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Kerbal Anatomy


Casualnaut

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My take on this is that the are something like venus fly traps. They totally could survive without food (like snacks or N.O.M.S.), but its overall better for them if they actually get something to eat. Probably a little cactus-y as well, storing water and nutrients in the big ol' head of theirs.

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4 hours ago, Casualnaut said:

To be honest, this topic is about a realistic approach towards kerbal anatomy and origins. What did they look like? How did they evolve? What caused the Kerbal Life Explosion?

Well we don't have enough to go on to decide how they evolved or what they evolved from. We don't have a whole lot to work with when it comes to unpicking their biology either. So what do we know:

Locomotion:    Kerbals appear to walk much like humans, with due allowance made for physical proportions. So that suggests joints and so presumably some kind of underlying skeleton. Strength wise they're probably not too dissimilar to Terran lifeforms, since Kerbin's gravity seems to be approximately the same as Earth's, at least judged from the size and morphology of trees on Kerbin, which are fairly similar to Earth trees and so presumably evolved to cope with similar structural loads.

Colour:  @Snark has already debunked the photosynthesis thing, so where does the green colouration come from? There are a couple of possibilities I can think of. One - it's a residual photosynthetic pigment left over from an earlier, more plant-like evolutionary stage and retained because, although it's not much use for generating energy, it makes a useful sunblock, similar to melanin in humans. Two - it's a blood pigment - possibly something like chlorocruorin, although that doesn't really explain the uniformity of the green colouration, since chlorocruin changes colour depending on oxygenation level. One might expect green veined kerbals but not uniformly coloured kerbals. 

Metabolism.  Kerbals are physically active (relatively), thinking creatures, implying a fairly large brain, or brain equivalent and a reasonably efficient metabolism to power that brain. So they're probably warm blooded.

Life cycle:  I reckon this is forum friendly but I'm going to spoiler it just in case:

Spoiler

No real evidence, although I'm not really keen on the various 'spore' theories, since kerbals aren't that plant-like. From what we know of them they're also rather rash and impulsive, so I doubt they'd have much patience with sitting on a nest incubating eggs. So, live birth it is, possibly marsupial since (and I'll be delicate here), their body proportions are all wrong for them to be mammalian. Gender dimorphism in kerbals is also far less pronounced than humans, suggesting that they don't nurse externally. However, this is speculative - compare humans to the great apes for example.

Internal organs and biochemistry:   Simply not enough canon material to go on.

Edited by KSK
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4 minutes ago, KSK said:

where does the green colouration come from? There are a couple of possibilities I can think of. One - it's a residual photosynthetic pigment left over from an earlier, more plant-like evolutionary stage and retained because, although it's not much use for generating energy, it makes a useful sunblock, similar to melanin in humans. Two - it's a blood pigment - possibly something like chlorocruorin, although that doesn't really explain the uniformity of the green colouration, since chlorocruin changes colour depending on oxygenation level. One might expect green veined kerbals but not uniformly coloured kerbals.

Or maybe they're just green.  On Earth, there are plenty of green animals, whose greenness has nothing to do with either chlorophyll or their blood-- it's just a skin (or feather, or scale) pigment that provides some benefit from its greenness, such as protective coloration.

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16 minutes ago, Snark said:

Or maybe they're just green.  On Earth, there are plenty of green animals, whose greenness has nothing to do with either chlorophyll or their blood-- it's just a skin (or feather, or scale) pigment that provides some benefit from its greenness, such as protective coloration.

Exactly, and it would also have to deal with the light wavelengths being emitted by Kerbol. There may be more yellow and blue spectrum light being absorbed by Kerbin's atmosphere than red light waves... Just a thought as I am waiting for the dentist to call me back.

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17 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

it would also have to deal with the light wavelengths being emitted by Kerbol. There may be more yellow and blue spectrum light being absorbed by Kerbin's atmosphere than red light waves...

Well, it's reasonably safe to say that Kerbol's emission spectrum is pretty similar to our sun's, and Kerbin's atmospheric absorption / scattering must be pretty similar to Earth's.

Why?  Because sunlight color in space, sunlight color on the surface, and the color of Kerbin's sky are pretty similar to Earth's.  If the spectra involved were very different, either sunlight or sky or both would be a very different color.

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In the beginning, the first life forms colonized Kerbin. They were called Lerbals. They were mammals, and required water to stay alive. Then the Great cataclysm (Khea and Kerbin colliding) happened and they where all killed. But life survived, and the first Kerbals came to being. They lived and prospered. Then a giant asteroid hit Kerbin and killed all the Kerbals except a few dozen. They lived underground, but one day a kerbal ventured out to the surface, and established a Facility (or KSC). To launch rockets. And they continue to do so while the remaining population grows underground.

