I'm not sure what my favorite animal is. Let's decide it by a market! This March Mammal Madness inspired game will play out in phases. Aside from the Setup phase, expect each phase to last about a day or two, but I reserve the right to speed up the clock as I deem fit.
Setup phase:
Traders add animals to the market. After the setup phase is complete, traders will no longer be able to add animals to the market. Expect this phase to end some point after this other market resolves. Traders can add as many eligible animals as they wish to the market. To be eligible, add a real, non-microscopic, non-Homo-genus animal by following the provided formatting:
[common name] - [scientific name]
Example: Goldfish - Carassius auratus
A subspecies can be specified, but new animals must have a unique genus + species compares to all other animals already listed.
Selection phase:
The animal with the highest probability (the “Frontrunner”) and the lowest probability (the “Underdog”) will be selected to do battle. I will declare when the approximate cutoff time for when this selection is.
Discussion phase:
Traders can convince me why an animal should win the match up. DO NOT paste an AI / LLM output in the comments. However, I might read an AI / LLM conversation if you paste a link to it.
Battle phase:
The selected animals will appear on “The Field of Battle” in my imagination, but the animals won't necessarily feel that they are supposed to fight each other. At the very least, one should notice the other one.
By default, “The Field of Battle” will be the native habitat of the “Underdog”, and the boundaries of "The Field of Battle" will vary at my discretion. If the probabilities were miraculously a tie, the default habitat would be decided by a coin toss. Other animals may also be present as part of the habitat.
An animal wins the battle if they are last to be incapacitated, or if they are last to be capable of moving (for approximately 10 seconds), or if the other contender flees “The Field of Battle”. I myself will be the sole judge of how this plays out.
If the result doesn't seem manifestly obvious to me, I will use these attributes to guide my decision: temperament, weaponry, armor, body mass, speed, fight style, physiology, and motivation, all relative to the battle's habitat.
I will not take kindly to bribes. Don't even try.
I expect many matches to end by asphyxiation or by an animal wandering off. They won't know where the boundaries are, and they won't know they are in a tournament. They just want to survive and thrive.
Clarification comment on handling lifecycle morphology and parasitism.
If an animal loses a battle, it will be marked as "defeated". If an animal wins a battle, that animal will continue on in the tournament, and that animal will have its memory wiped of the battle. We loop back to the Selection phase after a Battle phase if we're not at the last animal. The last animal on the market that isn't defeated and isn't ineligible resolves YES. All others, NO. "Other" will not resolve YES, but it may be a useful answer during the Setup phase. I cannot resolve market answers until the game is over.
I will award at least 100 mana to the person who adds the animal that wins this tournament. I guarantee no refund of your mana if you add an ineligible animal.
Medals:
🥉: Battles won as Underdog
🥈: Battles won as Frontrunner
🥇: Won a battle while 10 or fewer animals remain. (This is awarded instead of a bronze or silver medal.)
Dashboard to derivative markets
There will be no AI clarifications added to this market's description.
I will not trade on this market.
The close date is a placeholder and has no bearing on this market.
This will be a very subjective market. Expect that something will be scuffed, and I will have to fix things on the fly.
1,000People are also trading
Battle phase #52!
@prismatic with the Frontrunner
Tiger - Panthera tigris
Vs.
@solarflare with the Underdog
Sulfur Cave Molly - Poecilia sulphuraria
Habitat: Cueva de las sardinas ciegas
The Tiger finds itself swimming in a sulfur river cave, Cueva de las sardinas ciegas, with the cave mollies. The cave mollies take note of the beast next to it and shimmer the water surface to instinctively ward off predators.
The tiger violently winces at the air it breathes. This air contains a thick cocktail of hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) gas. This is extremely toxic to the tiger. It takes a gulp of breath and immediately passes out, paralyzed. If the hydrogen sulfide gas didn't kill it, the drowning did.
The cave molly wins!
---Places I went for research---
See previous tiger research here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulphur_molly
"Poecilia sulphuraria is restricted to the Atlantic slope. The type locality is Baños del Azufre and their outlet stream, Arroyo Azufre, within the Grijalva River basin, about 12 km west of Teapa, on the border between the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco."
This is a sulfur springs
"Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), which is abundant in the sulfur molly's habitat, is a potent respiratory toxin; the few animals that tolerate it tend to be invertebrates."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nagqvwlDeU
There isn't much on YouTube for the cave molly, but you can listen to this guy monologue about them if you want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q68rm4CF4zU
I stand corrected! This is amazing footage! Look at the way they scatter the water surface when a predator swoops in.
AI was used. https://claude.ai/share/13dabc21-420c-4379-b487-557addbacf1b
The tiger heckin' dies.
It takes me to this Google Maps pin.
Look at the photos of this place on Maps!!! The tiger is very dead in that enclosed space.
I read the abstract, looked at the photos, and it also seems like the location of a sulfur spring vent is in this paper too! We'll choose this as our habtat.
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@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @121 @100Anonymous @vi
@Eternal A single of the animal is the chosen champion for combat. However, if it is the Underdog, it is possible that others of its kin or other symbiotic species may be present as a part of the habitat.
@Eternal For your example, assuming the tiger is the Underdog, it would almost certainly be facing off against a singular Frontrunner fire ant.
If the roles were inverted, the tiger would encounter a colony, but only one ant would be the designated champion for combat. If it dies, the tiger wins.
Discussion phase #52!
@prismatic with the Frontrunner
Tiger - Panthera tigris
Vs.
@solarflare with the Underdog
Sulfur Cave Molly - Poecilia sulphuraria
Discuss! (And tell me if the ping notification worked this time. I manually typed everything in from scratch this time.)
