Fragment by Warren Fahy review part 2: the biology
Alright let’s get down to brass tacks. This is what you REALLY wanted me to talk about in a review of a book about a nightmarish ecosystem.
I’m going to be completely honest, I’m going to rip apart the biology of these creatures. I spent time talking with @revretch to get a second opinion on various biological impossibilities (mostly anatomy) and some of these things actually made them mad. Thankfully it’s in the spirit of the book to poke holes in the facts and information presented, so it’s not too bad?
I do want to preface this by saying I still very much like these creatures and I don’t think Warren is dumb or didn’t do his research. He very much did in fact do his homework when making this book and talked with multiple scientists. For instance he talked quite a bit with Dr. Donald Lovett of The College Of New Jersey during the writing of Fragment. Dr. Donald Lovett is not only very well versed in crustacean ecology in response to climate change but is one of the leading authorities in crustacean osmoregulation.
It also doesn’t help that, since the book was published in 2009, it has been subject to Science Marches On. So some of the stuff in the book is less wrong and just outdated, especially in regards to the early evolution of arthropods. In the years after the publication of the book we’ve had lots of revolutionary discoveries into the evolution of lobopods, radiodonts, and panarthropods, which has blessed us with a much clearer picture than Warren had to work with almost 20 years ago.
At the end of the day this post is all in good educational fun.
I’m going to get some basic fact corrections out of the way first really quick, and then I’m going to go through each species and present anatomical critiques after their profile.
1) The book incorrectly says saber tooth cats wiped out terror birds. This is a pretty common myth, but the reality is that most terror birds went extinct before the Great American Interchange, and the few that remained like Titanis actually did extremely well for themselves. In some areas mammalian predators played second fiddle to terror birds. We don’t know exactly why terror birds went extinct, but it likely was climate change.
2) Incorrectly states that horseshoe crabs don’t have an immune system, which isn’t accurate. Like most arthropods they don’t have much in the way of an adaptive immune system and instead have a very robust innate immune system that displays some ability to learn like an adaptive immune system. The special blood of horseshoe crabs also helps a lot. Also incorrectly says they’re related to pill bugs, when they’re actually chelicerates. A 2019 study found horseshoe crabs to be arachnids based on genetic evidence, although more recent research using larger samples and more complete sequencing data maintains their position as non-arachnid chelicerates.
3) This book has the common misconception that mantis shrimps see more colors than us. This isn’t necessarily true… I mean it technically is but there’s a big catch. Mantis shrimps can see more light wavelengths than a human, but ironically they can’t actually discern individual colors as well as a human can. Humans can tell the difference between colors 5 nanometers apart, but mantis shrimps aren’t able to tell the difference between colors if they’re less than 12-20 nanometers apart. So while a mantis shrimp has access to a much wider range of colors, they’re technically “blind” to more colors than us. The book also posits that mantis shrimps evolved on and escaped Henders island 200 million years ago, but the reality is that stomatopods fossils have been found 359 years ago right around the beginning of the Carboniferous, and they possibly split off from other crustaceans 400 million years ago. The book also seems to be under the impression that mantis shrimps have always looked the way they do, when in actuality the clawed and clubbed look of modern stomatopods is somewhat geologically recent, and for a good chunk of time they actually just looked like thick shrimps with occasionally big claws. It also proposes that all arthropods evolved on the supercontinent that would become Henders island, but this would be very false.
4) An ecosystem where everything eats everything is not sustainable nor is the severe lack of preservation instinct in the animals present on the island. This nightmare ecosystem, without clear trophic levels, would have completely burnt through all the energy on Henders Island. To be fair the book acknowledges this, but it’s still very egregious.
5) The book posits that copper based blood is more efficient than iron, but this is not true as copper based blood can be as much as four times less efficient than iron based blood. It does however, perform better than iron under both extreme pressure and chilling temperatures, which is why so many invertebrates thrive in the abyssal ocean.
