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I didn't know this thread existed. I am really into extensive research on ocean biology, and so forth. I am also very experience with working with different types of exotic animals from raccoons, to whatever ends up being brought to our house. Ironically before splatoon, I did regularly check up on cephalopods.
So I will love to cooperate some of my theories into this once in a while when the second game comes out.
the symbiotic thing would also explain secondary sex characteristics in adult female inklings in a way (altho they would be vestigal in this explanation). the nanoswarm sees images of humanoids and creates a form accordingly, eventually this becomes a default form.
Along with Marina's moving tentacles, I'm having trouble figuring out if Pear's tentacles also move because she's constantly moving her head around.
Anyway, the Splatoon JP twitter has posted some official artwork. Looks like inklings will still have their rectangular fingers. Meanwhile, if Marina is typical among current octolings, then they possess more ovoid fingers like a human with pseudo-fingernaile and can give the tips of their fingers an ink color to simulate nail polish.
i went and read this entire forum in one night. very interesting stuff buuut...
yall (sorta kinda) agreed that inklings might not have parents, and if they did, they weren't exactly hovering over the heads of turf warring inklings, right?
im actually surprised none of you mentioned this (i mightve skipped over it, though), but the squid sister stories builds some story for splatoon 2, and it mentions callie and marie's parents in chapter 5.
link to the page, if anyone was interested: http://splatoon.nintendo.com/squid-sisters-stories/
so inkling parents are definitely a thing, and they dont die after having kids.
We've actually discussed this on this very thread... and I, at least, have changed my opinion on the subject several times. Currently, I like the idea that Inklings can tolerate some Water, but too much will trigger their splat reflex due to a number of dangers- density preventing Inklings from swimming, threat of dissolving, etcetera.
As for swimsuits, Inklings may just wear them for fashion- there are other races in inkopolis which are not ink- based; as such, there is no need to explain why swimsuits exist.
So... I have new info from the single player campaign. Tread lightly, squids, because this thread is likely to turn into a spoiler-fest.
So, according to one of Spla2n's sunken scrolls, Inkling ink disappears because aerial microbes eat it up (if I don't forget, I'll post the scroll tomorrow.) This leads to many questions: Did these microbes help ink creatures evolve by eating the ink before it could rot and/or attract predators, or were they a huge challenge to the squid kids? Are they omnipresent, or are they released by the ink itself? I currently believe that the microbes are helpful, and that Inkling ink has evolved to let itself be eaten up (to better preserve the Inklings, in which it propagates itself.)
This also leads to an interesting question: when an inkling dies, how much of it's body "evaporates" after it's immune system stops working? And, on a more macabre note, do Inklings with poor immune systems start to "evaporate" alive? If so, then an Inkling Immunodefficiency Virus would be the stuff of horror movies.
Also, there's some really interesting stuff on the salmonids... is there a thread for general lore, or for the biology of Splatoon creatures other than Inklings and octolings? If not, how can I make one?
Ok, here's the scroll. Note that it, like all the other campaign stuff I will post, is marked as a spoiler.
So, there's that. Also, In the single player campaign, you can sometimes find boxes submerged in enemy ink; This demonstrates that inkling/octarian ink can indeed swallow various objects Super Mario Sunshine style.
I mean, there isn't really anything stopping you from making a thread for Salmonid biology in the Splatoon 2 section, but I think it's something that could be covered here. Not that I've seen much about them other than them also possessing some kind of ink-like substance and having excellent olfaction.
What gets me is the fact that they specify it as "Inkling Ink." Not just ink in general, but that particular to the Inklings. It's nothing special, to be sure, but all the same it's as if there's an implied difference in how Inkling and Octarian ink work. Not that Octarian ink is inherently more resilient than the Inklings, since multiple levels in the campaign have both kinds strewn around, but it seems that way.
Given that what we know about the two species' growth and development in addition to this, I may have to revise my earlier stance about the two species undergoing convergent evolution. I still think they have to some extent, but the number of differences between the two indicate (to me, anyway) that they're well more distant to each other than I'd originally thought.
One other thing: again, it's likely intended to be just a throwaway line, but in one of the levels Marie quips about how something "gets your ink pumping". I can't remember where we came to regarding whether their ink functioned as their blood (coulda sworn we did tho), but taken literally this statement seems to back that idea up.
Now, separate from the ink discussion, I wanna bring up a small thing from Salmon Run. Yet again, fringe hypothesizing, but I digress:
In that mode, whenever you get killed you wind up in a lifesaver with a puddle of ink in the middle and the mini squid-ghost floating around above it. Now, remember that discussion we had way back about the Inklings being living bio-mechs? Well, if you consider the mini squid-ghost to be the core Inkling, that's one thing that could point in the idea's favor: see, with the host body destroyed, the core has to hide in that little ink puddle until it can get more ink from an external source (in other words, building a new host form).
If you ask me, though, I'd sooner wager that the mini-squid is still the same Inkling, just in a heavily compressed form. At that size all it can really do is hide and/or call for help, and that inkblot in the lifesaver is the only thing sustaining it until it can recover and grow back to full size.
