How did Glukkons evolve? And such.

[AlexFili]

I wonder how the Glukkons evolved?

(By the way, how did someone manage to create a new thread using a quote from a previous thread topic? that's weird. I would have preferred to have a poll though...)

[Crashpunk]

i don't really know, never really thougt of it. but i found out that they were once a very spirtual race like the Mudokons. somthing happened... try looking on the Oddworld libary, thats very useful!

[mr.abe]

they evolved from swamp-dwelling octopus like creatures

[AlexFili]

I wonder if any glukkons still have functional legs?

[Chronicler]

As stated already, Glukkons evolved from octopus-like creatures. Brings up the question whether the Oktigi/Gloktigi from Stranger's Wrath evolved into the Gluks themselves.

Anyways, Alex, you should really ask these little questions in the Questions and Answers thread.

[Bullet Magnet]

Actually, he asked it in the Darwin Day thread. I sent it here on its own, so it's my fault.

[Nemo]

Obviously, Glukkons didn't "evolve." They were designed by an intelligent creator.

[Venks]

As stated already, Glukkons evolved from octopus-like creatures. Brings up the question whether the Oktigi/Gloktigi from Stranger's Wrath evolved into the Gluks themselves.

Anyways, Alex, you should really ask these little questions in the Questions and Answers thread.

I personally think Glukkons are related to Oktigi/Gloktigi like we are to monkeys. We didn't exactly evolve from the ones we see around today. We're just closely related.

[Crashpunk]

they had arms!

[Jordan]

They still have arms. Glukkons walk on their arms because their legs are too small and are incapable of supporting the body.

[Bullet Magnet]

I find the whole "octopus ancestry" to be bullshit. Glukkons are clearly vertebrates. The basic vertebrate morphology is very plastic, but it is all present and accounted for within the Glukkon form. Octopuses, however, are molluscs, and I can see absolutely no homologous structures shared between them. Besides, vertebrates are deuterostomes, and molluscs are protostomes. They couldn't be more different and still be within the Eumetazoa.

[Wil]

That’s funny, I thought Oddworld was quite distinct from Earth and would have its own, independent evolutionary tree that has produced, at some point, what would appear to us to be a vertebrate octopus. You might as well complain about the beetle with a skeleton, the bird descendants with teeth, or—as Dipstikk loved to do—the birds with mammary-gland–indicative growths.

He loved to do the complaining about them, not he loved to do the birds.

Glukkons and Oktigi share a relatively recent common ancestor. It may be that their speciation is an important point in the backstory. Gloktigi are also related, but are supposed to be a hybrid between Glukks and Oktigi to produce a highly egotistical elite bodyguard race.

[Bullet Magnet]

I am well aware that the biology of seemingly Earth-like species on Oddworld is nothing like that which we are familiar with. But the "beetles" with skeletons, well, apart from clearly not being an arthropod, but something new, it is still recognisable as such. Arthropods and vertebrates both have hard parts of their body for muscle attachments and hinged limbs, and threading an endoskeleton through an exoskeleton, while somewhat redundant and raising interesting implications for the placement of skeletal musculature, is not all too much of an issue with some imaginative interal studies, though being such an unusual combination I don't think I'll be able to find any papers on the subject (unlike with the physics of Godzilla), but overall you can still end up with something recognisably coleopteran.

Octopuses, however, are a very different story. They are defined, above all else, as lacking any hard parts besides the ends of their beak. They motilate using muscular hydrostat system similar to that in our tongues. The modifications that would be made to an octopus to render any relation to the Glukkon or Gloktigi form make it stop being a mollusc. There is no possible justification for calling such a creature an octopus.

Similar issues arise when I compare Glukkons to Oktigi. Oktigi are closer to octopuses, their face and head is peculiar and seems based on a hard underlying structure, but it can be made workable as having an octopus decent. We might even be willing to use a similar model as the basis of the Oddworld variant of the octopus.

I short, I could probably make any one of the peculiar claims about the ancestry of Glukkons and Oktigi work in a biological and evolutionary sense. But all of them? That's a tall order. I need many more geological periods and orders of removal than could justify calling them "closely related". Birds with mammary glands are a cakewalk. Octopoda siring a vertebrate species? Trickier.

[Chronicler]

Eh. If some dude that's of OWI says Gluks evolved from an octopus, then that means they evolved from an octopus. If all of that was merely fan speculation, then I would totally go against the idea. That's what I think of Oddworldian Evolution.

[Bullet Magnet]

OWI said they descended from octopuses. Fine- but it's damn hard to swallow based on what they give us.

If it were real and they descended from octopuses, then a real and amazing solution would exist to be found.

[AlexFili]

Octopussy

[Bullet Magnet]

Devour excreta and expire.

[shaman]

Dude someone should make an evolutionary chart for gukons...

