Fixing Alien Worlds 3: Eden - Review & Analysis

[@orbismworldbuilding8428]

I personally think that the inconsistency between bodyplans could be fine but the thing is we only see 3 species and so there isn't that much we can discern. To illustrate my point, imagine if in a doctumentary of life on earth they only showed a crow, a cow and a fish. We don't know anything about the photog of the species on Eden whatsoever, just that there's tetrapods and hexapods and a fungus and some unexplained background flora

[@HybrydaArt]

or even show a snake next to some rodents and big ass spider and sudenly you have no legs, 4 legs and 8 legs

[@orbismworldbuilding8428]

@@HybrydaArt yeah

[@jambec144]

8:20 Concerning self-harming behaviors: Agreed that predators would soon evolve a dislike for infected prey. However, the parasites almost certainly evolve faster than their hosts, and so could remain exceptionally attractive to the prey species. WRT the prey's eyes: I interpreted those as three actual pupils. Such a design would exaggerate chromatic aberration, which has been suggested to be the method by which cephalopods see color. I'm glad that you pointed out the inconsistency of the predators having an extra set of limbs. That annoyed the heck out of me. Not impossible, but strongly suggestive of somebody not bothering to construct an evolutionary tree.

[@fishyfishyfishy500akabs8]

The issue here is that the prey could just adapt to consume other sources of nutrition.

[@jambec144]

@@fishyfishyfishy500akabs8 Parasites evolve *much* faster than hosts. Herbivores can indeed have a fatal attraction to parasitized plants. See last five examples from table 1 from "Host Manipulation by Parasites: Cases, Patterns, and Remaining Doubts" (Martin Heil) [Note: this is my third attempted response. My comments keep disappearing for some reason.]

[@fishyfishyfishy500akabs8]

​@@jambec144 fair enough, though now I just find it odd that there are only 2 species of for lack of a better word, fauna, but I can excuse it because budget and time constraints. I would think that considering the vast breeding rates of the prey, there would be several subspecies of varying size, eating habits, etc. and maybe even several parasitoids for each specific subspecies, allowing for a large amount of niches and resources in the environment to be exploited

[@Phrenotopia]

@@jambec144 I'm sorry about that. I'm being raided by spambots promoting naughty sites at the moment, so I'm forced to hold all comments for review.

[@balazsvarga1823]

The extra arms did look strange. I think they overdid the idea by making a very mammalian body plan, and than going "yeah mantis arms are cool" .

[@tonoornottono]

this show genuinely had no effort put in to the alien WORLDS. i want to see an ecosystem.

[@TheMainCharacter93]

This show has 30 seconds of cgi aliens played over and over again every episode

[@TheYgds]

I actually stopped watching the series after this episode. I just got incensed as a biologist myself that so little effort was expended in developing and explaining this ecosystem. As others have remarked, it was marketed as a sort of "walking-with" series, where it would focus on a single world and really go into depth of how an alternative ecosystem on an alien world might function. Instead we got very limited snapshots of one world per episode, with limited, low-resolution explanations and subsequent citation of similar phenomena on Earth. That's not particularly interesting at all. Earth is indeed incredible, but I didn't watch the documentary to learn more about Earth, but to learn more about alternative biological systems; how things could work, not how they do work. I already know that stuff, I've spent 20 years of my life on that stuff. Mainstream high production value documentaries of this type never take the deep dive. I mean really go deep, tell me about the evolution of these different clades, justify the existence of animals and plants plausibly as it seems rather silly to assume life would always develop along that division. Maybe sessile versus motile is a better division? A azoles and vinyls used in place of sugars and fats? Are proteins and DNA still the prevailing molecules of function or are other more exotic systems in place. How does the biochemistry settle? Are the designs stemming from a well thought through phylogeny and basic body-plans or is it just this ill-thought out artistic license bull****. I'm truly disappointed in this, almost as disappointed as I am in most astrobiologists, who are so myopic in their view of what is possible.

[@HlootooThunderhammer]

Yeah. I found myself skipping a lot of the parts to get to the alien planets. Still wasn't worth it.

