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Steven Universe | The Story of Rose Quartz | Cartoon Network Africa

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the day the world died

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The Day The World Died - Metro Last Light Song

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signed on for a sequel

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Aviators - Signed on for a Sequel (Synthwave)

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Bijna 3,8 miljard jaar geleden ontstond het leven op aarde. De eerste levende organismen waren eenvoudige bacteriën die zich in het water ontwikkelden. Mettertijd hebben deze organismen zich vermenigvuldigd en gediversifieerd. Sommige verlieten het water en zochten het land op. Andere gingen uiteindelijk vliegen. Zo zijn er nu miljoenen soorten, miljarden individuen, op onze aarde. Maar tijdens hun evolutie ondergingen deze soorten talrijke wijzigingen. Sommige hiervan verliepen langzaam: er waren generaties voor nodig. Abruptere veranderingen waren het gevolg van massale uitstervingen, waarvan een het einde van de dinosauriërs (met uitzondering van de vogels) veroorzaakte. Hier zoemen we in op enkele sleutelmomenten van de evolutie...

Vijf ogen, 24 poten, rijen stekels, schubbige platen ... De wezentjes uit de Burgess Shale spreken tot de verbeelding. Onze maquettiste werkte vijf maanden aan de minutieuze reconstructie van vijf van deze fantastische diertjes ...
Hier: Aysheaia pedunculata (1-6cm lang)

De trilobieten vormen de grootste groep fossiele mariene geleedpotigen: er zijn meer dan 18 000 soorten beschreven. Deze soorten hadden uitgestrekte leefgebieden en kwamen elk gedurende een korte tijd voor. Daarom zijn het goede gidsfossielen: wanneer trilobieten van éénzelfde soort voorkomen in twee lagen die geografisch ver van elkaar verwijderd zijn, tonen ze aan dat beide lagen even oud zijn.
Deze trilobiet, waarschijnlijk Gerospina schachti, is vrij klein (38 mm lang), maar sommige soorten zijn wel 70 cm lang.

In Messel, bij Frankfurt in Duitsland, ligt een uitzonderlijke vindplaats. De hier ontdekte fossielen zijn 47 miljoen jaar oud. Ze zijn bovendien ongelooflijk talrijk, goed bewaard en verscheiden: insecten, kikkers, krokodillen, slangen, schildpadden, vogels ... en ook veel zoogdieren. Hier zien we uitstekend hoe de primitieve in de moderne fauna overging. Zo lijken de slangen en de hagedissen er nogal primitief, terwijl sommige zoogdieren (vooral de vleermuizen) modernere kenmerken vertonen.
De vleermuizen van Messel leken al goed op hun huidige nichtjes, maar ze konden misschien nog geen echolocatie gebruiken. Hier: Palaeochiropteryx sp. (ware grootte: 7 cm hoog)

The Primitive Horse from Messel
English version (French and Dutch versions below)
1:56

De buidelwolf of Tasmaanse tijger is een Australisch buideldier. Neen, dat wás hij. Benjamin, het laatste exemplaar in gevangenschap, stierf op 7 september 1936 in de dierentuin van Hobart op Tasmanië.

Vooroordelen en onwetendheid in verband met zijn manier van leven bezegelden zijn lot. Hij moest wel gevaarlijk zijn voor de schapenteelt, want hij was een vleeseter, ging op jacht na zonsondergang en kon zijn muil héél wijd opensperren! Daarom ruimden ze hem, bij middel van premies, systematisch uit de weg. Het had anders kunnen zijn: hij was gemakkelijk te temmen.

Nieuwe variëteiten rozen, orchideeën, tulpen ... Botanici kennen wat van kunstmatige selectie: ze kiezen systematisch die exemplaren uit die één of meer gewenste kenmerken bezitten (kleur, geur, grootte, aantal bloemblaadjes, vorstbestendigheid ...). Ze kruisen ze steeds verder tot de nieuwe variëteit haar kenmerken van generatie tot generatie doorgeeft.

Wie dieren kweekt, zal voor individuen zorgen die vlugger lopen, zwaardere lasten trekken, meer melk produceren ... Bij koeien van het Belgische witblauw ras (foto) was de spierontwikkeling, en dus de kwaliteit van het vlees, van belang. Nu behoort bijna 45 % van de veestapel van het land tot dit runderras. Maar zonder de mens zou het niet overleven: door hun lichaamsbouw - zoals die precies door de kwekers bevorderd is - kunnen de meeste koeien niet zonder keizersnee kalven.

Propellonectes russeli, de fictieve afstammeling van de noordelijke reuzenstormvogel ( Macronectes halli), is aangepast aan een leven in het water. De vleugels zijn zo gereduceerd dat de vogel niet meer kan vliegen, maar dankzij de grote achterpoten en het gestroomlijnde lichaam is het dier een uitstekende zwemmer geworden. Lengte: 1 m

Met een massievere schoudergordel en kop, grotere en meer vooruitstekende knaagtanden zou de fictieve Corticochaeris gouldi een afstammeling kunnen zijn van de nu levende capybara ( Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris). Zijn aanpassingen zouden het dier toelaten schors van bomen te stropen. Lengte: tot 2 meter

Ook voor de voskoesoe ( Trichosurus vulpecula, een boombewonende buidelrat) werd een fictieve afstammeling uitgedacht: deze Trichopteryx dixoni, een vliegende buidelrat. Doorheen de evolutie werd zijn grijpstaart langer en elastischer en ontwikkelden er huidplooien tussen de poten. De buidelopening is aangepast aan het hangen in de bomen: met de opening naar de staart toe. Lengte: 1,5 meter, met de staart inbegrepen

Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen (Koninklijk Belgisch Instituut voor Natuurwetenschappen)

Het uitgelichte verhaal kan in sommige gevallen zijn gemaakt door een onafhankelijke derde partij en kan afwijken van de standpunten van de hieronder vermelde instituten die de content hebben geleverd.

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Verleden, heden en toekomst: de wonderen van de evolutie - Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen (Koninklijk Belgisch Instituut voor Natuurwetenschappen) - Google Arts & Culture

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Bijna 3,8 miljard jaar geleden ontstond het leven op aarde. De eerste levende organismen waren eenvoudige bacteriën die zich in het water ontwikkelden. Mettertijd hebben deze organismen zich vermenigvuldigd en gediversifieerd. Sommige verlieten het water en zochten het land op. Andere gingen uiteindelijk vliegen. Zo zijn er nu miljoenen soorten, miljarden individuen, op onze aarde.

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Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

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Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to texts, movies & music, as well as 624 billion archived web pages.

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After man : a zoology of the future : Dixon, Dougal : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Opening 1 | 4K | 60FPS | Creditless | Flac.

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https://www.primamarketinginc.com/pinspiration/

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elephantbird https://www.ian-miller.org/elephant-bird-2/

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https://www.filmtotaal.nl/film/15626/foto?page=2

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https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretarisvogel

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Julio Lacerda • Penguins are really magnificent. I’m working on a... (tumblr.com)

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https://twitter.com/_ashmackenzie/status/1234579572844367873

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https://funnyjunk.com/channel/pokemon/Tim+burton+pokemon/lmDnLyz/

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https://a-dinosaur-a-day.com/post/151213987090/dinoween-masterpost

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https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/8866530499938299/

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After Man

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artstation.com

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this just look cool
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/627830004303139542/

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https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20200305/the-last-of-us-goes-from-playstation-to-hbo

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After Man

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https://theauburngeek.wordpress.com/2017/03/03/first-reaction-to-horizon-zero-dawn/

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-an-industrial-prehuman-civilization-have-existed-on-earth-before-ours/

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Post-apocalypse on Behance

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https://wall.alphacoders.com/by_sub_category.php?id=174669&name=The+Last+Of+Us+Wallpapers

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Scottish geologist, illustrator, and speculative zoologist Dougal Dixon has made his career dreaming up dozens of fictional creatures shaped by evolution gone bonkers. Here are 10 of his creations who seemingly escaped from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.

We've mentioned our love of Dixon's never-was dinosaur menagerie before, but he's worked on several projects about speculative biology. His most notable speculative endeavors include:

- After Man: A Zoology of the Future (1981), which details the rise of rodents and other critters 50 million years from now.
- The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution (1988), which is about a world where the K-T extinction event never happened.
- Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future (1990), a book about man's genetically engineered descendants.
- (2003), a documentary similar to After Man, but about monkey-like tree squids.

Most of Dixon's chimeras resemble modern-day creatures, as they occupy evolutionary niches familiar to modern-day humans. But some of his speculative beasts are unadulterated nightmare fuel ( Man After Man is by far the worst, what with its sabertooth yetis and other horrors). The following 10 creations will make you pray for a robot uprising and a supervolcano...at the same time.

10.) The Tic from Man After Man
In Man After Man, genetically superior humans abandon a polluted Earth to colonize space. The remaining Homo sapiens tinker with their gene codes for a thousand years to achieve immortality. One such species is the Tic, who graft back-up organs and limbs onto their bodies like Mr. Potato-Head made flesh.

9.) The Horrane and Raboons from After Man
50 million years in the future, carnivorous apes hunt on the African plains. The creepiest are the leopard-like horrane and 7-foot-tall fanged baboons. They need to reboot Planet of the Apes with these guys - the movie will last five minutes.*

*Speaking of which, you can watch stop-motion versions of these horror apes from a Japanese documentary based on After Man.