6) Geoffrey puts forward the theory during one of his Fire Breathing Chats that the reason organisms die is to prevent cross generational inbreeding. Saying that animals that breed fast and die young have a natural biological clock that kills them before this can happen, that is unless predators do that for them. On the flip side, animals that live very long either have behavioral, social, or biological ways to prevent inbreeding through things like being largely solitary or having delayed sexual maturity. While this is definitely an interesting theory, and one that is brought up a few times in the story and comes to be true at least on Henders Island, I feel as though it might be wrong to point to one thing as the reason why dying exists. The biology of death is actually really complicated and may come more from limits in cell division and capacity for telomere repair as well as factors related to disease.
7) Nell chastised another character for insisting on hazmat suits, saying that the microbes on the island have evolved for a different biochemistry. But that hazmat dude was right because you never know how foreign diseases will act.
Keep in mind that the descriptions of the creatures in the book differ slightly from their official art.
Henders island is what’s left of a New Zealand sized piece of Pannotia that separated 500 million years ago, and has been riding up and down the pacific rim and gradually being ground down. It’s apparently a “continental microplate with a craton or basement core composed of prelife Archean-aged rock.”. I am not a geologist so I will not comment on the possibility of this, but I think context on the origins of Henders Island is important.
The Disk Ant is a creature of uncertain phylogenetics. They don’t have a queen and are pack hunting scavengers. They’re radially symmetrical, with their “top” side having five plates divided like pie slices, with a toothy maw in the center and two eyes on either side of it. They have 20 pairs of legs that can retract like a telescope and are hard like diamond. Between each leg is an eye, and their optic nerves might have an on and off switch activated by an inner ear-like organ. So essentially the eyes facing the ground turn off, functioning like a zoetrope. They have a ring shaped brain that is incredibly large in proportion to their body, twice that of a jumping spider. When not rolling they can walk on either side and carry food on top.
The “bottom” side has three Fibonacci spirals coming from the center. One is a birth canal that feed vitellin to the young, while the other is a waste canal, and the third is actually another colony of babies. The babies eat the mom’s exoskeleton as she molts to aid her. They’re hermaphrodites that reproduce once and give birth constantly for the rest of their lives using a stored sperm packet, but can probably can self fertilize. They give birth to miniature adults that live on them until ready to strike out on their own or until they eat their mother, or mother eats them. The young themselves give birth as well. Bigger disc ants give birth to bigger babies, but because those babies have babies that have babies, it goes all the way down until the disk ants are mite sized. Disk ants from other mothers hitch rides on strangers and organize in size automatically. This alliance is tenuous, as they start eating each other when the going gets tough or one of them shows any weakness.
They throw themselves at prey like throwing stars and impale with their legs. Nano ants can eat through things like acid with an incredibly unrealistic speed. The sequel book Pandemonium informs us that the faunal “trees” on Henders Island are also disk ants themselves in another life stage. They have massive hearts to pump up their blood high enough for their more vertical bodies, and they start eating blood through tendrils, particularly those of a seabird that has evolved to raise their young in the canopy. The trees offer protection for the eggs, at the cost of eating the parents. The trees can retract underground for protection. They produce sticky eggs that rub off onto other animals but then quickly fall off.
Henders describes them as the most dangerous creatures on the island, and when a colony of disk ants rolled by the Hendropods had no choice but to retreat into the treetops. Also keep in mind that every organism on Henders Island is a hermaphrodite like a barnacle.
Critiques: So the idea of a radially symmetrical arthropod is rather unlikely. The only times arthropods have completely broken away from bilateral symmetry has been when they evolve into endoparasites, like with various endoparasitic barnacles. Theoretically the ancestors of disc ants could have been endoparasites that then evolved back into free living organisms? But it’s also just as likely that disc ants aren’t actually arthropods at all.
The prospect of tiny disk ants eating through skin like acid is incredibly unrealistic. Ignoring the obviously exaggerated speed at which they do it, it’s probably likely that the nano ants can’t realistically pierce human skin.