[@thuzan117]

10:45 yeah using the predator to disperse the spores via feces or some other non-lethal means would probably make more sense and is basically how toxoplasmosis works, though I suppose you could argue the fungus is using the K strategy since by killing the predator it gives the new plant a really big head start nutritionally so there's no need to just spray spores everywhere as once an infected predator dies there is a pretty high likelihood of a new fungus growing to maturity from it.

[@PeterDanielBerg]

i've yet to see a work of fiction with a compelling alien species designed with vestigial traits that hint at its evolutionary history

[@vbgvbg1133]

Biblaridion is making one, you should check that one out!

[@jesushorta502]

Like the comment able states, Biblaridion's Alien Biospheres series is quite scientific with interesting creatures. However, it is ment as a tutorial series, so it's somewhat tame at times and all the creatures are examples of some evolutionary principals.

[@Core7SO]

Check out Curious Archive here on youtube, plenty of examples to be found over there; Snaiad and Serina are the first ones that come to mind

[@gadielgonzalez2755]

The spec evo community is growing. I might start my own project as soon as I'm done with another i got going on.

[@Jpteryx]

Subnautica isn't super biologically accurate, but it does this a bit. Several of its sea creatures have flippers that look like they evolved from legs, hinting at them being secondarily aquatic. And the Ghost Leviathan still has the electrical appendages of its Ampeel relative, but vestigial and inside its (transparent) body.

[@pogicus89]

Alien worlds was just awful. They marketed it like some sort of Walking With series but for aliens. Instead it was nothing but fluff with 5 minutes per episode of actual aliens. I didn’t expect that when I was watching a documentary about Aliens, I’d instead be watching some African guy get honey from a tree. What do you expect from Netflix these days anyhow.

[@nexusoflife]

Completely agreed.

[@eybaza6018]

It's my least favourite episode of the series, but it's still ok in my opinion. Janus just really had a good impression on me.

[@Patchlamb]

Breaking down these into more realistic/probable scenarios is really helpful for making your own alien worlds! Like reverse engineering. Great stuff!

[@dracodracarys2339]

Couldn't they make the aliens look ACTUALLY alien instead of just making them scaled-up tarsiers?

[@jaysonklein6018]

I'M a scaled-up tarsier. Lol

[@definitivamenteno-malo7919]

As a science fiction mangaka, your work here is incredibly useful. So much, that I will begin my speculative biology tree on a lore that is disguised as "fantasy" when it's actually science fiction hehehehe...

[@JhonIkkiOfficial]

Parece maneiro

[@nootnoot4770]

I was hoping for more of a nature documentary type of show with most of the focus put onto the aliens and their biologie instead just filming scientist for 10 minutes with 10 seconds of aliens.

[@pequenotamandua5712]

This was the worst episode in my opinion. It felt like they spent all of their creativity in the previews episodes and didn't have time to come up with better comparisons to Earth ecosystems (seriously, honeybirds and gatherers have nothing to with the scenario they proposed). It had a lot of potential t first, showing an biome that is, supposedly, very biodiverse, but they talked about 3 species only, cmon! There could have something like an apex predator with the silhouette of a big cat, some kind of large sized herbivore, they could even have talked about the plants of that place, but no, they had to spend most of their budget on footage of Earth that takes most of the episode (on a documentary about alien planets...). And don't even get me started on the boring ass names. Predator, Prey, Fungus? If you want to be blunt call them Frog-Monkey, Bunny-Moth and Spore-Sack, would be better than this. This quickly turned into a rant so I am going to stop here.

[@xuanluu4873]

Did the Eden episode discussed how the stars of the Eden system being binary mitigate problems that red and orange dwarf have with habitability like you did in this video?

[@Phrenotopia]

No. I filled in a lot of the blanks they left out in order to assess plausibility.

[@xuanluu4873]

@@Phrenotopia also, sorry if this sounds annoying, but how is your family life doing? You mentioned you had an 11 year old son in the slime video, and I was just wondering how he and the rest of the family have been doing

[@crabman8264]

Are you gonna make a video about slivergreen life-forms in the future?

[@imaredwhale2thenotsoelectr916]

That would be neat

[@bigmetalmanboyoooo7502]

Maybe the fungus could evolve to not kill the host and feed off the nutrients in the predators feces.