8.) The Slobber from After Man
Meanwhile in Australia, the slobber - a barely moving, blind, marsupial sloth that catches insects with strands of mucous and is covered in parasitic algae - grows its young out of its torso. This creature lost the genetic lottery a hundered times over.

7.) The Slithersucker from The Future is Wild
200 million years in the future, a giant slime mold consumes flying fish in the northern forests of a new Pangea-like continent. It looks like the set of the Super Mario Bros. movie and enjoys traveling in giant forest squids' brains. So yeah, the future will be written by Gary Gygax and H.P. Lovecraft.

6.) The Gourmand from The New Dinosaurs
This one's more depressing than unpalatable. The gourmand is the future relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex - it's a 60-foot-long, 15-ton armless scavenger that wanders around the South American pampas, consuming found corpses and sleeping. I mean, paleontologists are already calling the T-Rex's badass credentials into question, but it's disheartening to think that it would eventually evolve into the latter-day Orson Welles of the dinosaur world.

5.) The Vacuumorph from Man after Man
200 years from now, mankind will build starships in the vacuum of space with the help of genetically engineered star-humans. Apparently when we're building lifeboats to save the human race, some of us will become genital-less sentient bocce balls.

4.) The Night Stalker from After Man
50 million years from now, Hawaii will be overrun by flightless carnivore bats who eat anything with a pulse. It will be hell.

3.) The Coneater from The New Dinosaurs
There's nothing wrong with this 10-foot-long hypsilophodont that roams the Russian coniferous forests, other than the fact that it's seemingly the Joe Camel of saurians. I motion to rename it "Erectodon."

2.) The parasite-men from Man After Man
One of the recurring humanoids in Man After Man are a colony of genetically engineered symbiotic yetis (don't ask). 2 million years from now, this relationship will turn parasitic and gross everyone out.

1.) The engineered animals of hyper-evolved humans from Man after Man
In 5 million years, mankind's descendants return from the stars and begin to terraform Earth. They bring these guys, who resemble the Mindless Ones of Dormammu...

...and this guy, who is a sentient pile of suet. Three cheers for natural selection, everyone.

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The horrors of evolution: the 10 freakiest animals of speculative biology

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Scottish geologist, illustrator, and speculative zoologist Dougal Dixon has made his career dreaming up dozens of fictional creatures shaped by evolution gone bonkers. Here are 10 of his creations who seemingly escaped from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. We've mentioned our love of Dixon's never-was dinosaur menagerie before, but he's worked on several projects about speculative biology.

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What would a world without humans be like? | BBC Ideas

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What Would Happen If Humans Suddenly Disappeared? | Unveiled

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Speculative evolution is a genre of speculative fiction and an artistic movement focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life, and a significant form of fictional biology. It is also known as and it is referred to as in regards to hypothetical animals. Works incorporating speculative evolution may have entirely conceptual species that evolve on a planet other than Earth, or they may be an alternate history focused on an alternate evolution of terrestrial life. Speculative evolution is often considered hard science fiction because of its strong connection to and basis in science, particularly biology.

Speculative evolution is a long-standing trope within science fiction, often recognized as beginning as such with H. G. Wells's 1895 novel The Time Machine, which featured several imaginary future creatures. Although small-scale speculative faunas were a hallmark of science fiction throughout the 20th century, ideas were only rarely well-developed, with some exceptions such as Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, a fictional rendition of Mars and its ecosystem published through novels from 1912 to 1941, and Gerolf Steiner's Rhinogradentia, a fictional order of mammals created in 1957.

The modern speculative evolution movement is generally agreed to have begun with the publication of Dougal Dixon's 1981 book , which explored a fully realized future Earth with a complete ecosystem of over a hundred hypothetical animals. The success of After Man spawned several "sequels" by Dixon, focusing on different alternate and future scenarios. Dixon's work, like most similar works that came after them, were created with real biological principles in mind and were aimed at exploring real life processes, such as evolution and climate change, through the use of fictional examples.

Speculative evolution's possible use as an educational and scientific tool has been noted and discussed through the decades following the publication of After Man. Speculative evolution can be useful in exploring and showcasing patterns present in the present and in the past. By extrapolating past trends into the future, scientists can research and predict the most likely scenarios of how certain organisms and lineages could respond to ecological changes. In some cases, creatures first imagined within speculative evolution have since been discovered, such as an imaginary filter-feeding anomalocarid illustrated by artist John Meszaros in the 2012 book All Yesterdays by John Conway, C. M. Kosemen and Darren Naish being proven as having existed through fossils discovered in 2014 of the real anomalocarid Tamisiocaris.

Explorations of hypothetical worlds featuring future, alternate or alien lifeforms is a long-standing trope in science fiction. One of the earliest works usually recognized as representing one of speculative evolution is H. G. Wells's science fiction novel The Time Machine, published in 1895. The Time Machine, set over eight hundred thousand years in the future, features post-human descendants in the form of the beautiful but weak Eloi and the brutish Morlocks. Further into the future, the protagonist of the book finds large crab-monsters and huge butterflies. Science fiction authors who wrote after Wells often used fictional creatures in the same vein, but most such imaginary faunas were small and not very developed.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote in the early 20th century, can like Wells be considered an early speculative evolution author. Although his fictional ecosystems were still relatively small in scope, they were the settings of many of his novels and as such quite well-developed. In particular, Burroughs's Barsoom, a fictional version of the planet Mars which appeared in ten novels published from 1912 to 1941, featured a Martian ecosystem with a variety of alien creatures and several distinct Martian cultures and ethnic groups.

In 1930, Olaf Stapledon published a " future history", Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future, describing the history of humanity from the present onwards, across two billion years and eighteen human species, of which Homo sapiens is the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic engineering, and is an early instance of the fictional group mind idea. Published in 1957, German zoologist Gerolf Steiner's book Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia (translated into English as The Snouters: The Form and Life of the Rhinogrades) described the fictional evolution, biology and behavior of an imaginary order of mammals, the Rhinogradentia or "rhinogrades". The Rhinogrades are characterized by a nose-like feature called a "nasorium", the form and function of which vary significantly between species, akin to Darwin's finches and their beak specialization. This diverse group of fictional animals inhabits a series of islands in which they have gradually evolved, radiating into most ecological niches. Satirical papers have been published continuing Steiner's imagined world. Although the work does feature an entire speculative ecosystem, its impact is dwarfed by the later works due to its limited scope, only exploring the life of an island archipelago.

In 1976, the Italian author and illustrator Leo Lionni published Parallel Botany, a " field guide to imaginary plants", presented with academic-style mentions of genuine people and places. Parallel Botany has been compared to the 1972 book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, in which Marco Polo in a dialogue with Kublai Khan describes 55 cities, which, like Lionni's "parallel" plants, are "only as real as the mind's ability to conceptualize them".

One of the significant "founding" works of speculative evolution is by Dougal Dixon, published in 1981. To this day, After Man is recognized as the first truly large-scale speculative evolution project involving a whole world and a vast array of species. Furthering its significance is the fact that the book was made very accessible by being published by mainstream publishers and being fully illustrated with color images. As such, After Man is often seen as having firmly established the idea of creating entire speculative worlds. Through the decades following After Man's publication, Dixon remained one of the sole authors of speculative evolution, publishing two more books in the same vein as After Man; The New Dinosaurs in 1988 and Man After Man in 1990. Dixon cited The Time Machine as his primary inspiration, being unaware of Steiner's work, and devised After Man as a popular-level book on the processes of evolution that instead of using the past to tell the story projected the processes into the future. A central idea of After Man, besides a wave of extinction following humans, is convergent evolution as new species bear a close resemblance to their unrelated predecessors.

When designing the various animals of the book, Dixon looked at the different types of biomes on the planet and what adaptations animals living there have, designing new animals descended from modern day ones with the same set of adaptations. The success of After Man inspired Dixon to continue writing books that explained factual scientific processes through fictional examples. The New Dinosaurs was in essence a book about zoogeography, something the general public would be unfamiliar with, using a world in which the non-avian dinosaurs had not gone extinct. Man After Man, explored climate change over the course of the next few million years by showcasing its effects through the eyes of future human descendants.

Today, many artists and writers work on speculative evolution projects online, often in the same vein as Dixon's works. Speculative evolution continues to endure a somewhat mainstream presence through TV shows featuring hypothetical and imaginary creatures, such as The Future is Wild (2002), (2007-2011) and (2011) and films such as (2009) and After Earth (2013). The modern explosion of speculative evolution has been termed by British paleontologist Darren Naish as the "Speculative Zoology Movement".

Although primarily characterized as entertainment, speculative evolution can be used as educational tool to explain and illustrate real natural processes through using fictional and imaginary examples. The worlds created are often built on ecological and biological principles inferred from the real evolutionary history of life on Earth and readers can learn from them as such. For example, all of Dixon's speculative works are aimed at exploring real processes, with After Man exploring evolution, The New Dinosaurs zoogeography and both Man After Man and Greenworld (2010) exploring climate change, offering an environmental message.

In some cases, speculative evolution artists have successfully predicted the existence of organisms that were later discovered to resemble something real. Many of the animals featured in Dixon's After Man are still considered plausible ideas, with some of them (such as specialized rodents and semi-aquatic primates) being reinforced with recent biology studies. A creature dubbed " Ceticaris", conceived by artist John Meszaros as a filter-feeding anomalocarid, was published in the 2012 book All Yesterdays and two years later, in 2014, the actual Cambrian anomalocarid Tamisiocaris was discovered to have been a filter-feeder. In honor of Meszaros's prediction, Tamisiocaris was included in a new clade named the Cetiocaridae.

