Jaws are bones. Your joints are…”
P: “...cartilage?”
D: “Yes”
P: “So Osteichthyes would be cartilage based fish?”
Feathers ruffling.
P: “Oh, Chondrichthyes would be cartilage based.”
D: “That’s the one.”
P: “So, we’re not that”
D: “We go back to the Osteichthyes. So try to remember too that we are not osteichthyes, rather we descend from the osteichthyes. If we were osteichthyes we’d be saying we’re fish.”
P: “Right, sorry.”
Writing.
D: “Osteichthyes come down to Sarcopterygii and Actinopterygii. To give you the common thing there once again, ‘pterygii’ comes from a word meaning ‘wing’ and ‘fin’.”
P: “So, arms?”
D: “Right…”
Long pause.
D: “I will give you that this is a tough one…”
Pause.
P: *Breath*
Pause.
D: “Need a hint?”
P: “Yyyy… yes… yes.”
Typing, mouse scrolling and gliding.
D: “This is where fish diverge again, so the difference here isn’t going to be as obvious to us intuitively as it relates to us, but it’s-
P: *Ahermmm. Cough cough.*
D: “A lot easier to see if you look at one of each and compare. Just give me a minute”
Faint wet sound. Tissues ruffling
Pause.
D: “So, this is an Actino’. This is specifically a Queen Angelfish; holacanthus ciliaris. And this one is a Sarcopto’; a Barramunda, which is a lungfish; neoceratodus fforsteri. What do you notice about the fins?”
P: “The Angelfish’s fins look a bit more papery?” *Sip*
D: “Yep, width wise. You’re on the right track. Why do you think they’re different?”
P: “Like, what is materially different about them?”
D: “Yep.”
P: “Well they’re also… is it, like… meat?”
D: “I’ll give you that. So this is, like- you know what radial means?”
P: “No.”
D: “No worries, so you see how there’s these lines in the tailfin, and they’re kind of equally spread further apart as they go? These are very thin bones, they’re a bit like batwings in that way, though don’t take that as a hint. And around these bones is a tight, thin layer of skin. But they’re quote-un-quote ray-finned because the structure of the bones is radially extended from one point. Where on this barramunda, the fins have a lot more of a support system beneath the exterior, there’s lobes and skeletal structures supporting all of that work.”
Writing.
P: “So, like hands?”
D: “Yes, exactly; we get our limbs from Sarcopterygii fins.”
P: “I have a question about DNA?”
D: “Yes.”
P: “Can we see the DNA of those fish in yo- our DNA?”
D: “Kind of, yes? You couldn’t scour through our DNA and take all of the fish parts and construct a new fish out of it, but we can compare the DNA of us, and the DNA of ancestral species, and the DNA of their previous ancestors further and further back. We will be able to see how that DNA changed to become what we are today.”
P: “So there is no fish in us, but our DNA is comparable?”
D: “You could say that yes. Ultimately, in this particular pattern, we come back to the next clade and notice what that clade has compared to the Sarcopterygii. The next sisterhood of clades we have here are the Actinistia, Tetrapoda and Dipnoi. These words of course have a lot less in common, but I will give you that one of these are the lungfish I just showed you, one of them are coelacanths and the third one is the next clade we’ll be looking at.”
P: “So Lungfish and Coelacanths’ evolutionary pathways stop at their… you said anthropomorphic form?”
D: “Yes, as well as their wild forms. Pop-culture pseudozoologists will call them dinosaurs for this reason, but they pre-date dinosaurs quite significantly on the evolutionary path.”
P: “What do the words you said mean directly?”
D: “So, Dipnoi - two breaths. Tetrapod - four foot. Actinistia basically means ray-sail.”
P: “We are tetropods.”
D: “Yep, pretty simple; four footed, we can take that to ‘four limbs’. Coelacanths are our ray-sails - it’s kind of similar to actinopterygii, which is a bit of a giveaway there. And the lungfish are Dipnoi; they’re named after their lungs of course; a very advanced respiratory system which is related to those of tetrapods like ourselves.”
P: “So lungfish don’t need water to breathe?”
D: “Wild variants can go days without water. Our anthropomorphic variants can go much longer, though like all anthropomorphic fish, they still need water to survive still, and if they travel out of the water they travel with an aide for that. The lungfish is able to last longer without that aid and they might, perhaps, keep their aids in a room they’re staying in and refresh overnight. At least that’s what the one lungfish I’ve ever met has told me. It’s a complicated system though, of course, I couldn’t do it justice not having to deal with it myself.”
P: “Interesting…”
Writing.
D: “Tetropods can be a bit of a misnomer because not all tetrapods actually have 4 limbs, but most do and the name stuck. We’re getting a little close now, but some history; the tetrapods are where we split away from fish and we get our legs and we get onto the land. A word you’ve undoubtedly heard before is amphibians; our frogs, newts, and so on. This is one of the next layer of classes. The other tetrapods, important to us, are our amniotes; these are the mammals, reptiles and birds.”
D: “Things get complicated around here as far as birds and reptiles are concerned so I’ll speak on this very briefly; there are two classification systems, one based on physical appearance, Linear, and one based on DNA analysis, phylogenetic. The first system is best used for simplicity - birds and reptiles present as completely different from each other. On a DNA basis however, birds are reptiles which makes “reptiles” a bit of a misnomer but we still use it for the most part. Specifically we came from the dinosaurs, and we are closer related to crocodiles than crocodiles are to, say, lizards. Intuitively it’s best to think of birds separately, as we’re so well separated in traits that thinking of us all as one thing is a bit more mentally gymnastic especially when even our dinosaur ancestors and crocodilian siblings are still with us, but we’re teaching on a DNA basis. Hence, reptile can be a confusing word at first when we start including birds in it and alleging that crocodiles are closer to birds than lizards, but it’s the word we still use”
P: “Okay, so if I’m outside of here, you’re not a dinosaur or reptile, but while I’m here, you are.”
D: *Laughs* “Yes exactly; genetically speaking one could say they’re my great grandparents when we zoom out, in a reductive sense.”
P: *Laughs.*
D: “To get back to the split off though, we come to the term Amphibian; think like ‘ambiguous’; the term ultimately means “both lifestyles” as amphibians live both in the water and on the land. Amniote refers to the amnion, which is this slim coating of membrane that surrounds a foetus during development. Amphibians lay their eggs in water because they lack that amnion; if they laid their eggs on land, they would dry up.”
Crackle.
P: *Gulp. Gulp. Gulp*
D: “When describing where those three core terms from,”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “mammal refers to the mammary glands; the mammalian breast has a gland that produces milk.”
P: *Gulp.*
“There is more to it than that which we’ll discuss soon. Reptiles were named”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “initially for the way they crawl, which is of course now outdated with our modern understanding.”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “Birds, being completely honest, is just a word as old as time - it used to only refer”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “to baby birds and “fowl” were the adults, but at some point in history, they broadened the meaning of birds.”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “Fowl has its origins in words that meant “flight”, but this is also outdated”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “Now we have birds like penguins and ostriches which don’t do that. When it comes”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “down to it, the word bird exists simply for the necessity of giving things names-”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “a- are you okay?”
P: *Gulp.*
Crackle.
P: “Huh?”
D: “Thirsty?”
P: “A little dehydrated.”
D: *Chuckles* “That’s more than half of it. You won’t evaporate without it”
P: *Wavering* “Uhh… right…”
D: “Now, we can go over the full extent of specifics another time, but let’s quickly move towards each of our respective species now. Before reaching Order, Family, Species and Genus, let’s cover key traits of mammals and birds.”
Writing.
D: “Mammals, as mentioned previously, have a mammary gland, as well as hair, prominent ears and in wild variants, the region of the brain responsible for the way anthropomorphic beings think is present. We shall avoid the implications of this for now as it’s a deep rabbit hole; we have a separate session for that which will be covered two sessions from now and we’ll do something lighter next week since today’s quite heavy on its own, but that’s your mammals.”