The disk ants becoming enormous trees is also really out there and impossible. Do they have chloroplast? Or maybe algal symbiotes?
Henders Wasps are another radially symmetrical critter explicitly stated to be related to the disk ants. About five inches long, they fly on five transparent insect-like wings. They have dragonfly-like “abdomens” and two rings of five double jointed jackknife legs. They have a ring of eyes on a stalk above their wings, and the end of their abdomen is tipped with five jawed maws. They have two brains too.
A potentially related species is known as the Drill Worm, which has three grappling hook legs, eyes, and black wings. They have yellow drill bit abdomens and drill through the disk ant trees. Drill worms have a juvenile stage called Half-Worms, which have blue wings and lamprey mouths and are kept in purple honeycomb hives made by the adults. They eat blood, and mature by growing a new segment shaped like a drill bit with three legs and a second brain and mouth. A mature drill-worm split in half can regenerate from the injury like a planarian and they can mate and give birth to polyp-like eggs. Drill worms are parasitoids.
Critiques: The fact that these things, which aren’t insects, have insect wings is a bit of an issue. Insect wings are such a highly specific and weird body part derived from an already highly specific and weird body part (flowing external gills in aquatic ancestral insects) that the likelihood of something else evolving them is next to zero.
Another problem is the uneven wing ratios of Henders Wasps and Drill worms. Without an even number of wings to counteract each other, these creatures would be quickly put off balance and fly lopsided.
Almost all the animals on Henders Island have two brains, apparently to help process information behind them when getting chased by a predator. This is quite frankly completely unnecessary. Brains are very calorie intensive and more than one is actually not needed and is a waste.
The extreme planarian-like regeneration of the drill worms is unnecessary and probably impossible for a very complex animal.
The “Clover” are a lichen-like amalgamation of various symbiotic microbes that work together. By day they photosynthesize and are green, and by night they eat the iron-sulfide rich in Henders Island rock thanks to a symbiotic Cyanobacteria or proteobacteria that metabolizes sulfur. This makes the clover purple at night and smell like rotten eggs thanks to producing hydrogen sulfide gas. During day clover makes oxygen while the rock eating bacteria retreat underground. It actually changes color depending on what it eats, turning red on iron, yellow on acrylic, and white on paint. It grows in hexagonal tiles and extends half hex fins up to photosynthesize.
Critiques: None. This is actually a pretty solid spec evo biofilm.
The “Grazers” (no image available) are fern-like animals(?) unrelated to any living animal. They only come out at night to eat the clover when it’s purple and producing hydrogen sulfide gas, and it’s mentioned that they might be so ancient they can’t tolerate oxygen and need the hydrogen sulfide gas to protect themselves. They convert the hydrogen sulfide into sulfuric acid to melt the clover off the rocks for consumption. The product eggs that they spread on the “wasps” to carry away. Their gradual melting of rock is also responsible for Henders Island’s bowl shape.
Critiques: If they can’t tolerate oxygen then they might be more ancient than animals all together and thus are not animals themselves.
The Cliff Gliders are two foot wide crustaceans living on the cliffs of Henders Island that looks like if a horseshoe crab and a six winged stingray had a baby. They’re giant flying triops. Seems like they’re not terribly active animals as outside of rapidly flying after their various arthropod prey they just kinda chill on the cliffside. They can bite you but not much else.
Critiques: Not much aside from just pondering how their method of flight works. If they’re using their carapace as wings then wouldn’t that imply their carapace is flexible around the wings and they have muscles that can flex them? Also considering that these things aren’t ravenous hypervores and don’t kill anyone, this might actually be a relatively benign species on the island that was overlooked.
The Mega-Mantises are bus sized mantis shrimps with football sized eyes and iridescent green and red plates. They’re illustrated as spearers in the book but behave like smashers. Their genus name is Magnisquilla. They live in a giant saltwater lake in the middle of Henders Island that is several hundred meters deep.
