Never assume that there is familiar green grass underfoot on another planet. On Nike:
"...the ground was densely carpeted with a soft mossy growth." (p. 484)
Another native species is a fronded, pale green, although blue-tinted, gymnosperm plant. Dagny assumes that this plant bears chlorophyll despite its paleness and partial blueness.
However, imported Terrestrial species are more highly developed and efficient and therefore have taken over most of the territory traversed by Roan Tom's wives, Dagny and Yasmin. Grass has displaced most of the pseudo-moss which seems to have:
"...a competitive advantage only in the shade." (ibid.)
There are oaks, birches, cedars, primroses, thrushes, bulbuls, hawks, butterflies, bees, mustangs, carabao and a wild boar. Native forms are represented by large, flying insectoids and awkward amphibians. North American mustangs are feral horses descended from domesticated horses imported from Spain. Thus, Nikean mustangs are even further removed from their domesticated ancestors.
Also imported although not from Earth are:
"...an entire herd of antlered six-legged tanithars." (p. 485)
Such devotion to descriptive details is astounding.
6 comments:
'tis the devotion to descriptive detail -- and making it fit together -- that give the reader a sense of immediacy. It can be overdone, of course.
nb on North American mustangs; by 1492, the American ecology was full of gaping holes, mostly caused by humans.
Horses evolved in North America and spread to the rest of the world from here; but together with over half the large animals, they went extinct shortly after the arrival of humans.
There's a pattern in the spread of H. Sapiens; the later we arrived in a given environment, the worse the mass extinctions.
North America got highly developed late-Stone Age hunting cultures all at once. Africa, by contrast, retained most of its megafauna because it co-evolved with human beings, and until recently could hold its own.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And cloning might someday bring back from extinction some of those lost due to over hunting?
To see living woolly mammoths would be cool!
Ad astra! Sean
And then there is the idea that Mr. Stirling included in "Conquistador", introducing ecologically similar replacements into the Americas for animals that went extinct there millenia ago.
Horses have already been done in real life. See this for a discussion about controversies related to that: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4786
Then there are hippopotamuses in S. America
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamuses_in_Colombia
Will they be beneficial or harmful on balance?
Kaor, Jim
I remember that! The Commonwealth of New Virginia ruled by John Rolfe VI introduced to North American lions. And other animals as well.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: until the end of the last glacial period, N. America had lions, equivalents of tigers and cheetahs, several types of elephant (mammoths, etc.), giant ground sloths, lots of different antelopes, many types of large predatory cat, several different species of wolves (dire wolves, etc.), giant beavers, very large bison, and a whole bunch of others.
It was like the Serengeti out there.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A very cool beans interesting environment! Except for the lack of human beings. THEN about 15 or 17,000 years ago humans with advanced Neolithic tech and weapons for hunting came across the Bering land bridge from Asia. And wiped out these animals thru over hunting.
Ad astra! Sean
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