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, 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.
Additional clarifications seen here and in the comments following it.
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 of 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.)
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.
1,000I may ask for a bonus day beyond the 24 to 48-hour time boundary to research this battle. I think the discussion here is important, and I don't want to rush this if it has a profound effect on future parasite battles. Everybody deserves a chance to chime in. I'm invoking this rule to justify this action:
This will be a very subjective market. Expect that something will be scuffed, and I will have to fix things on the fly.
Funnily enough, I did have to fix something. And the animal is a fly! Get dad joke'd on.
Discussion phase #9!
@Gen with the Frontrunner
Hippopotamus - Hippopotamus amphibius
Vs.
@TheAllMemeingEye with the Underdog
New World Screwworm - Cochliomyia hominivorax
The titan versus a parasitic species. Discuss!
---Subscription pings---
@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @vi @121
Discussion phase #9!
@Gen with the Frontrunner
Hippopotamus - Hippopotamus amphibius
Vs.
@TheAllMemeingEye with the Underdog
New World Screwworm - Cochliomyia hominivorax
The titan versus a parasitic species. Discuss!
---Subscription pings---
@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @vi @121
@Quroe I assume the preliminary discussions about this matchup during the previous phase will be considered without requiring repetition, right?
@SimonWestlake Yes. No matter where they are, they have been considered as long as they aren't AI slop. If one feels compelled to post AI output, it must be in the form of a chat link.
I may ask for reiteration if arguments are substantially buried in the comments, though.
Generally speaking, what sways me most are arguments with citations attached to them. If you can make it easy for me to research, you're being convincing.
@TheAllMemeingEye Okay, help me out here with your critter. Do you prefer the adult fly form, or the parasitic larval form for this fight? Which do you think suits it better here?
I may ask for reiteration if arguments are substantially buried in the comments, though.
I have some devious edge cases in mind that depend on the technicalities established in an earlier comment thread, I'll check them and get back to you shortly
@TheAllMemeingEye Keep in mind, this is setting the precident for future parasite matchups. How I handle this needs to be fair and broadly applicable.
@TheAllMemeingEye Here was our original conversation. It looks like I had "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it" energy.
Say hello to the bridge.
I'm debating whether or not I'm capable of making the hippo itself The Field of Battle, and that the Field's bounds move with it. I don't think that's consistent with the rules as I have them now, but let's entertain that moving Field of Battle thought for a moment.
Let's pigeonhole your options here.
If your screwworm champion is an adult fly, then it will probably fly away and lose.
If your screwworm champion is an egg, I think that's microscopic and is ineligible.
If your screwworm champion is a larva, then it's either parasitizing the hippo itself, or the hippo encounters an infested animal. If it is actively parasitizing, it adopts the movement of the host relative to the Earth, and it probably won't lose to the movement rule.
If it's parasitizing the hippo, it doesn't make much sense to have the Field of Battle's bounds locked in relative to the Earth. They'd both leave it at practically the same time. So, in this case, it makes more sense to bound the Field relative to the hippo.
(Or the screwworm is a pupating larva on the ground, and loses due to the inability to move for 10 seconds.)
I may ask for a bonus day beyond the 24 to 48-hour time boundary to research this battle. I think the discussion here is important, and I don't want to rush this if it has a profound effect on future parasite battles. Everybody deserves a chance to chime in. I'm invoking this rule to justify this action:
This will be a very subjective market. Expect that something will be scuffed, and I will have to fix things on the fly.
Funnily enough, I did have to fix something. And the animal is a fly! Get dad joke'd on.
@Quroe ok, so after checking, though you did find the comment where I suggested a few potential strategies (which unfortunately don't work in this case), this is the earlier comment thread I was thinking of in which some useful rules were established:
https://manifold.markets/Quroe/what-is-quroes-favorite-animal#4hpxmkb6dem
In particular, the establishment of the battlefield boundaries and the allowance of tailoring for maximum fitness seem to open multiple creative routes for scenarios granting the screwworm an advantage.
@Quroe Where in the description does the justification for getting to choose the life cycle come from? I was betting assuming that it had to be the adult.
I acknowledge that you have recently said things that made it clear you viewed the larva as a possibility if it's macroscopic, but the implications of that did not sink in ig. Either way, that seems like information that should be in the description.
@SimonWestlake Fair criticism. I added a link to the comment chain that TheAllMemeingEye pointed to to the description.
@Quroe New potential strategies:
Be a larva infesting an arboreal mammal (e.g. sloth) or bird [1] high up in the rainforest canopy, so that the heavy hippo immediately falls through the branches and out of the battle area.
Be a larva infesting a livestock animal [1] on a farm, so that the farm fence prevents the livestock fleeing the battle area, and the farmer likely kills, lures away, or otherwise chases off the hippo once they notice it threatening their livestock. Even if the hippo kills the livestock first, the screw worm itself remains alive and mobile [2].
Be a larva that, alongside hundreds of others [3], is infesting an extremely injured and dying wild animal [4] which will be too weak to flee the battle area, and possibly be somewhat repulsive to the hippo. Even if the hippo kills the animal first, the screw worm itself remains alive and mobile [2].
(Wacky wildcard) Be a larva that is infesting one of the hippos Pablo Escobar brought over to Colombia [6]. To avoid the insect repellent sweat and thick skin, it could be infesting the inner corner of the eye [5]. Surely if there's one thing that can defeat a hippo in a fight, it's a family-bonded herd of hundreds [7] of pain-enraged, fast-growing [8], COCAINE HIPPOS [9].
