Seas of Polinices | Speculative Biology

Imagine a world of aquatic organisms. What species might emerge? A breakdown of J. J. Aniorte’s excellent speculative biology project ‘Polinices.’
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At this very moment, in the depths of Earth’s oceans, alien lifeforms are waiting. Not alien in the sense they come from another planet, but alien in the sense that they’re so different from what we think of as life, they seem not of this Earth. If our oceans harbor organisms that appear extraterrestrial, imagine what we’d find in a literal alien sea?

Polinices is a speculative biology project by the brilliant artist and worldbuilder J. J. Aniorte, which explores life on a planet ruled by aquatic organisms. The infinite forms of this tropical paradise are among the most creative I’ve ever featured on this channel — pushing the boundaries of life as we know it.

There’s a tremendous amount to discover. So, let’s dive in to these teeming waters, and see what awaits us upon planet Polinices.

0:00 Seas of Polinices
1:01 Meet the Stegocaudate
2:09 Cycles of Life
4:00 Onirocolia
4:45 Amphinatans
5:35 Sponge Eaters
6:23 Greatest Reef
7:12 Hive Drones
7:55 Signal Repeaters
8:52 Chain Fish
9:57 Biological Internet
10:44 Dipterognathe
11:55 Sea Belt
12:33 Sea Wheel
13:20 Intertidal Hunter
14:24 The Last Giant
15:28 Outro

Copyright Disclaimer: Under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. All video/image content is edited under fair use rights for reasons of commentary.

I do not own the images, music, or footage used in this video. All rights and credit goes to the original owners.

Beauty Flow, Firesong, Impact Lento, Majestic Hills, Thunderbird, Bittersweet, Floating Cities
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

#CuriousArchive #SpeculativeBiology #Polinices

[RANDOMstuffanimation]

I love how J. J. Aniorte isn't afraid to go beyond something that exists on Earth and actually explore unique and truly alien concepts that possibly has never been thought to be possible.

[monkewithinternetaccess]

It’s always stumped me how an underwater civilization would get very far without things like fire and electricity.

[wingedwolf]

I'm convinced J. J. Aniorte’s just went to another planet, and all of this is his real accounts. This stuff is WILD but so believable!

[Surkk]

These "fish" look borderline eldritch... Good designs and good job to the artist :)

[KrazyKaiser]

I have long thought about a speculative organism that uses radio waves to communicate, I'm glad I've finally found a project that has a similar idea.

[Red-in-Green]

Given the supercontinent, very rare land organisms, and shallow seas full of true weirdos, this world feels like it’s set some time between the Cambrian and Silurian. On the one hand I would love to see this continue to evolve through time, but on the other I admire the restraint needed to keep life there! It’s such a cool time period and I feel like spec ev doesn’t explore it enough

[Miruer]

Underwater environments always freak me out but also always sound so cool to me. Great vid man

[laurelsilberman]

Aquatic beehives? Yes. Such a cool idea for convergent evolution.

[kongtsang]

I love how there’s a ‘world of birds’(Serina), a ‘world of amphibians’ (amphiterra), now a ‘world of fish’ (this).

[DStecks]

When I started seeing the images, I thought "ugh, it's just being strange for the sake of being strange!" but by the end I was totally convinced that this could be a real alien ecology. This feels startlingly plausible if the idea is that this planet's Cambrian Explosion equivalent resulted in siphonophores becoming the dominant biological mode.

[themk]

This one is super interesting. When creature have arbitrary complexity I often think it’s silly but because the whole ecosystem functions the way it does, it makes sense. Thanks for another great video.

[CaitlinKoi]

Here one minute after it went live! You are one of the most underrated channels. I'm autistic and my one special interest encapsulates speculative biology/zoology/fauna, and plausible aliens (and constructed lanuage but there's already so many channels for that), and your content brings it all to me in a detailed but still easily digestible way with a soothing voice. What more could I ask for but keep making awesome content!

[JaymieSword]

it almost makes me cry to see you share so much speculative biology with us lol. speculative evolution is one of my favorite things ever and before this channel I had difficulty finding projects to read/see

[liamsmith]

I always forget how colorful the reef can be, and seeing an alien reef is really stunning.

[cybo_vampire]

I wonder what it would be like if some crossover-like event took place with all these speculative worlds. Perhaps aliens begin hand-picking very specific animals from all sorts of planets and canons, like the axe heads of Serina, the flyers from All Tomorrows, the arrow tonge from Expedition, the dipterognathe from Polinices, and many more, then bring them to a single planet with no animal life, all to fill ecological niches that have been left vacant by, maybe, some planet wide disease, and this introduction of various life forms was done as a last ditch effort to prevent total ecological collapse. I'd like to see what kind of evolution would take place in this type of world.

[paradox]

As we see on earth with convergent evolution, alien life that lives in water will likely develop a 'fish' shape, because that is the optimal shape to move through water, which would be the same environment regardless of which planet it's on.

[manifest]

By far one of the most ‘alien’ environments you’ve showcased

[Jacob-yglz]

I've wondered about the concept of radio being used for hive communication. I think it would be a very quick way for a species to gain sapience, given the vast advantage it gives to information processing.

[claytonharting]

This is one of the most creative spec evo projects I’ve heard of

I love how you introduce us to such different projects that are all creative in their own ways. The other that comes to mind is serina, and how unique its story of the evolution of sentience is.

[jesusjoseph]

12:17
Sea Belt puts a smile on my face. It reminds me of RNA. The drones being mRNA, the food particles being tRNA and the main sponge being rRNA (ribosome). Fascinating!