Critiques: So there’s not really much to critique aside from a spearer mantis shrimp behaving like a smasher, but there’s a lot of implied things. Their genus name implies that they might be related to the mantis shrimp genus Squilla, which has been around for 145 million years.
An arthropod of this size would have to have a closed circulatory system, but that actually isn’t too unreasonable as crustaceans possess something sort of in between an open and closed circulatory system. They still dump blood around organs, but also have extensive veins and such. Look up the circulatory system of a blue crab and you’ll see what I mean. So a hypothetical giant crustacean could very easily transition to a fully closed circulatory system.
A bus sized mantis shrimp has to eat something, and while in the book they’re amphibious in the way a crocodile will wait in the water’s edge, there’s also gotta be large prey in that lake to feed them. The only other creatures we see in the lake are described as looking like they came from the Burgess Shale.
The Henders Rat is essentially the model for the next few creatures. It, the Spiger, Shrimpanzees, Henders Badgers, and Hendropods all form a group of related creatures. So their anatomy and biology is all extremely similar and can apply to each other.
Henders rats have iridescent face fur and blue retractable lips on a cranial cap with gnathostome-like jaws. Their exoskeleton has become internalized into a sort of “mesoskeleton”, with the limb rings being disconnected from each other and the flesh between able to stretch. Their skin supports actual mammal-like fur that can ripple and raise up like hackles, implying there’s muscles there too.
Their nervous system runs dorsally like a vertebrate instead of ventrally like arthropod, and they possess a second brain in the hips with its own cranial cap and three eyes. The anus is between the central legs. Henders rats have a fuck ton of spiracles along the body and legs to directly supply oxygen to the muscles, but they also breathe through nostrils on the chest, forehead, and through the mouth which implies a lung system possibly derived from spiracles. They can whistle through their nostrils. Henders rats have copper based blood and can alter the PH levels in their blood near instantly to deal with infection, which is universal among fauna on the island.
They have coxal glands, a gastric mill, malpighian tubes, and hepatopancreas. They also have a branching digestive tract with multiple intestines. All intestines, urethras, and malpighian tubes empty out the cloaca, and waste comes out as uric acid. Specialized muscles in the sphincter flex only when the tail isn’t curled under the body to avoid pooping on itself. They have three ribosomal RNA peaks.
Henders rats are hermaphrodites that are born pregnant and in some cases can mate in the womb. They can also asexually reproduce miniatures of whatever life stage they’re at and reproduce sexually at the final stage. Meaning any creature could build an entire ecosystem of interconnected creatures around itself. They give birth through the cloaca.
Like all life on Henders Island, the rats hate saltwater and suffer fatal dehydration and salt intoxication from it like some freshwater animals. This is allegedly due to Henders Island fauna having come on land before the oceans became salty, so they never developed the cellular pumps to handle it. To warn other creatures about salt water, organisms have evolved to spray an oily rainbow colored warning pheromone.
Critiques: This is where I rip things apart. While these are very cool, creative, and iconic designs, these follow the incorrect way of thinking in that mammalian characteristics are the pinnacle of evolution, and as such have done away with a lot of the unique characteristics of the things we’re told they’re descended from to make essentially bug ferrets. And this is one of the major things that actually made Rev angry. This is not a terrestrial cursorial stomatopod, this is a vertebrate with bug features.
The spear limbs themselves aren’t very practical. Not only do they resemble the raptorial appendages of mantis flies more than actual stomatopods, but the Henders rats and Spigers are described as also walking on them. This would very quickly wear down the points, or worse, the sharp ends might get caught in something and snap off. Also the raptorial appendages of mantis shrimps are derived from mouthparts (specifically the second pair of maxillapeds) and not legs, so these are on the wrong part of the body. Although I guess their location isn’t impossible if some hox gene fuckery is involved like how fly antennas can become legs. Also an arthropod would not have toes, and no, biramous limbs don’t count.
