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No. 62705
Found this on tumblr. I like it.
>I personally would place Gl’bgolyb in the bathypelagic or abyssopelagic zone - that is to say, the midnight zone. Zero light. This is where bioluminescence happens and shit gets extremely weird. That seems appropriate for Gl’bgolyb! I think the twilight zone is still too accessible a place to find her; she seems to feed primarily on whale falls in the form of lusii that Feferi and Eridan fetch her, rather than what she catches herself. (bitches lovve wwhales.) In other words, she’s a detritivore, which is practically what the midnight zone is all about.
>I too am pretty sure that Feferi cannot/does not actually tow whales around. It doesn’t matter how strong she is, I don’t think her size allows her to overcome that kind of resistance. I could do more research to make sure, but that involves math and fluid dynamics and I cannot be bothered right now. However, accompanying the carcass at least partway as it falls and defending it against other scavengers is highly possible! (And since it takes days for a whale to fall - 100m per day, to depths of 1000m-5000m - she would undoubtedly gorge on it and any would-be scavengers, then ascend using the energy from that food.)
>But we still have Feferi traversing from the midnight zone and up, meaning she undergoes extreme pressure and temperature variation.
>As for pressure, I’ve done some research, and I know that it not only can be done, it IS done. Several species move between zones, deeper during the day and higher up during the night. Sloane’s viperfish, cookiecutter sharks, kitefin sharks, grenadiers, some sea cucumbers, great whites - realmonstrosities.com has some awesome charts that show what depths these are found in, and some of them go many places and do many things indeed. So it CAN be done, and presumably Feferi has the appropriate modifications to do so. I’m very frustrated that I have yet to find out HOW, but that is a matter of additional research!
>One thing that seems likely is a large, oil-filled liver. No swim bladder, because the effort to keep something like that inflated at those pressures is considerable and not really worth it. This would put her in the realm of sharks, who also have no swim bladders and are neutrally buoyant (IE they’ll just hang there in the water neither floating nor sinking). Many deep sea creatures try to keep themselves approaching the same density as water to avoid pressurization issues, so Fef may be a little squishy around the edges, with muscles closer to the core of her body, again like some sharks. (This is no matter what her actual weight or body structure.) Her bones may be similar to whale bones by being stuffed full of fats and lipids to reduce their weight, or possibly they’re lighter-weight cartilage like that employed by sharks. I personally think it would be awesome if they were actually chitin, but this may not be plausible. I love arthropod!trolls, I can’t help it.
>And now, moving on to temperature. This one I like, because I think it makes sense! In short, I think that seadwellers are coldblooded, not warmblooded. More technically, this means Feferi would likely be a heterotherm: she CAN generate her own heat, but isn’t always doing it. It’s possible that she would have rete mirabile like tuna in order to conserve body heat (veins and arteries positioned so that blood warmed by muscles goes on to warm cooler blood from the heart), and/or strips of red muscle that generate heat to keep her inner bits warmer than her outer bits, like thresher sharks and great whites. (Hollow chitin bones filled with rete mirabile? Thermodynamically sound or crazed, you decide!) When operating in warmer surface waters and in air, she would be the temperature of the water throughout; when diving down to Gl’bgolyb, she can generate enough heat to warm her inner bits and keep her functioning. This means that Feferi doesn’t have to use all her energy to keep herself warm throughout; it frankly wouldn’t make a difference if she were in a parka or stark naked down there. (“)(—EY!”) Her outermost bits will be the temperature of the water regardless. This would be something like gigantothermy (again great whites!), where the larger an animal is, the easier it is for it to keep its core warm.
>As for her hair and clothes, I wept quietly to myself when I thought about what long, fine filaments are used for in sea creatures, because they are filtration devices and traps. You heard it here first: Feferi eats what gets caught in her hair underwater. The Condesce undoubtedly has small shoals of fish that live in her hair permanently and are snacked upon.
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