What's your spirit animal?

[imfivebyfive]

Mine is the owl. Whenever some crazy stuff was about to happen in my life it was always preceded by me seeing an owl.

[Ezrael]

According to the medicine wheel my animal totem is the snow goose. I know I have a connection with felines, turtles, hawks.

[Original Poster]

I have no fucking clue

[sefalik]

no clue. but i envisioned what I believe was a mammoth one time, and felt a strong enough connection that I got it tattooed on me. no other connection or meaning to it, just that i pictured a mammoth and after a few months decided to contact an artist. so, maybe a mammoth? lol...

[thedanknight]

My Indian name means beaver in Cherokee.

[Carrot]

My Indian name means beaver in Cherokee. My Chinese name means Spring Phoenix. I believe it implies resilience.

[Original Poster]

My name is welsh for the dude that smoke pot on a pointed hill

[BobbyLance]

I took an online test and the result says my animal spirit is the bat.

[Ezrael]

Look up the medicine wheel to find out.

[DWTW]

Once when deep in meditation, I encountered my spirit guide in the form of a deer. I've felt a special connection to deer since then.

[Abra]

Fuck having a spirit animal. I have a spirit menagerie. Complete with extants, endangereds, extincts, alternate paths of evolution (for instance, what if fish didn't evolve (what if, say, Opipeuter trilobites (free swimmers) evolved swim bladders and jaws first, or instead?) or if fish evolved in a way that made them less competitive (certain mutations just didn't show up)?). No alien species though, as my spirit animal worlds are all earth-based (not to be confused with my dream worlds, which can transcend causality to the extent my creative-yet-ultimately-deterministic brain allows). I use the simpler creatures to learn natural virtue, and converse with the more intelligent ones as devil's advocates, to round out discussions before presenting them to peers. Though in recent years I've been cutting the middleman and just emulating said peers inside my head instead. Depends how bored I am, or what types of responses I want. The spirit guides, since they're so open-ended, give less predictable responses than emulated peers.

[Ekyu]

Your inner animal spirit is a Cat You're elegant, understanding, and intuitive. Often deep in though,you're an empathetic person with a big heart. At times, you can be rather lazy. Online tests are quite a joke! most of the animals are probably not even in the database.. On another test i had the spider, but that can't be right, because i hate spiders! Ew!!!!

[DWTW]

Does it advance in any sort of chronological timeframe? Do the stronger species outlive the weaker ones?

[Abra]

Does it advance in any sort of chronological timeframe? Do the stronger species outlive the weaker ones? I start with a seed mutation early in the evolutionary branch of whatever I'm looking at. A shell-less cephalopod develops amphibious attributes, and all non-arthropod land fauna radiate from it. I'll pick a few other phylums/classes/orders from around the same geologic period, and tweak those, too (often to replace whatever niches the "alternate amphibian" or, later, "alternate sapient" left, but also to antagonize or compliment them). More details of the evolutionary story are filled in by convergent evolution. So we'll have a few different methods of flying independently evolved. We'll have fur again, but perhaps in some radically separated clades it will catch pheromones and smells in addition to providing insulation (and it'd be made of different building blocks, of course). Arthropoids might develop skin and vertebrate-like musculature early in their rise to dominance, but retain chitinous faces because they are so versatile in evolutionary time (mouthparts on bugs can morph in the blink of an evolutionary eye, becoming highly specified, or generalized, based on the whims of the current age). So yeah, pick a seed, alter the chronological appearance of key mutations elsewhere, fill in gaps with convergent evolution, and let the story run its course. Retcon with truer biology if you feel the need. Depending on if I want to achieve sapience or not (and when), they can advance quite far. How 'bout no mass extinctions, even the end Permian? What would a limited-by-lightspeed, space-faring race of myriapods even do, being lonely loners of intelligence in the cradle-age of life in the universe? Today I went on a 10 mile walk along the coast, mock-conversing with a sapient social trilobite colony (radiating from agnostids which I imagined found a home in hydrothermal vent communities... Being blind, benthic, and suitable for high-pressure environments, I find this scientifically plausible. Over millions of years, they became social as are modern hymenopterans, and over more millions, the complexity of the hive created what we would call a thinking, feeling, mind. This world is special, since in it there are two sapient organisms which exist simultaneously, made possible by their extreme geographic (and ecological) separation). The colony's name translates to "Effigy," and it introduced itself by wondering, "Why bother pondering my world, my self, when none of it all actually happened? You paint this picture, this retelling of history as if it were something of value. I see no utility, only futility." I countered with the futility of my own finite existence, how both should feel lucky that we exist in any form at all. Effigy responded that, if it were a true being, it could at least have an effect on other true beings, as I as a human do. I responded with the sad fact that most human lives touch few other human lives, while only a few profoundly change the future of the species. There was an interval of silence, where I walked along a stretch of larger-grained gravel in the shore, and when I returned to the sand, I added that Effigy would have an effect on a true being's life: my life (and the lives of those I share its story with). But I don't think it was 'listening' anymore (by that, I mean the character's culture and personal history aren't formed enough to have a well thought out response). I'm willing to bet Effigy took the nihilist tone because I myself was wondering about my world-building, after posting in this thread. Also, before becoming aware of its creator, it was one of a society of colonies, dominating the oceans, keeping them turbulent and unfriendly to the sapient landcrawlers. At the peak of a thousands-years war... To have the illusion stripped so rapidly... Must have been soul-crushing.

[brokedownheart]

According to the internet... You are a swan. Powers: Foretelling future through dreams, dream-walking Swans are idealistic, open-minded, and passionate. Your good nature often leads people to think they can take advantage of you, but they should be careful—beneath that serenity lies a fighting spirit. Your love is fierce and unconditional, fueled by the certainty that it should last forever.