Dougal Dixon's The New Dinosaurs was heavily influenced by paleontological ideas developing during its time, such as the ongoing dinosaur renaissance, and as such many of the dinosaurs in the book are energetic and active creatures rather than sluggish and lumbering. Dixon extrapolated on the ideas of paleontologists such as Robert Bakker and Gregory S. Paul when creating his creatures and also used patterns seen in the actual evolutionary history of the dinosaurs and pushing them to an extreme. Perhaps because of this, many of the animals in the book are similar to actual Mesozoic animals that were later discovered. Many of the dinosaurs in it are feathered, something not widely accepted at the time of its publication but seen as likely today. Similarly, After Man in 1981 represents a sort of time capsule of geological thought before global warming was fully discerned, but Dixon also portrays a sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene before it was commonplace to do so.

Speculative evolution can be useful in exploring and showcasing patterns present in the present and in the past, and there is a useful aspect to hypothesizing on the form of future and alien life. By extrapolating past trends into the future, scientists could research and predict the most likely scenarios of how certain organisms and lineages could respond to ecological changes. As such, speculative evolution facilitates authors and artists to develop realistic hypotheses of the future. In some scientific fields, speculation is essential in understanding what is being studied. Paleontologists apply their own understanding of natural processes and biology to understand the appearances and lifestyles of extinct organisms that are discovered, varying in how far their speculation goes. For instance, All Yesterdays and its sequel All Your Yesterdays (2017) explores highly speculative renditions of real (and in some cases hypothetical) prehistoric animals that do not explicitly contradict any of the recovered fossil material. The speculation undertaken for All Yesterdays and its sequel has been compared to that of Dixon's speculative evolution works, though its objective was to challenge modern conservative perceptions and ideas of how dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures lived, rather than designing whole new ecosystems. The books have inspired a modern artistic movement of artists going beyond conventional paleoart tropes, expanding into increasingly speculative renditions of prehistoric life.

Additionally, the evolutionary history of fictional organisms has been used as a tool in biology education. Caminalcules, named after Joseph H. Camin, are a group of animal-like lifeforms, consisting of 77 purported extant and fossil species that were invented as a tool for understanding phylogenetics. The classification of Caminalcules, as well as other fictional creatures like dragons and aliens, have been used as analogies to teach concepts in evolution and systematics.

Speculative evolution is sometimes presented in museum exhibitions. For instance, both After Man and The Future is Wild has been presented in exhibition form, educating museum visitors on the principles of biology and evolution through using their own fictional future creatures.

A popular subset of speculative evolution is the exploration of possible realistic extraterrestrial life and ecosystems. Speculative evolution writings focusing on extraterrestrial life, like the blog Furahan Biology, use realistic scientific principles to describe the biomechanics of hypothetical alien life. Although commonly identified with terms such as "astrobiology", "xenobiology" or "exobiology", these terms designate actual scientific fields largely unrelated to speculative evolution. Though 20th century work in exobiology sometimes formulated "audacious" ideas about extraterrestrial forms of life. Astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Edwin Salpeter speculated that a "hunters, floaters and sinkers" ecosystem could populate the atmospheres of gas giant planets like Jupiter, and scientifically described it in a 1976 paper.

In extraterrestrial-focused speculative biology, lifeforms are often designed with the intention to populate planets wildly different from Earth, and in such cases concerns like chemistry, astronomy and the laws of physics become just as important to consider as the usual biological principles. Very exotic environments of physical extremes may be explored in such scenarios. For example, Robert Forward's 1980 develops a tale of life on a neutron star, and the resulting high-gravity, high-energy environment with an atmosphere of iron vapor and mountains 5-100 millimeters high. Once the star cools down and stable chemistry develops, life evolves extremely quickly, and Forward imagines a civilization of "cheela" that lives a million times faster than humans.

In some cases, artists and writers exploring possible alien life conjure similar ideas independent of each other, often attributed to studying the same biological processes and ideas. Such occasions can be called "convergent speculation", similar to the scientific idea of convergent evolution.

Perhaps the most famous speculative work on a hypothetical alien ecosystem is Wayne Barlowe's 1990 book Expedition, which explores the fictional planet Darwin IV. Expedition was written as a report of an 24th-century expedition that had been led to the planet by a team composed of both humans and intelligent aliens and used paintings and descriptive texts to create and describe a fully realized extraterrestrial ecosystem. Barlowe later served as an executive producer of a TV adaptation of the book, Alien Planet (2005) where exploration of Darwin IV is instead carried out by robotic probes and the segments detailing the ecosystems of the planet are intercut with interviews with scientists, such as Michio Kaku, Jack Horner and James B. Garvin.

Other examples of speculative evolution focused on extraterrestrial life include Dougal Dixon's 2010 book , TV programmes such as 1997 the BBC2/ Discovery Channel special and the 2005 Channel 4/ National Geographic programme as well as a variety of personal web-based artistic projects, such as C. M. Kosemen's "Snaiad" and Gert van Dijk's "Furaha", envisioning the biosphere of entire alien worlds.

Through science fiction, the speculative biology of extraterrestrial organisms has a strong presence in popular culture. The eponymous monster of (1979), particularly its life cycle from egg to parasitoid larva to 'Xenomorph', is thought to be based on the real habits of parasitoid wasps in biology. Further, H. R. Giger's design of the Alien incorporated the features of insects, echinoderms and fossil crinoids, while concept artist John Cobb suggested acid blood as a biological defense mechanism. James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar constructed a fictional biosphere full of original, speculative alien species; a team of experts ensured that the lifeforms were scientifically plausible. The creatures of the movie took inspiration from Earth species as diverse as pterosaurs, microraptors, great white sharks, and panthers, and combined their traits to create an alien world.

Similar to alternate history, alternative evolution is the exploration of possible alternate scenarios that could have played out in the Earth's past to give rise to alternate lifeforms and ecosystems, popularly the survival of non-avian dinosaurs to the present day. As humanity is often not a part of the worlds envisioned through alternative evolution, it has sometimes been characterized as non- anthropocentric.

Although dinosaurs surviving to the age of humans has been adapted as a plot point in numerous science fiction stories since at least 1912, beginning with Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, the idea of exploring the fully fledged alternate ecosystems that would develop in such a scenario truly began with the publication of Dixon's The New Dinosaurs in 1988, in which dinosaurs were not some lone stragglers of known species that had survived more or less unchanged for the last 66 million years, but diverse animals that had continued to evolve beyond the Cretaceous. In the vein of Dixon's The New Dinosaurs imagination, a now largely defunct, but creatively significant collaborative online project the Speculative Dinosaur Project followed in the same zoological worldbuilding tradition.

Since 1988, alternative evolution has sometimes been applied in popular culture. The creatures in the 2005 film were fictitious descendants of real animals, with Skull Island being inhabited by dinosaurs and other prehistoric fauna. Inspired by Dougal Dixon's works, the designers imagined what 65 million years or more of isolated evolution might have done to dinosaurs. Concept art for the film was published in the book The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island (2005), which explored the world of the film from a biological perspective, envisioning Skull Island as a surviving fragment of ancient Gondwana. Prehistoric creatures on a declining, eroding island had evolved into "a menagerie of nightmares".

A hypothetical natural history of dragons is a popular subject of speculative zoology, being explored in works such as Peter Dickinson's The Flight of Dragons (1979), the 2004 mockumentary and the Dragonology series of books.

The evolution of organisms in the Earth's future is a popular subset of speculative evolution. A relatively common theme in future evolution is civilizational collapse and/or humans becoming extinct due to an anthropogenic extinction event caused by environmental degradation. After such a mass extinction event, the remaining non-human fauna and flora evolve into a variety of new forms. Although the foundations of this subset were laid by Wells's The Time Machine already in 1895, it is generally agreed to have been definitely founded through Dixon's After Man in 1981, which explored a fully realized future ecosystem set 50 million years from the present. Dixon's third work on speculative evolution, Man After Man (1990) is also an example of future evolution, this time exploring an imagined future evolutionary path of humanity.

Peter Ward's Future Evolution (2001) makes a scientifically accurate approach to the prediction of patterns of evolution in the future. Ward compares his predictions with those of Dixon and Wells. He tries to understand the mechanism of mass extinctions and the principles of recovery of ecosystems. A key point is that "champion supertaxa" who diversify and speciate at a greater rate, will inherit the world after mass extinctions. Ward quotes the paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, who points out that the fantastical or even whimsical creatures devised by Dougal Dixon's, echo nature's tendency to converge on the same body plans. While Ward calls Dixon's visions "semi-whimsical" and compares them to Wells' initial visions in The Time Machine, he nonetheless continues the use of analogous evolution, which is a larger trend in speculative zoology.

Future evolution has also been explored on TV, with the mockumentary series in 2002, for which Dixon was a consultant (and author of the companion book), and the series Primeval (2007-2011), a drama series in which imagined future animals occasionally appeared. Ideas of future evolution are also frequently explored in science fiction novels, such as in Kurt Vonnegut's 1985 science fiction novel , which imagines the evolution of a small surviving group of humans into a sea lion-like species. Stephen Baxter's 2002 science fiction novel follows 565 million years of human evolution, from shrewlike mammals 65 million years in the past to the ultimate fate of humanity (and its descendants, both biological and non-biological) 500 million years in the future. C. M. Kosemen's 2008 All Tomorrows similarly explores the future evolution of humanity. Speculative biology and the future evolution of the human species are significant in bio art.

