Clearly they ride minibikes and wear tiny tuxedos
February 12, 2018
3:02 am
Don’t worry the feral velociraptors are living long happy lives in a wildlife preserve somewhere
Manly Guys Doing Manly Things
Updated Mondays or whenever I feel like it
Their adorable fluffy existence is a boon to the world, who needs anything more?
Also their plushies probably earn the Space Future military a lot of cash from the kids and their existence warms their image as not only badass but also caring good guys.
Raptor squad plushies! That’s what we need! Get on it Coelasquid!
Okay, but seriously. Is there a way we could get Squishables to think about doing this?
I’ve been thinking we need Squishables raptors since the first time I saw them!
Also they need to make sounds like porcupines
Yes! Can we please make this happen. I want the whole set, but especially Princess. And life size!
Also a Fattest Pigeon would be appreciated, with costumes.
I definitely need a fluffy raptor plushie.
I can’t help but see there having been a real life jurassic park type thing, only with sane people in control of the whole place and junk.
I mean they could also have just been taken to … you know … their natural habitat … and epoch.
I know we have Word of God but I just love time travel.
Yeah,but if they’re in a wildlife preserve, they have less of a chance of being killed by larger predators, since they were everywhere back in their time but the predators around today are the same size as them.
I just figure even if they’re feral, they’re still lab-raised and it would be unethical to release them into the wild.
So the future space military people who sneakily cyberize their own supersoldiers against their wills are worried about the ethical implications of releasing bio-engineered living weapons into the wild?
It’s okay. We’re not Tom Cruise – we can handle the truth. Those raptors got disintegrated by a Tau Cannon, because at least that way they could be of some minor military use as target practice.
Well, they don’t know how the lab-enginered raptor would interact with the natural wildlife at the time. they could end up mating a creating a new variety of raptors. And you’d just need one persone thinking about it, and time-travel bullshit happen, and we end up in a present where raptor have survived and rule the world. And a raptor controlled space-future instead of the normal space-future.
They wouldn’t get a chance to dissolve them. Untrainable or not, they were Jet’s babies too and Angel and Jet probably either smuggled them out or got legal involved to protect them.
Less those ethics, and more the ethics of letting out creatures who have never had to live away from human assistance.
That’s more or less what happens in domestication, and I love that you’ve done your homework on this! Oftentimes the genes for curly tails and baby faces are next to the genes for domestication; but because inheritance goes through a process of recombination where the chromosomes are chopped up and reassembled with bits of other chromosomes, ones next to each other tend to go as a pair, as it were. They’re also nearer the middle of the chromosome, and the ends of the legs are more likely to get chopped and changed. In practice this means that unless you get in there with the gene editing you can’t really select for one without selecting for the other.
Great comic as ever! :D
Hahaha It’s the real story of how Satinette pigeons, the birds they’re based on, differ from Seraphim pigeons, which are a very similar breed but have a sleeker, longer body shape. They found that breeding Seraphims from satinettes, selecting for the slimmer bodies rather than the round satinette bodies, seemed to make the birds behave more skittish and feral despite being exactly as “domesticated” as the satinettes.
There is also the case of domesticated red fox! (check the article on Wikipedia)
Basically by picking and breeding the most docile foxes, by 6th generation they had a new class for the friendliness and eagerness for human contact, and by 20th generation 35% of pups were that “elite” class. The side effect was also more dog-like appearance (raised tail, biannual heat and others) and from what I remember one of the causes was hormonal changes.
Hahaha I’m well aware of the domestic fox project, I actually know the woman who runs the only organization in the US that can import authentic domestic foxes from Russia.
MGDMT: Come for the comedy, stay for the classes in genetic modifications!
THEY’RE. SO. FLUFFY.
When I’m rich I plan on getting a pair as pets. My partner wants one and I like multiples of pets at a time (two cats play with each other, keep themselves company, two dogs play with each other, make it a bit easier on me).
Hahaha it’ll run you about 20 grand
I’ve been teaching my anthropology and archaeology students about this program for years! Does this friend of yours ever agree to talk to college stydents? (Also, did you see the article today from the Atlantic about rabbit domestication? Kinda cool!)
