Notes

Surprisingly little is known about the first carnivores ( = animals who eat meat), despite the majority of animal species having been carnivores for millions of years. A partial reason for that is the fact that “eating meat” can mean many things.

You can look at it through a broad lens: you already eat meat if you can somehow absorb animal particles. (So, anything that animals need or produced, and not from plants or lifeless objects.) In that sense, the very first animal was probably a carnivore. Some suggest the Nectocaris Ptoryx: a tiny squid that already lived off particles from other animals that happened to float through the water.

But was it a “carnivore”? It had no teeth. It had no real mouth or jaws and didn’t literally eat other, living animals.

(By the way, evidence for meat consumption goes millions of years further back. They have found fossils of creatures who probably died because another attacked them or killed them. The Nectocaris already had quills. But the further back you go, the less solid the evidence. Partially because time breaks or spreads it, partially because animals had no skeleton back then and only soft bodies.)

And so you look further. These creatures become snake-like creatures, lizards, squid-like beings who leave the water to walk on land. Most of these creatures are carnivores nowadays—and they probably were back then. But they were tiny and mostly lived off of insects, aiding gaps in their diet with plants.

If you wait millions of years, you obviously arrive at the largest lizards of all: dinosaurs. Many claim the Nyasasaurus Parringtoni was the first dinosaur, and that was a carnivore.

Only once the dinosaurs disappear does space open up for smaller animals to grow and find enough food. Only then the biological order of Carnivora comes into existence: the dangerous predatory animals everyone knows. The Creodonta, Miacidae and Viverravidae were all wolf-like beings that eventually became felines, dogs, bears, and more. But they were much smaller and looked more like weasels or marters.

At the same time, crocodiles ruled the sea, and gigantic birds walked on land. Birds that probably evolved from dinosaurs, as discussed at The Stone Dinosaurs ;)

What do we choose?

For this story, I couldn’t pick the very first carnivore. That would have been in the previous time period and exceptionally boring and unclear. How do you write a tense story about a not-really-a-fish who accidentally absorbs some meat particles? How do you write stories in worlds without intelligence or animals that people can imagine? You don’t.

But I also didn’t want to surpass the dinosaurs, jumping straight to the Carnivora we know and love. (Or know and are scared of.) It’s far too big a leap and far from the real start. Which also brings you close to the next time period of the Saga of Life. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of stories with wolves, bears, and crocodiles.

So I chose to place the story before the dinosaurs. We see this mighty group slowly come into existence here—though real dinosaurs are still far off. We see the transition from “I happen to eat animal particles” to “my body is designed, with sharp teeth and predatory instincts, to actively hunt for meat”. We see how eating insects represented a long phase before general carnivore diets appeared.

The timeline

This story thus happens around the moment (in our real history) when the first signs of dinosaurs appear. In reality, this was about 250 million years ago. The Saga of Life keeps time shorter and more compact, making it roughly 250 thousand years ago.

The event mentioned near the end is the 4th “mass extinction” from our history. (The Triassic-Jurassic extinction, about 200 million years ago.) These events almost wiped out all life on earth, usually due to a changing climate or natural disaster.

The 5th mass extinction is that asteroid that wiped out most of the dinosaurs. (See, again, the story of The Stone Dinosaurs.)

Many scientists now claim we are seeing the start of the 6th mass extinction. Humans rapidly change nature and climate … and animals can’t adapt in time. The unfortunate difference is that we make these changes far more quickly than a natural disaster would, for example. The fortunate difference is that we are intelligent beings who have influence over this. We can prevent or soften the blow, if we try to live in harmony with nature again.

Earth’s history has seen many “dominant species”. Animals that roamed the earth for millions of years and stood at the top of the food chain. Think of the dinosaurs who were the absolute, unquestionable rulers of the world for 200 million years. Eventually, all those dominant species were wiped out by mass extinctions, which is the only thing that allowed humans to be the dominant species now.