P: “I feel like I was always told mammals have more traits. And that there are outliers that are mammals but also not.”
D: “Mammals… do not have more directly common traits, you maybe were told that they are-... or that all the things above it are mammalian traits or maybe things below it are more broadly mammalian than they are - that’s the property of giving live birth primarily, which is very broadly mammalian, but it’s overruled as an all-mammalian trait by the monotremes; our vulgarly named mammalian outliers like echidnas and strepodons and platypuses.”
P: “Vulgarly named?”
D: “Yep. ‘One opening’ is what monotreme means; the, uh, reproductive anatomy of female monotremes follows the standard among birds and reptiles where they rather uniquely carry out their urinary and reproductive functions through the same genital opening, hence the name. Monotremes differ still from at least wild birds where the male monotremes have penises separate from the rest of their anatomy and wild birds do not, but I exclude other reptiles from this, largely because the reproductive anatomy of reptiles do tend to vary up and down the scale - even male anthropomorphic birds differ from most wild birds, which is not surprising considering the diversity of anthropomorphism, which again is a session 3 topic.”
P: “Alright”
D: “But since we’ve got a convenient segue here for birds, our key traits connecting us all include our wings,”
Feathers ruffling.
Writing.
D: “our sturdy, hard-shelled eggs. Our,”
Tap. Tap.
D: “Toothless jaws with firm beaks, our very hollow bones but still very study skeletons, and our relatively large hearts with 4 chambers.”
Writing.
D: “As we get, now, into the Orders, things start branching out a lot more and defining every step of the way will be stretching our time thin, so we’ll gloss over other examples in future steps to hone in a lot more on you and I as species.”
“On the mammal side, we mentioned previously the monotremes of course; monotreme is an order. Humans were mentioned previously too, and these are primates. You as a dog are part of a family in the subclass caniformia which is of the broader class “carnivora”, so, carni means flesh, vora means eating - carnivora means flesh-eating. The carnivores are split into two groups; your caniformia and the cats’ feliformia, which are each named after the cats and dogs respectively; the scientific names being felis catus and canis familiaris or canis lupus familiaris depending on who you ask, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.”
P: “How do you know that?”
D: “How do I know what?”
P: “You said you didn’t know what I was when we started.”
D: “Well, classification stops at that level. We’ll discuss the naming system last,”
Writing.
D: “but canis lupus familiaris is the scientific name of every ‘dog’ regardless of ‘breed’ - breed is a distinction where species may have historically been bred into having a set of unique traits fit for a set purpose and is a consequence of a much more intentional evolution of traits unlike higher differences that happened with no thought behind them; just competitive traits winning over others.”
P: “So is Rock Eagle Owl also a breed?”
D: “No, that’s a species. We don’t have breeds; a very select group of creatures were bred this way under a dark history I’m frankly surprised you’re not aware of.”
P: “That’s, uh… well… I’m working on it…”
D: “Working… on it?”
P: “Yep… I, uh, wasn’t really around for that history…”
Pause.
D: “I- I was about to ask how you could have missed learning about the history of breeds when you live in such a core hub for said breeds, but I feel you may have had something more important going on I shouldn't be looking into…”
P: “Let’s… go with that…”
D: “Alrighty… *Ahem*, back to orders, briefly on caniformia and feliformia, *ahem*, they each refer to two broad categories where one category is more similar to cats, the second category is more similar to dogs; cats and dogs are words predating our knowledge of all this, so we went back and did it the same way. The obvious caniformia would include creatures like various wolves and foxes, which are all under the family called “canidae” as you’re already undoubtedly aware, but we also include under caniformia so-called unrelated species like bears and seals and red pandas and mustelids. Feliforms have a similar thing going on; the cat family, and then cat-like families including the mongooses, the euplerids and the hyaenids, which is surprising for a lot of people.”
P: “How so?”
D: “Their frame of reference is the visual appearance which is dog-like.”
P: “I thought everyone knew they weren’t canids?”
D: “I think it’s easier when you live around canids all the time and don’t run into hyenas as much, but again, it’s a rather common misconception that I was sure you’d have at least heard.”
P: “Mm… no,”
Writing.
P: “hasn’t come up…”
D: “Fascinating, really.” *sip* “Um, as it comes to myself, Owls are an order in their own right - we are strigiformes with a similar structure in that we have two families; the strigidae, typical owls, and the tytonidae; barn and bay owls. Tytonidae have a more apple slice shaped face where strigids like myself have rounder faces. We have rather large eyes, unlike the much smaller tyto eyes, and there are other differences across our legs, talons and beaks.”
Writing.
D: “Beneath classes are of course families, which I’ve kind of already delved into and past when discussing the orders. Families are the last step where naming convention isn’t involved in the scientific naming process, so under families we then get into genera and then species; naming convention has it that we name the genera and then their species right after. The common names, which are like ‘rock eagle owl’, are oftentimes just a product of observation; rock eagle owls are named after their habitats, primarily, though that’s just my species. The broader eagle owl genus - the bubos - are named so because wild variants match in size to wild eagles. As I briefly hinted at earlier, the same doesn’t happen with the word “dog”, but it happens for other canids like ‘bat-eared foxes’ that have ears that resemble the wings of a bat.”
Writing.
P: “One of my superiors at work is a bat-eared fox. Whenever we talked about this class I was being trained by Dr. Mot on the farming trial he said he knew you”
D: “Yeah? What’s his name?”
“Buzwe.”
D: “Ohhhh Buzwe Kiuon?”
P: “Yep.”
D: *Raised pitch* “Ohhhhhh he was so nice! He was in my basic medicine class when I was still a student!”
P: “He’s nicer than ever then, it seems.”
D: “It’s always a joy to hear people haven’t changed. What’s he do now?”
P: “HR at a massage parlour in Canine’s Cave. I’ve only known him a few weeks, but he’s been super accommodating to my… complexities…”
D: “Awh, that sounds wonderful… Despite how out there my interests got he was never shameful towards me…” *ahem* “Anyway… um, named after his ears is his species. Besides dogs, as we covered, dog ‘breeds’ have their own names which can be a bit more observational. But the species canis lupus familiaris gets its name from their genus, which is canis - it comes from the type of teeth you have called canines. Those who call dogs “canis lupus familiaris’ work in the term ‘lupus’ as dogs are a direct descendent from wolves which are called canis lupus. The familiaris comes from the domestication process, which is another part of that tumultuous history that keeps cropping up. I’ll scrounge up all I can on that and maybe give you a history lesson beyond the subjects I’ve already planned.”
P: “I would appreciate that. I could check into a library if you have research to recommend?”
D: “Might be a better idea, yep. Uh, Bubo Igneus - Bubo goes back to the name of a different species, the common eagle owl; Bubo Bubo. Igneus is a fake word that mimics the name of a type of rock… presumably that’s the type of rock they first found us sitting on? I can only imagine what those before me were thinking.”
P: “Is that why that rock is there?”
D: “What… this?”
P: “Yeah.”
D: “No, no, this is a lava rock.”
P: “Does it have importance to zoology?”
Pause.
D: “Uh…”
Pause.
D: *Sigh* “No..? It’s uh…”
Pause.
D: “N-... not… no, it’s not from zoology.”
P: “Where is it from?”
D: “Uhh… a volcano. It was… um… given to me…”
P: “... Pretty cool…”
D: “Yyyyesss…”
Pause.
D: “Uh… so… any questions on… what we’ve, uh… covered here?”
P: “Oh, yes, actually. Where are the insects? I feel like we never went anywhere near them.”