---Subscription pings---
@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @121 @100Anonymous @vi
Battle phase #52!
@prismatic with the Frontrunner
Tiger - Panthera tigris
Vs.
@solarflare with the Underdog
Sulfur Cave Molly - Poecilia sulphuraria
Habitat: Cueva de las sardinas ciegas
The Tiger finds itself swimming in a sulfur river cave, Cueva de las sardinas ciegas, with the cave mollies. The cave mollies take note of the beast next to it and shimmer the water surface to instinctively ward off predators.
The tiger violently winces at the air it breathes. This air contains a thick cocktail of hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) gas. This is extremely toxic to the tiger. It takes a gulp of breath and immediately passes out, paralyzed. If the hydrogen sulfide gas didn't kill it, the drowning did.
The cave molly wins!
---Places I went for research---
See previous tiger research here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulphur_molly
"Poecilia sulphuraria is restricted to the Atlantic slope. The type locality is Baños del Azufre and their outlet stream, Arroyo Azufre, within the Grijalva River basin, about 12 km west of Teapa, on the border between the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco."
This is a sulfur springs
"Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), which is abundant in the sulfur molly's habitat, is a potent respiratory toxin; the few animals that tolerate it tend to be invertebrates."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nagqvwlDeU
There isn't much on YouTube for the cave molly, but you can listen to this guy monologue about them if you want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q68rm4CF4zU
I stand corrected! This is amazing footage! Look at the way they scatter the water surface when a predator swoops in.
AI was used. https://claude.ai/share/13dabc21-420c-4379-b487-557addbacf1b
The tiger heckin' dies.
It takes me to this Google Maps pin.
Look at the photos of this place on Maps!!! The tiger is very dead in that enclosed space.
I read the abstract, looked at the photos, and it also seems like the location of a sulfur spring vent is in this paper too! We'll choose this as our habtat.
---Subscription pings---
@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @121 @100Anonymous @vi
Does this ping work?
---Subscription pings---
@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @121 @100Anonymous @vi
Okay, I'm going to science this. Which of the following ping you?
Method 4: desktop comment, pasting the entire battle writeup, deleting it, then manually typing the handle and using the dropdown menu.
@moobunny Hm... Alright, no idea what's happening. I really don't want to use the @traders ping for every update. But I might have to nix the subscription pings.
Discussion phase #51!
@samoel with the Frontrunner
Meerkat - Suricata suricatta
Vs.
@moobunny with the Underdog
Yellow-Lipped Sea Krait - Laticauda colubrina
Discuss!
---Subscription pings---
@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @121 @100Anonymous @vi
@Quroe Oh I missed this! I’ll make a post in defense of the sea krait later. Spoiler: the “sea” part will figure heavily.
@moobunny I also haven’t been getting notifications for this recently, I’ve checked manually a few times here and found a post with no notification
@Gen Okay, this is interesting. Multiple users are coming forth with this experience. I am using the same pinging method and making sure to use the menu that pops up when I pull an @ handle. Any ideas on what might be happening?
@Quroe Let’s start off with some Steve Irwin! There’s a sea krait at the start of this clip: https://youtu.be/dXKit_DCgMY?si=bkKwjLe7bIYNtD7m
As you can see they are totally at home in the ocean. They are highly venomous, though that clip suggests they might not use it on a meerkat unless they were attacked or they wanted to eat it, and as far as I can tell a meerkat is likely a little big to be easy prey for a sea krait.
Wikipedia helpfully provides us with a video of a sea krait absolutely horking down a small moray eel.
File:Sea Snake eating Moray Eel, Fiji (Laticauda colubrina vs. Gymnothorax sp.).webm - Wikipedia
When hunting, yellow-lipped sea kraits frequently head into deep water far from land, but return to land to digest meals, shed skin, and reproduce.
So it should be reasonable to find our sea krait in deep water far from land, which would be my preference for the field of battle. Unless…
Each year during the warmer months of September through December, males gather on land and in the water around gently sloping areas at high tide [to mate].
It seems they return to land seasonally to mate. I’m not sure if they can also be found in deep water hunting during those months, but fortunately it’s not mating season currently.
I think this one mostly comes down to the field of battle.
Battle phase #51!
@samoel with the Frontrunner
Meerkat - Suricata suricatta
Vs.
@moobunny with the Underdog
Yellow-Lipped Sea Krait - Laticauda colubrina
Habitat: A coral reef
The meerkat finds itself underwater around a coral reef. A sea krait winding through the ocean notices a furry animal floating in the current.
This meerkat breathes in much the same way a submarining billionaire doesn't. The meerkat's lungs suddenly get very, very wet -- leading to death by drowning.
The curious sea krait gets a fairly easy meal. Sea krait wins!
---Places I went for research---
See previous meerkat research here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow-lipped_sea_krait
The video that was linked above by @moobunny from this article is a great example of feeding behavior.
Judging by the shadows of the sea krait in the video, I suspect the lighting source is not from the diver, or at least, is not only from the diver. I believe this animal lives in the photic zone, where light can still reach. We'll say it's about 200m deep max based on the picture in the wikipedia wrticle I'm hyperlinking here.
Semiaquatic. Can move on sea and land.
"When hunting, yellow-lipped sea kraits frequently head into deep water far from land, but return to land to digest meals, shed skin, and reproduce."
Do you have a particular time of year you reproduce in...?
Yup, September through December.
https://youtu.be/dXKit_DCgMY?si=bkKwjLe7bIYNtD7m
Won't bite a human. I suspect this means that the venom is only meant for prey already stuck in its mouth.
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@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @121 @100Anonymous @vi
@Gen @wasabipesto I'm not sure what's going on here. The notifications seem borked for people. Any ideas?