A Supermagnet, A Doctor, and A Twin Walk Into A Bar

[iamnotpolaris]

Milliways. Oh, bless.
Dr. Xavier could have finished her shift, made it home, and buried her head in a pillow if she had to. But this is much easier.
"Hi, Bar, can I have a stimulant that won't interfere with my judgement or dexterity or anything like that?"

Comments

[iamnotpolaris]

"I've never eaten pig because of religious restrictions but I'll take your word for it. And that would seem to follow, considering how huge just plain moose are."

[roc_on]

"Moosows are pig-cows. I'm not actually aware of any moosepigs. Mooselions yes, dragon moose, moosewhales..."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Ah. No offense, but those sound terrifying."

[roc_on]

"Dragon moose are domesticated. They've fallen out of use, but they used to pull heavy loads."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I'm trying to imagine what a moosewhale would look like and I'm probably doing it wrong because it's coming out implausibly comic and also very Canadian."

[roc_on]

"...Bar, can you give us a picture of a moosewhale?"

Bar produces a picture of a moosewhale. It is basically a killer whale, brown where orcas are black, with moose antlers, angled to reduce their impact on the streamlined shape, and a blunt mooselike snout.

[iamnotpolaris]

"I had the antlers at a different angle and was using a different kind of whale, is I think most of the problem. The Canadianness persists, I'm just going to assume my brain inextricably links moose with Canada. Canada is a country near mine that has a lot of moose in it," she clarifies.

[roc_on]

"I see."

[iamnotpolaris]

"So most of the animals where you're from are weird mix-ups? Weird from my perspective, I mean, sorry."

[roc_on]

"Yeah. We have some isolate animals - an Earth King once famously kept a pet bear - but they're uncommon and tend not to do as well even if they establish populations."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Huh. I wonder why that is."

[roc_on]

"I don't know. Do you not have very many kinds of animals? Since there's no combinatorial explosion?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"We have a lot of animals. We have I think several million kinds of beetle, thousands upon thousands of kinds of birds, mammals, reptiles, uncountable sea creatures...I'm not a taxonomist or I'd have better figures but it's a lot."

[roc_on]

"...Okay. Maybe you have more kinds of animals than we do. Since instead of crossing and generalizing they're specializing ever-finer until you have millions of kinds of beetle."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Probably, yeah. I'm not the best person to ask, evolution isn't my field of study."

[roc_on]

"Fair enough. ...That is so many beetles. Counting everything that has as a component any kind of beetle we probably have a few thousand, it's a good design, but that's just ridiculous."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I think beetles are one of the more numerous kinds of animal on the planet, yeah."

[roc_on]

"Rocs are an unusually streamlined animal. I think they're eagle/ospreys but they're one of the animals that gets their own name."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Well, they're a specific thing in my world's mythology. I think the fictional version eats elephants or something."

[roc_on]

"I mean, rocs are big enough that they could probably eat most of an elephant-rat, maybe even an elephant-rhino if they took their time, but they prefer fish."

[iamnotpolaris]

"...Rats are tiny. Rhinos are not tiny but significantly smaller than an elephant. I suspect that elephant-rats and elephant-rhinos are smaller than just plain elephants."

[roc_on]

"I don't actually know how big any of these things are as isolates. An elephant-rat is yea big -" She gestures a size that's a bit bigger than a regular rat. "I say 'most of' because it wouldn't have fish bones and the roc wouldn't be able to swallow it whole, it wouldn't be much of a meal really... An elephant-rhino is huge, though."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Hey, Bar, can we have pictures of an elephant and an elephant-rhino on approximately the same scale?"

[alicornucopia]

They can get a spread of all the elephant crosses, including the elephant koi, which is the biggest. The elephant-rhino is second-biggest, about the size of an Earth elephant.

[iamnotpolaris]

"Okay, that's about the size of an Asian elephant. African elephants are bigger, but I don't remember which one rocs were supposed to eat, so."