Ah, if you wanna get in touch and ask her, her name’s Kay Fedewa!
Kay is awesome and worth getting in touch with, regardless. (I still have to read her comic, though. Keep meaning to. So. Much. Media. Gah!)
Wait that is fucking amazing, and is there any way to get them that isn’t balls-ass expensive?
Not if you want a real domesticated one. There’s a very limited population of them that only exists in Russia, they sell some as pets to help fund the experiment now that it’s not run on Soviet grants. So it’s the combination of the cost to get one of a very exclusive, limited population of animals with the cost of all the fees associated with bringing an animal from Russia to another country.
You can get pet foxes from places like fur farms as well (I think it requires some sort of exotic animal license?), if you raise them from a young age and know how to handle them you can get them to imprint on you, but they won’t be “tame” in the same way the domestic foxes are.
Which is a shame, because foxes are amazing, and I would theoretically be convinced to want one if it was a red fox. Though I think all things considered, were I to get a semi-exotic pet it’d probably be a skunk.
I watched a video on this a while back! They call it the Neural Crest Cells Hypothesis (at least for dogs).
https://www.facebook.com/nprskunkbear/videos/309768252761648/
The thesis statement is basically that if you go back far enough in development all the differences caused by domestication smaller brain (docility), softer cartilage (floppy ears and curled tails), adrenal shrinkage (lower aggression and baby like appearance) should be able to be linked back to a reduction in the early embryonic cells that go into those i.e. Neural Crest cells.
I just had to look up how Satinette Pigeons look like and now I see where you got your idea for your raptors! :)
I’m leaaarrrnninnnnng!!
Trying to domesticate wild raptors from scratch sounds like a good way to pick up some gnarly scars.
I love panel 4 btw. My gramma used to have a cat like that.
Maybe that’s why he has that artificial eye?
No, he’s got an artificial eye because the higher ups thought it’d “look cool”.
I may not be a paleontologist, but that looks like an outstanding depiction of velociraptor mongoliensis up there to me. (We already knew that you are the leading artist for velociraptor domesticus)
Oh my goodness, that last panel slew me.
Homing raptors. That is all.
So in a sense they went from feral cat boyds to fluffy puppy boyds?
so when can we expect a kickstarter for the adorable puffball raptor plushies lmao
I’d buy one!
I’d buy the whole pack.
We still don’t get to find out what the end-goal of this breeding/training program is supposed to be.
You also made me wonder, if you get a good slice of human socially inept/disabled people of the psychopath/schizophrenic/psychotic/recluse/otherwise persuasion, do they end up sharing physical characteristics with higher statistical pings than “random”?
Depends where the genes are located physically upon the chromosome. If a behavioural trait and a physical trait have their genes very close to each other then they’re more likely to coincide. Doubly so if they’re near the core of the chromosome rather than out on the leg. With that said, we know that things like phrenology don’t work so it probably isn’t common. Domestication and body plan are just a very famous example of when it does work out that way.
The end goal is simple, money. The Space Future Military Industrial Complex needs to keep money coming in, Politicians need the masses employed. As automation takes over simply making more deadly weapons becomes trivial so things get fancy. We don’t NEED Boston Dynamics robots for defense but money needs to circulate. The Captain said before it’s all about optics, it passes the test for not sounding any immediate alarms so everybody is just happy enough to not think about things too hard, like Government owned clones or dubiously consensual cybernetic enhancement or dinosaur soldiers or invading centipede planet during centipede season.
Just so long as they don’t live on an island with other dinos in a wildlife tourist attraction. And that the owners of said attraction don’t get it into their heads to try to breed/create a super dino to get more punters…
Just saying.
Can we have fluffy raptors plushies?
Asking for my nephew and my niece of course.
Yeah…that right it’s for the kid’s 😉 i would like one also…for my niece. (my 25 yr old niece).
Let me guess: he hasn’t figured out what their official job is yet? o_O
Should he care? Their (not so official) job now is to be cute, fluffy and adorable and it seems to work perfectly.
Depends on if they’re a personal project or something from higher up. If it’s from the higher ups then he’ll need to be able to justify the funding.
Yeah, and they may not approve of them wearing mini bikes and riding mini tux’
Why WOULDN’T they want the raptors to do that? That’s TOY SALES right there!