[@tiagotiagot]

Humans have a huge variety of self-harming behaviors, including susceptibility to a variety of harmful but addictive substances, and despite having access to much more knowledge and likely rational thinking potential than most animals, that keeps happening with tons of people. So it is possible the fungus is exploiting something analogous to for example the human craving for sugar and fattening foods in general; the instinct to consume that kind of stuff evolved in periods where there was never too much of it available, and so there was no pressure to also evolve a overdose-avoidance instinct. The yellow version could have a more diluted concentration of the nutrients/chemical signals associated with the nutrients, and possibly some addictive substance; and then the orange ones have it all more concentrated.

[@ekszentrik]

This was an original production and originals are perfectly fine. But for another production, some mainstream outlet could look at proven spec evo projects like Serina or Phtanum B. Those already have an inbuilt audience and resulting passion which will not sustain such a project, but proves that a) it has appeal and b) they will serve as free marketing/word of mouth. Even hypothetical negative reviews by the fans.

[@WeAllWitnessed]

*cough* comic book movies *cough*

[@smrtelnik7802]

For people, who are fans of speculative evolution and like or study biology and evolution biology, Alien Worlds was disappointment. Just my honest opinion. Your analysis was brilliant and i want see another. You covered all nonsense which was in my mind about this episode. Feeding triangle was really ridiculous. Fixed ecosystem was so satisfying. I do not care about pseudo-pupil.( I CARE A LOT!, I was really happy that somebody noticed this)

[@ekszentrik]

It was absolutely not a disappointment. It was a boring sleep aid, but spec evo is a new and growing hobby, and we got a mainstream 1mil+ budget production (for its own sake, rather than as backdrop, like Avatar) relatively soon. This was a substantial signal boost.

[@smrtelnik7802]

@ᴛᴀᴘ ᴍᴇ ᴀɴᴅ sᴇᴇ Lily ?

[@battyboio]

This comment section has been flooded with nsfw bots stealing comments What the hell happened

[@Phrenotopia]

Thanks for letting me know!

[@PeterDanielBerg]

these usually hit much bigger channels and so aren't as noticeable. guess Phrenotopia has hit the big time!

[@RomanHistoryFan476AD]

the episode after this one episode 4 made the super advanced and smart civilization dumb enough to send off their people in open and unshielded donut container units on a needle. during a very active Sun sending out radiation and solar winds constantly. It seemed a bit dumb to me that they sent these habitat out space with no proper heavy radiation shielding or magnetic field creation devices. Or just be swarmed by sacrificing drones that help lessen the blow of the ration when it hits.

[@RomanHistoryFan476AD]

@Rose 25 y.o - check my vidéó I think you forgot to write your part of the comment.

[@rga1605]

I remember this episode was what I disliked most because it portrayed a theoretically bigger biodiversity, but only three species. I know the show has constraints in budget and deadlines, but it did feel it really isn't as diverse as it attempted to be.

[@pacotaco1246]

Its like the producers or whoever was in charge decided a limited budget means less aliens to focus on. Imagine if they gave the art and science people on this project more room to find creative solutions!

[@randomguy2918]

bUt On EaRtH

[@mathieuleader8601]

ooh giant Aye-Aye in the thumbnail

[@imaredwhale2thenotsoelectr916]

Finally! Alien worlds is good now!

[@battyboio]

@@imaredwhale2thenotsoelectr916 wouldn't answer these bots if i were you. They're not only very nsfw, but also stealing comments. Who knows what other horrors they hold

[@imaredwhale2thenotsoelectr916]

@@battyboio I actually noticed they were bots after a while, then I attempted to report every single one.

[@orbismworldbuilding8428]

Hi bro

[@imaredwhale2thenotsoelectr916]

@@orbismworldbuilding8428 hello friend

[@blaircolquhoun7780]

I've seen Alien Worlds. It reminds me of Expedition and Extratrestrial, both of which were on the Discovery Channel and the National Geographic Channel, back in 2005. Expedition was based on Wayne Barlowe's book of the same name about an expedition he took to Darwin IV. Extraterrestrial was about a planet called Aurelia. That was Part One. Part Two was about a moon of a gas giant called the Blue Moon. The lifeforms on those worlds were quite different.

[@matheussandbakk9959]

I do think Expedition, (The TV Mockumentary) was called Alien Planet in most platforms

[@blaircolquhoun7780]

@@matheussandbakk9959 It was.