D: “Ah, right! We didn’t touch on those. So, peel all the way back to the kingdom and we’ll go from there. Under each kingdom we have subkingdoms, we are under the eumetazoa and so are insects. We’ll come back to the other subkingdoms another time, but the Eumetazoa splits into all of those phyla. We fell down the chordates path, insects fell down the arthropoda paths.”
Writing.
D: “There are 4 core branches to the arthropods; the chelicerata, the crustacea, the myriapoda and the hexapoda. The ‘crabs’ can be a little confusing here, so to slightly clear that while we’re here; some things are named crabs but are not actually in the same family group; the horseshoe crab is not a crustacean, it is a chelicerates which is the order containing horseshoe crabs, sea spiders and arachnids - which can be misconstrued as insects in their own right, but arachnids are not insects.”
P: “Hang on, this is already a lot of information.”
Writing.
D: *Sip.*
P: “Go on,”
D: “So, arachnids, sea spiders and horseshoe crabs are chelicerata. Shrimps, lice, crabs, remipedes, barnacles… that sort of group are crustaceans. The myriapods are pretty much anything that resembles a millipede or centipede. Hexapods are your insects and entognatha.”
Writing.
P: “I think I understand that”
D: “Ah, thank goodness. Your understanding is truly magnificent, you know, going through some of these things we usually linger on certain parts a bit more as we sort through misconceptions, but you seem to have a lot of these cleared or are on a blank slate with them, which is super ideal.”
P: *Laughing* “I can’t tell how much of a compliment that is.”
D: “Well, hah, it is a compliment despite me being happy you’re not a person with quote-un-quote common knowledge. I’m still bemused with what you’ve missed given how widespread some of this information is in factoid lovers, but what it means is that you have avoided all of those problems. It’s almost like your base understanding is DNA.”
P: “Oop. Um, I mean…”
Scratching.
P: “I’m sure I get it from somewhere…”
D: “You must know where you get it from?”
Scratching.
Pause.
D: “Do you really not?”
Short pause.
P: “Sure…”
D: “...There’s something to you, you know…”
P: “What does that mean?”
Pause.
D: “I don’t know yet, but I think these sessions are going to be interesting.”
Pause.
P: “What are jellyfish?”
D: “Aha! Fascinating biology here. So, we’re back to digging through Phyla. Jellyfish are Cnidaria, which are the marine stinging animals. Um, cnidaria are quite the enigmas, we have the hydrozoa in here which are often discarded as Supernatural by those just observing the anthros, but the wild variants work exactly the same way; to go on small tangent, hydrozoa includes siphonophores and siphonophores are like colonies of tiny tiny beings which come together to form one self-sustaining system - if you’ve heard of the praya dubia that’s what’s going on there.”
P: “But they’re not supernatural?”
D: “No.”
P: “But, like, an anthro-fungus is?”
D: “So… I would love to say I understand that. I don’t. We just kind of have to go with what the leaders say on that one…”
P: “Uh… I see…”
D: “Anthrofungi, though… uh… are not animals and I think it’s assumed… that… they don’t sometimes act like one… naturally. But I think the court is still out on that one too?”
P: “On what?”
D: *Sigh…* “the naturality… of… non-animal anthropomorphic beings.”
P: “... right…”
D: “It’s also… not considered zoology...”
P: “Why?”
D: “Zoology is… animals.”
P: “Oh, right. Not non-animals.”
D: “Correct…”
Pause.
D: *Muttered* “nor the supernatural in general apparently” *cough* “AHEM. THEEEEeeeee… uhh… yes, the… uh… jellyfish! Um… they’re not a specific class - they’re all cnidaria, but a box jellyfish is not the same class as stalked jellyfish. Again, complicated. We’re not super filled in when it comes to understanding jellies.”
P: “What about dragons?”
D: “Dragons are reptiles. Descended from dinosaurs, we think.”
P: “And why are they, like, half divine?”
D: “That’s a history thing, so I may not be fully clued in on this, but if you’re asking about morphology, biology, DNA, stuff like that, dragons aren’t naturally Divine. Divinity itself is something above life or that contributes to life, but as it comes to dragons… I believe the story goes that somewhere in their history a… one could say errant Divine got a bit too big for their boots and roped the dragons into divinity for their affinity towards dragons and then once that happened it couldn’t really be reversed since divines are prohibited from interfering. My knowledge on how any of that works is deeply primitive though, those kinds of questions are better asked to, like, a historian or religious teacher than myself.”
P: “And Divines… they look like beings from here, but they’re like, not?”
D: “Beings from here ascend. Again, Divine studies are not something I’m totally clued in on, but our general understanding of it is also quite vague anyway; the divines seem to suggest it’s for us to figure out on our own and they avoid interfering with our knowledge.”
P: “Ah, right. I think I knew that much at least.”
D: “I was gonna say, that lack of knowledge would be getting suspicious.”
P: *Nervous laughter* “Yeah, well, thank goodness I’m not suspicious.”
D: “I apologise if my curiosity towards you has been intimidating.”
P: “It’s, uh, okay. I, uh, just get nervous about it is all.”
D: “Yeahh, I would never point fingers or anything, to be clear. I don’t really believe in that.”
P: “What do you mean?”
D: “You know, doling out supernatural accusations.”
P: “Oh thank g-, well, thank you, I, uh, I guess…”
D: “Yeah, I mean observationally, what constitutes the supernatural is too deep in history for even historians to fully understand it seems, and I can’t in good faith point fingers when our understanding of all of these things are so minute.”
P: *Mumbled* “I’m sure someone has to know.”
D: “The supernatural themselves, maybe. Too bad we can’t ask them.”
P:“Yeah, you definitely can’t go doing that.”
Awkward pause.
D: “Right…”
Brief pause.
D: “Well. We’ve been going quite a bit and we’ve covered a lot of the stuff I wanted to cover. Do you want to come back to this next session?”
P: “Yep, where is the toilet?”
D: “Here-”
[][chairscutingfootstepsdooropendoorclosepause………dooropensfootstepsdoorclosestypingdooropensfootstepsdoorclosesspeech][/i]
D: “-back Pooka”
Scrape. Pencils clacking.
“Thanks Dion.”
D: “I think for the next session we’ll maybe just go over the ins and outs of what traits are theoretically used for.”
P: “Okay. So, like, what?”
D: Some key headers in here are, like, functions of the mouth and varied ways different species use other parts. We’ll touch on why some species are venomous or sting. We’ll touch on mimicry briefly and talk about why that’s important, uh-”
P: “Mimicry?”
D: “Yes, like, some species have traits that look similar to other things, which we believe serves some purpose or another,”
P: “Oh… right.”
D: “And also touch on some reproductive traits and also cover the concept of vestigial traits.”
P: “But not, like, behavioural mimicry?”
D: “Oh, you really curious about mimicry?”
P: “I, uh… well, yeah.”
D: “Mimicry is a very diverse phenomenon. We’ll get there when we get there, but behavioural mimicry is a part of that.”
P: “Is it, like… uh…” *muttering* “how do i…” *talking* “shaaapesftingg?”
D: “Well. Again, if we’re calling it that, we’re going into the supernatural.”
P: “Ah, ha!.. Uh… So, what is it?”
D: “It’s an evolved thing. Naturally. Again, be patient, we’ll get to it next week. But as a brief example… On the way to the toilet I think we went past Mr. Miwa, the Nixon-side Chemistry teacher. Mr. Miwa is a Potoo, the wild Potoos like to perch on treestumps as a form of camouflage, because their feather patterns resemble tree bark remarkably closely, and that trait naturally developed because when a Potoo more closely resembles parts of trees, their chances of survival in the wild is dramatically increased and those who looked less that way were less likely to continue the species.”
P: “Ohhhh that makes more sense.”
D: “Yeah. Again though, next session.”
P: “Right. Well thank you for this, sir. I’ve enjoyed today, awkward as I might have seemed.”