Astrobiology - the interdisciplinary study of the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.

Bestiary - popular in the Middle Ages, bestiaries combined descriptions of real animals with descriptions of fantastical ones, sometimes likened to speculative biology.

Future history - imagined future historical events and predictions.

Global catastrophic risk and Human extinction - often tends to precede works featuring hypothetical animals that could one day inhabit Earth in the distant future.

Hypothetical types of biochemistry - hypothesized life based on molecules other than carbon.

Paleoart - artwork reconstructing prehistoric animals, often seen as closely related to speculative biology given the inherent speculation required to reconstruct long-dead organisms.

Xenology - a hypothetical scientific field that would study alien life, discussed mostly in science fiction.

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Speculative evolution is a genre of speculative fiction and an artistic movement focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life, and a significant form of fictional biology. It is also known as and it is referred to as in regards to hypothetical animals.

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Animal culture involves the current theory of cultural learning in non-human animals, through socially transmitted behaviors. The question as to the existence of culture in non-human societies has been a contentious subject for decades, largely due to the lack of a concise definition for the word "culture". However, many leading scientists agree on seeing culture as a process, rather than an end product. This process, most agree, involves the social transmittance of novel behaviour, both among peers and between generations. Such behaviour can be shared by a group of animals, but not necessarily between separate groups of the same species.

The notion of culture in other animals dates back to Aristotle in classical antiquity, and more recently to Charles Darwin, but the association of other animals' actions with the actual word "culture" first originated with Japanese primatologists' discoveries of socially-transmitted food behaviours in the 1940s.

What is culture?

Culture can be defined as "all group-typical behavior patterns, shared by members of animal communities, that are to some degree reliant on socially learned and transmitted information".

One definition of culture, particularly in relation to the organizational aspect is the utilization of "involvement, consistency, adaptation, and mission." Cultural traits that are indicators of a successful form of organization are more likely to be assimilated into our everyday lives. Organizations that utilize the four aforementioned aspects of culture are the ones that are the most successful. Therefore, cultures that are better able to involve their citizens towards a common goal have a much higher rate of effectiveness than those who do not have a shared goal. A further definition of culture is, "[s]ocially transmitted behavior patterns that serve to relate human communities to their ecological settings." This definition connects cultural behavior to the environment. Since culture is a form of adaptation to ones environment, it is mirrored in many aspects of our current and past societies.

Other researchers are currently exploring the idea that there is a connection between cultural sociology and psychology. Certain individuals are especially concerned with the analysis of studies connecting "identity, collective memory, social classification, logics of action, and framing." Views of what exactly culture is has been changing due to the recent convergence of sociological and psychological thought on the subject. "Recent work depicts culture as fragmented across groups and inconsistent across its manifestations. The view of culture as values that diffuse other aspects of belief, intention, and collective life has succumbed to one of culture as complex rule-like structures that constitute resources that can be put to strategic use." Culture is specific to region and not just one umbrella definition or concept can truly give us the essence of what culture is. Also referenced is the importance of symbols and rituals as cognitive building blocks for a psychological concept of shared culture.

Richard Dawkins argues for the existence of a "unit of cultural transmission" called a meme. This concept of memes has become much more accepted as more extensive research has been done into cultural behaviors. Much as one can inherit genes from each parent, it is suggested that individuals acquire memes through imitating what they observe around them. The more relevant actions (actions that increase ones probability of survival), such as architecture and craftwork are more likely to become prevalent, enabling a culture to form. The idea of memes as following a form of Natural Selection was first presented by Daniel Dennett. It has also been argued by Dennett that memes are responsible for the entirety of human consciousness. He claims that everything that constitutes humanity, such as language and music is a result of memes and the unflinching hold they have on our thought processes.

A closely related concept to memes is the idea of evolutionary culture. The validity of the concept of evolutionary culture has been increasing recently due to the re-evaluation of the term by anthropologists. The broadening scope of evolution from simple genes to more abstract concepts, such as designs and behaviors makes the idea of evolutionary culture more plausible. Evolutionary culture theory is defined as "a theory of cultural phylogeny." The idea that all human culture evolved from one main culture has been presented, citing the interconnectedness of languages as one of his examples has also been presented. There is, however, also the possibility for disparate ancestral cultures, in that the cultures we see today may potentially have stemmed from more than one original culture.

According to the Webster's dictionary definition of culture, learning and transmission are the two main components of culture, specifically referencing tool making and the ability to acquire behaviors that will enhance one's quality of life. Using this definition it is possible to conclude that other animals are just as likely to adapt to cultural behaviors as humans. One of the first signs of culture in early humans was the utilization of tools. Chimpanzees have been observed using tools such as rocks and sticks to obtain better access to food. There are other learned activities that have been exhibited by other animals as well. Some examples of these activities that have been shown by varied animals are opening oysters, swimming, washing of food, and unsealing tin lids. This acquisition and sharing of behaviors correlates directly to the existence of memes. It especially reinforces the natural selection component, seeing as these actions employed by other animals are all mechanisms for making their lives easier, and therefore longer.

Though the idea of 'culture' in other animals has only been around for just over half of a century, scientists have been noting social behaviors of other animals for centuries. Aristotle was the first to provide evidence of social learning in the songs of birds. Charles Darwin first attempted to find the existence of imitation in other animals when attempting to prove his theory that the human mind had evolved from that of lower beings. Darwin was also the first to suggest what became known as social learning in attempting to explain the transmission of an adaptive pattern of behavior through a population of honey bees.

The vast majority of cultural anthropological research has been done on non-human primates, due to their being closest evolutionary to humans. In non-primate animals, research tends to be limited, and therefore evidence for culture strongly lacking. However, the subject has become more popular recently, and has prompted the initiation of more research into the area.

Whiten's Culture in Chimpanzees

Andrew Whiten, professor of Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology at the University of St. Andrews, contributed to the greater understanding of cultural transmission with his work on chimpanzees. In Cultural Traditions in Chimpanzees, Whiten created a compilation of results from seven long-term studies totaling 151 years of observation analyzing behavioral patterns in different communities of chimpanzees in Africa (read more about it below). The study expanded the notion that cultural behavior lies beyond linguistic mediation, and can be interpreted to include distinctive socially learned behavior such as stone-handling and sweet potato washing in Japanese macaques. The implications of their findings indicate that chimpanzee behavioral patterns mimic the distinct behavioral variants seen in different human populations in which cultural transmission has generally always been an accepted concept.

Population geneticists Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman have also been frontrunners in the field of cultural transmission, describing behavioral "traits" as characteristics pertaining to a culture that are recognizable within that culture. Using a quantifiable approach, Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman were able to produce mathematical models for three forms of cultural transmission, each of which have distinct effects on socialization: vertical, horizontal, and oblique.

Vertical transmission occurs from parents to offspring and is a function which shows that the probability that parents of specific types give rise to an offspring of their own or of another type. Vertical transmission, in this sense, is similar to genetic transmission in biological evolution as mathematical models for gene transmission account for variation. Vertical transmission also contributes strongly to the buildup of between-population variation.

Horizontal transmission is cultural transmission taking place among peers in a given population. While horizontal transmission is expected to result in faster within-group evolution due to the relationship building between peers of a population, it is expected to result in less between-group variation than the vertical transmission model would allow for.

Oblique transmission is cultural transmission being passed from one generation to another younger generation, such as is done by teaching, and the result of reproducing information across generations is a rapid loss of variation within that specific population. Unlike vertical transmission, oblique transmission doesn't need to occur strictly between parent and offspring; it can occur between less-related generations (e.g. from grandparent to grandchild), or from an individual to a non-related younger individual of the same species.

Cultural transmission, also known as cultural learning, is the process and method of passing on socially learned information. Within a species, cultural transmission is greatly influenced by how adults socialize with each other and with their young. Differences in cultural transmission across species have been thought to be largely affected by external factors, such as the physical environment, that may lead an individual to interpret a traditional concept in a novel way. The environmental stimuli that contribute to this variance can include climate, migration patterns, conflict, suitability for survival, and endemic pathogens. Cultural transmission can also vary according to different social learning strategies employed at the species and or individual level. Cultural transmission is hypothesized to be a critical process for maintaining behavioral characteristics in both humans and nonhuman animals over time, and its existence relies on innovation, imitation, and communication to create and propagate various aspects of animal behavior seen today.

Culture, when defined as the transmission of behaviors from one generation to the next, can be transmitted among animals through various methods. The most common of these methods include imitation, teaching, and language. Imitation has been found to be one of the most prevalent modes of cultural transmission in non-human animals, while teaching and language are much less widespread, with the possible exceptions of primates and cetaceans. Recent research has suggested that teaching, as opposed to imitation, may be a characteristic of certain animals who have more advanced cultural capacities, though this is debatable.

The likelihood of larger groups within a species developing and sharing these intra-species traditions with peers and offspring is much higher than that of one individual spreading some aspect of animal behavior to one or more members. This is why cultural transmission has been shown to be superior to individual learning, as it is a more efficient manner of spreading traditions and allowing members of a species to collectively inherit more adaptive behavior. This process by which offspring within a species acquires his or her own culture through mimicry or being introduced to traditions is referred to as enculturation. The role of cultural transmission in cultural evolution, then, is to provide the outlet for which organisms create and spread traditions that shape patterns of animal behavior visibly over generations.