[@SockTaters]

There are a couple errors in the video: 2:31 "Eden has a markedly higher obliquity than Earth's, namely 40 degrees, thus almost doubling the axial tilt puts Eden at a greater angle towards stellar irradiation, leading to more light hitting the surface, and thus driving photosynthesis and primary production." There isn't more light hitting the surface. It's the same amount, just more at one pole and less at the other. No matter the axial tilt, about half of the planet is lit at a time, so there wouldn't necessarily be more primary production. 3:32 "Any planet with an interesting biosphere -- that is, one that grows above a microbial [stage?] -- would be based on Oxygen-producing primary production and Oxygen burning consumption." That's a huge assertion with no evidence. We only know of one instance of multicellular life in the universe, and with such a small sample size, it's impossible to say what is and isn't possible for all life. Otherwise, great analysis :)

[@jambec144]

"...no evidence." The evolution of kingdom Animalia came after the great oxidation event. A single datum of circumstantial evidence, sure. However... There is only *one* known species of obligate anaerobic animal (a type of Lorcifera), which is a mostly inactive detritivore. Furthermore, oxygen-poor ecosystems have reduced numbers of trophic levels, often lacking predators altogether. These two facts suggest that if you were to strip away all oxygen, animals would 'devolve' into something more fungal than animal. AAR, I agree that *oxygen* per se isn't the only possible electron acceptor. Halogens have been proposed as an alternative. Carbon monoxide might be adequate. Sulfur could work on a hotter world.

[@Phrenotopia]

@Cody Miner - Thanks for your input! What you call corrections, I would rather term disagreements. With regards to the obliquity and the importance of oxygen as biomarker, I'm merely relaying (uncritically perhaps) what scientific ideas that are communicated in the documentary itself. And as @Jamie B already mentioned, there's some credence to the notion that simple things like obliquity or even longer days can have a marked effect on biological evolutions. Especially the increasing day length that developed on Earth has by some scientists been put forward as one of the factors that kickstarted the Cambrian Explosion, due to rising oxygen levels. Of course, implied here is "life as we know it"; There could be vastly different biochemistries possible in the universe, but the ones that we know from Earth are the only ones we have evidence for.

[@umbralstudios5957]

day 1 of asking phren to make follow up on the slime video

[@Phrenotopia]

The script is actually ready for audio recording! 😃

[@umbralstudios5957]

@@Phrenotopia oh that was quick

[@umbralstudios5957]

@@Phrenotopia i was expecting at least a week

[@gsquared8730]

Concerning the eyes: I believe that how you went about they eyes of fauna on Eden is incorrect. An arboreal predator (ambusher) would likely not have slit eyes as slit eyes produce an exaggerated blur on horizontal objects. The effect is less pronounced the higher up the line of sight is, which in turn reduces the likelihood of a bigger (or arboreal) organism to have slit eyes. You can see this in the two cat families Felidae and Panthera respectively, as lion do not have slit eyes, yet smaller housecats do. Slit eyes also change the range of vision, so predators will likely have slit eyes, while the prey do not. Surely the predator would preferably have a wider, less focused field of view than the prey that are usually focused on ONE thing and one thing only, right? Anyways love ur vids!

[@Ecotasia]

I think someone read about the toxoplasmosis thing with mice and cats and based the whole story on that

[@DeathbyProxy]

Glad this series is getting some love!

[@orbismworldbuilding8428]

Hi :D

[@DeathbyProxy]

@@orbismworldbuilding8428 Hello!

[@orbismworldbuilding8428]

@@DeathbyProxy 👋'u'

[@RustyhairedAlp9575]

Well, I assume that the fungi mooch off the surrounding megaflora

[@themonsterbaby]

Somebody like this comment please? Just one is all I need. I want to be reminded to watch this later, looks interesting.

[@meli-melo9759]

No! The grazer's eyes are more similar to geckos than to mantis shrimps.

[@violetlight1548]

I loved how you described how the aspects of Eden's animals' anatomy that just don't work in regards to their ecosystem. I'd love to see you do something similar with other speculative animals, like those from Dougal Dixon's books, or "The Future is Wild" (though I think they're generally more well-thought out).