D: “Yes. And I am interested in knowing more about you and your history with knowledge. I think I can become an even better teacher just by learning how to cater to the way you go about these subjects.”
P: “Of course. I’m a bit shy to that though,” *chuckling*.
D: “Well there’s no need to be. Believe it or not I tend to be quite shy myself in a regular setting. I’m just in my element when I have someone willing to just sit and listen to me talk about this stuff.”
P: *Giggle* “Well thank you for the reassurance. We’ll see how I open up, I’m sure…”
D: “Oh, before you go, do you wanna quickly stop the recording and pass it over to me.”
P: “Oh, sure…”
D: “I’ll make a copy for myself an-”
Button press.
Disclaimer 2! While the information presented in this story is founded in hastily done research into the real world study of zoology, the author is not a zoologist and is also taking his own creative liberties as to make the story make sense in his own fictitious setting - including information about which species are still alive today as well as information that may appear to intertwine religious and/or mythological thought with scientific thought, and information about the names of species which may have been changed to reflect the lack of real world individuals and place names in this fictional world.
—
Button Presses.
Footsteps.
Dion: *Sigh.*
Short creak, slouch.
Crunching plastic. Flowing water. Gulp gulp gulp. Creak.
D: *Sigh. Tsk tsk tsk*
Knock knock knock.
D: “Come in”
Seat springs. Footsteps. Feathers and fur ruffling.
Pooka: “Hi”
D: “Pooka, yes?”
P: “Yes, uh, sir? Professor?”
D: “Either is fine. Dion works too; it’s what most people call me”
P: “Oh, good. Sorry I’m a little late.”
D: “That’s no problem. And you’re..?”
P: “Thanks. Huh?”
D: “You’re a canid. Of what variety?”
P: “Oh, uh…”
Scratching.
D: “A very unique variety, you must surely be aware. I often see dogs and can swiftly place that they’re a hound or perhaps a spaniel, but you seem to be quite mixed.”
P: “Uh, yeah, I must be? I never really knew…”
D: “Oh… fascinating…”
A pause.
D: “Well, let’s sit down, shall we?”
Footsteps.
P: “Yes, uh,”
Scrape.
P: “Right here?”
D: “That’ll do, yep.”
Knock of plastic. Clothes ruffling.
D: “Alright, let’s discuss your test before we start our first session,”
Paper shuffling. Clink.
P: “Uh, yes”
Zip. Paper flapping. Pencils scattering.
D: “I must say, Pooka, I am very impressed. Have you taken a class before or is this purely a private investment you’ve engaged with?”
P: “Ha ha, just a personal interest”
Scratching.
D: “A personal interest you’ve taken quite far, it seems. Besides some less than polished phrasing issues on some of these answers, and unclearness around specifics in taxonomy, you seem to have a pretty good lay understanding of a lot of concepts in zoology for someone who has never had any formal studying. How do you study this field at home.”
Gulp.
P: “Well, I tend to get curious and go on tangents of searching the internet.”
D: “So it’s like a trivia subject, would you say?”
P: “Yeah, something like that. A bit more dedicated, maybe?”
D: “You keep notes?”
P: “Mentally, yeah.”
D: “This knowledge just…”
Paper ruffling.
D: “Sits in your head and you’re able to just,”
Click.
D: “Pull it out like that?”
P: “Uh… yeah?”
Scratching.
D: “I see…”
Pause.
D: “Well, then let’s get on with it then. We’ll start with some stuff on classification as it appears to have been a bit of a gap for you. I’m sure you’re at least aware on some level that we organise living things into groups upon groups upon groups of all kinds of things. Like we’d call you a Canid or myself an Avian. We may get specific, like saying I am a Rock Eagle Owl or that the founders of our institute were a Megascops Barbarus and a Ninox Rudolfi, or less specific, such as saying that you are a mammal, I am a bird, we are both animals. This”
Ceramic scrape.
D: “is a plant.”
P: “Yes.”
D: “This is one of my specialties; taxonomy. We’ll start basic”
Footsteps. Marker squeaking.
D: “So, we organise life into many categories, are you at the very least aware of what these are?”
P: “I think so? There are kingdoms, classes, families, species’...”
D: “Exactly. How many levels are there, would you say?”
P: “5 or 6?”
D: “It’s actually 8. At the top is of course,”
Tap tap.
D: “Life, which is just the name of the category ultimately, it’s what we’re… taxonomising, I suppose. Underneath that we have Domains, followed by Kingdoms…”
Marker squeaking.
D: “Phylum… Class… Order… Family… Genus… and… Species… We’re of course concerned with this level here, but to give a brief on domains and other kingdoms.”
D: “Domains are… Well there are two or three depending who you ask, but we define them by their biological composition, you could say; so under the idea there are three domains, they’re split into Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryotes. If you’re operating under a two-domain system, Eukaryotes may be included as part of Archaea since they evolved from these, but what’s really important here is that practically all the life that is visible to us at any given moment; that we do not need assistive tools to bare witness to; are eukaryotes. Our cells have nuclei.”
P: “Oh, right, and others don’t. That’s why-… that makes sense…”
Writing.
D: “Uh, right… so… underneath the Eukaryotes we have 4 kingdoms. The 5th Kingdom, at least that we recognise here, is Monera; single-cell organisms with no nucleus. Protists, another kingdom we’re not going to be concerned with much are single cell eukaryotes. Protists include amoeba, which have no cell walls and have entirely free movement as a result, can completely change their shapes,”
Brief pause.
D: “It also includes algae, euglena, and slime mould”
P: *Gasp.*
D: “Yeah? Slime mould?”
P: “Uh… yeah?”
D: “What do you know about that?”
P: “Uh… well…”
Pause.
P: “There’s a lot of it that I’ve seen, in my life… just, like… attached… to stuff…”
D: “Err… right… Well, yes, that’s what it does. For the most part…”
Pause.
D: “Anyway…” *gulp…* “uh- you spent a lot of time in very shady areas? Kind of damp places?”
P: “Yyyyep…”
D: “Interesting…” *tsk…* “Um… The other kingdoms are fungi; that’s most famously mushrooms and yeast and lots of other types of mould. We also have plants, of course, and then Animals, which is what we’re concerned with. Other, uh, kingdoms and domains may come up with regards to how they interact, but for this session, we’re just going to cover types of animals and just ignore how this all might be related to other kingdoms, and we have two examples in the room with us to work off of, of course which we will get to.”
P: “Gotcha,”
D: “So, next under Kingdom is Phylum. What connects different phyla- is quite simply that when you look at animals you are able to notice that some basic traits are present in all of them. In the animal kingdom we have 31 phyla give or take. To use an example outside of us two, Molluscs can include a huge bracket of animals and the word mollusc itself means ‘soft’ which is because the flesh of a mollusc tends to be very soft and plush, but the key take away of molluscs is they are quite muscly, they have mantles which are of high importance to them and contributes to the way they breathe and contains overall a lot of their organs, and as part of their way of eating they have this special organ called a radula with which they can break up their foods for consumption. There’s other similarities, but that’s just an example.”
P: “Interesting. And molluscs are, like…”
D: “Oh, right. Big examples of molluscs are the cephalopods, those are octopodes, squids, cuttlefish. They have gastropods which includes slugs, and helcionelloida which includes the yochelcionella.”
p: “Right I see. I don’t think I’ve met a mollusc before.”
D: “The sapiens molluscs tend to live a little closer to the water. Wild molluscs like to live in damper places, I’m sure you’ve come across a wild snail?”
P: “Maybe like once?”
D: “Oh, that’s it? They come out when it rains a lot more.”
P: “Ah, I spend most of my time in Canines Cave.”
D: “Right, you live there don’t you. Enjoy the peace and quiet?”
