hmmm...
How is this a problem? Humanity had no trouble overcoming this obstacle. By this logic, we shouldn't be able to learn foreign languages without face-to-face interaction. Pimsleur and Tae-Kim, two very successful "on your own" language programs that rely on pre-recorded material beg to differ. It may not be native-speaker level proficiency, but it is enough to allow for a general understanding of what others are saying.
Well, these "on-your-own" language programs rely on the assumption that you understand the concept that what you are learning is in fact a language. When I say "develop writing", I am not saying "learn the language". When I say "develop writing", I mean "Understand the concept that pictures can convey meaning". In order for the squids to learn to write, they have to understand that writing is in fact language at all, and that when they write something down.
Humanity was able to generally spread the idea that the funny pictures on the paper actually meant something because the people who decided that they could use pictures to represent words had contact with the people who were supposed to learn to write (and even then, writing didn't become a thing among the general public until well into human civilization- before then, it was just a fancy mechanism for politically important people to keep track of things.)
Again, this assumes that evolution has some end goal or objective. Animal life spans are dictated more by the rate at which their internal organs and tissue deteriorate rather than some reason to live longer. Turtles are not mammals, nor do they show any signs of parenting or raising the next generation of turtles. That hasn't kept them from being one of the longest lived animals on Earth. Rather, they live longer because their muscle, tissue and organs deteriorate much slower than those of other animals. It's possible that Inklings developed longer life spans naturally or, like humans, healthcare innovation has increased their lifespan artificially. Either way, this doesn't suggest they can survive mating. It's more plausible that they have the same life cycle, merely increased proportionally to a longer period of time.
Well, no, but simply due to probability of survival, certain traits are more likely to be passed on to the next generation, and thus become more prominent.
While individuals which can live for a long time have no advantage in this case (this case being when they die after mating), they have no disadvantage either, so if inklings were to die after reproduction, there would be no pressure to lengthen or shorten lifespans. If that were the case, the squids lifespan would probably remain about as long as it is now- which is only a few years.
However, inklings apparently did increase in typical lifespan- by nearly a century. Because evolution does not have any inherent goal, it isn't plausible that the lifespan of the inkling would change so drastically unless there was some outside pressure that gave inklings which lived longer more opportunity to successfully continue their own genetic traits. If inklings died after mating, I am unsure of how such an outside pressure could come to exist, unless inklings frequently had to go for long periods of time without the opportunity to procreate. I don't see any reason to believe that this is the case, because we have established that inklings are social animals.
Second verse same as the first. There's no grand scheme at work with evolution or natural selection. I cannot emphasize this point enough. These things are decided entirely by what genes are passed on to the next generation. If people with who are high risk for heart disease and cancer started having more children and people who were lo risk for both stopped having kids over the course of several generations, humanity would evolve to have a high risk of very serious health problems. This would not aid survival in the slightest, but would become an evolved trait because those genes were passed on while the others weren't.
"Evolution" and "natural selection" do not imply some genetic march towards becoming the ultimate life form. They describe the process where genetic mutations become standard traits.
Once again, I did not mean to imply that evolution actively attempted to achieve certain results.
And because evolution does not have a goal, any given trait is not likely to noticeably change in a population, as both individuals who strongly demonstrate this trait and those who weakly demonstrate this trait have an equal chance of reproductive success- unless, of course, there is some environmental factor which causes individuals with a certain trait to have a better chance of reproductive success.
Anyway, we see that Cuttlefish is presumably able to live long past the age where he could reproduce. This is drastically different from the lives of modern squids, which, I believe, die after a few years whether they mate or not. Because evolution does not have goals, it is unlikely that such a change in lifespan would have occurred randomly, as long-lived inklings would not be more successful in reproduction than short-lived inklings.
So, the fact that inklings are very long lived suggests that there must have been some outside pressure which caused long-lived inklings to reproduce successfully more often than short-lived inklings, because without this outside pressure, the lifespan of the inkling would most likely have remained relatively constant.
Once again, I can only think of two environmental conditions which would have given long-lived inklings an advantage over short-lived inklings- either the inklings frequently had to live for long periods in which reproduction was not possible, or inklings did come to be able to survive mating, and were thus able to either have more children, or actively protect the ones they did have.
As for how inklings would have developed the ability to reproduce multiple times...
Well, I would guess that the reason squids today still die after mating is because, as time goes on, the probability that an individual squid has been eaten increases due to more time for that squid to be eaten. Because of this, very few squids which did survive mating would live long enough to mate again anyway.
As such, were evolution to randomly create a squid that could survive mating, it would have a low chance of living into the next mating season anyway.
This is my best explanation.
Perhaps when inklings moved onto land, they encountered fewer predators, and thus the chance that any given inkling has been eaten after a certain amount of time decreased. Because of this, those few squids that were randomly able to survive mating did have a significant chance of living long enough to mate again.
Those particular squids, as a result, had more offspring, which gave them proportionally greater representation in the next generation. As this trend continued, the percentage of squids that were able to survive mating became larger and larger, until it approached 100%- not because evolution wanted inklings to have more children, but because inklings who did have more children had a greater probability of their own offspring successfully growing up and reproducing on their own.