Culture, which was once thought of as a uniquely human trait, is now firmly established as a common trait among animals and is not merely a set of related behaviors passed on by genetic transmission as some have argued. Genetic transmission, like cultural transmission, is a means of passing behavioral traits from one individual to another. The main difference is that genetic transmission is the transfer of behavioral traits from one individual to another through genes which are transferred to an organism from its parents during the fertilization of the egg. As can be seen, genetic transmission can only occur once during the lifetime of an organism. Thus, genetic transmission is quite slow compared to the relative speed of cultural transmission. In cultural transmission, behavioral information is passed through means of verbal, visual, or written methods of teaching. Therefore, in cultural transmission, new behaviors can be learned by many organisms in a matter of days and hours rather than the many years of reproduction it would take for a behavior to spread among organisms in genetic transmission.

Culture can be transmitted among animals through various methods, the most common of which include imitation, teaching, and language. Imitation is one of the most prevalent modes of cultural transmission in non-human animals, while teaching and language are much less widespread. In a study on food acquisition techniques in meerkats ( Suricata suricatta), researchers found evidence that meerkats learned foraging tricks through imitation of conspecifics. The experimental setup consisted of an apparatus containing food with two possible methods that could be used to obtain the food. Naïve meerkats learned and used the method exhibited by the "demonstrator" meerkat trained in one of the two techniques. Although in this case, imitation is not the clear mechanism of learning given that the naïve meerkat could simply have been drawn to certain features of the apparatus from observing the "demonstrator" meerkat and from there discovered the technique on their own.

Teaching is often considered one mechanism of social learning, and occurs when knowledgeable individuals of some species have been known to teach others. For this to occur, a teacher must change its behavior when interacting with a naïve individual and incur an initial cost from teaching, while an observer must acquire skills rapidly as a direct consequence.

Until recently, teaching was a skill that was thought to be uniquely human. Now, as research has increased into the transmission of culture in animals, the role of teaching among animal groups has become apparent. Teaching is not merely limited to mammals either. Many insects, for example have been observed demonstrating various forms of teaching in order to obtain food. Ants, for example, will guide each other to food sources through a process called " tandem running", in which an ant will guide a companion ant to a source of food. It has been suggested that the "pupil" ant is able to learn this route in order to obtain food in the future or teach the route to other ants. There have been various recent studies that show that cetaceans are able to transmit culture through teaching as well. Killer whales are known to "intentionally beach" themselves in order to catch and eat pinnipeds who are breeding on the shore. Mother killer whales teach their young to catch pinnipeds by pushing them onto the shore and encouraging them to attack and eat the prey. Because the mother killer whale is altering her behavior in order to help her offspring learn to catch prey, this is evidence of teaching and cultural learning. The intentional beaching of the killer whales, along with other cetacean behaviors such as the variations of songs among humpback whales and the sponging technique used by the bottlenose dolphin to obtain food, provide substantial support for the idea of cetacean cultural transmission.

Teaching is arguably the social learning mechanism that affords the highest fidelity of information transfer between individuals and generations, and allows a direct pathway through which local traditions can be passed down and transmitted.

Imitation is often misinterpreted as merely the observation and copying of another's actions. This would be known as mimicry, because the repetition of the observed action is done for no other purpose than to copy the original doer or speaker. In the scientific community, imitation is rather the process in which an organism purposefully observes and copies the methods of another in order to achieve a tangible goal. Therefore, the identification and classification of animal behavior as being imitation has been very difficult. Recent research into imitation in animals has resulted in the tentative labeling of certain species of birds, monkeys, apes, and cetaceans as having the capacity for imitation. For example, a Grey parrot by the name of Alex underwent a series of tests and experiments at the University of Arizona in which scientist Irene Pepperberg judged his ability to imitate the human language in order to create vocalizations and object labels. Through the efforts of Pepperberg, Alex has been able to learn a large vocabulary of English words and phrases. Alex can then combine these words and phrases to make completely new words which are meaningless, but utilize the phonetic rules of the English language. Alex's capabilities of using and understanding more than 80 words, along with his ability to put together short phrases, demonstrates how birds, who many people do not credit with having deep intellect, can actually imitate and use rudimentary language skills in an effective manner. The results of this experiment culminated with the conclusion that the use of the English language to refer to objects is not unique to humans and is arguably true imitation, a basic form of cultural learning found in young children.

Language is another key indicator of animals who have greater potential to possess culture. Though animals do not naturally use words like humans when they are communicating, the well-known parrot Alex demonstrated that even animals with small brains, but are adept at imitation can have a deeper understanding of language after lengthy training. A bonobo named Kanzi has taken the use of the English language even further. Kanzi was taught to recognize words and their associations by using a lexigram board. Through observation of its mother's language training, Kanzi was able to learn how to use the lexigrams to obtain food and other items that he desired. Also, Kanzi is able to use his understanding of lexigrams to decipher and comprehend simple sentences. For example, when he was told to "give the doggie a shot," Kanzi grabbed a toy dog and a syringe and gave it a realistic injection. This type of advanced behavior and comprehension is what scientists have used as evidence for language-based culture in animals.

The beginning of the modern era of animal culture research in the middle of the 20th century came with the gradual acceptance of the term "culture" in referring to animals. Japan's leading primatologist of the time, Kinji Imanishi, first used the word with a prefix as the term "pre-culture" in referring to the now famous potato-washing behavior of Japanese macaques. In 1948, Imanishi and his colleagues began studying macaques across Japan, and began to notice differences among the different groups of primates, both in social patterns and feeding behavior. In one area, paternal care was the social norm, while this behavior was absent elsewhere. One of the groups commonly dug up and ate the tubers and bulbs of several plants, while monkeys from other groups would not even put these in their mouths. Imanishi had reasoned that, "if one defines culture as learned by offspring from parents, then differences in the way of life of members of the same species belonging to different social groups could be attributed to culture." Following this logic, the differences Imanishi and his colleagues observed among the different groups of macaques may suggest that they had arisen as a part of the groups' unique cultures. The most famous of these eating behaviors was observed on the island of Koshima, where one young female was observed carrying soiled sweet potatoes to a small stream, where she proceeded to wash off all of the sand and dirt before eating. This behavior was then observed in one of the monkey's playmates, then her mother and a few other playmates. The potato-washing eventually spread throughout the whole macaque colony, encouraging Imanishi to refer to the behavior as "pre-culture," explaining that, "we must not overestimate the situation and say that 'monkeys have culture' and then confuse it with human culture." At this point, most of the observed behaviors in animals, like those observed by Imanishi, were related to survival in some way.

The first evidence of apparently arbitrary traditions came in the late-1970s, also in the behavior of primates. At this time, researchers McGrew and Tutin found a social grooming handclasp behavior to be prevalent in a certain troop of chimpanzees in Tanzania, but not found in other groups nearby. This grooming behavior involved one chimpanzee taking hold of the hand of another and lifting it into the air, allowing the two to groom each other's armpits. Though this would seem to make grooming of the armpits easier, the behavior actually has no apparent advantage. As the primatologist Frans de Waal explains from his later observations of the hand-clasp grooming behavior in a different group of chimpanzees, "A unique property of the handclasp grooming posture is that it is not required for grooming the armpit of another individual... Thus it appears to yield no obvious benefits or rewards to the groomers."

Prior to these findings, opponents to the idea of animal culture had argued that the behaviors being called cultural were simply behaviors that had evolutionarily evolved due to their importance to survival. After the identification of this initial non-evolutionarily advantageous evidence of culture, scientists began to find differences in group behaviors or traditions in various groups of primates, specifically in Africa. More than 40 different populations of wild chimpanzees have been studied across Africa, between which many species-specific, as well as population-specific, behaviors have been observed. The researching scientists found 65 different categories of behaviors among these various groups of chimpanzees, including the use of leaves, sticks, branches, and stones for communication, play, food gathering or eating, and comfort. Each of the groups used the tools slightly differently, and this usage was passed from chimpanzee to chimpanzee within the group through a complex mix of imitation and social learning.

In 1999, Whiten et al. examined data from 151 years of chimpanzee observation in an attempt to discover how much cultural variation existed between populations of the species. The synthesis of their studies consisted of two phases, in which they (1) created a comprehensive list of cultural variant behavior specific to certain populations of chimpanzees and (2) rated the behavior as either customary - occurring in all individuals within that population; habitual - not present in all individuals, but repeated in several individuals; present - neither customary or habitual but clearly identified; absent - instance of behavior not recorded and has no ecological explanation; ecological - absence of behavior can be attributed to ecological features or lack thereof in the environment, or of unknown origin. Their results were extensive: of the 65 categories of behavior studied, 39 (including grooming, tool usage and courtship behaviors) were found to be habitual in some communities but nonexistent in others.

Whiten et al. further made sure that these local traditions were not due to differences in ecology, and defined cultural behaviors as behaviors that are "transmitted repeatedly through social or observational learning to become a population-level characteristic". Eight years later, after "conducting large-scale controlled social-diffusion experiments with captive groups", Whiten et al. stated further that "alternative foraging techniques seeded in different groups of chimpanzees spread differentially...across two further groups with substantial fidelity".

This finding confirms not only that nonhuman species can maintain unique cultural traditions; it also shows that they can pass these traditions on from one population to another. The Whiten articles are a tribute to the unique inventiveness of wild chimpanzees, and help prove that humans' impressive capacity for culture and cultural transmission dates back to the now-extinct common ancestor we share with chimpanzees.