P: “You could say that. I like that it's nice and dark too though. The sunlight beats down on me in an intense way,”
D: “Don’t like feeling sweaty?”
P: “Uhh… you could say that I guess? Just not used to the way the sun feels.”
D: “You’ve always lived in caves?”
Pause.
P: “Yyyyes.”
Pause.
D: “A remarkable dog indeed…”
Shrug.
D: “So, when it comes to us,” *Sip* “We are both of the same phylum, chordates. Chordates is also a huge phylum. We have it arranged into smaller phyla , the subphyla, which are tunicata, cephalochordata and vertebrata. The word Chordate means “cord”. All of us under Chordata have a dorsal nerve cord, which in the most lay way possible is”
Feathers ruffling.
D: “We've all got this cord down our backs which is effectively central to everything about us. We have a notochord which we lose during development, but for us particularly we get a spine instead"
Pat. Pat.
D: “thyroid gland, right here. Behind our mouths we have our pharynx connecting to our throats, which for chordates are slitted as part of a filtration system, and we have a post-anal tail. Tails present very differently across us all, including very unnoticeably such as for humans who don’t look like they have one, but it’s just a little nub at the base of their spine, but as chordates we all have them and they’re all located above our butts.”
P: “Is there such a thing as a pre-anal or just not post-anal tail?”
D: “Good question. It depends how you define tail, really, I would say there’s plenty of invertebrates which the tail can’t really be called post-anal, but when we assess that, the positioning of the the tail isn’t what’s different, it’s the positioning of the anus, like in a wild slug the anus is under its mantle rather than at the tail end of their bodies. But even there, defining a slugs tapered end as a tail could be considered dubious by some individuals”
P: “Interesting.”
D: “I’m also aware of some things that just aren’t around the Surface…”
P: “Like, of their bodies?”
A pause.
D: *Gulp* “Um…” *sniffle* “So…” *Gulp* “Uh- nevermind that. Just… so the Chordate Phylum… it’s a little warm in here”
Clothes ruffling.
P: *Whispered* “Oh…”
A pause.
D: “Chordates,” *breath* “have 3 subphyla, like I said. Tunicates are like… if you’ve ever heard of sea squirts, the ascidians; tunicates are very unique beings, they’re marine creatures only and very tubey, but they still have all the relevant traits fitting chordata. The Cephalochordata are lancelets, these are also exclusively marine and they’re vital to our understanding of fish. If I explain further than that we’ll get distracted and I’ll ramble on about lancelets all day. Vertebrata is where both of us lie as well as all birds, mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians.”
Writing.
P: “And are the wild equivalents also classified this way?”
D: “Yes indeed, the core difference between sapiens and non-sapiens species anatomically speaking is that at some point, sapiens directly diverged off their standard evolutionary paths to follow these traits. It’s still a huge mystery to us how that happened, but fundamentally there is something about this particular structure that wins out and humans are a bit like the lancelet of all sapiens as the “wild human” is not a thing that exists today; all wild humans became the humans as we know them today.”
P: “And we really don’t understand that?”
D: “Well, what would you propose?”
P: “I thought it was two separate paths, like it split off at a much earlier level so that all animals could, like, become a sapiens at a more fundamental stage and beneath that they all just evolved the same species under both”
D: “Well that’s an older idea that’s existed, but what has ultimately gone against that is that the DNA is far too similar and rather than all sapiens going back to a joint sapiens ancestor, all the evidence we have points to the individual species dating back to their non-sapiens or ‘wild’ counterpart.”
P: “And why are they all sapiens and not something like ‘human-form’?”
D: “It’s ultimately the main thing that connects all of us - wisdom and our brains. The actual form itself is a much bigger mystery because take, say, the wild Rock Eagle Owl like the wild form of what I am; a wild bird doesn’t have hands like these, their phalanges at this point in their wings are hidden and don't work like hands, and quite notably, the wild Rock Eagle Owl is roughly 53cm tall where the average height for us Sapiens Rock Eagle Owls is 173cm. And rather than liken us all to humans, the community has been arriving at words like ‘personly’, ‘anthropomorphic’, or adopting the term ‘mankind’ since it already somewhat describes it, but that’s not an adjective so it’s also being rejected.”
P: “I see.”
D: “But we’ll have a lesson rounding up the traits and differences between sapiens and wild species at another time.”
P: “And is there other mysteries like that?”
D: “Well…”
Scratching.
D: *Breath* “the, uh, bulk of mysteries come from a field that isn’t exactly encouraged…”
P: “Oh… and, why is that?”
D: *Sigh* “it’s uh… considered a little… beyond fringe, we’ll say, to be invested in. Often feared in the world…”
P: “Ah… I uh…”
Brief pause.
P: *I think I get it”
D: “Since,” *ahem* “We’re moving past phyla now to get to Class and we’re both vertebrates, we shall start by leading down to the divergence in our paths. So, parts of the taxonomic ranks can be divided by clades. Cladistics is simply the categorisation of species on the grounds of where we think common ancestors lie. There are two major branches, called infraphylum, to consider first, and we’ll make this a little game where you guess which path we’ll follow to find our species. The infraphyla are Agnatha and Gnathastomata. I will give you the information that “stomata” means mouth, but both infraphyla still have mouths, so these terms are just describing a property about their mouths that is common between those under the umbrellas.”
P: “Well, I at least know that if A is at the beginning of another word it usually means ‘not’ right? Like ‘apolitical’?”
D: “That would be correct.”
P: “So, ‘gnatha’ would mean it has a gnatha and ‘agnatha’ would mean it doesn’t?”
D: “Right.”
P: “Like teeth?”
D: “Not teeth. Teeth are denticles.”
P: “Right…”
Pause.
Wet sound.
D: *Giggling* “Think a bit more outside of the mouth.”
Pause.
P: “Lips?”
D: D: “Bit further out”
P: “Jaw?”
D: “Yes, so we would be…”
P: “Gnathastomata”
D: “Correct. This is a huge category. Gnathastomata consists of every vertebrate with a jaw. The jawless vertebrates are much rarer and it’s those with jaws that persisted the most throughout evolutionary history. The most persistent agnatha are the cyclostomi; those are lampreys and hagfishes. Ultimately, going back to the gnathostomata level we’re pretty entrenched in marine life and that’s where the evidence points to the animal kingdom's very beginning, it’s sea creatures.”
P: “Everything has evolved from sea creatures?”
D: “Precisely. We’ll get to the split off soon, but next under gnathostomata are the Chondrichthyes and Osteichthyes. Uhh, Ichthyes is fish, so we’re still in the ocean at the moment, but we have formally reached the stage where everything is a fish, and what I will give you is that we’re talking here about structure.”
P: “Like, internally?”
D: “Yes.”
P: “Skeletons.”
D: “What about them?”
Pause.
P: “Number of bones?”
D: “You’re going too deep there, peel back…”
Pause.
P: “Peel back?”
D: “Think… how the skeleton is made…”
P: “Oh, like… types of bone?”
D: “Not… exactly… so think like… ribs are bones. Jaws are bones. Your joints are…”
P: “...cartilage?”
D: “Yes”
P: “So Osteichthyes would be cartilage based fish?”
Feathers ruffling.
P: “Oh, Chondrichthyes would be cartilage based.”
D: “That’s the one.”
P: “So, we’re not that”
D: “We go back to the Osteichthyes. So try to remember too that we are not osteichthyes, rather we descend from the osteichthyes. If we were osteichthyes we’d be saying we’re fish.”
P: “Right, sorry.”
Writing.
D: “Osteichthyes come down to Sarcopterygii and Actinopterygii. To give you the common thing there once again, ‘pterygii’ comes from a word meaning ‘wing’ and ‘fin’.”
P: “So, arms?”
D: “Right…”
Long pause.