...This argument disagrees with some of my other arguments... doesn't it?
Ok, I guess the squid babies, in this low-predator environment, would be able to survive relatively independently.
The bigger question might be the specific biological pressure which forced inkling birth rates to drop to a sustainable level... but I'm sure it's happened before.
This assumes they are under the same pressure in a society where they seem rather safe. I doubt they'd be under the same pressure to mature quickly if they lived in a society where they did not have to worry about finding food or escaping predators. Furthermore, parental care doesn't have anything to do with offspring being pressured to mature as far as I can see. These things are determined by the rate at which a species matures mentally and anatomically.
Let's see...
Parental care is related to how quickly animals grow up because animals under parental care have a fully-grown individual protecting them, so the probability that they are eaten lowers. Let us remember that because adult animals are larger, stronger, and more experienced than children, a juvenile animal which has an adult animal protecting it has more chance to survive than a juvenile animal which must fend for itself. Even if the babies are born self-sufficient, they still don't have the experience or sheer size of an adult.
I guess it's hard to name a specific pressure that would cause inklings to have longer childhoods. Of course, if no such pressure existed, then humans would probably have short childhoods, because, as you said, evolution has no goals, so any given factor, such as the length of childhood, would likely remain the way it was originally, because individuals which had longer childhoods would have the same chance of survival than individuals with shorter childhoods.
Evolution does not have goals, but this also means that it does not change things on it's own. Whenever there is a significant change in a population, this is almost certainly because some change in the environment led to a situation in which individuals with this new trait had a greater chance of survival and reproductive success than individuals without this trait.
Even with all of that, you still haven't offered any refutation on my observations. What type of adult who provides parental care would leave the defense of Inkopolis up to children? What type of adult who cares for baby Inklings would leave them to earn their own living by competing Splat-games? I don't recall any shops offering to send a bill to your parents for any clothing you buy nor do I recall the point in the game where your parents give you a credit card to go shopping. Even if I give you the full benefit of the doubt in terms of Inkling biology allowing for parenting, this does not address any of the observations of how Inkling society functions without any noticeable influence from parents wanting to make sure their children are cared for.
You're right. Let's see what I can do.
Perhaps the reason that a child is part of the new Squidbeak Splatoon is because Cuttlefish's judgement had been softened by age, or maybe he was just not inclined to think about the consequences of his actions.
Given that you only see a few enemies each stage in the single player campaign, I think it might be safe to assume that this isn't the entire octarian invasion force. It's possible that the majority of the force was occupied by an actual military. Perhaps the military decided to send a small team into enemy territory to steal the zapfish back, because they couldn't afford to send their entire military. They chose Cuttlefish because he was a war hero in the past, because he had already been watching the octarians, and because they didn't realize how bad Cuttlefish's judgement was. Callie and Marie never challenged him because they respected him, and because they were pop stars who had no real military experience.
Of course, this is still a rather shaky explanation, but Inklings do seem to be more hedonistic and careless than humans.
As for the living... well, there are a few options here.
Firstly, while inklings do seem to earn all their money though turf wars, they are never seen spending that money on food or housing. This could probably be adequately justified by "story and gameplay segregation", as no player wants to be forced to spend their money on virtual food. However, there could also be another explanation- combined with the game design issues.
Housing is expensive. While inklings can earn a great deal of money, Do you really think that this is enough to pay for housing? and if so, inklings probably wouldn't have much left over for clothing and weaponry. There are a few possible explanations.
1: Inklings are all homeless. This is probably the least likely situation, as society at large generally tends to think of homelessness as a problem.
2: Inklings don't have to provide for themselves- they only need to buy clothing and weapons (and maybe some food). The person paying for the inklings housing would probably be their parent or caretaker.
3: Inklings all live in some kind of communal housing set up entirely for turf war battlers. The money to support this housing would probably come from the economic entity responsible for the turf wars (or at least paying the winners). I find this to be relatively unlikely, because of the sheer magnitude of inklings turf warring. While professional sports players often make a lot of money, I doubt that the sports industry could support an entire species.
Of course, once could assume that only a small proportion of inkling children actually participate in turf wars, and that the rest all have some kind of job, but even then... well, actually, that might be a sustainable system.
As for why the inklings are able to run amok as they are...
either you are right, and inklings do die after mating, or...
Well, perhaps inklings simply do not practice the same level of parental care that humans do. Rather than truly watching over their offspring, inkling parents simply provide food and shelter.
Also, notice that we never see inklings under the age of 14 in the plaza. This is probably because those inklings stay at home with the parents/other guardians most of the time.
And also... While it is true that inklings live much longer than any squids we know, There is nothing to guarantee that they grow at the same rate we do, or that they view growth in the same way. Maybe all the 14-year-old inklings in the plaza are legally considered adults in their own right. Or, maybe inkling society considers 14 to be an age where inklings are mature enough to spend most of their time on their own, but still don't need to pay for their own housing. either way, inklings of age 14 to 18 would be far more independent than humans of the same age.
If you can say that "grandchildren" is a cultural translation from inklings to humans, I can say the same thing about the word "kid".
