Talk:Stalker/@comment-43741937-20191215185449

imma straight up copypasta my own comment from the snow stalker thread on the below zero wiki, hope that isnt against the rules, but its kind of relevant here as well.

"an interesting point to mention is the animals evolutionary lineage. they're obviously related to stalkers in way, but its doubtful that one came from the other, theyre either sister taxa or more derived, just retaining similar traits.

the fact that the snow stalker doesnt have a cephalofoil on its nose and chin suggests that it may be a sensory structure just like in hammerhead sharks on earth, useless outside of the water.

another interesting point to note is the matter of locomotion. the ocean stalker has a whale like tail fluke, and swins with an up down style of body flexing, the primary muscles for locomotion being above and below the spinal chord.

on earth this is an adaptation used by land animals to both have control of the spine, while also being able to use seperate muscle froups on the underside of the spine, such as legs. mainy for legs really,

i think it wouldnt be too far fetched to say, just like cetaceans (whales) on earth, that the general body plan for stalkers would have better suited a land based lifestyle, later evolving to be more aquatic over time, possibly due to selection pressure, niche partitioning, rising ocean levels. and lost use of their hips over the subsequent evolutions. i'd even go so far as to say that there is a huge possibility to see other land based stalker specimens in the future in addition to the arctic variant.

and lastly i'd also like to point out: as far as i'm aware, the only other creatures to exibit similar morphology is the reaper leviathan. despite the fact that it has more eyes, and thus more holes in its skull, classifying it based on that because we classify earth animals that way isnt fair as it isnt an earth animal.

the reaper leviathan has a large structural protrusion on both its (nose?) and chin, what i'd refer to as a cephalofoil. along with a vertical method of locomotion and the large horizontal tail fluke it might be reasonable to assume that the two groups share an evolutionary history"