D: “I will give you that this is a tough one…”
Pause.
P: *Breath*
Pause.
D: “Need a hint?”
P: “Yyyy… yes… yes.”
Typing, mouse scrolling and gliding.
D: “This is where fish diverge again, so the difference here isn’t going to be as obvious to us intuitively as it relates to us, but it’s-
P: *Ahermmm. Cough cough.*
D: “A lot easier to see if you look at one of each and compare. Just give me a minute”
Faint wet sound. Tissues ruffling
Pause.
D: “So, this is an Actino’. This is specifically a Queen Angelfish; holacanthus ciliaris. And this one is a Sarcopto’; a Barramunda, which is a lungfish; neoceratodus fforsteri. What do you notice about the fins?”
P: “The Angelfish’s fins look a bit more papery?” *Sip*
D: “Yep, width wise. You’re on the right track. Why do you think they’re different?”
P: “Like, what is materially different about them?”
D: “Yep.”
P: “Well they’re also… is it, like… meat?”
D: “I’ll give you that. So this is, like- you know what radial means?”
P: “No.”
D: “No worries, so you see how there’s these lines in the tailfin, and they’re kind of equally spread further apart as they go? These are very thin bones, they’re a bit like batwings in that way, though don’t take that as a hint. And around these bones is a tight, thin layer of skin. But they’re quote-un-quote ray-finned because the structure of the bones is radially extended from one point. Where on this barramunda, the fins have a lot more of a support system beneath the exterior, there’s lobes and skeletal structures supporting all of that work.”
Writing.
P: “So, like hands?”
D: “Yes, exactly; we get our limbs from Sarcopterygii fins.”
P: “I have a question about DNA?”
D: “Yes.”
P: “Can we see the DNA of those fish in yo- our DNA?”
D: “Kind of, yes? You couldn’t scour through our DNA and take all of the fish parts and construct a new fish out of it, but we can compare the DNA of us, and the DNA of ancestral species, and the DNA of their previous ancestors further and further back. We will be able to see how that DNA changed to become what we are today.”
P: “So there is no fish in us, but our DNA is comparable?”
D: “You could say that yes. Ultimately, in this particular pattern, we come back to the next clade and notice what that clade has compared to the Sarcopterygii. The next sisterhood of clades we have here are the Actinistia, Tetrapoda and Dipnoi. These words of course have a lot less in common, but I will give you that one of these are the lungfish I just showed you, one of them are coelacanths and the third one is the next clade we’ll be looking at.”
P: “So Lungfish and Coelacanths’ evolutionary pathways stop at their… you said anthropomorphic form?”
D: “Yes, as well as their wild forms. Pop-culture pseudozoologists will call them dinosaurs for this reason, but they pre-date dinosaurs quite significantly on the evolutionary path.”
P: “What do the words you said mean directly?”
D: “So, Dipnoi - two breaths. Tetrapod - four foot. Actinistia basically means ray-sail.”
P: “We are tetropods.”
D: “Yep, pretty simple; four footed, we can take that to ‘four limbs’. Coelacanths are our ray-sails - it’s kind of similar to actinopterygii, which is a bit of a giveaway there. And the lungfish are Dipnoi; they’re named after their lungs of course; a very advanced respiratory system which is related to those of tetrapods like ourselves.”
P: “So lungfish don’t need water to breathe?”
D: “Wild variants can go days without water. Our anthropomorphic variants can go much longer, though like all anthropomorphic fish, they still need water to survive still, and if they travel out of the water they travel with an aide for that. The lungfish is able to last longer without that aid and they might, perhaps, keep their aids in a room they’re staying in and refresh overnight. At least that’s what the one lungfish I’ve ever met has told me. It’s a complicated system though, of course, I couldn’t do it justice not having to deal with it myself.”
P: “Interesting…”
Writing.
D: “Tetropods can be a bit of a misnomer because not all tetrapods actually have 4 limbs, but most do and the name stuck. We’re getting a little close now, but some history; the tetrapods are where we split away from fish and we get our legs and we get onto the land. A word you’ve undoubtedly heard before is amphibians; our frogs, newts, and so on. This is one of the next layer of classes. The other tetrapods, important to us, are our amniotes; these are the mammals, reptiles and birds.”
D: “Things get complicated around here as far as birds and reptiles are concerned so I’ll speak on this very briefly; there are two classification systems, one based on physical appearance, Linear, and one based on DNA analysis, phylogenetic. The first system is best used for simplicity - birds and reptiles present as completely different from each other. On a DNA basis however, birds are reptiles which makes “reptiles” a bit of a misnomer but we still use it for the most part. Specifically we came from the dinosaurs, and we are closer related to crocodiles than crocodiles are to, say, lizards. Intuitively it’s best to think of birds separately, as we’re so well separated in traits that thinking of us all as one thing is a bit more mentally gymnastic especially when even our dinosaur ancestors and crocodilian siblings are still with us, but we’re teaching on a DNA basis. Hence, reptile can be a confusing word at first when we start including birds in it and alleging that crocodiles are closer to birds than lizards, but it’s the word we still use”
P: “Okay, so if I’m outside of here, you’re not a dinosaur or reptile, but while I’m here, you are.”
D: *Laughs* “Yes exactly; genetically speaking one could say they’re my great grandparents when we zoom out, in a reductive sense.”
P: *Laughs.*
D: “To get back to the split off though, we come to the term Amphibian; think like ‘ambiguous’; the term ultimately means “both lifestyles” as amphibians live both in the water and on the land. Amniote refers to the amnion, which is this slim coating of membrane that surrounds a foetus during development. Amphibians lay their eggs in water because they lack that amnion; if they laid their eggs on land, they would dry up.”
Crackle.
P: *Gulp. Gulp. Gulp*
D: “When describing where those three core terms from,”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “mammal refers to the mammary glands; the mammalian breast has a gland that produces milk.”
P: *Gulp.*
“There is more to it than that which we’ll discuss soon. Reptiles were named”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “initially for the way they crawl, which is of course now outdated with our modern understanding.”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “Birds, being completely honest, is just a word as old as time - it used to only refer”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “to baby birds and “fowl” were the adults, but at some point in history, they broadened the meaning of birds.”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “Fowl has its origins in words that meant “flight”, but this is also outdated”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “Now we have birds like penguins and ostriches which don’t do that. When it comes”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “down to it, the word bird exists simply for the necessity of giving things names-”
P: *Gulp.*
D: “a- are you okay?”
P: *Gulp.*
Crackle.
P: “Huh?”
D: “Thirsty?”
P: “A little dehydrated.”
D: *Chuckles* “That’s more than half of it. You won’t evaporate without it”
P: *Wavering* “Uhh… right…”
D: “Now, we can go over the full extent of specifics another time, but let’s quickly move towards each of our respective species now. Before reaching Order, Family, Species and Genus, let’s cover key traits of mammals and birds.”
Writing.
D: “Mammals, as mentioned previously, have a mammary gland, as well as hair, prominent ears and in wild variants, the region of the brain responsible for the way anthropomorphic beings think is present. We shall avoid the implications of this for now as it’s a deep rabbit hole; we have a separate session for that which will be covered two sessions from now and we’ll do something lighter next week since today’s quite heavy on its own, but that’s your mammals.”
P: “I feel like I was always told mammals have more traits. And that there are outliers that are mammals but also not.”
D: “Mammals… do not have more directly common traits, you maybe were told that they are-... or that all the things above it are mammalian traits or maybe things below it are more broadly mammalian than they are - that’s the property of giving live birth primarily, which is very broadly mammalian, but it’s overruled as an all-mammalian trait by the monotremes; our vulgarly named mammalian outliers like echidnas and strepodons and platypuses.”
P: “Vulgarly named?”