The gnathostome jaws are also not something that would evolve on a crustacean. I actually don’t know why Warren went with an admittedly more familiar anglerfish face rather than the alien and nightmarish mouths of actual stomatopods. Actual stomatopod mouths are a vertical hole flanked by five pairs of maxillapeds. The second pair is the iconic raptorial appendages of stomatopoda, while pairs 3-5 sport wicked jointed hooks.
I know it’s a pretty common trope in spec evo for arthropods to evolve skin over their exoskeleton to avoid having to molt and be able to remodel it on the fly like vertebrate bones, and it’s a trope I’ve fallen into as well in the past, but sadly this just isn’t possible. Arthropods probably would have done it by now since they don’t half ass things for long, but doing so would involve some significant genetic and anatomical reshuffling of essential things that are already there. At that point you might as well go back to the drawing board. Also skin and muscle over an exoskeleton would probably gum up the joints and reduce range of motion, and it doesn’t make sense to have both muscles inside and muscles outside restricting the exoskeleton when you can just prioritize the internal muscles that are already there. If being vulnerable while molting is that big of an issue for a hypothetical spec-evo megafaunal arthropod, then just shed your exoskeleton in pieces instead of all at once so you can still run around. Terrestrial isopods already molt one half of their body at a time.
The amount of flexibility these things display is unnatural as well. The Spigers in particular have a moment where one stretches its neck like The Thing does in the 2011 movie.
The placement of the anus is also not right. There’s no way it would ever be between a limb pair like a vertebrate. The arthropod anus is on the tip of the tail. The bit about secreting uric acid, as far as I know, actually seems pretty solid and would probably make sense… although I don’t know of any terrestrial arthropods that secrete uric acid as waste. The multiple intestines seem very unnecessary and unlikely, although other arthropods have done strange things with their digestive systems so maybe it’s not that strange??
The reproductive system and digestive system leading to a cloaca is also not in line with arthropods. Arthropods have holes for both waste and reproduction, and sometimes they can be very far apart from each other. And if males of a species have a penis then that might not be near where his gametes are secreted either. In spiders the pedipalps have their equivalent of a penis, which is on the opposite end of the body where gametes are secreted. And in dragonflies the testes are in their 9th abdominal segment, but their penis is between their second and third abdominal segments! Funnily enough though, the weird reproductive strategies and life cycle is actually the most grounded and normal thing here, with multiple arthropods getting even weirder than that.
The fact that the nerve cord in Henders rats and relatives runs dorsally doesn’t line up with arthropods or even lobopods. In lobopods the brain is up top, the brain stem splits in two and goes around the esophagus, and then comes back together to form a ventral nerve cord. Dorsal nerve cords are a chordate trait. In the Henders wasps and Drill Worms I mentioned how inefficient it is for a second brain, but here it’s egregious. The extra eyes and brain apparently evolved to help keep a lookout behind the animals and handle evasive maneuvers, but remember these things are stomatopods! They already have eyes on highly mobile stalks and each eye has trinocular vision! It would be so much more efficient to just have one eye facing backwards at all times.
And lastly the bit about things on Henders Island evolving before the ocean became salty is impossible. The oceans have been salty since not long after the earth cooled.
Spigers actually closely resemble the official art. They have elastic flesh between body segments and can extend them. They can adjust their iridescent fur to ripple patterns across their body, and are either phosphorescent or bioluminescent at night, which is apparently very common on the island. They hunt in packs and average around the size of a polar bear, but alphas can reach 2 tons and jump 30 feet. They can also roar like a train horn. They might actually be the final life stage of the Henders Rat.
Critiques: Not much to say since it’s all been said in the Henders rat section, although the vertical jaws with maxillapeds is a stark improvement.
