Question I really should MST3K this, but...

I really should MST3K this, but I have a feeling I'm gonna need it. I'm trying to work out the structural changes for a GSD student who was born with no head. I figure the brain is down in the pelvis, eyes are on either side of the bladder...Further then that I'm not sure.

So I take it his head really is up his ass....

Now I'm wondering how much of the cervical vertebrae and musculature is necessary not only to keep the head where it needs to be, but also to stabilize the shoulder joints.

Also, if the neck isn't present, the thyroid and parathyroid glands have to go somewhere.

Sounds a bit like Arnin Zola

Why not a decentralized nervous system, so his 'brain' is literally all over his body?

Somewhere there needs to be the line: "Careful! You could poke an eye out with that!"

Bek D Corbin wrote: Why not a decentralized nervous system, so his 'brain' is literally all over his body?

That I didn't think of.

null0trooper wrote: Somewhere there needs to be the line: "Careful! You could poke an eye out with that!"

She's a little gun shy for that reason.

Wait, so they're headless, but they've got arms and legs and stuff? And a neck?

Do you want them to be able to speak?

Does she have a huge, gaping mouth at her navel, like the Blemmyes of myth and legends, or some versions of the Anthropophagi legend?

those pictures make me wonder about females.
"I thought I told you to look me in the eye, but you just keep staring at my breasts "

"Same difference"

would crying be spilled milk?

I am not sure(*) that it is biologically or physically possible for such life forms to exist. At least not without resorting to Lovecraftian geometry.

Heads evolve for good biological and survival reasons after all (a mobile sensor platform that helps discover threats before they can get too close) and brains are located as close to those sensors as possible to minimise the processing time. Putting a neck between the head and the center of mass is a evolutionary cheap way of making that sensor platform more mobile and thereby more useful for survival.

Which really invites the question how much sense mutant biology must make and how much can be catered to the fevered imagination of medieval illustrators who were seeking to shock their audience and had about as much understanding of physiology as a 4 year old drawing stick figures.


(* read, I am reasonably certain that it isn't)

Hmm... arguable. Fish don't have necks, or clearly distinct heads to an outside viewer (if you can see the skeleton it's a different matter), for instance. So it is possible in principle to conceive of a near-humanoid with a head integrated into the main body.
From an evolutionary standpoint, no, it does not make much sense. Any obvious advantages (like better protection for the airways, as well as blood vases and nerves that connect to the brain) would not compensate for other disadvantages.
But, well, in the Whateley mutant context, evolutionary advantage is a bit beside the point. It's strongly suspected that the mutant's mind can influence the BIT. So, some kid with a morbid fascination for those medieval illustrations (as well as a few comic villains, such as MODOK, Arnin Zola and Egg-Fu) might end up as such.

Erianaiel wrote: Which really invites the question how much sense mutant biology must make and how much can be catered to the fevered imagination of medieval illustrators who were seeking to shock their audience and had about as much understanding of physiology as a 4 year old drawing stick figures.

For the Whateley Universe, the Body Image Template is largely independent of eukaryotic evolution. Some canon characters exist only as sentient light or stone. So, Cryptic's looking for what other accomodations are needed for one mutant being modified according to a higher-dimensional template.

For mammals, skulls are very useful things. They provide bony sockets to protect the eyeballs and to stabilize the interocular distance for the two eyes needed for binocular vision. Outer ears amplify sound into inner ears that are also separated to provide directional information, but the skull keeps the geometry of the two systems stable while the visual and sonic sensors are steered in three dimensions. Image fusion is very important to visual processing and distance judgement. Visual processing becomes a magnitude more difficult if the sensor geometry keeps changing. Skulls are also great things for supporting heat-shedding sinuses, that double as sounding boards and cavities for communication.

If her nose is below the diaphragm, her airways are either inverted and passing through the diaphragm, or the trachea, etc. are routed around it before entering the chest. That breathing tube would be far more vulnerable than a trachea: the center of the body's center of mass is a primary target for attack and she can't lower her head to block a strike. Even doing situps could be dangerous. Probably not, then.


You know, the "face" could be entirely vestigial except for the mouth guarding the business end of her digestive track. Bring air in through holes in the sternum (perhaps being able to completely close them for swimming?) and borrow room from (or add to) the chest so you can place the sinuses behind that structure. Instead of relying on vision and hearing, use empathic senses for target tracking and telepathy for communication and target track prediction (or even target steering).

If eyes, steering muscles, and eyesockets are needed, there isn't a great place to mount them analogous to the front, top, or side of skull. The clavicles might be the least worst sites. Not loving a one-over-one configuration for attaching to the sternum except for a third eye to align the left and right images to.

tl,dr: Pretty much what Sir Lee wrote

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As to the medieval illustrators, some of the inspiration may have come from seeing or hearing desscriptions of people with parasitic twins.

I had been considering that Schol-R-LEA, though for an alien. I was thinkig she does have a bit of a neck that is topped with a mouth. I was also considering she's a low level clairvoyant.

How low level? Well, at least it'll help her not trip and stuff?

No eyes, just PSI?

Yes eyes ad her range is she can see like her eyes are in the normal spot, but it's unreliable and she's not used to that vantage point.