D: “Yep. ‘One opening’ is what monotreme means; the, uh, reproductive anatomy of female monotremes follows the standard among birds and reptiles where they rather uniquely carry out their urinary and reproductive functions through the same genital opening, hence the name. Monotremes differ still from at least wild birds where the male monotremes have penises separate from the rest of their anatomy and wild birds do not, but I exclude other reptiles from this, largely because the reproductive anatomy of reptiles do tend to vary up and down the scale - even male anthropomorphic birds differ from most wild birds, which is not surprising considering the diversity of anthropomorphism, which again is a session 3 topic.”
P: “Alright”
D: “But since we’ve got a convenient segue here for birds, our key traits connecting us all include our wings,”
Feathers ruffling.
Writing.
D: “our sturdy, hard-shelled eggs. Our,”
Tap. Tap.
D: “Toothless jaws with firm beaks, our very hollow bones but still very study skeletons, and our relatively large hearts with 4 chambers.”
Writing.
D: “As we get, now, into the Orders, things start branching out a lot more and defining every step of the way will be stretching our time thin, so we’ll gloss over other examples in future steps to hone in a lot more on you and I as species.”
“On the mammal side, we mentioned previously the monotremes of course; monotreme is an order. Humans were mentioned previously too, and these are primates. You as a dog are part of a family in the subclass caniformia which is of the broader class “carnivora”, so, carni means flesh, vora means eating - carnivora means flesh-eating. The carnivores are split into two groups; your caniformia and the cats’ feliformia, which are each named after the cats and dogs respectively; the scientific names being felis catus and canis familiaris or canis lupus familiaris depending on who you ask, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.”
P: “How do you know that?”
D: “How do I know what?”
P: “You said you didn’t know what I was when we started.”
D: “Well, classification stops at that level. We’ll discuss the naming system last,”
Writing.
D: “but canis lupus familiaris is the scientific name of every ‘dog’ regardless of ‘breed’ - breed is a distinction where species may have historically been bred into having a set of unique traits fit for a set purpose and is a consequence of a much more intentional evolution of traits unlike higher differences that happened with no thought behind them; just competitive traits winning over others.”
P: “So is Rock Eagle Owl also a breed?”
D: “No, that’s a species. We don’t have breeds; a very select group of creatures were bred this way under a dark history I’m frankly surprised you’re not aware of.”
P: “That’s, uh… well… I’m working on it…”
D: “Working… on it?”
P: “Yep… I, uh, wasn’t really around for that history…”
Pause.
D: “I- I was about to ask how you could have missed learning about the history of breeds when you live in such a core hub for said breeds, but I feel you may have had something more important going on I shouldn't be looking into…”
P: “Let’s… go with that…”
D: “Alrighty… *Ahem*, back to orders, briefly on caniformia and feliformia, *ahem*, they each refer to two broad categories where one category is more similar to cats, the second category is more similar to dogs; cats and dogs are words predating our knowledge of all this, so we went back and did it the same way. The obvious caniformia would include creatures like various wolves and foxes, which are all under the family called “canidae” as you’re already undoubtedly aware, but we also include under caniformia so-called unrelated species like bears and seals and red pandas and mustelids. Feliforms have a similar thing going on; the cat family, and then cat-like families including the mongooses, the euplerids and the hyaenids, which is surprising for a lot of people.”
P: “How so?”
D: “Their frame of reference is the visual appearance which is dog-like.”
P: “I thought everyone knew they weren’t canids?”
D: “I think it’s easier when you live around canids all the time and don’t run into hyenas as much, but again, it’s a rather common misconception that I was sure you’d have at least heard.”
P: “Mm… no,”
Writing.
P: “hasn’t come up…”
D: “Fascinating, really.” *sip* “Um, as it comes to myself, Owls are an order in their own right - we are strigiformes with a similar structure in that we have two families; the strigidae, typical owls, and the tytonidae; barn and bay owls. Tytonidae have a more apple slice shaped face where strigids like myself have rounder faces. We have rather large eyes, unlike the much smaller tyto eyes, and there are other differences across our legs, talons and beaks.”
Writing.
D: “Beneath classes are of course families, which I’ve kind of already delved into and past when discussing the orders. Families are the last step where naming convention isn’t involved in the scientific naming process, so under families we then get into genera and then species; naming convention has it that we name the genera and then their species right after. The common names, which are like ‘rock eagle owl’, are oftentimes just a product of observation; rock eagle owls are named after their habitats, primarily, though that’s just my species. The broader eagle owl genus - the bubos - are named so because wild variants match in size to wild eagles. As I briefly hinted at earlier, the same doesn’t happen with the word “dog”, but it happens for other canids like ‘bat-eared foxes’ that have ears that resemble the wings of a bat.”
Writing.
P: “One of my superiors at work is a bat-eared fox. Whenever we talked about this class I was being trained by Dr. Mot on the farming trial he said he knew you”
D: “Yeah? What’s his name?”
“Buzwe.”
D: “Ohhhh Buzwe Kiuon?”
P: “Yep.”
D: *Raised pitch* “Ohhhhhh he was so nice! He was in my basic medicine class when I was still a student!”
P: “He’s nicer than ever then, it seems.”
D: “It’s always a joy to hear people haven’t changed. What’s he do now?”
P: “HR at a massage parlour in Canine’s Cave. I’ve only known him a few weeks, but he’s been super accommodating to my… complexities…”
D: “Awh, that sounds wonderful… Despite how out there my interests got he was never shameful towards me…” *ahem* “Anyway… um, named after his ears is his species. Besides dogs, as we covered, dog ‘breeds’ have their own names which can be a bit more observational. But the species canis lupus familiaris gets its name from their genus, which is canis - it comes from the type of teeth you have called canines. Those who call dogs “canis lupus familiaris’ work in the term ‘lupus’ as dogs are a direct descendent from wolves which are called canis lupus. The familiaris comes from the domestication process, which is another part of that tumultuous history that keeps cropping up. I’ll scrounge up all I can on that and maybe give you a history lesson beyond the subjects I’ve already planned.”
P: “I would appreciate that. I could check into a library if you have research to recommend?”
D: “Might be a better idea, yep. Uh, Bubo Igneus - Bubo goes back to the name of a different species, the common eagle owl; Bubo Bubo. Igneus is a fake word that mimics the name of a type of rock… presumably that’s the type of rock they first found us sitting on? I can only imagine what those before me were thinking.”
P: “Is that why that rock is there?”
D: “What… this?”
P: “Yeah.”
D: “No, no, this is a lava rock.”
P: “Does it have importance to zoology?”
Pause.
D: “Uh…”
Pause.
D: *Sigh* “No..? It’s uh…”
Pause.
D: “N-... not… no, it’s not from zoology.”
P: “Where is it from?”
D: “Uhh… a volcano. It was… um… given to me…”
P: “... Pretty cool…”
D: “Yyyyesss…”
Pause.
D: “Uh… so… any questions on… what we’ve, uh… covered here?”
P: “Oh, yes, actually. Where are the insects? I feel like we never went anywhere near them.”
D: “Ah, right! We didn’t touch on those. So, peel all the way back to the kingdom and we’ll go from there. Under each kingdom we have subkingdoms, we are under the eumetazoa and so are insects. We’ll come back to the other subkingdoms another time, but the Eumetazoa splits into all of those phyla. We fell down the chordates path, insects fell down the arthropoda paths.”
Writing.
D: “There are 4 core branches to the arthropods; the chelicerata, the crustacea, the myriapoda and the hexapoda. The ‘crabs’ can be a little confusing here, so to slightly clear that while we’re here; some things are named crabs but are not actually in the same family group; the horseshoe crab is not a crustacean, it is a chelicerates which is the order containing horseshoe crabs, sea spiders and arachnids - which can be misconstrued as insects in their own right, but arachnids are not insects.”
P: “Hang on, this is already a lot of information.”