Hedropods are a sophont species that can stand 7 feet tall and are described as like a “crab-like kangaroo crossed with a praying mantis”. They have iridescent fur with fractals that lets them refract light and become completely invisible, which is how they’ve been able to survive for so long on the island. Their book appearance is a little different than the official art, like the Henders rats and Spigers. Their body is cello shaped. They have a wide mouth with three curved teeth on the upper jaw as wide as hatchet blades and large oval eyes on short stalks that can retract into furry lids. The head has a small sagittal crest, and two crests almost like a Dilophosaurus that have resonating chambers for communication. While the tail of a Henders rat or Spiger acts as a lever, the tail of a Hendropod is completely prehensile and almost tentacle-like, and can coil into a cavity on their belly when not in use.
Their six primary limbs are long. The hind legs serve as the primary ones, and bend almost like grasshopper legs. The feet end in hand-like appendages, but padded “ankles” bear most of the weight of a hendropod when walking around. The first four legs act as arms. All six limbs end in hands that each have four fingers and two thumbs, so six fingers in total. They have lightning reflexes like most creatures on the island and can use tools. In particular they often use throwing star-like things made of rock and obsidian they can throw with enough force and precision to sever the hind brain of a Spiger from its nerve cord. They are also capable of vocal mimicry, and can learn extremely quickly.
They’re biologically immortal in the same way as a lobster (like most things on the island), and the five Hendropods we meet all speak five different languages, implying that not only is their species old but had multiple civilizations with different cultures. This is true as I’m pretty sure in the second book we’re told their species has been around for millions of years and once had cities.
Critiques: Most of what I could say was in the rat section, but there’s some stuff of note. Sagittal crests are only really a thing on mammalian skulls. Also, while these things could be a cool alien design, this is too human for a sapient mantis shrimp. They do kinda remind me of Abe from Oddworld though and I do like how their movement is described in the book.
The Shrimpanzee is described as shimmering and with a spring-like tail. They have furry cuttlefish-like arms. It may be a juvenile Hendropod or closely related species?? Regardless, the Hendropods hate them because they steal from their traps.
A more badger-like take on the Henders rats, which may be another life stage. The Henders badger.
A “dog sized animal with the head of a grouper with a crown of eyes” with bone crushing jaws.
Mouse sized creatures that look like barracudas with 20 rippling legs.
A two-legged creature the size of a turkey with an anvil nose that it uses for intraspecific combat.
A white and yellow jellyfish thing with spider arms and a rodent toothed maw.
Armored worm things, which gatekeep nematodes from their own niche.
Critiques: Various ground microbes and micro fauna like nematodes would absolutely make it on Henders Island.
Closing Thoughts & Theories
I still really like a lot of these creatures even if they’re unrealistic. And I’d actually love to see someone do a take on the Hendropods, or Spigers, or Henders rats that actually follows stomatopod anatomy.
If I had to classify these creatures based on the information in the book, I have a few thoughts.
For the radially symmetrical creatures, either they’re arthropods that had an endoparasitic ancestor really long ago, they’re extremely derived cnidarians, or they’re their own animal phylum.
For the bug badgers, they’re either a unique group of chordates that lost the notochord, or a unique phylum of animals.
Or they’re a third thing, GMOS. The Hendropods have been around for a very long time, possibly long enough to have lived through a mass extinction. If their landmass suffered a bad enough extinction, then maybe they created new organisms or modified the existing ones? Maybe the creatures on Henders Island are actually descendants of mantis shrimps, but have been changed via genetic tampering?
Regardless, finally after all these years I made that review of Warren Fahy’s fragment I promised so long ago. And I’m glad to have finally got it done. Hopefully this was an easy to follow and very comprehensive and extensive post, but I’m certain I probably missed one or two critters in the book mentioned in like one sentence. I do want to do the same to the sequel Pandemonium, and preferably this year and not another 8 years from now. Maybe I’ll even send an email to Dr. Donald Lovett and ask him questions about his involvement in Fragment? Maybe, maybe not, who knows!
Thank you for reading! And thanks Rev for double checking some of these things.
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