Imagine what would happen if you left a type of bird — for example, finches — alone
on a lush planet without predators for hundreds of millions of years.
What kinds of incredible forms might evolve?
If you consider that mammals grew from a few rodent-like species into elephants, whales,
horses, bats, and primates in a much shorter period after the extinction of dinosaurs—
you’ll start to realize just how incredible things might get.
This concept is the idea behind one of the most detailed speculative biology projects
ever created; Serina, the World of Birds.
This epic multi-million year journey was created by Dylan Bajda, an incredible artist ad writer.
I have links below where you can follow and support his work.
There’s so much incredible detail to this project, and I won’t be able to cover it
all in a single video.
But for now, let’s get started at the very beginning of the saga, with the introduction
of life on the moon of Serina.
The story begins when some force—perhaps aliens or advanced humans—places earth lifeforms
on the moon of Serina.
Specifically, they put... canaries — finches to be exact — into a terraformed ecosystem
much like earth’s.
A few other species — including grasses, algae, flowering plants like sunflowers, tiny
fish like guppies and swordtails, and insects like ants and crickets — are also left on
the planet to create a stable food source for the finches — which are the only large
land animals on this entire moon.
And then, the creators of this mysterious experiment depart, and evolution takes over.
The explosion in canary diversity is almost instantaneous.
Badjda speculates that lacking predators and with a near endless food supply, the population
would skyrocket over the first ten thousand years.
From here, early specialization emerges — with insect-eaters, plant-eaters, egg-eaters, and
seed-eaters all becoming subtly divergent over generations.
In the sea, guppies and swordtails grow and diversify.
Over the next several million years, which is called the Hypostecene, the small fish
will become larger and more streamlined — with hydrodynamics shaping them into familiar forms.
Several million years in, and leafcutter ants have quickly proliferated, with their numbers
reaching tens of billions.
Soon, larger flightless variants of canaries emerge to feed on this emerging food source.
As the sun rises 10 million years in, a true ecosystem of different species is forming.
Here, the thick-beaked axbills strut across the plains, near the large womblers and long-legged
aardgeese.
Already, the moon of Serina is a much different place from when these birds first arrived.
And from here, things will only get stranger…
11 million years in, an era call the Tempuscene begins, marked by a steady cooling and an
increase in arid environments.
At fifteen million years, a region called the Northern Drylands comprises the largest
temperate desert region on this moon, where all sorts of new species are emerging.
It’s now early spring here, and a large and lithe aardgoose offshoot is strutting
across the Drylands — keeping an eye on the fearsome descendants of the formerly herbivorous
Axbills called the Skykes, which are now sharp billed omnivores.
Nearby, one of the first true predators, the small Falconary, hunts a songbird under the
branches of huge, tree-like sunflower descendants.
But below them all, in a series of tunnels, an even more interesting dynamic is unfolding.
These tunnels are made by an enormous lobster-like arthropod, which despite weighing as much
as a small cat, is in fact a cricket.
And with it in its home are strange little birds called ground serins.
They can’t dig tunnels themselves, but make use of the friendly crickets’ burrow to
keep themselves safe, and in return act as lookouts.
A very strange set of roommates indeed.
As the Tempuscenic Era progresses, Serina continues to cool.
In this changing environment, the artist imagines one successful branch of Aardgeese, called
the ‘vivas,’ is on the path of a surprising adaptation: the birth of live young without
requiring an egg.
In the coming ice age, this adaptation will prove vital to the branch’s success.
Away from the mainland, however, the isolated Kyran Islands are not yet feeling the effects
of the global cooling.
On these islands — where food grows in abundance and predators are scarce — very different
selective pressures are creating some of the largest, and strangest, species of birds so
far.
Reaching heights of over ten feet, the chubbirds are huge offshoots of finches that don’t
resemble any other birds on Serina at this time.
In this paradise, there’s simply nothing big enough on these islands to bother them.
In time, though, the islands change.
The chubbirds pass on, and in their place an even stranger species of megafauna emerge
— better suited for the islands’ new grassier ecosystem.
These are the snuffalos: shaggy, heavyset creatures almost the size of cattle — and
with a similar grazing behavior.
The snuffalos are so heavy, however, that they can’t support their weight on their
two feet alone, and must also rely on their beak for balance, which has become almost
a third foot.
Inefficient?
Perhaps, but there are few predators on these islands that would make the snuffalo require
speed.
Save perhaps, for one.
The butcherraptor is an evolutionary newcomer to the world of Serina, and not large enough
to seem like a threat to something suffalo-sized.
But the butcherraptor has something the snuffalo does not: intelligence.
Butcherraptors are quite possibly the smartest creatures Serina has yet to produce, efficient
pack hunters that can, in a group, take down something as big as a snuffalo.
And in the oceans, life is also diversifying into unexpected forms.
Take, for example, the Swordsharks: predators whose swordtail ancestors averaged six inches
in length.
The swordshark, in contrast, averages up to eight feet — and preys on vast shoals of
smaller fish, thrashing them with their unique tails to stun them.