Similar to humans, social structure plays an important role in cultural transmission in chimpanzees. Victoria Horner conducted an experiment where an older, higher ranking individual and a younger, lower ranking individual were both taught the same task with only slight aesthetic modification. She found that chimpanzees tended to imitate the behaviors of the older, higher ranking chimpanzee as opposed to the younger, lower ranking individual when given a choice. It is believed that the older higher ranking individual had gained a level of 'prestige' within the group. This research demonstrates that culturally transmitted behaviors are often learned from individuals that are respected by the group.

The older, higher ranking individual's success in similar situations in the past led the other individuals to believe that their fitness would be greater by imitating the actions of the successful individual. This shows that not only are chimpanzees imitating behaviors of other individuals, they are choosing which individuals they should imitate in order to increase their own fitness. This type of behavior is very common in human culture as well. People will seek to imitate the behaviors of an individual that has earned respect through their actions. From this information, it is evident that the cultural transmission system of chimpanzees is more complex than previous research would indicate.

Chimpanzees have been known to use tools for as long as they have been studied. Andrew Whiten found that chimpanzees not only use tools, but also conform to using the same method as the majority of individuals in the group. This conformity bias is prevalent in human culture as well and is commonly referred to as peer pressure.

The results from the research of Victoria Horner and Andrew Whiten show that chimpanzee social structures and human social structures have more similarities than previously thought.

Second only to non-human primates, culture in species within the order Cetacea, which includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises, has been studied for numerous years. In these animals, much of the evidence for culture comes from vocalizations and feeding behaviors.

Cetacean vocalizations have been studied for many years, specifically those of the bottlenose dolphin, humpback whale, killer whale, and sperm whale. Since the early 1970s, scientists have studied these four species in depth, finding potential cultural attributes within group dialects, foraging, and migratory traditions. Hal Whitehead, a leading cetologist, and his colleagues conducted a study in 1992 of sperm whale groups in the South Pacific, finding that groups tended to be clustered based on their vocal dialects. The differences in the whales' songs among and between the various groups could not be explained genetically or ecologically, and thus was attributed to social learning. In mammals such as these sperm whales or bottlenose dolphins, the decision on whether an animal has the capacity for culture comes from more than simple behavioral observations. As described by ecologist Brooke Sergeant, "on the basis of life-history characteristics, social patterns, and ecological environments, bottlenose dolphins have been considered likely candidates for socially learned and cultural behaviors," due to being large-brained and capable of vocal and motor imitation. In dolphins, scientists have focused mostly on foraging and vocal behaviors, though many worry about the fact that social functions for the behaviors have not yet been found. As with primates, many humans are reluctantly willing, yet ever so slightly willing, to accept the notion of cetacean culture, when well evidenced, due to their similarity to humans in having "long lifetimes, advanced cognitive abilities, and prolonged parental care."

In the cases of three species of matrilineal cetaceans, including pilot whales, sperm whales, and killer whales, mitochondrial DNA nucleotide diversities are about ten times lower than other species of whale. Whitehead found that this low mtDNA nucleotide diversity yet high diversity in matrilineal whale culture may be attributed to cultural transmission, since learned cultural traits have the ability to have the same effect as normal maternally inherited mtDNA. The feeding specializations of these toothed whales are proposed to have led to the divergence of the sympatric "resident" and "transient" forms of killer whales off Vancouver Island, in which resident killer whales feed on fish and squid, and transient whales feed on marine mammals. Vocalizations have also been proven to be culturally acquired in killer and sperm whale populations, as evidenced by the distinct vocalization patterns maintained by members of these different species even in cases where more than one species may occupy one home range. Further study is being done in the matrilineal whales to uncover the cultural transmission mechanisms associated with other advanced techniques, such as migration strategies, new foraging techniques, and babysitting.

By using a "process of elimination" approach, researchers Krutzen et al. reported evidence of culturally transmitted tool use in bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops sp.). It has been previously noted that tool use in foraging, called "sponging" exists in this species. "Sponging" describes a behavior where a dolphin will break off a marine sponge, wear it over its rostrum, and use it to probe for fish. Using various genetic techniques, Krutzen et al. showed that the behavior of "sponging" is vertically transmitted from the mother, with most spongers being female. Additionally, they found high levels of genetic relatedness from spongers suggesting recent ancestry and the existence of a phenomenon researchers call a "sponging eve".

In order to make a case for cultural transmission as the mode of behavioral inheritance in this case, Krutzen et al. needed to rule out possible genetic and ecological explanations. Krutzen et al. refer to data that indicate both spongers and nonspongers use the same habitat for foraging. Using mitochondrial DNA data, Krutzen et al. found a significant non-random association between the types of mitochondrial DNA pattern and sponging. Because mitochondrial DNA is inherited maternally, this result suggests sponging is passed from the mother.

In a later study one more possible explanation for the transmission of sponging was ruled out in favor of cultural transmission. Scientists from the same lab looked at the possibility that 1.) the tendency for "sponging" was due to a genetic difference in diving ability and 2.) that these genes were under selection. From a test of 29 spongers and 54 nonspongers, the results showed that the coding mitochondrial genes were not a significant predictor of sponging behavior. Additionally, there was no evidence of selection in the investigated genes.

Notable research has been done with black rats and Norwegian rats. Among studies of rat culture, the most widely discussed research is that performed by Joseph Terkel in 1991 on a species of black rats that he had originally observed in the wild in Israel. Terkel conducted an in-depth study aimed to determine whether the observed behavior, the systematic stripping of pine cone scales from pine cones prior to eating, was a socially acquired behavior, as this action had not been observed elsewhere. The experimentation with and observation of these black rats was one of the first to integrate field observations with laboratory experiments to analyze the social learning involved. From the combination of these two types of research, Terkel was able to analyze the mechanisms involved in this social learning to determine that this eating behavior resulted from a combination of ecology and cultural transmission, as the rats could not figure out how to eat the pinecones without being "shown" by mature rats. Though this research is fairly recent, it is often used as a prime example of evidence for culture in non-primate, non-cetacean beings. Animal migration may be in part cultural; released ungulates have to learn over generations the seasonal changes in local vegetation.

In the black rat ( Rattus rattus), social transmission appears to be the mechanism of how optimal foraging techniques are transmitted. In this habitat, the rats' only source of food is pine seeds that they obtain from pine cones. Terkel et al. studied the way in which the rats obtained the seeds and the method that this strategy was transmitted to subsequent generations. Terkel et al. found that there was an optimal strategy for obtaining the seeds that minimized energy inputs and maximized outputs. Naïve rats that did not use this strategy could not learn it from trial and error or from watching experienced rats. Only young offspring could learn the technique. Additionally, from cross-fostering experiments where pups of naïve mothers were placed with experienced mothers and vice versa, those pups placed with experienced mothers learned the technique while those with naïve mothers did not. This result suggests that this optimal foraging technique is socially rather than genetically transmitted.

Birds have been a strong study subject on the topic of culture due to their observed vocal "dialects" similar to those studied in the cetaceans. These dialects were first discovered by zoologist Peter Marler, who noted the geographic variation in the songs of various songbirds. Many scientists have found that, in attempting to study these animals, they approach a stumbling block in that it is difficult to understand these animals' societies due to their being so different from our own. This makes it difficult to understand the animals' behaviors, let alone determine whether they are cultural or simply practical.

However, despite this hindrance, evidence for differing dialects among songbird populations has been discovered, especially in sparrows, starlings, and cowbirds. In these birds, scientists have found strong evidence for imitation-based learning, one of the main types of social learning. Though the songbirds obviously learn their songs through imitating other birds, many scientists remain skeptical about the correlation between this and culture: "...the ability to imitate sound may be as reflexive and cognitively uncomplicated as the ability to breathe. It is how imitation affects and is affected by context, by ongoing social behavior, that must be studied before assuming its explanatory power." The scientists have found that simple imitation does not itself lay the ground for culture, whether in humans or birds, but rather it is how this imitation affects the social life of an individual that matters.

The complexity of several avian behaviors can be explained by the accumulation of cultural traits over many generations.

In an experiment regarding at vocal behavior in birds, researchers Marler & Tamura found evidence of song dialects in a sparrow species known as Zonotrichia leucophrys. Located in the eastern and southern parts of North America, these white-crowned song-birds exhibit learned vocal behavior. Marler & Tamura found that while song variation existed between individual birds, each population of birds had a distinct song pattern that varied in accordance to geographical location. For this reason, Marler and Tamura called the patterns of each region a "dialect": however, this term has since been disputed, as different types of in bird song are much less distinct than dialects in human language.

By raising male sparrows in various acoustic settings and observing effects on their verbal behavior, Marler and Tamura found that sparrows learned songs during the first 100 days of their lives. In this experimental setting, male birds in acoustic chambers were exposed to recorded sounds played through a loudspeaker. They also showed that white-crowned sparrows only learn songs recorded from other members of their species. Marler and Tamura noted that this case of cultural transmission was interesting because it required no social bond between the learner and the emitter of sound (since all sounds originated from a loudspeaker in their experiments). However, the presence of social bonds strongly facilitates song imitation in certain songbirds. Zebra finches rarely imitate songs played from a loudspeaker, but they regularly imitate songs of an adult bird after only a few hours of interaction. Interestingly, imitation in zebra finches is inhibited when the number of siblings (pupils) increases.