[Wil]

I hope you feel this was worth it.

[Bullet Magnet]

Wow, hybridisation really fucks over cladograms.

[Nate]

Glukkons and Oktigi share a relatively recent common ancestor. It may be that their speciation is an important point in the backstory. Gloktigi are also related, but are supposed to be a hybrid between Glukks and Oktigi to produce a highly egotistical elite bodyguard race.

Remember also that the current Glukkon shape and appearance was the result of the self-experimentation they performed during the Age of Alchemy. We don't know for sure what they looked like before then.

[Chronicler]

Remember also that the current Glukkon shape and appearance was the result of the self-experimentation they performed during the Age of Alchemy. We don't know for sure what they looked like before then.

I know the Glukkons were originally into the Dark Arts and Alchemy, but it was actually stated that those things were the reasons why they turned out the way they are? I'd really like to see what the Gluks did back in those days.

[Wil]

I keep thinking about that, and I only remember reading that on a fan site. Through official means that I recall, the Glukkons’ Alchemy Age was only mentioned once, and it doesn’t say their morphology was changed as a result of their ‘alchemy’. Nor does it say they were trying to change their hand shape. Nor does it explicitly say the Glukkons were nearly wiped out in terms of numbers, although that may be a more tangible inference.

What is actually said is this:

In actuality, their belief system centered on the moon that orbited Oddworld; the face of the planet appeared to bear the mark of a Mudokon’s handprint. At the time, the Mudokons considered this a sign that they were, for lack of a better term, the Chosen People. The Glukkons went to great lengths through their alchemy to disprove this theory and prove that they—​in fact—​were the true chosen people. During the course of these experiments, a disaster of unknown type occurred and almost did to the Glukkons what Jerry Springer has done to America’s sense of decency.

In short, this accident set the wheels of fate into motion. The remaining Glukkons became what Lorne Lanning refers to as ‘Enclosurists,’ not wanting to look up in the sky and be reminded of the fact that they weren’t the Chosen ones—​kind of like DeadHeads after Jerry Garcia died. As a result, they immediately began spending all their waking hours inside—​kind of like Star Trek fans. Over the course of the many years that ensued, their eyes became incapable of dealing with natural light.

That’s not to say it can’t be right. It wouldn’t be the first time canonical information has become mainstream through an indeterminate non-official source. It also makes sense it way that’s logically elegant, which is probably why I took it for truth.

Wow, hybridisation really fucks over cladograms.

I searched for a while to find a cladogram that included a hybrid species, but couldn’t find anything that wasn’t a dendrogram of genes. Possibly Gloktigi aren’t elligible for inclusion on such a diagram because they’re infertile (as a species if there’s a morphological queen that pops up), or created individually.

[Bullet Magnet]

You should have looked at wheat. There are no clades smaller that Triticum because they hybridise so often. Cereal sluts!

Genuine hybrid species are rare in the animal Kingdom, because polyploidism, which is required for a hybrid to become fertile, is usually deleterious in animals. I don't know how Gloktigi work, but possibly they're more like mules.

Species with queens present no particular difficulty to cladistics.

EDIT: In the very thread you linked to I find this awkward acknowledgement:

I'm loathe to admit the existence of either [magic or psychic abilities], but since this is a fictional world in which several characters appear able to perform amazing world-altering feats by some unseen and seen power, we must entertain the possibility of there being fantastic abilities accessible to mudokons at the very least.

Which I must use to allow any weird and impossible evolutionary relationships, obscene as they may appear to me. It does render discussion sans officially released palaeobiology rather futile, however.

[Fil The Slig]

Glukkons-That Head Sitting Oktigi-Small Oktigi-Bigger Oktigi-Very Big Oktigi.
That's the evolution.

[Chronicler]

Glukkons-That Head Sitting Oktigi-Small Oktigi-Bigger Oktigi-Very Big Oktigi.
That's the evolution.

That's not how it went AT ALL.

[Fil The Slig]

That's not how it went AT ALL.

yes.
I know.
It went so:
Glukkon-Octigi 0.1-Gloktigi-Octigi 0.2 .
I saw this in the Oddworld Graphic Gallery.

[Wil]

No, you saw concept art for the Oktigi family of species. They didn’t evolve into one another any more than the extant species of penguin evolved into one another. Oktigi 0.2 is just Oktigi 0.1 controlling a host: they’re the same species, and share a common ancestor with Glukkons. Gloktigi are an artificial hybrid of the two.

[Bullet Magnet]

There was that other weird one as well. One we haven't seen before.

[Wil]

What weird one? The Oldger relative that evolved (in the design sense of the word) into the Chronicler? The alternative unhosted Oktigi designs? Just alternative designs, I believe. They’re dated 1999 (although there is obviously image manipulation involved given the discrepancy between the version of the image on TOGG and the one in the book).

Or a different weird one?