Edited by DunaManiac
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Generally when something is like kerbals, its either a plant or its camouflaging with plants. I feel that's unlikely since, keeping in mind that they can still survive years without food/water (or at least, in such minor quantities that it makes no noticeable effect on a rocket's mass and DeltaV), its likely they would've evolved in their very pale desert. Evolving in the desert is also supported by the temple, which is the only definitively ancient kerbal construction. Kerbals aren't known for their speed, so its unlikely that they could outrun any predator, or catch any reasonably fast prey. Combined with their herbivore teeth its likely they are herbivores, and herbivores eat a lot for not a lot of activity. Despite all this they still have forward facing eyes. Now while it might be that such is for spotting distant threats (which considering the immense zoom you can get in first person could very well be the case), there's not many places they could hide, except underground but nothing about them seems good for digging.

Realistically speaking I can only imagine Kerbals living as long as they have by breeding faster than they die.

Of course none of the above matters if the look of kerbals is indicative of all life on Kerbin, and they are all stubby and awkward with various cartoonish features. Which is another thing. We are assuming "realistic" to be that Kerbin has an extremely Earth-like ecosystem, which save for trees, cacti, and bird-sounding creatures, may not be the case. Not that its by any means a bad assumption given present data (it is reasonable), but its entirely possible Kerbin's fauna vastly differs from what we have here on Earth.

I mean, honestly speaking its almost impossible to look at kerbals through a fully realistic lense based on their ability in-game. They can run indefinitely and live long enough to outlive the universe. Besides that they can survive a 100 meter drop without a scratch (which I've done a couple of times do unwanted passengers), and can support multiple tons on their own head. Heck, on the right difficulty setting Jeb rematerializes at KSC after being thrown into the Sun, or even hugging hugging multiple Tsar Bomba. Even with realism mods making Kerbin Earth-sized and adding life support, a well fed Kerbal will never die, run forever, balance a Saturn V on their head, and survive pretty hefty falls.

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On 7/25/2017 at 2:09 PM, KSK said:

From what we know of them they're also rather rash and impulsive, so I doubt they'd have much patience with sitting on a nest incubating eggs. So, live birth it is, possibly marsupial since (and I'll be delicate here), their body proportions are all wrong for them to be mammalian placental .

Fixed that for you.  Good analyis, though.

Edited by Archgeek
Fixed that for me.
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18 hours ago, FungusForge said:

Kerbals aren't known for their speed, so its unlikely that they could outrun any predator, or catch any reasonably fast prey. Combined with their herbivore teeth its likely they are herbivores, and herbivores eat a lot for not a lot of activity. Despite all this they still have forward facing eyes.

Ah, perhaps that's a reason for their green color.  Perhaps they're just really toxic-- i.e. poison glands under the skin.  Their bright green color isn't for camouflage, it's for visibility, as a distinct visual signal to any would-be predators that "if you eat me, you will die."  Like poison-dart frogs.

Which would also explain why they don't need side-mounted eyes for field of view, or the ability to run fast.  They've never had to worry about anything eating them, so there's no particular reason to be built like a prey animal.

20 hours ago, KSK said:

From what we know of them they're also rather rash and impulsive, so I doubt they'd have much patience with sitting on a nest incubating eggs. So, live birth it is, possibly marsupial since (and I'll be delicate here), their body proportions are all wrong for them to be mammalian.

Well, suppose they're more like frogs.  (They sure look kinda froggy.)  They just lay their batches of many tiny eggs somewhere and let them fend for themselves, no nest-sitting required.    Sure, 99.99% of the kerblings won't survive to adulthood, but let's face it, the kerbals have always been kinda nonchalant about the whole "individual survival" thing anyway.  :)

Or maybe they have hollow cavities in their heads where they store the eggs until they're ready to hatch, like those frogs that carry their eggs in their mouths.  Might explain why their heads are so big.  Perhaps it's the male's job to tote the eggs, which could explain some of their gender dimorphism-- the males need space for the big cranial egg pouches.

22 minutes ago, Archgeek said:

Fixed that for you.

?

KSK's original "marsupial" comment was completely reasonable, and precisely the point would be that they're not placental.  So not sure how that would be "fixing" anything.

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10 minutes ago, Snark said:

Ah, perhaps that's a reason for their green color.  Perhaps they're just really toxic-- i.e. poison glands under the skin.  Their bright green color isn't for camouflage, it's for visibility, as a distinct visual signal to any would-be predators that "if you eat me, you will die."  Like poison-dart frogs.