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia_hominivorax
[1]
The New World screwworm fly infests wild and domestic animals, and less frequently birds and humans.
[2]
Should the wound be disturbed during this time, the larvae burrow or "screw" deeper into the flesh, hence the larva's common name.
[3]
Screwworm females lay 250–500 eggs in the exposed flesh of warm-blooded animals.
[4]
The maggots can cause severe tissue damage or even death to the host.
[5]
Healthy areas with soft tissue or body orifices can also be infested, such as the inner corner of the eye (medial canthus) or the perineum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamuses_in_Colombia
[6]
Four hippopotamuses were first kept by the drug lord Pablo Escobar in his private zoo in the early 1980s, and upon his death in 1993, they were allowed to wander his unattended estate. The hippos eventually broke out of the estate and were left to roam the outside area, due to difficulty in containment.
[7]
Another study in 2023 revealed the number of existing hippos to be even higher than previously estimated, with already between 181–215 individuals.
[8]
The Colombian hippos reach sexual maturity earlier than African hippos.
[9]
In 2013, the National Geographic Channel produced a documentary about the species in Colombia titled Cocaine Hippos.
@TheAllMemeingEye But would this allow for the hippo being in it's embryo stage? And inside another Hippo?
@TheAllMemeingEye Keep in mind that there is 1 other parasite on the roster, the giant nematode. Whatever handling I use here propagates to that animal too.
@JussiVilleHeiskanen I think it's vanishingly unlikely for a screwworm to infect an embryo. Screwworms infect open wounds that are exposed to the environment. Look up images of this at your own peril. (Thanks for the nightmares, TheAllMemeingEye.)
I don't think infesting an embryo is fair for this fight.
@JussiVilleHeiskanen Or maybe I'm not hitting the point you were getting at.
I would argue that the definition of "fitness" here is a bit subjective and varies from person to person. That's an inevitable pitfall of how these market rules work. Hence, we discuss. The point of this market is to be educational and spur people to learn about animals, so assume I will be open to accepting shenanigans if they are well researched and rules-lawyered hard enough.
Generally speaking, I would assume an embryonic hippo, or most embryonic animals for that matter, is strictly less "fit" than their adult form. Some animals may get an exception to this, and most parasites would be allowed these exceptions because their general "fitness" is derived from the entirety of their lifecycle.
@Quroe terribly sorry for the nightmares! I guess I'm so used to super grim stuff these days that it didn't occur to me it might cause distress for others, I was thinking about it purely from the perspective of "hey, that could allow crazy game dynamics, and wouldn't it be hilarious if something this grotesque was the winner, and this might very slightly contribute to raising awareness of extreme wild animal suffering".
@Quroe regarding embryos, I think I agree that for hippos it wouldn't necessarily be a fitness advantage.
Sure, it would gain the benefit of being protected inside its mother's womb, but unlike a screwworm, it would be relying on its placental blood supply, so I imagine it would die of oxygen deprivation very soon if the mother died.
On top of that, the mother would likely be significantly smaller thus weaker than if it had just been an adult male in the first place [1].
The final nail in the coffin is that the whole reason the screwworm can make use of infested hosts is that they are the habitat in its larval stage, and as the underdog it gets habitat advantage. Meanwhile for this specific battle the hippo is the frontrunner, so the hippo embryo wouldn't even get a mother, and just gets plopped unceremoniously on the ground to die.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamus
[1]
Hippos are recognisable for their […] large size: adults average 1.5 t (1.7 short tons) for bulls (males) and 1.3 t (1.4 short tons) for cows (females).
@moobunny So that one's weird. I haven't done a deep dive yet, but it seems to have a parasitic larval phase of its life, and I'm on the fence about if that is considered microscopic.
@TheAllMemeingEye Plead your case. Convince me on if that phase of life should count as tournament legal. I think you brought it up before.
@Quroe I’m seeing that the larval form grows up to 17 mm, which shouldn’t be problem?
I guess I’m thinking that an adult screwworm fly could pose a major danger to a lot of the large mammals on this list, though perhaps not a hippo due to their insect repellant, but it would be by laying eggs in the mammal’s flesh which would create lingering wounds which would in turn feed the larvae. But even if this proved fatal for the mammal, the fly would have made itself scarce well before anything happened. Likewise if the individual “contestant” were a larva infesting the flesh of the mammal, the mammal might be the field of battle, and the larva might grow up into an adult fly and make itself scarce before the mammal succumbed to the wounds. I suppose in either case the screwworm has lost the matchup, but has it really?
@moobunny I suppose there’s no real issue there, just the tournament format being unfavorable to the screwworm. Of course, my thoughts on the matchup are my own and you can interpret things as you will.
@moobunny I was thinking very similarly. While the screwworm can win the war, it will almost certainly lose the battle as defined here, however you look at it.
@SimonWestlake I think if I were running this tournament, I'd give each organism an objective in each encounter. It might be to eat and reproduce, it might be to hunt prey, it might simply be to survive - in which case running away would be a win. For a screwworm fly, successfully infesting an organism would be a clear win, even if it died in the process. But that's a different tournament.
@Quroe hahaha, that's what I get opening my damn mouth 😅
I'm a little prone to dropping interests over time, but if I'm still using Manifold when this market ends and I think I'm likely to want to continue for the duration of the market, I'll take up the torch!