An even more incredible transformation has occurred in the case of the Giant Gemnus,
a guest entry into Serina conceptualized by Joseph Cawley.
The Giant Gemnus grows over thirty feet, or 9 meters in length, and consumes over 400
pounds, or 180 kilos of plant-matter a day.
And yet, the ancestors of these herbivorous behemoths… are the tiny guppies.
Truly aquatic birds called Bloons also emerge during the Tempuscene — like the starry
Pelecarrier, a species that incubates eggs under its hind legs and carries its young
safely in its mouth.
Right now, these early seafaring birds are far from the largest things in the sea: about
the size of a human diver.
In the future, however, the circumstances of the Bloons would change…
However, it’s not the Bloons, nor even the Giant Gemnus that one should be keeping an
eye on long-term.
These tiny, unfortunate, almost-toad looking creatures are called mudwickets.
They’re a species of fish that lives in tidal areas and are beginning the process
of crawling onto land.
Right now, they aren’t up too much, but there are many millions of years to go in
our great epic...
Looking back on Serina’s progress, 50 million years have now passed since the introduction
of the canaries, and the moon is now entering a period called the Cryocene.
The climate, already cooling in the Tempuscene, has now cooled further and over half the moon’s
surface is locked in ice.
In this new frontier, the live-bearing vivas group have come to dominate all manner of
niches: both at the equator and in the colder regions.
From the large topical shimmersnoot vivas who eat insects with their long tongues, to
the lithe herbivorous serilopes and thick-beaked carnivorous banshees of the plains, to the
tiny bumblets who burrow underground to keep warm — the vivas have become one of the
most diverse groups in this new world.
Another successful vivas is the Canaribou — large, thick-coated offshoots of serilopes
that live in enormous migratory herds and can withstand the harsh polar winters in this
region.
The Canaribou is the first true live-bearing bird, giving birth to fully hatched infants.
Here, a mother protects its newborn from a Giant Falconry — aerial predators that have
grown fully gigantic over the ages, but not so large they’re ready to tangle with an
angry mother protecting its young.
In the tall forests of pineflowers (plants which have evolved conifer-like needles),
however, the more familiar descendants of egg-laying species hold on.
In this more temperate region, the giant flightless anvilbeak, with a beak that helps it crack
open all manner of seeds, lives near its cousins, the swordbills — who are lightweight hunters.
These holdovers are the distant descendants of the axbills, and in these forests, their
lineage will endure through the cooling trends.
Another familiar (though increasingly strange) species are the molebirds — the descendants
of burrowing finches who, instead of relying on the tunnels of others, are capable diggers
in their own right.
For millions of years they’ve quietly tunneled underground, content to be ignored by the
above ground megafauna.
Also much changed since our last visit are the aquatic Bloons, which are now one of the
most specialized lineages of birds on Serina.
Growing to more than sixty feet (18 meters) in length and weighing up to fifteen thousand
pounds (6800 kg) the artist describes them as a family of gentle, herbivorous leviathans
— and the largest birds to have ever existed.
This particular species, the Emperor Bloons, have been nicknamed the ‘birdwhales’ — and
you can likely imagine why.
And at the water’s edge, the unassuming mudwickets have continued to adapt, spending
more and more time on land.
They still don’t look like much, but soon, circumstances will change...
But the time of the mudwickets is not yet upon us.
Jumping forwards to the late Cryocene — the final period we’ll be covering in this particular
video — we’ve arrived at an age…. of giants.
On the plains, one large offshoot of the serilope are the flutterboks, colorful herbivores with
a colorful plumage similar in many ways to the feathers of earth’s peacocks.
The flutterboks are in turn stalked by the dinosaur-like Trunksnouts — whose newly
evolved pseudo-teeth make them effective predators… with a high degree of evolutionary potential.
Even more dinosaur-like are the Serestriders, the largest terrestrial bird that has yet
to evolve on Serina.
Exceeding 12 meters or 40 feet in height and weighing several tons, the Serestriders are
the sauropods of their day, adapted to browse the highest branches of trees.
Here, a solitary bull serestrider wanders peacefully in the shade — content in the
knowledge that few species can match it.
But larger herbivores mean larger carnivores.
The Tyrant Serins, the grandest of all descendants of the distant axbeak, are apex predators
that can take down other large megafauna.
Equipped with serrated beaks able to shatter bone, these tyrants are the heaviest land
predators yet to evolve.
This period is an early peak of megafauna on Serina — which now supports species so
large and distinct they’re almost unrecognizable when one reflects on the moon’s first, humble
inhabitants.
Over the next several million years, Serina would change once again, as an increase in
volcanic eruptions on a larger scale than ever before would turn the environment on
its head, giving rise to far more alien-looking creatures than ever before, which we’ll
explore in our next installment.
But for now, that’s all the time we have.
For now, if you enjoyed learning about the moon of Serina, consider following and supporting
Dylan Bajda using the links below.
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See you in the next video.