Rodent Fiction, part 1

It was the Squirrels who developed space travel. The first animals they sent up into orbit were tamarins - the simians were good choices for experimental animals, since they had hands as flexible as Squirrels', and could be trained to do many routine tasks. Tamarins in particular were almost the same size as Squirrels, so the prototypes used for the tamarins could be made again identically for the Squirrels. As it turned out, however, the Squirrels' fascination with space did not extend to having the temperament to sit in a small capsule for hours or days, so most of the actual astronauts were Guinea Pigs. It was a good choice - among the races of Rodents, there were many smarter and cleverer than Guinea Pigs, but the Guinea Pigs, as a race, were temperamentally agreeable to sitting still for long periods and to giving reports. Lots of reports. In fact, it was difficult to get a Guinea Pig to shut up. Since the Guinea Pigs were generally longer-lived than other Rodents of their size, a few months in a spaceship to Mars was not as big a slice out of their lives as it would be for the Squirrels, and a few days to the Moon were nothing. The Chinchillas declined to volunteer; although even longer-lived, and still small enough to be good travelers, they were, as a race, even less inclined to sit still in an small enclosed space than the Squirrels. So Guinea Pigs it was, in pairs at first, and then as many as seven at a time, and if one had to suffer the constant chatter, well, that was the price one paid for getting People who were willing to travel.

Rodent Fiction, Part 2

Going to space didn't intrigue everyone. It didn't even interest all of the Rodents. Rats and Mice had declined to participate, and declined to specify their reasons. The aquatic races weren't interested either, which was just as well, as the Squirrels shuddered to think of the cost of building spacecraft that would hold Capybaras at all, let alone four Capybaras and a swimming pool. Likewise, Beavers were rather large for space travel, and even Nutria. The only other truly sentient races on the planet, the Cetaceans, also weren't interested; their representatives pointed out that there was still quite a bit of ocean to explore. In one sense it was a pity, size considerations aside, since as completely aquatic races, they would have done nicely in zero-gravity conditions, but if the Whales and Dolphins weren't interested in developing spacecraft for their size and with the special manips they needed to deal with machinery, the Squirrels certainly weren't going to invest the resources.

Sometimes the Squirrels wondered how it had happened, that only Rodents and Cetaceans had developed intelligence. Theory had it that the majority of Rodent races had the combination of rapid reproduction, and adaptability to environment, that was needed to evolve intelligence on land; the Cetaceans had different strategies, but their environment was larger, and stabler over the millenia, and less subject to weather disasters. And among the Rodents, of course Squirrels were the most superior - look at how they had spread to almost every continent! The Cavies and their cousins had never expanded out of South Twin Continent. Rats and Mice were rumored to be working on a solution to their short lifespans which would than allow them to take on longer projects. Porcupines reproduced so slowly, it was a wonder they had evolved at all; the Squirrels felt that that was part of why the simians had never evolved true intelligence. In fact, the simians' slow reproduction completely offset their long lifespans, and they also appeared to be unable to survive outside the southern hemisphere. While South Twin Continent had many species of simians, and Hot Continent had even more, almost all simians who had migrated elsewhere had gone extinct, except for a small colony of macaques in the Northeast Islands off Large Continent. Large Continent had fossils showing that several ape species had spread across it, but died out every time. Of all the simian species, the Red Apes of the South Islands seemed the closest to intelligence, but their reproductive rate was so slow that they were going extinct even within recorded history. To conquer enough environments to challenge the brain to develop intelligence, apparently rapid reproduction was necessary, at least for land animals. (The Squirrels wondered about birds, who shared the trees, but if any of them were intelligent, they had thus far shown no signs of wanting to communicate with mammals; it was as if they were aliens. The Cetaceans were strange, and sometimes their thinking was alien, but at least they were Mammals. They reported that there were no other sentient races discovered yet in the oceans, but so much water remained to be explored that they were not prepared to make a blanket statement.) Simians had never migrated to North Twin Continent at all, or to Big South Island.

Apparently, liking vampires balances out writing Rodent Fiction somewhat

So, bunrab, your LiveJournal reveals...



You are... 1% unique and 6% herdlike
(partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy vampires).
When it comes to friends you are normal. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are wary of trusting strangers.

Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is intellectual.

Your overall weirdness is: 36

(The average level of weirdness is: 27.
You are weirder than 77% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

(gacked from Practically Everybody)