[@Phrenotopia]

Thank you! Well, as it happens, I've had the "Future is Wild" DVD on my desk for a few weeks now. Maybe I should just finally pop it in. Also, "Life after Man" is my favourite book from my childhood.

[@violetlight1548]

@@Phrenotopia from a layman's perspective, "The Future is Wild" is amazing! It's what got me into speculative biology. I just hope it's equally impressive to a real biologist :)

[@earthcoloredeyes5043]

What’s always forgotten are the biological displays creatures develope for reproduction. Telling the other sex about the physical health of a potential mate.

[@desperoflamenco5950]

One thing that bothers me is the fact that no one even tries to eat the "larvae" of the grazzers

[@rockclanhawkstar1454]

Imagine a species of flying predator, or even a predatory plant that would just scoop up the larvae like spaghettis. Or even when the eggs form a parasitoid going and laying eggs on or in the egg. Those would be both super fun and interesting to see.

[@SpaceDragon14]

sweet video, nice job

[@battyboio]

I love how bad this episode was Glad someone fixed it

[@PAPiRsusstange_bone]

11:29 i don’t get why producer or artist contiunue thinking that the spectator relate whit a more known tipe of design Isn’t true the spectator relate to the mind of a creature not the body

[@jollyplaguedoctor7512]

I’m really not a fan of the whole “if life on earth evolved with these features,that means everything else everywhere ever evolved with those exact same characteristics and therefore looks exactly the same” idea. Extremely arrogant.

[@peeperleviathan2839]

There’s some that are quite universal, like eyes. If there’s light eyes are the best things to use, and that’s why eyes have evolved multiple times. If legs are present it’s usually going to be 2+ because of the stability

[@jollyplaguedoctor7512]

Eyes have evolved multiple times *on earth* There’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that they’re part of the essential body plan of an organism that evolved elsewhere. It’s all conjecture.

[@Staladus]

This was great!

[@orbismworldbuilding8428]

I like your solution to the lifecycle/ecosystem

[@Triliton]

Thanks for making this rewiev. :)

[@vladtomuta3008]

Can't wait for you to cover the other episodes, this was very interesting

[@PAPiRsusstange_bone]

15:46 mmmm for mi the two creature could be member of diferent phylum

[@balazsvarga1823]

I think they just went "oh moth bunny cute" , which would be an interesting fantasy pet.

[@thunderwazp7653]

Waitin’ …

[@mharizsaifuddin7059]

Thanks for letting me know about this show..

[@xuanluu4873]

Will you do a review and deeper analysis of Alien Worlds Part 1 and 2 as well?

[@Phrenotopia]

When the inspiration grabs me again.

[@rashidshadow9325]

@@Phrenotopia has it grabbed yah yet?

[@Phrenotopia]

@@rashidshadow9325 Just recorded the audio. :)

[@Incenpilz]

Thank you! This is exactly what i was thinking. I mean sure, this is visually one of the best Series about Alien life. But i think its WAY to simple. And the so-called "experts" are CLEARLY lacking in ingenuity. Basically, all creatures are just a mix of what you know from Earth if you know even a little bit about exotic species.

[@handledav]

fix

[@vortex7984]

merci

[@ODJJ-77.83]

2022--0 2023--1 2024--2 2025--3 2026--4 2027--5

[@ODJJ-77.83]

2022-12--0 2023-13--1 2024-14--2 2025-15--3 2026-16--4 2027-17--5

[@purplehaze2358]

7:51 I love how 'mutualism' is missing the second 'U', so it's just mutalism.

[@tompatterson1548]

Why is realism so important.

[@horse14t]

Will you do something like this for the other episodes too?

[@Phrenotopia]

Yes, and it's about time!

[@horse14t]

@@Phrenotopia Awesome!

[@chir0pter]

Pretty much all speculative biology is tedious and riddled with implausibilities and tendentious flourishes based on copy-pasting then wildly overextrapolating some random observation of Earthly life. I really dislike it lol. There's so much interesting work to be done on life on Earth, why bother with that nonsense...I blame the videoification of thought among today's youth...

[@Florkkkk]

Fixed it or changed it to fit your opinion of what you believe is correct ?

[@Phrenotopia]

Is there a difference?