Wasn’t the whole group of supersoldiers developed to generate as much appeal as possible to sell action figures?
Jet and his cute fluffy raptors and optional tuxedo’s might have a huge target audience that isn’t the usual adolescent boy…
you should make Budgey raptor dolls! I bet they would sell like MAD!
I second this.
I third this sentiment…. I just want to cuddle them.
Anyone remember the large parakeet-dinosaur thing that he accidentally taught to sing “let the bodies hit the floor?”
Yes, and I can only imagine what these people did to triceratops or to other herbivores…
You know that’s based on an actual bird, right?
YouTube Evidence
(Here’s hoping the tags work)
Tags did not work.
https://youtu.be/uguXNL93fWg
There you go.
I can’t be the only one who desperately wants plushies of these raptor babies
Not by a long shot, but getting a line of plushies would be a pretty big investment. Would likely need thousands of dollars pledged just to start on the process of making them happen.
hence why we have Kickstarter, it’d probably do pretty well too
Wait, what happened to the nu metal raptor?
A wildlife preserve. With lots of tall grass.
Jared needs to teach them to catch pokemon.
Catch them, not eat them!
YES! DO THIS THING! They must wear the ash Ketchum hats, and have crossed bandoliers of pokeballs, and only work well with fossil or rock Pokemon
Raptor Red sees a wild trainer.
(dissolve to battle screen)
RR: Jaaa-red, I choo-se you!
Jared and Trainer Blue square off.
Jared uses Mr. Fish.
Trainer Blue is confused.
—
I have no idea how to write parrot dialogue. I want it to sound screechy.
What is going on in panel one with the commander and the raptor’s feet? Are they playing patty-cake, or thumb wrestling, or something else?
Also, do they have names?
I think he’s either trimming toe-claws or tickling the raptor’s feet.
It probably latched on to his shirt.
That makes a lot of sense too.
he’s just playing with it’s paws like people do with baby’s feet.
You never played with a pets foot? Every cat I have ever owned would wrap it’s fingers around one of mine. My great grandmother’s parrot liked to shake hands too. It would stand on the edge of it’s cage and hold up a single foot, you can reach out and it would wrap it’s foot around two of your fingers and shake your hand then let go.
My dogs like to shake hands.
Are these from a video game/movie, or are these a product of your beautiful imagination?
Haha, they’re mine
SoooOOooo… no copyright obstacles for fluffy raptor plushies, then? Aha! Let the clamoring redouble! (Sure, you can produce them in your, ha ha, copious free time.)
I’d buy one!
Anxious wyld type raptor screeching atop the fridge is my spirit animal. we need more of them.
Trainable animals that can actually hold and carry things in their hands while running full speed? There’d be a lot of good uses for those even if you need to breed them into fluffballs to train them…
This comic is everything I needed in life right now.
The puffball raptors do have a job…. they get people to buy any merch they’re on or made to look like them. In the nondescript spacefuture, they are the toys/pets that every kid wants. Just imagine if coela had puffball raptor merch… it’d probably sell out in a week or less.
Holy heck, I think this is literally the first time I’ve ever seen normal (?) feather bird raptor, and hot dang that thing is MAJESTIC. Screw the Jurassic Park lizzo raptors, that thing DESERVES to get more recognition.
pug raptors. love them.
Holy shit those hands are enormous in that last panel.
Maybe people would be more accepting of the idea that birds are reptiles if we made these cuties the mascot of the movement?
Birds aren’t reptiles, and neither were dinosaurs. Both are/were warm-blooded, among other differences.
Well, now I wish you’d illustrate a paleontology book! Love this strip!
This ‘wildlife preserve’ that the feral raptors are now living, is it perchance the same one my cats went when they got old?
Reminds me of the friendly alligator I saw on Nat Geo a few weeks back. Archaelogists were creating a computer model of a dinosaur and since alligators are from the same family tree they brought a live one in for reference. The guy (girl?) was do tame that they didn’t even need to sedate him or bind him, could just put him on table and tug on his legs and play with his toes, he didn’t mind. Great buddy but clearly wouldn’t work as a security, robbers would think it’s a stuffed alligator, that’s how lazy he was.
