>> The "elk shooting eye-beams" thing made me laugh for real. <<
As much as I support responsible hunting, I believe that nature maintains a balance between predator and prey. Humans have been shooting at wildlife for tens of thousands of years. In a setting with a high mutagenic factor, it is logical to project that wildlife will eventually learn to shoot back. After all, there are already skunks and bombadier beetles, and the spitting cobras turned out to be real after all.
>> Hey, octopi are brilliant, how about a mutation that gave them a long lifespan and the ability/ desire to work together? They'd probably wind up with a civilization eventually. <<
Feel free to prompt for it. Just remember that evolution usually works slowly. In order to create a stable population quickly, you need a widespread game-changing force.
Frex, two species of Hawaiian cricket rapidly evolved from noisy to silent in response to parasites. THIS is why you do not wipe out your handicapped members. A few male crickets went from unfuckable cripples to "the last man on Earth" and saved the cricket population from extinction. Silence went from a devastating handicap to a survival need. You just never know what you might need.
Another possibility raised elsewhere is factories, power plants, or other sources of pollution dumping it into the waterways. The Gulf of Mexico now has deformed sealife.
Feel free to prompt for super-powered cephalopods if you wish; I quite admire these creatures. *chuckle* Especially the supervillain octopus that one aquarium store caught on camera eventually. I could totally work with that.
>> I've been reading comics lately and I imagine that having a high-school level biology education is a disqualifying factor for writing them. <<
Often it seems that way. On the other hoof, superhero science is like cartoon physics -- it has its own rules. I'm okay with working in dimensions whose fundamental laws are different from our own. Farthest I've gone with that is nether-Earth but Terramagne is pretty different in certain specific ways. Frex, Super-Strength comes with a force-manipulation ability that makes it possible to life large things without tearing them apart. It stands to reason that Super-Size: Giant would come with the ability to bend rules making it possible to survive, although I do tend to use living or fossilized creatures as reference points.
Re: Sorry, rambling.
As much as I support responsible hunting, I believe that nature maintains a balance between predator and prey. Humans have been shooting at wildlife for tens of thousands of years. In a setting with a high mutagenic factor, it is logical to project that wildlife will eventually learn to shoot back. After all, there are already skunks and bombadier beetles, and the spitting cobras turned out to be real after all.
>> Hey, octopi are brilliant, how about a mutation that gave them a long lifespan and the ability/ desire to work together? They'd probably wind up with a civilization eventually. <<
Feel free to prompt for it. Just remember that evolution usually works slowly. In order to create a stable population quickly, you need a widespread game-changing force.
Frex, two species of Hawaiian cricket rapidly evolved from noisy to silent in response to parasites. THIS is why you do not wipe out your handicapped members. A few male crickets went from unfuckable cripples to "the last man on Earth" and saved the cricket population from extinction. Silence went from a devastating handicap to a survival need. You just never know what you might need.
Another possibility raised elsewhere is factories, power plants, or other sources of pollution dumping it into the waterways. The Gulf of Mexico now has deformed sealife.
Feel free to prompt for super-powered cephalopods if you wish; I quite admire these creatures. *chuckle* Especially the supervillain octopus that one aquarium store caught on camera eventually. I could totally work with that.
>> I've been reading comics lately and I imagine that having a high-school level biology education is a disqualifying factor for writing them. <<
Often it seems that way. On the other hoof, superhero science is like cartoon physics -- it has its own rules. I'm okay with working in dimensions whose fundamental laws are different from our own. Farthest I've gone with that is nether-Earth but Terramagne is pretty different in certain specific ways. Frex, Super-Strength comes with a force-manipulation ability that makes it possible to life large things without tearing them apart. It stands to reason that Super-Size: Giant would come with the ability to bend rules making it possible to survive, although I do tend to use living or fossilized creatures as reference points.