Humans have only existed for at most 100,000 years. Modern humans and civilization for only 10,000 years. Wiping ourselves out before we even reach 1 million years of dominance seems exceptionally silly. We’d lose from the dinosaurs by a wiiiide margin!

It seemed important to mention that.

The problem with cruelty of life

Nature is exceptionally cruel, especially through the lens of the comfortable human. If I’d told this story completely realistically, the protagonist would have died a painful death halfway chapter 1.

Life wasn’t prepared for predators and large groups of carnivores on the land. The story shows this, through animals who just don’t understand what happens when attacked. Animals think carnivores just have “weird teeth” or a “misshapen body” and don’t even flee.

(The story after this one talks a bit more about differences between land and sea. Even when they walked on land, most carnivores found their meat by catching fish. Because, well, a fish can’t fight back if a paw suddenly grabs it from above.)

But even if you were prepared—by training or by physical evolution—you couldn’t always win. The “weakest” of each group ended in the mouth of a carnivore. Without that simple law of nature, we, humans, would have never been here.

This story had to find a balance. Show the cruel reality of eating meat, but also the why and the positive consequences. I couldn’t let everyone survive the story, nor did I need to end all lives.

Still, if I had to pick one story about which I have doubts, it would be this one. I’m not sure at all what is “right” to do, or which of the characters is “right”. But in the Saga of Life, I think that’s not an issue and just illustrates the points of stories: life doesn’t have clear answers.

Bearded Dragons

These are real animals. We’re not certain, but they might have lived already during this time period.

More important, they’re kind of the role model for animals during this time. Most life was still in the water, and most land dwellers were the same lizard-like creatures and frog-like creatures. (What do you get when you take a long, smooth fish body and slowly replace the fins with legs? Exactly: lizards.)

I picked them firstly for the cool name and idea, but secondly because they are surprisingly social and intelligent creatures. Our idea of being social and living together is very human—many animals don’t have that at all. No desire to be with others, no reason to cooperate or communicate, no sense of a “herd” or a “home”.

Research shows, for example, that bearded dragons have the capacity to copy the behavior of other bearded dragons. If they see another member of their species open a door in a certain way, they can immediately do that as well, never having opened a door in their life before. (Because, well, where would they find a door in the wilderness?)

Until recently, this behavior was considered “extremely intelligent”, crucial to the evolution of humans and something probably “only humans could do”.

(It has to do with the evolution mirror neurons, if you want to look it up. Being able to do or understand something merely by seeing it and mirroring it. A very efficient but inherently social way of learning.)

Also, their beard that can blow up is a unique element to remember them by.

And so they became the protagonists of this story. The alternative was a story in which animals didn’t communicate, were always alone, and were all insects ;)

Fun fact: at first, a snake played a big part in this story. Until I learned snakes only evolved once the dinosaurs had already arrived! That’s why this story has a “Proto-snake”—a precursor to snakes—but nothing more.

Characters

• Hespry (precursor to wolves/dogs): Feria’s pet, her Heavenmatter. Loyal to her, means wel, hugger and playful. His touch unintentionally turns others into Carnivores, and since he realized this, he shamefully tries to right the wrong.
• Magim (Bearded Dragon): thinks in terms of plans and tiny steps. Small, not strong, doesn’t realize any danger exists (considering Carnivores and such). Has the same lazy life each day, until it suddenly changes, and he sees the value of working harder and living in groups/herds. Is great at imitation, both posture and speech, and as such better at speaking with other animals than most.
• Higgis (Lizard): carnivore, but doesn’t want to be. Has bad eyes—which he only learns once Magim points it out. Quite large and strong, but far from the largest or the strongest (carnivore). Talks little, mostly sweet and innocent. Uses the tactic of seeming funny and silly to attract herbivores to him as food. Ends up taking the gamble of asking Hespry to try and remove his ability to eat meat.