Their job is to be loved, Commander. Their job is to be LOVED!
But what about….
LOVED!
These guys need their own slice of life comic. Never get enough of the raptor cuteness
Neotenacity! A persistence of the traits that typify childhood. A huge number of evolutionary leaps have been Neotenacity, when creatures kinda sorta didn’t mature ‘adequately’, retained juvenile traits then continued to mature in some other direction. One of the markers is babyish proportions. Human are neotenic- we retain our large heads and hairless essential and, like, inquisitiveness.
You see it in dogs too, regardless of domestication. Those that *look* more like adult wolves, with the proportionately longer snoot etc, are frequently more instinct-driven, and are often herding/working dogs. Kelpos, sight hounds. Whereas those dog we train up as guard, companion, assistance animals retain puppyish qualities of play, inquisitiveness, forming close bonds- and big ol round puppy heads.
(HERPADERP)
I’d imagine, from the perspective of his superiors, that they largely fulfill the same role as SAR and Police Dog functions while also making the toys for Handlers that much more marketable.
“the feral velociraptors are living long happy lives in a wildlife preserve”
Good
Obviously the raptors are meant for highly classified anti-cataclysmic measures. See the deep red one? Cthulhu. The pink one? Mecha-HitlerStalin from parallel universe ß24. Orange-red? Grey goo. Ninja one hiding? Atarilla, in case the E.T. cartridges congeal and achieve sentience.
In a distant techno-space future where wars are fought via the power of marketing, these rainbow face-y tribbles are weapons on par with rail-delivered ordinance.
I’d still hug it.
Mass produce Fluff Raptors as a toy. You’ll become a billionaire.
It’s like they’ve been hybridized from the Red Queen’s croquet mallets and balls in Disney’s Alice In Wonderland.
Think this was the logic behind most toy dog breeds. :D
Are Jet’s raptors actually babies, or is he just unnecessarily coddling them? What exactly is the life cycle of a cloned adorable fluffy stubby raptor like?
And we’ve already seen that Raptor Squad is surprisingly good at stealth, theft, and high-class serving. I’m sure there are plenty of ways the future space navy could use them.
Easy, their job is to pull the cute animal con job where they all wander up to you looking cute and then either steal your wallet or mob and eat you.
as wonderfully adorable as they are, I do hope we get to see them do something appropriately badass someday(well besides riding little motorcycles or being butlers), like maybe have them fight an infestation of Gremlins or Critters or something along those lines
No no, don’t try to eat uncle’s beard. He needs that to highlight his manlyness.
This is actually brilliant scifi logic and I’m pleasantly surprised that as always, the most brilliant fiction is lifted from real life with minimal modifications
I still want to eat them. Rabbits are cute, plushy and adorable and I still want to know what rabbit tastes like.
There is an element of reality in this strip, which the creator probably knows of. Russia did a breeding program with foxes to breed for friendliness. Within less than 20 years or so, the foxes were acting like friendly Border Collies…
BUT, the gene also made their ears floppy, their coats patchwork and even their breeding cycle much more dog/Collie like.
Hmmm…If you can teach Raptors to ride mini-bikes by example…Can you teach them to make their own vehicles by example?
As long as Rock must have known Jet, how has this question not come up between them before now? This seems like the kind of question Jared would be asking Jet, on account of how much he loves creatures.
But then again, seeing big, buff Rock playing with the raptors while one nibbles on his jaw curtain is just funnier.
That last panel is how my husband holds our cat.
What purpose do floofy, semi-friendly animals serve?
Therapy animals! They help people with some psychological/mental issue deal with their stuff. I mean, when you’ve got an animal that needs feeding, you DO tend to think “while I’m here, I AM a bit hungry…” and since animals tend to let you know that they are hungry at certain times of the day, it DOES provide some structure to a day so time doesn’t keep slipping away in a haze. (although, if you live somewhere that likes to change their clocks in order to get more daylight in their days, you end up with animals complaining about being hungry at least an hour before you’d normally feed them)
(Although, if they can open doors, does that mean that they can operate can openers?)
Just came to the realization that you *could* breed cute fuzzy friendly raptors… in principle.
Look at wolves vs. golden retrievers.