Innovative foraging

In 20th century Britain, bottled milk was delivered to households in the early morning by milkmen and left on doorsteps to be collected. Birds such as tits (Paridae) began to attack the bottles, opening the foil or cardboard lids and drinking the cream of the top. It was later shown that this innovative behavior arose independently in several different sites and spread horizontally (i.e. between living members) in the existing population. Later experimental evidence showed that conformity may lead to the horizontal spread of innovative behaviors in wild birds, and that this may in turn result in a lasting cultural tradition.

A spread of new foraging behaviors also occurred in an Argentinian population of kelp gulls (Larus dominicanus). During the 20th century, individuals in this population began to non-fatally wound the backs of swimming whales with their beaks, feeding on the blubber and creating deeper lesions in areas that were already wounded. Aerial photographs showed that gull-induced lesions on local whales increased in frequency from 2% to 99% from 1974 to 2011, and that this behavior was not observed in any other kelp gull populations other than two isolated incidents. This implies the emergence and persistence of a local tradition in this population of gulls.

Juvenile birds that migrate in flocks may learn to navigate accurately through cultural transmission of route choice skills from older birds. Cultural inheritance of migration patterns has been shown in bustards (), and the pattern of inheritance was shown to depend on social structures in the flock.

Social networks are a specific mechanism of cultural transmission in birds. Information learned in social contexts can allow them to make decisions that lead to increased fitness. A great deal of research has focused on the communication of new foraging locations or behaviors through social networks. These networks are currently being analyzed through computational methods such as network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA).

In wild songbirds, social networks are a mechanism for information transmission both within and between species. Interspecific networks (i.e. networks including birds of different species) were shown to exist in multispecies flocks containing three different types of tits whose niches overlapped. In this study, knowledge about new feeding areas spread through social interactions: more birds visited the new area than the number of birds that discovered the area independently. The researchers noted that information likely travelled faster among members of the same species (conspecifics), but that individuals did not depend solely on conspecifics for transmission. Another study on army-ant-following birds has also evidenced interspecific transmission of foraging information.

A recent study used RFID identification transponders to experimentally manipulate avian social networks: this scanner technology allowed them to restrict access to feeders for some birds and not others. Their data showed that individuals are more likely to learn from those who were able to enter the same feeding area as them. Additionally, the existing "paths" of information transmission were altered following segregation during feeding: this was attributed to changes in the population's social network.

Others have been able to predict the pattern information transmission among individuals based on a preexisting social network. In this study, social interactions of ravens (Corvus corax) were first analyzed to create a comprehensive network. Then, the order in which individuals learned task-solving behavior from a trained tutor was compared with the network. They not only found that the pattern of learning reflected the network that they had built, but that different types of social connections (such as "affiliative interactions" and "aggressive interactions") characterized different rates of information transmission and observation.

Bartlett and Slater observed call convergence (i.e. conformity) in budgerigars introduced into groups with different flock-specific calls than their own. They also found that the original calls of flock members did not change significantly during this process.

Conformity is one mechanism through which innovative behaviors can become embedded in culture. In an experimental setting, tits preferentially adopted the locally popular method of opening a two-action puzzle box even after discovering the other possible way of accessing the food. This formed diverging local traditions when different populations were seeded with birds specifically trained in one method.

Other research showed that although conformity has a strong influence on behaviors adopted by birds, the local tradition can be abandoned in favor of an analogous behavior which gives higher reward. This showed that while conformity is a beneficial mechanism for quickly establishing traditions, but that unhelpful traditions will not necessarily be adhered to in the presence of a better alternative.

In some cases, conformity-based aggression may benefit individuals who conform to traditions. Researchers used the framework of sexual selection and conformism in of song types of songbirds to model territorial aggression against individuals with non-conforming song types. Their model showed that aggressors won more frequently when targeting non-conformers (than in un-targeted or random aggression). They also found that alleles for conformity-enforcement propagated more effectively than alleles for tolerance of non-conformity.

Finally, other species of birds have been observed to conform to the personality of other individuals in their presence. Gouldian finches (Erythrura gouldiae) exist in red- and black-headed subtypes, and these subtypes have been shown to have different levels of boldness (measured by the time taken to explore new areas, and other similar tests). Experiments placing black-headed birds (known to be less bold) in the company of red-headed birds (known to be more bold) resulted in the black-headed bird performing "bolder" behaviors, and red-headed birds became "shyer" in the presence of black-headed ones. The experimenters hypothesized that this individual-level conformity could lead to stronger social cohesion.

Evidence for cultural transmission has also been shown in wild fish populations. Scientists Helfman and Schultz conducted translocation experiments with French grunts ( Haemulon flavolineatum) where they took fish native to a specific schooling site and transported them to other sites. In this species of fish, the organism uses distinct, traditional migration routes to travel to schooling sites on coral reefs. These routes persisted past one generation and so by relocating the fish to different sites, Helfman and Schultz wanted to see if the new fish could relearn that sites' migration route from the resident fish. Indeed this is what they found: that the newcomers quickly learned the traditional routes and schooling sites. But when residents were removed under similar situations, the new fish did not use the traditional route and instead use new routes, suggesting that the behavior could not be transmitted once the opportunity for learning was no longer there.

In a similar experiment looking at mating sites in blueheaded wrasse ( Thalassoma bifasciatum), researcher Warner found that individuals chose mating sites based on social traditions and not based on the resource quality of the site. Warner found that although mating sites were maintained for four generations, when entire local populations were translocated elsewhere, new sites were used and maintained.

A popular method of approaching the study of animal culture (and its transmission) is the "ethnographic method," which argues that culture causes the geographical differences in the behavioral repertoires of large-brained mammals. However, this significantly downplays the roles that ecology and genetics play in influencing behavioral variation from population to population within a species. Behaviors stemming from genetic or environmental effects are not reliant on socially learned and transmitted information; therefore, they are not cultural.

Culture is just one source of adaptive behavior an organism exhibits to better exploit its environment. When behavioral variation reflects differential phenotypic plasticity, it is due more to ecological pressures than cultural ones. In other words, when an animal changes its behavior over its lifespan, this is most often a result of changes in its environment. Furthermore, animal behavior is also influenced by evolved predispositions, or genetics. It is very possible that " correlation between distance between sites and 'cultural difference' might reflect the well-established correlation between genetic and geographical distances". The farther two populations of a species are separated from each other, the less genetic traits they will share in common, and this may be one source of variance in culture.

Another argument against the "ethnographic method" is that it is impossible to prove that there are absolutely no ecological or genetic factors in any behavior. However, this criticism can also be applied to studies of human culture. Though culture has long been thought to arise and remain independent of genetics, the constraints on the propagation and innovation of cultural techniques inevitably caused by the genome of each respective animal species has led to the theory of gene-culture coevolution, which asserts that "cognitive, affective, and moral capacities" are the product of an evolutionary dynamic involving interactions between genes and culture over extended periods of time. The concept behind gene-culture coevolution is that, though culture plays a huge role in the progression of animal behavior over time, the genes of a particular species have the ability to affect the details of the corresponding culture and its ability to evolve within that species.

We do not know every possible genetic or environmental effect on behavior that exists, nor will we ever. In other words, it is impossible to reject the notion that genes and ecology influence all behaviors, to a degree. Culture can also contribute to differences in behavior, but like genes and environments, it carries different weight in different behaviors. As Laland and Janik explain, "to identify cultural variation, not only is it not sufficient to rule out the possibility that the variation in behavior constitutes unlearned responses to different selection pressures [from the environment], but it is also necessary to consider the possibility of genetic variation precipitating different patterns of learning." Gene-culture coevolution, much like the interaction between cultural transmission and environment, both serve as modifiers to the original theories on cultural transmission and evolution that focused more on differences in the interactions between individuals.

Some scientists believe the study of animal culture should be approached in a different way. Currently, the question being asked is, "is this behavior learned socially (and hence is a result of culture alone), or is it a product of genes and/or environment?" However, it is impossible to find an absolute answer to this question, nor does one in all likelihood exist. Therefore it seems as though scientists should focus on examining how much variance in a behavior can be attributed to culture. Performing field experiments is an excellent way to try to answer this question: translocating individuals between populations or populations between sites could help biologists distinguish between culture, ecology and genetics. For example, if a newly introduced animal shifts its behavior to mimic that of others in its new population, genetic difference as an effect on behavior can be ruled out.

In the study of social transmissions, one of the important unanswered questions is an explanation of how and why maladaptive social traditions are maintained. For example, in one study on social transmission in guppies ( Poecilia reticulata), naïve fish preferred taking a long, energetically costly route to a feeder that they had learned from resident fish rather than take a shorter route. These fish were also slower to learn the new, quicker route compared to naïve fish that had not been trained in the long route. In this case, not only is the social tradition maladaptive, but it also inhibits the acquisition of adaptive behavior.

Metzmacher, M. (1995). "Song acquisition in Chaffinches (Fringilla c. coelebs): sensitive period and live tutors". Alauda. 63: 123-134. hdl:2268/162713. ISSN 0002-4619.

Hoppitt, W. and Laland, K.N. (2013). Social learning: An Introduction to Mechanisms, Methods, and Models. Princeton University Press.0691150710

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Animal culture involves the current theory of cultural learning in non-human animals, through socially transmitted behaviors. The question as to the existence of culture in non-human societies has been a contentious subject for decades, largely due to the lack of a concise definition for the word "culture".

