Life form

A creature, as the word is used in the Wongery, is any living entity. The etymology of the word notwithstanding, a "creature" in this sense was not necessarily created; the word is used to refer to organisms that evolved naturally as well as those made artificially by magical and technological means.

Classification

Because there is such a vast multiplicity of creatures inhabiting the cosmoi, various schemes have been devised to try to classify them in a useful manner into defined categories. By far the most widespread and well developed is the system of biological taxonomy. While on True Earth generally credited to an eighteenth-century scientist named Carl Linnaeus, this system appears to be panyparic, having arisen seemingly independently on many worlds, albeit in some cases with some slight variation.

Standard biological taxonomy involves the use of groupings of creatures, known as taxa, on various levels, with those on higher levels potentially including multiple lower-level taxa. The lowest-level standard taxon is that of the species, though some species are divided further into subspecies and possibly beyond. Species are grouped into genera, genera into families, families into orders, orders into classes, classes into phyla, phyla into kingdoms, kingdoms into empires, empires into alliances, and alliances into universes. The universe, the highest-level taxon, represents (in theory, at least) an entirely different way for life to arise.

Similar terms

The word "creature" should not be confused with other words for living entities which, in general, are more specialized. An organism, for instance, is a living thing that arose by a process of natural evolution (that is, of the universe Asceuastoe), or which has been transformed from such a creature. An animal is even more restrictive, referring to a particular kingdom of organisms. A race is a noetic species of creature, one capable of sophisticated abstract thought.

There are other words, such as "beast", "florum", and "faunum", that are somewhat more vaguely defined. "Florum" and "faunum" refer respectively to plant-like and animal-like creatures, that is, creatures that are generally sessile and living off their nonliving environment, and creatures that move about and feed on other creatures. These terms come from etymologically iffy back formations from the collective terms "flora" and "fauna", and still are not universally accepted, but are becoming increasingly widely used in the general etorological community, though not yet on True Earth. The word "beast" can be used to refer to any innoetic fauna, though it is often used figuratively to refer to noetic creatures of particularly savage or unthinking mindset.

Study

The study of creatures in general and of life in all its forms is called "etorology", or sometimes simply "etory". Again, there are more specific terms for scientists studying creatures of particular taxa, or within given environments. The study of Asceuastoan organisms in particular is called "biology"; sometimes this term is used synonymously with "etorology", and "eubiology" is used for the more specific study of organisms, but this is becoming increasingly rare. The study of creatures formed or animated by magic (that is, pertaining to the universe Mira) is called "phasmology". The study of seins and other artificial creatures created through technology (creatures of the universe Machillae) is called "threptology". The study of prehistoric life (especially prehistoric organisms, but more broadly prehistoric life in general) is called "palaeontology". The study of microscopic creatures is called micretory. The study of a creature's changes during its development is called ontogeny, that specifically of its physical growth auxology. The study of the internal structure of living things (again, especially of organisms) is called anatomy. The study of cyclical phenomena in creatures' behavior and life cycles is called chronobiology. Taxonomy is the study of the classification of living creatures, and ecology of how they interact with each other and with their environment.

Comparative etorists with broad knowledge of life on many worlds are very rare, for the same reason that pediologists are rare: because few people have the chance to explore multiple worlds and study the life therein. In practice, therefore, most etorists know well only the life on their own world. This means, of course, that etorists may be completely unaware of, or at least unfamiliar with, entire empires or universes that don't exist on their own worlds. In particular, for instance, there will generally be no phasmologists on a nonmagical world.

Creation and reproduction

There are six main ways that creatures can be created: by replication, by artificial creation, by ananomy, by transformation, by procreation, or by spontaneous generation. There may be some overlap between these methods; a creature that transformed other creatures into entities completely identical to itself would, for instance, be reproducing simultaneously by replication and transformation. Nor do these six methods necessarily exhaust all possible means of creating a living entity; there may be a few unusual instances that don't quite fit any of these cases.

Certain taxa are characterized by their means of creation, among other factors. Organisms generally reproduce through procreation (or occasionally through replication); machillas generally are created artificially. When another creature is involved in the creation process (that is, in all cases but spontaneous generation and some cases of artificial creation), the original creature is called the parent, and the new creature the child. It is, of course, entirely possible for the creation of a new creature to involve more than one parent; indeed, in procreation, in particular, this must be the case by definition.

Replication

Perhaps the conceptually simplest process, replication occurs when one parent creature gives rise to an identical creature, or at least a creature which has the potential to become identical to the parent. In the case of creatures with some form of genetic material, the parent and child have identical genes.

Replication can occur through a number of different means. The parent can merely split into two similar children (binary fission); it can grow a smaller copy of itself that may later break away (budding); or a parent divided into multiple discrete parts may grow a new copy from each part (fragmentation). In some cases, creatures that normally reproduce through procreation may instead reproduce through replication under certain conditions, a phenomenon known as parthenogenesis.

Artificial creation

Artificial creation describes a process in which one or more parent creatures instill life in some formerly nonliving object or construction external to themselves. This may mean building a mechanism sufficiently complex to achieve life technologically, or it may mean placing a magical enchantment upon an object to bring it to life. The vivification process need not be done intentionally or consciously, and in fact the parents need not be aware that they are doing it. It is entirely possible for some utterly innoetic creature to have the power to animate nonliving matter, and to therefore, without any comprehension of what it is doing, to be engaged in the artificial creation of other creatures.

Ananomy

Ananomy is a process in which one or more parent creatures reshape and redistribute their substance to form one or more child creatures different from the parents. If there is only one parent but several children, the process is known as darsis; if several parents but only one child, the process is known as henosis. Technically, several forms of replication could be considered instances of darsis, and the joining of gametes in some versions of procreation could be considered henosis, but ananomy can also produce new creatures in many other ways. There are, in fact, some creatures that reproduce exclusively through ananomy, such as the nelder of Tamamna, which each form through the henosis of three other organisms; and the sanhvin of Loge, which arise through the darsis of a larger parent organism.

Transformation

Sometimes a new creature may be created by the transformation of an existing creature. To what extent the new creature really qualifies as new is a subjective matter; when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, its form becomes drastically different, but it is still generally considered to be the same creature (and certainly to still pertain to the same species). Even a human is altered quite a bit as it grows from an embryo to an adult, but without usually being thought of as actually becoming a different creature altogether. Still, while the matter is largely moot, there are some transformations sufficient to convert a creature into a different creature entirely. Generally this applies when the transformation does not occur to all members of the species, when it comes from some external source, and when the transformation is mental as well as physical. Some forms of undeath form an example of such a transformation.

Procreation

Procreation is a process by which two or more parent creatures combine their genes and create one or more children with a genome that is some mixture or combination of that of the parents. This isn't to say that the child will necessarily look like the parents; though they have the same genetic structure, the genes may be expressed sufficiently differently to make the parent and child dramatically dissimilar. Indeed, it's not particularly uncommon for the child to look very different from the parents, but similar to the parents' parents, a phenomenon called alternation of generations.

Spontaneous generation

In some circumstances, in some cosmoi, living creatures can spontaneously appear from nonliving material. This may be because of ambient magic, or it may be because of some more fundamental physical or chemical phenomenon. Arguably, on any world where life didn't arrive from elsewhere (and wasn't somehow always present), spontaneous generation had to happen at least once to create life in the first place, but in that case when it happened depends on how one defines the onset of life, and it makes more sense to consider life to have arisen gradually and not at a specific point.

See also

Creature on Wikipedia