Which would also explain why they don't need side-mounted eyes for field of view, or the ability to run fast.  They've never had to worry about anything eating them, so there's no particular reason to be built like a prey animal.

I like this... :)

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Kerbals are actually the reptillian Visitors from the original V TV series - thus the yellow glass in the helmets they always wear when outside. Kerbin is their version of day care, so we only ever see the Visitor children playing with their toy spaceships and not the full grown adults. 

Edited by Cydonian Monk
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21 minutes ago, Snark said:

Ah, perhaps that's a reason for their green color.  Perhaps they're just really toxic-- i.e. poison glands under the skin.  Their bright green color isn't for camouflage, it's for visibility, as a distinct visual signal to any would-be predators that "if you eat me, you will die."  Like poison-dart frogs.

Which would also explain why they don't need side-mounted eyes for field of view, or the ability to run fast.  They've never had to worry about anything eating them, so there's no particular reason to be built like a prey animal.

Actually had entirely forgotten about poison. That is a really good point.

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22 minutes ago, FungusForge said:

Actually had entirely forgotten about poison. That is a really good point.

One Kerbin predator to another:  "Bleeccchhh.  Don't eat the green ones, they're yucky."  :)

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8 minutes ago, Snark said:

One Kerbin predator to another:  "Bleeccchhh.  Don't eat the green ones, they're yucky."  :)

Thousands of years eating nothing but cheese snacks made Kerbals toxic??? hehehe

Edited by Just Jim
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2 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

Hmm, I personally find that a bit scary.

Luckily I don't intend to live for thousands of years :wink:

OK, let's change that to thousands of generations of Kerbals eating nothing but cheese snacks... lmao.... 

Edited by Just Jim
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36 minutes ago, FungusForge said:

Actually had entirely forgotten about poison. That is a really good point.

Agreed.

I also had a slightly crazy notion to explain the extreme impact tolerance of kerbals - they've basically evolved airbags. (Not too far-fetched given that fish have evolved swim bladders for buoyancy control). Of course to maintain the necessary resilience the airbags / bladders are under fairly high pressure - with fatal consequences if they rupture. Hence the distinctly binary 'survive or poof' results of dropping a kerbal from a height.

So perhaps the green colouring isn't a 'caution - toxic' signal, so much as a 'caution - don't bite the exploding prey' signal. :) 

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4 hours ago, Snark said:

?

KSK's original "marsupial" comment was completely reasonable, and precisely the point would be that they're not placental.  So not sure how that would be "fixing" anything.

Whoops, I missed!  I meant to correct "their body proportions are all wrong for them to be mammalian", since marsupials are mammals too.

And I've just edited my post, so things just look weird now. :confused:

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i think this post gives me an idea:

what if kerbals history are like shown on Prometheus, Alien, and Convenant movies?

probably a race that comes from laythe was trying to make life in duna and in eve?, after that the eve's life killed themselves causing high amounts of the eve's purple material, getting eve to its actual state, and in a war the dunatians killed themselves making duna a red ball made of radiactive waste that are too old for making radiation, and then the laythians seen that and tryed to make life on kerbin, then they seen that kerbals was the correct life types, so they (laythians) try to make a new substance similar to the kerbals original substance for improve themselves, and then they discovered that it was dangerous and the laythians was killed by its own experimaent.

some laythians escaped to tylo where they made an hiden base where they live actually out of the sight of kerbals.

probably any day, a kerbal will discover its base and kerbals will see the last laythian and this kerbal will contaminate and put in danger zone to the kerbal race.

now that i think it's a good idea for a new serie of matt lowne

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We keep thinking of them as one big organism, but what if they are actually huge colonies of single-cell critters? A form of highly organised plankton that used to live in the waters of Kerbin, retaining vegetative photosynthesis capability in (expected) low-food conditions.

In times of nutrition excess (snacks!) they can afford to wildly splurge energy on flexing their muscle-proteins to move the colony about, and when food is lacking -or to save food they'll need much later- they revert back to a vegetative condition where photosynthesis is all they need to survive. Given a proper medium (eg. a fluid-filled compartment or space suit) they could even decide to break up into smaller clumps or down to single-cell to maximize light absorption, and reclump later into the multi-cellular active forms we know.

It would explain how they can survive hundreds of years marooned in space in their suits or ship (fragment), or while waiting to enter Eloo SoI.

It would also explain the poofing as a last-ditch life-preserving measure in which the energy of the would-be-catastrophic collision/combustion gets diverted into an almost instantaneous endothermic breaking of the bonds that hold the colony together... dissolving the kerbal into a cloud of billions of frozen 'spores' that blow apart, fading into invisibility to the naked eye. Which can later reconstitute themselves, explaining how previously 'lost' kerbals reappear again after a bit of time.