Of course, in either case the problem becomes a matter of how they get back to their fully-grown/bio-mech form from their diminutive state. The mini squid is capable of movement, so I'd assume the basic answer is they float around looking for the nearest patch of ink to recover in, as demonstrated in Turf Wars. In Salmon Run it's a bit different, since there's no revival platform around to facilitate that regrowth, but it would seem that the lifesaver fills that void once it's been given a shot of ink. Outside of battle... well, I guess they'd have to hope there's a place with same-colored ink close by.
I think that's more or less what we thought earlier. The inkling splat reflex allows the inklings to "drop" the parts of their body made of ink and float away to hide in the hope that they can regenerate their body before they are killed. the respawn pads and the life rafts speed this process up from taking several hours at least to seconds, although it seems the life rafts require another inkling's assistance for this purpose.
The scroll does seem to imply that only "inkling ink" is eaten up, doesn't it... Still, I would expect that octarian ink goes through the same process... maybe the octarians never bothered to study their own ink because they were too busy looking for potential weaknesses of the inklings? I mean, it took them this long to realize that microbes were behind it, so it may be that nobody really bothered to study ink of any kind until the events of Splatoon 2.
This scroll mentions sentient tentacles in an odd way- it looks like the tentacles are created by zapping other octarians! could the octarians be recycling their consciousnesses and bodies like some bee-people in a distopian society? alternatively, maybe the octarians other than octolings are artificial life forms? either way, this is incredibly significant to this discussion.
Yeah... The Salmonids are an ancient threat that, according to the inkling equivalent of the bible, will END THE WORLD. and you thought they were creepy before... well, if you believe in that sort of thing. Maybe the ancient Inklings just had wild imaginations.
Either way, the Salmonids are not some new thing that appeared out of nowhere; They've been here the whole time. Maybe we didn't see them in the first splatoon because we never met Mr. Grizz... or maybe their massive migration just happened to occur at the same time as Splatoon 2.
Say... The Salmonids live in the sea, so they must have proper gills, right? If they do, can they breath on land as well? or are they just holding their breath the whole time?
Also... Earlier, Ansible apologized for a double post- I just made a quintuple post, so no worries. If you did something wrong, I'm in much hotter water than you.
So... I have new info from the single player campaign. Tread lightly, squids, because this thread is likely to turn into a spoiler-fest.
So, according to one of Spla2n's sunken scrolls, Inkling ink disappears because aerial microbes eat it up (if I don't forget, I'll post the scroll tomorrow.) This leads to many questions: Did these microbes help ink creatures evolve by eating the ink before it could rot and/or attract predators, or were they a huge challenge to the squid kids? Are they omnipresent, or are they released by the ink itself? I currently believe that the microbes are helpful, and that Inkling ink has evolved to let itself be eaten up (to better preserve the Inklings, in which it propagates itself.)
This also leads to an interesting question: when an inkling dies, how much of it's body "evaporates" after it's immune system stops working? And, on a more macabre note, do Inklings with poor immune systems start to "evaporate" alive? If so, then an Inkling Immunodefficiency Virus would be the stuff of horror movies.
Every Macroscopic organism suffers disease. If there are microorganisms that can consume ink, there are undoubtedly microorganisms that can reek havoc inside of an inkling.
Also, not all of us are sure about the living energy idea, although it has come up. We never came to a universal conclusion on the nature of an inkling's body. I, at this moment, favor the theory that Inklings have a number of conventional organs, as well as a unique ink infused flesh that can unhook like that of a sea cucumber to "melt" and allow for the inkling to change form, or to ditch most of their body and fly off (the splat reflex).
Yeah, that's kinda what I lean toward eac. I figure that mini squid-ghost has only what it needs to survive long enough to find a puddle of ink in which it can recuperate (ie. brain, heart{s}, vocal cords, eyes, and enough muscle tissue to let it move somewhat).
Since I'm on the topic:
Yeah, yeah, they have a mini octo-ghost too, but I noticed something interesting while going through the campaign.
See, the second boss of the game, the Octo-Samurai dude, has one as well. You can see it fly away when you splat it, and you can see it return to the hammer-roller-machine the tentacle sticks out of each time you splat that. It even floats around in the pool of ink in that machine for a while before recovering its full self.
This, to me, raises a few questions. Why does this guy have a mini octo-ghost and not the other Octotroopers? Furthermore, why does it have one and not the tentacle? Does this imply that the two are separate from each other, and the tentacle only powers the Octo-Samurai's hammer-roller-machine?
This scroll mentions sentient tentacles in an odd way- it looks like the tentacles are created by zapping other octarians! could the octarians be recycling their consciousnesses and bodies like some bee-people in a distopian society? alternatively, maybe the octarians other than octolings are artificial life forms? either way, this is incredibly significant to this discussion.
It looks like this has less to do with Octarian development and more with how the various Octoweapons are powered. Remember, a real-world octopus's arms have enough nerves such that they can move interdependently(?) of what the brain directs them. As a result, they can take the arms off an Octarian such as DJ Octavio and have them pilot the Octoweapons on their own. So these are the true biomechs in Splatoon's universe.
That being said, I remember reading somewhere that the various Octarian grunts are born the same way: they take off another one of poor Octavio's arms and leave it to grow independently, or something like that. If that's the case, then it' can be said that the Octarians reproduce via a process similar to budding/autotomy, or more accurately what starfish do. So your bee-people comparison might hold some weight.