Writing.
D: *Sip.*
P: “Go on,”
D: “So, arachnids, sea spiders and horseshoe crabs are chelicerata. Shrimps, lice, crabs, remipedes, barnacles… that sort of group are crustaceans. The myriapods are pretty much anything that resembles a millipede or centipede. Hexapods are your insects and entognatha.”
Writing.
P: “I think I understand that”
D: “Ah, thank goodness. Your understanding is truly magnificent, you know, going through some of these things we usually linger on certain parts a bit more as we sort through misconceptions, but you seem to have a lot of these cleared or are on a blank slate with them, which is super ideal.”
P: *Laughing* “I can’t tell how much of a compliment that is.”
D: “Well, hah, it is a compliment despite me being happy you’re not a person with quote-un-quote common knowledge. I’m still bemused with what you’ve missed given how widespread some of this information is in factoid lovers, but what it means is that you have avoided all of those problems. It’s almost like your base understanding is DNA.”
P: “Oop. Um, I mean…”
Scratching.
P: “I’m sure I get it from somewhere…”
D: “You must know where you get it from?”
Scratching.
Pause.
D: “Do you really not?”
Short pause.
P: “Sure…”
D: “...There’s something to you, you know…”
P: “What does that mean?”
Pause.
D: “I don’t know yet, but I think these sessions are going to be interesting.”
Pause.
P: “What are jellyfish?”
D: “Aha! Fascinating biology here. So, we’re back to digging through Phyla. Jellyfish are Cnidaria, which are the marine stinging animals. Um, cnidaria are quite the enigmas, we have the hydrozoa in here which are often discarded as Supernatural by those just observing the anthros, but the wild variants work exactly the same way; to go on small tangent, hydrozoa includes siphonophores and siphonophores are like colonies of tiny tiny beings which come together to form one self-sustaining system - if you’ve heard of the praya dubia that’s what’s going on there.”
P: “But they’re not supernatural?”
D: “No.”
P: “But, like, an anthro-fungus is?”
D: “So… I would love to say I understand that. I don’t. We just kind of have to go with what the leaders say on that one…”
P: “Uh… I see…”
D: “Anthrofungi, though… uh… are not animals and I think it’s assumed… that… they don’t sometimes act like one… naturally. But I think the court is still out on that one too?”
P: “On what?”
D: *Sigh…* “the naturality… of… non-animal anthropomorphic beings.”
P: “... right…”
D: “It’s also… not considered zoology...”
P: “Why?”
D: “Zoology is… animals.”
P: “Oh, right. Not non-animals.”
D: “Correct…”
Pause.
D: *Muttered* “nor the supernatural in general apparently” *cough* “AHEM. THEEEEeeeee… uhh… yes, the… uh… jellyfish! Um… they’re not a specific class - they’re all cnidaria, but a box jellyfish is not the same class as stalked jellyfish. Again, complicated. We’re not super filled in when it comes to understanding jellies.”
P: “What about dragons?”
D: “Dragons are reptiles. Descended from dinosaurs, we think.”
P: “And why are they, like, half divine?”
D: “That’s a history thing, so I may not be fully clued in on this, but if you’re asking about morphology, biology, DNA, stuff like that, dragons aren’t naturally Divine. Divinity itself is something above life or that contributes to life, but as it comes to dragons… I believe the story goes that somewhere in their history a… one could say errant Divine got a bit too big for their boots and roped the dragons into divinity for their affinity towards dragons and then once that happened it couldn’t really be reversed since divines are prohibited from interfering. My knowledge on how any of that works is deeply primitive though, those kinds of questions are better asked to, like, a historian or religious teacher than myself.”
P: “And Divines… they look like beings from here, but they’re like, not?”
D: “Beings from here ascend. Again, Divine studies are not something I’m totally clued in on, but our general understanding of it is also quite vague anyway; the divines seem to suggest it’s for us to figure out on our own and they avoid interfering with our knowledge.”
P: “Ah, right. I think I knew that much at least.”
D: “I was gonna say, that lack of knowledge would be getting suspicious.”
P: *Nervous laughter* “Yeah, well, thank goodness I’m not suspicious.”
D: “I apologise if my curiosity towards you has been intimidating.”
P: “It’s, uh, okay. I, uh, just get nervous about it is all.”
D: “Yeahh, I would never point fingers or anything, to be clear. I don’t really believe in that.”
P: “What do you mean?”
D: “You know, doling out supernatural accusations.”
P: “Oh thank g-, well, thank you, I, uh, I guess…”
D: “Yeah, I mean observationally, what constitutes the supernatural is too deep in history for even historians to fully understand it seems, and I can’t in good faith point fingers when our understanding of all of these things are so minute.”
P: *Mumbled* “I’m sure someone has to know.”
D: “The supernatural themselves, maybe. Too bad we can’t ask them.”
P:“Yeah, you definitely can’t go doing that.”
Awkward pause.
D: “Right…”
Brief pause.
D: “Well. We’ve been going quite a bit and we’ve covered a lot of the stuff I wanted to cover. Do you want to come back to this next session?”
P: “Yep, where is the toilet?”
D: “Here-”
[][chairscutingfootstepsdooropendoorclosepause………dooropensfootstepsdoorclosestypingdooropensfootstepsdoorclosesspeech][/i]
D: “-back Pooka”
Scrape. Pencils clacking.
“Thanks Dion.”
D: “I think for the next session we’ll maybe just go over the ins and outs of what traits are theoretically used for.”
P: “Okay. So, like, what?”
D: Some key headers in here are, like, functions of the mouth and varied ways different species use other parts. We’ll touch on why some species are venomous or sting. We’ll touch on mimicry briefly and talk about why that’s important, uh-”
P: “Mimicry?”
D: “Yes, like, some species have traits that look similar to other things, which we believe serves some purpose or another,”
P: “Oh… right.”
D: “And also touch on some reproductive traits and also cover the concept of vestigial traits.”
P: “But not, like, behavioural mimicry?”
D: “Oh, you really curious about mimicry?”
P: “I, uh… well, yeah.”
D: “Mimicry is a very diverse phenomenon. We’ll get there when we get there, but behavioural mimicry is a part of that.”
P: “Is it, like… uh…” *muttering* “how do i…” *talking* “shaaapesftingg?”
D: “Well. Again, if we’re calling it that, we’re going into the supernatural.”
P: “Ah, ha!.. Uh… So, what is it?”
D: “It’s an evolved thing. Naturally. Again, be patient, we’ll get to it next week. But as a brief example… On the way to the toilet I think we went past Mr. Miwa, the Nixon-side Chemistry teacher. Mr. Miwa is a Potoo, the wild Potoos like to perch on treestumps as a form of camouflage, because their feather patterns resemble tree bark remarkably closely, and that trait naturally developed because when a Potoo more closely resembles parts of trees, their chances of survival in the wild is dramatically increased and those who looked less that way were less likely to continue the species.”
P: “Ohhhh that makes more sense.”
D: “Yeah. Again though, next session.”
P: “Right. Well thank you for this, sir. I’ve enjoyed today, awkward as I might have seemed.”
D: “Yes. And I am interested in knowing more about you and your history with knowledge. I think I can become an even better teacher just by learning how to cater to the way you go about these subjects.”
P: “Of course. I’m a bit shy to that though,” *chuckling*.
D: “Well there’s no need to be. Believe it or not I tend to be quite shy myself in a regular setting. I’m just in my element when I have someone willing to just sit and listen to me talk about this stuff.”
P: *Giggle* “Well thank you for the reassurance. We’ll see how I open up, I’m sure…”
D: “Oh, before you go, do you wanna quickly stop the recording and pass it over to me.”
P: “Oh, sure…”
D: “I’ll make a copy for myself an-”
Button press.
Category Story / Fantasy
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 356 kB
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