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After Man: A Zoology of the Future is a 1981 speculative evolution book written by Scottish geologist Dougal Dixon and illustrated by several illustrators including Diz Wallis, John Butler, Brian McIntyre, Philip Hood, Roy Woodard and Gary Marsh. The book also features a foreword by Desmond Morris. After Man explores a hypothetical future set 50 million years from now, a time period Dixon dubs the "Posthomic", which is inhabited by animals that have evolved from survivors of a mass extinction succeeding our own time.

After Man used a fictional setting and hypothetical animals to explain the natural processes behind evolution, a concept that proved successful. The success of After Man spawned two following speculative evolution books (sometimes called the " After trilogy") which used new fictional settings and creatures to explain other natural processes. The New Dinosaurs, released in 1988, explained the concept of zoogeography and biogeographic realms through a world in which the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event never happened and non-avian dinosaurs were still alive. Man After Man, released in 1990, focused on climate change over the next few million years through the eyes of future human species genetically engineered to adapt to it.

After Man and Dixon's following books inspired the speculative evolution artistic movement which focuses on speculative scenarios in the evolution of life, often possible future scenarios (such as After Man) or alternative paths in the past (such as The New Dinosaurs). Dixon is often considered the founder of the modern speculative evolution movement.

After Man explores an imagined future Earth, set 50 million years from the present, hypothesizing what new animals might evolve in the timespan between its setting and the present day. Ecology and evolutionary theory are applied to create believable creatures, all of which have their own binomial names and text describing their behaviour and interactions with other contemporary animals.

In this new period of the Cenozoic, which Dixon calls the "Posthomic", Europe and Africa have fused, closing the Mediterranean Sea; whereas Asia and North America have collided and closed the Bering Strait; South America has split from Central America; Australia has collided with Southern Asia (colliding with the mainland sometime in the last 10 million years), uplifting a mountain range beyond the mountains of the Far East that has become the most extensive and the highest chain in the world, greater even than the Himalayas at their zenith 50 million years ago; and parts of eastern Africa have split off to form a new island called Lemuria. Other volcanic islands have been added, such as the Pacaus archipelago and Batavia.

Over a hundred future animal species are described and illustrated in the book. Major groups include the "rabbucks", versatile descendants of rabbits filling the ecological niches of deer, zebras, giraffes and antelope; "gigantelopes", descendants of antelope filling niches held by elephants, giraffes, moose, musk oxen, rhinoceroses, and other large herbivores; "vortexes" and "porpins", descendants of penguins evolved to fill the aquatic niche of cetaceans; and the predatory rats, the major group of terrestrial predators and descendants of rats.

There are also more bizarre creatures such as the "raboons", gigantic theropod-esque descendants of baboons, the "night stalker", a gigantic predatory leaf nosed bat native to Batavia, the "desert leaper", a giant dipodid and the "chiselhead", a descendant of the eastern gray squirrel that has evolved a wormlike shape and large incisors for chiseling into coniferous trees (hence its name).

As a child, Dixon was inspired by H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, particularly the far future creatures featured in the book, to create his own imaginary future animals descended from creatures of the modern day. These animals often served as background characters in Dixon's own retellings of Wells' work. In the 1960s, Dixon was influenced by the contemporary conservationist movements, especially a campaign to save the tigers. Dixon began to ponder that should the tiger and other endangered animals go extinct, something would inevitably take their place. After seeing a "Save the Whale" badge on a friend in the late 1970s, the idea materialized again. Thinking of what might evolve to take their place if whales did go extinct eventually led to the idea of the giant aquatic penguins in the final book.

Dixon devised After Man as a popular-level book on the processes of evolution that instead of using the past to tell the story projected the processes into the future. After finishing a dummy version of the book, with text and his own illustrations, Dixon took the book to two different publishers in London, both of whom immediately greenlit the project.

When designing the various animals of the book, Dixon looked at the different types of biomes on the planet and what adaptations animals living there have, designing new animals descended from modern day ones with the same set of adaptations. Though Dixon made illustrations of his future animals to pitch the project, the final book used illustrations by other artists due to a publisher decision. Dixon created detailed illustrations that the artists followed in the creation of the final artwork featured in After Man.

One of few major speculative evolution works which preceded After Man, German zoologist Gerolf Steiner's 1957 Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia, which included a complete fictional order of mammals (the " Rhinogradentia", or "snouters"), included some ideas similar to what was later featured in Dixon's work, such as an animal with a face mimicking a flower (also present on a future bat in After Man). Dixon was completely unaware of Steiner's work, however, and had not used it as an inspiration.

In March 2018, Breakdown Press published a new edition of the book, updated to reflect modern science relating to evolution. The updated version also features new artwork for some of the animals, created by Dixon himself. The release of the new edition was celebrated with an event hosted at Conway Hall in London on 11 September that same year, which included a joint talk with Dixon and British paleontologist and science writer Darren Naish. The event also included showcases of original sketches and models and a showing of the Japanese stop-motion adaptation of After Man.

The first review of After Man was one made by Professor Barry Cox of King's College London in a science-based radio programme. Cox's review was extremely negative, but subsequent reviews were highly positive. Peter Stoler's review in called the animals in the book "variously amusing or appalling" but "perfectly logical". Dan Brothwell, writing for the British Book News stated that the world depicted in After Man is not one "of absurd monsters", since Dixon had carefully derived his animals from "the biological reality of the past and present" and had "taken careful note of the biological factors that account for the evolution of lifeforms". The review by Redmond O'Hanlon in The Times Literary Supplement particularly praised the introductionary essays on natural selection, genetics and various other natural processes. Reviews in New Scientist and BBC Wildlife also praised the book and Dixon went on publicity tours in the United States and the United Kingdom.

After Man was at the time of its release portrayed in reviews as a book about the extinction of mankind, though Dixon has stated that mankind's end was simply an excuse to discuss evolution, humanity having very little do with the "plot" of the book. Following its success, the book has been translated into a number of different languages.

In 1982, the book was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.

Following the success of After Man, Dixon realized that there was a market for popular-level books which use fictional examples and settings to explain factual scientific processes. After Man had explained the process of evolution by creating a complex hypothetical future ecosystem, the "sequel" The New Dinosaurs (1988) was instead aimed at creating a book on zoogeography, a subject the general public was quite unfamiliar with, by using a fictional world in which the non-avian dinosaurs had not gone extinct to explain the process. The New Dinosaurs was followed by another project in 1990, Man After Man, which focused on climate change over the next few million years through the eyes of future human species genetically engineered to adapt to it.

Although ideas about future creatures had been explored since H. G. Wells's The Time Machine in 1895, After Man was the first large-scale project that went into detail on several species. The fact that Dixon created an entire fictional world, which was then made easily accessible through a book with color illustrations printed by mainstream publishing companies had a large impact and effectively laid the foundation of speculative evolution, which in recent years has been increasingly popular on the internet through various personal projects.

Many of the animals presented in the book remain plausible even in the light of more modern discoveries, with particular examples including the rise of animals that were transported around the world by humans (for instance the rats) to prominent positions within worldwide ecology and that corvids and rodents could evolve into various predatory roles. Other ideas are seen as somewhat less likely, such as the theropod-like gait used by predatory descendants of baboons (though predatory baboons as an idea isn't considered as unlikely) and the evolution of penguins into huge, whale-like filter-feeders. Some of the animals featured in the book, in particular the popular "night stalker" (a giant and flightless predatory descendant of bats), have inspired numerous similar designs through speculative evolution projects since. Future flightless predatory bats are perhaps most famous for their inclusion within the ITV series (2007-2011) in the form of the "future predators".

The Future is Wild, a 2002 miniseries, features future animals evolving over the course of several million years. Early in its development, Dixon was brought in as a consultant. Dixon designed many of the creatures featured in the programme, some of which are similar to creatures in After Man (such as the "gannetwhale", a bird similar to the whale-like penguins of After Man), and co-authored the companion book with the producer of the series, John Adams. The Future is Wild also focused considerably on future environmental changes, something Dixon avoided in After Man so that readers would at the very least recognize the background inhabited by the various future animals.

Japanese markets were highly interested in After Man, and Japanese adaptations were made of the book, including both a 1990 stop-motion documentary and an animated film. To date, Dixon's 2010 speculative evolution book Greenworld, exploring humanity's impact on an alien ecosystem, has only been published in Japan.

In 1987, an exhibition based on the book and organized by a Japanese exhibition company, featuring a number of "life"-size models of the animals featured therein, was displayed at the Denver Museum of Natural History, from 6 February to 3 May, and then at the Chicago Academy of Sciences from 5 June to 7 September. The exhibition began with a "time tunnel", which visitors passed through before being met by several dioramas featuring the speculative future animals. According to spokespeople from both museums, the exhibition garnered positive reactions from visitors. The exhibition also included illustrations Dixon had previously made of a possible future evolutionary path of humanity, previously published under the title Visions of Man Evolved in Omni in 1982. Prior to this, a limited version of the exhibition (featuring 8 models rather than the 19 dioramas featured in the 1987 version) had been at the Newquay Zoo in Cornwall in 1983, in Japan in 1984 and in various locations within the United States from 1985 to 1986.

The Future is Wild was unable to use Dixon's original creatures as DreamWorks SKG had bought and owned the rights to After Man. DreamWorks eventually abandoned the project, and the rights were then bought by Paramount, though no potential movie adaptation has yet materialized.

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After Man: A Zoology of the Future is a 1981 speculative evolution book written by Scottish geologist Dougal Dixon and illustrated by several illustrators including Diz Wallis, John Butler, Brian McIntyre, Philip Hood, Roy Woodard and Gary Marsh. The book also features a foreword by Desmond Morris.