 

Then again, it could just be 02:32 AM and my brain is running out of ideas of how to get me to go to bed already...

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1 hour ago, swjr-swis said:

We keep thinking of them as one big organism, but what if they are actually huge colonies of single-cell critters? A form of highly organised plankton that used to live in the waters of Kerbin, retaining vegetative photosynthesis capability in (expected) low-food conditions.

In times of nutrition excess (snacks!) they can afford to wildly splurge energy on flexing their muscle-proteins to move the colony about, and when food is lacking -or to save food they'll need much later- they revert back to a vegetative condition where photosynthesis is all they need to survive. Given a proper medium (eg. a fluid-filled compartment or space suit) they could even decide to break up into smaller clumps or down to single-cell to maximize light absorption, and reclump later into the multi-cellular active forms we know.

It would explain how they can survive hundreds of years marooned in space in their suits or ship (fragment), or while waiting to enter Eloo SoI.

It would also explain the poofing as a last-ditch life-preserving measure in which the energy of the would-be-catastrophic collision/combustion gets diverted into an almost instantaneous endothermic breaking of the bonds that hold the colony together... dissolving the kerbal into a cloud of billions of frozen 'spores' that blow apart, fading into invisibility to the naked eye. Which can later reconstitute themselves, explaining how previously 'lost' kerbals reappear again after a bit of time.

 

Then again, it could just be 02:32 AM and my brain is running out of ideas of how to get me to go to bed already...

interesting idea....

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Not sure if this is related, but I suspect that kerbals is the kraken themselves. Bcs... the dead kraken that we found on one of the jool's moon is also green colored.

Also, when you put a kerbal on a great force from the outside, they seem to show their "true form" (aka spazzing) which, if they are being stretched enough, they seem to resemble "a central body with 5 or 4 long appendage sticking out radially" which resembles the kraken.

The question is why they always revert back to their calm-docile like creature whenever their spazzing finished (if they haven't blown into dust first)? Is there something that keeps kerbal from becoming kraken themselves? Or perhaps the (ghost of dead) space kraken outside is lonely and start attacking ships (which usually prefer big, part-heavy and complicated ship full of kerbals) so that he may turn the kerbals into what they should become? Or perhaps the kerbals themselves able to resist the power of kraken (well, mostly) so they can back to their kerbal form instead being blown to dust and joining ghost kraken?

Nah, I think I'm gone too far

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I think that Kerbals evolved from all the grass and trees from the surface of Kerbin, and their green skin color is used to photosynthesize. That is why they can survive long space trips. I also think all the Kerbals live in the KSC, and all the companies that support it, also are in the KSC.

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Evolution: Following on Snark's recent theory, it is possible that they were once a frog-like species. Judging by the awkward way they walk and how their legs, thighs, and pelvis are shaped, they are most likely the first evolution of the kerbal species to be bipedal.  While able to walk, the future generations eyes will most likely move closer together and get better at walking. Based on the "Snarkism Theory," I made this short species tree. There are missing links, because I need to study how kerbals look before making assumptions about their ancestors. 

 

Kerbo Primus (first proto-kerbals, possibly fish with legs)

|

?

|

?

|

Kerbo Salire

|

Kerbo Capitosus (Kerbals)

 

    

Body: Judging by the body , it has compact organs that are very tightly fit into the body. The rib cage is most likely made of 3 small rows of ribs, and the legs directly connect to the feet, making it impossible for it to kneel. The heart be strong for it to pump through kerbal's head and arms. Same goes for the neck, as it seems to small to support the large head. The digestive system would most likely be a short esophagus connecting to a tiny stomach that digests food and sends waste through just 1 intestine towards the kerbal's buttock. The small needs for energy and the small stomach is perhaps the reason they prefer snacks over real meals.The lungs seem to be very efficient at preserving whatever gases kerbals need to live, and connects only through a mouth, unless kerbals absorb these gases through their skin. In terms of nervous system, the brain will be slightly smaller than a human's, and have less nerves. A simpler nervous system, most nerves will go directly from limb to spine to brain due to a simpler body (no knees and possibly ankles.) It is hard to place the kerbal in the animal kingdom, as it has hair on it's head, but everywhere else it is hairless. Gravitational Pull resistance is varied for all kerbals. They are also possibly extremely sensitive to radiation.

Psychology: Perhaps the most mysterious stat of a kerbal, is their psychological profile. Some are half-scared to death everywhere while others are just... emotionless. Their entire culture revolves around space, and exploration.

To be edited.

Edited by Casualnaut
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