Help understanding Pixies.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

And neither frogs nor spiders nor people nor beetles are technically bugs, but whenever I say this people get upset for some reason.

And I would go with fleas actually for strongest relative to body size. A fleas legs are fairly unique in nature for the amount of energy they can store and release during a jump.

That's not a function of muscular output, but of the legs having an unusual mechanism for storing elastic energy, or so I've read.

As for "bugs," I'm aware of the technical meaning, but Bruno had made it clear that she was using the nontechnical meaning.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Bit further it looks like; insects seem to have split off from arthropods somewhere a bit over 400MYr back, while the separation between amphibians and amniotes is only a bit over 300MYr. It looks like sharks are a good candidate for a comparable separation.

"Split off from" sounds a little strange, as hexapods seem still to be classed as arthropods. In any case it would be odd to treat "all the traditional arthropods other than insects" as one group, and insects as another group; crustaceans and arachnids and myriapods are about as distant from each other as arachnids are from insects. (In contrast to chordates, where we can trace a sequence of splits giving rise to the traditional classes—amphibians from fish, reptiles from amphibians, mammals from reptiles, and then birds from reptiles, I think—most of the arthropod classes seem to have diverged from some unknown earlier source, more or less contemporaneously. They're more a bush than a tree.)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That's not a function of muscular output, but of the legs having an unusual mechanism for storing elastic energy, or so I've read.

Muscles are also a mechanism for storing and releasing energy. ST doesn't just represent muscle tissue, which is why construction equipment and power armor has a ST score too.

As for "bugs," I'm aware of the technical meaning, but Bruno had made it clear that she was using the nontechnical meaning.

Well, yes I was alluding to that. Hence it not mattering that spiders and insects (and I guess big humanoid monsters) are "bugs" in the colloquial sense.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Muscles are also a mechanism for storing and releasing energy. ST doesn't just represent muscle tissue, which is why construction equipment and power armor has a ST score too.

Fleas (and grasshoppers) don't use muscles to store and release energy for the jumping, they use elastic tissue. Kangaroos use the long ligament in the leg and pendulum action in the tail to store energy for hopping.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Bruno

They're slightly less related than tuna and humans, but probably about as related as hagfish and humans. How's THAT for close relations?

Or given that generation times tend to be shorter in arthropods than chordates, maybe humans and sea urchins. If that. There are still people who think Arthropoda really ought to be split into several phyla some of which may be closer to others (usually velvet worms or tardigrades) than each other.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Muscles are also a mechanism for storing and releasing energy. ST doesn't just represent muscle tissue, which is why construction equipment and power armor has a ST score too.

For storing and releasing energy, yes, but I said "elastic energy." Muscles work by storing and releasing chemical energy. The difference is kind of analogous to the difference betweeen batteries (which turn chemical energy into electrical energy over time) and capacitors (which release electrical energy in one quick surge).

And if you can release energy quickly to power an amazing jump, but your ability to lift, hit, grapple, and so on isn't at all proportionate, then what you have is not, in GURPS terms, ST but Super Jump.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Or given that generation times tend to be shorter in arthropods than chordates, maybe humans and sea urchins. If that. There are still people who think Arthropoda really ought to be split into several phyla some of which may be closer to others (usually velvet worms or tardigrades) than each other.

I found the Manton theory interesting, but in recent months I've been reading that DNA sequencing puts the Hexapoda among the Crustacea, rather the way it puts birds among (living) reptiles. And the old theory that arthropods are close to annelids seems to be less accepted now, in favor of convergent evolution based on segmentation.

[AlexanderHowl]

Practically every vertebrate animal uses some form of elastic energy storage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasti...sms_in_animals)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Fleas (and grasshoppers) don't use muscles to store and release energy for the jumping, they use elastic tissue. Kangaroos use the long ligament in the leg and pendulum action in the tail to store energy for hopping.

I'm not sure that DF Pixies use ordinary muscles either for their ST...

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I'm not sure that DF Pixies use ordinary muscles either for their ST...

Since they don't have to "wind up" before every movement, they clearly aren't using grasshopper or flea springs. And they don't have big pendulum tails :)