Unsorted
Quarray eels. Originally creatures of cliffs above the sea, reveling in the waters of high tide and hunting seagulls for the rest of the day... Some time ago, they somehow got into the slopes of ravines running through the Everfree. Needs further research. The water left in the holes after floods or soaking through the ground has to be the reason why they are able to breathe and survive. Or is it possible that they are able to breathe through air sacs or primitive lungs? How the hay am I supposed to find out, when they immediately cannibalize all of their deceased kin?!...
Star spiders seem to be endemic to the Castle of the Two Sisters and the surrounding areas. Though this might be just because no one looked for them in other places. The Equestrian Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures considers these not rare enough to pay them any attention, so what? Should I travel all over Equestria by myself, looking into every cave? Now I really wonder if I'll ever be able to finish these reports. And I have to remember to get rid of these jottings this time...
...
What are you reading now is the sheet of paper I use as a bookmark and some sort of message for those who like to poke their muzzle into my unfinished notes...
I'll just ask you... How did you get there?
No, don't say anything. Or say whatever you want, the paper won't mind... probably. Though I understand that you could have easily wandered in here by accident. There aren't many houses in the Everfree, after all. And an open notebook on a lectern is like a beacon for any curious guest, am I right?
Well, now you have read it all. Or maybe you opened it at this last page...
So, do you have anything to say about everything you have just read? Except for the work-in-progress parts, of course. Don't think anything bad of me, but I really don't want to discuss my unfinished work. Reading anything in that state might result in you misinterpreting something... and that's something I want to avoid. So, feel free to leave me a note below. Also, in case you have an acquaintance at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns or know some normal pony working for the E.S.f.t.P.o.R.C., it would be great if you told them what you have read here. As you have likely seen above, I could really use a helping hoof.
I'm afraid that this is all I have to say, so now please take leave. If you read carefully, I reckon you'll know how to behave to make it home safely. Good luck on your journey.
Sincerely,
H. G.
PS: Oh, please be careful around my flock of cockatrice hatchlings. They all have blindfolds on, but who knows what could happen?
I hope you enjoyed this little scientific trip into the Everfree 
If you want to read an actual story obeying these rules, I recommend taking a look at The Forest Pony. This guide is pretty much an in-universe thing in that tale.
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7667212 I take it like you were satisfied with my take on Timberwolves. Thanks!
And yeah, that's true. Maybe it's because we don't have tied hands by many laws as Hasbro and we can inspire each other...
This was realy intresting.
I realy like most of your ideas. Especially the Timberwolf one.
Althrough in my headcanon they have a way more closer bond whit Zap Apple trees.
7667281 Thank you
Also, stronger bond with Zap Apples? I'm curious to hear that theory of yours!
What does Natura Semper Liberi mean in English?
7668796 Nature of Everfree, it's from latin Natura-Nature, Semper-Ever, Liberi-Free. It's based on real biological books being named (or completely written) in latin.
7667330
Well in my theory:
The reason why Timberwolfs feels the Zap Aplle tree blooming is because they need the magic of the Zap Apple tree to creat new Timberwolfs. They have a symbiotic relationship whit each other.
This can be a reason why ther is so many Timberwolfs is close to the edge of the Everfree forest. They want to go to the Sweet Apple Acres Zap Apple Orchad to protect it.
7669433 Ooh, interesting and good reasons too! I'm always glad to see someone thinking about what they saw (not just) in the show
Thanks for adding your story to the W!
I'll read it posthaste!
7709785 You're welcome.
7710471
7710471
Philosophy hmm?
7766945 I consider it a philosophy about wildlife, completed with science.
Some interesting examinations of these various creatures. The phoenix mating ritual I found particularly clever.
7899663 Thank you. Clever birds deserve clever rituals... However, you can find something similar even in real nature - see green palolo worms
7900068 Huh.
Learn something new every day.
7929862
Don't get me started on cephalopods and their camouflage skills. Indonesian mimic octopus and its relatives with less audacious camouflage strategies. End of story.
7929907 Sorry if I'm misreading... but did I upset you somehow? If so, I apologize.
7929937
No, I meant it more as a tongue-in-cheek "Those guys are so good at camouflage that it's not even fair."
...it is different to be on the other side of the "Did I upset you?" for once though. Normally, I'm the clueless one.
7929954 Ah, I see.
Glad I could let you experience the 'difference' if it was pleasant for you.
7929978
Novel, amusing in hindsight... I'm not sure I'd call it full-on pleasant though. A miscommunication is a miscommunication.
Really cool story
Would be nice to have more stories exploring equestria's biology like this
7995355 Thank you
I was already thinking about a sequel, but unlike with those creatures, beasts such as Cipatctli, Tatzlwurm, Slingtails, Bugbear or Fruit bats got next to none screen time and/or their behaviour in the show was too straight to give me anything to start any bigger theories.
Truth is, I can't really help myself in not implementing biologist characters and my other story - The Forest Pony - isn't an exception. However, there are mostly things from this story and then some remarks about existing creatures.
8112469 You're welcome. I'm glad there is a group focusing on such interesting, yet widely ignored topic
8272688
True :(
8443758
Well, the thing is, the food herbivores eat is generally not all that nutrition-rich. Thus, if there will be only a few patches of grass left for the goat, it won't be enough to power up the whole body.
Sentient, indeed. Thank you for catching it.
Well, they are hard mostly on the outside, so it's just about having enough force to get through their thick scales and kind of squeezing them out
9386655
Anywhere from the birth of humanity and villages to the. Middle Ages. The time periods modern people my age don't care about.
9386720
I see. Actually liked learning about that times. Always felt much more interesting to me than, let's say, everything after the revolutionary year of 1848
9386736
For me that year things get boring is around 1400. Guns, tech and logic make history less fun
I picked the whole thing up - all eight chapters of it - about an hour ago and couldn't put it down. Quite commendable, the level of detail you put into describing each creature. Made learning about them all the more enjoyable. I felt like I was watching a documentary on the forest. Good job. I liked it.
9416524
Thank you for the kind words, I’m glad the story worked as it should
Wow. I honestly can't believe I didn't find this earlier. I really like guides to the various creatures of a fictional world, and this was really good!
Do you plan on making an updated version in the future?
9819194
Thank you for reading, glad you enjoyed this!
Well, I plan to revisit this one soon and maybe tweak it a little here and there as I feel it’d deserve some more polishing. And actually, I have a sequel in the works
called Natura Equestriana. Would like to finish that one within a month or so. And also as the Author’s Note states, my other story, The Forest Pony shows some tidbits of this book in use, as well as the discovery of more facts about the creatures.
Interesting exercise in speculative biology! The danger of phoenix feathers randomly bursting into flame makes more sense to me than their causing deafness, which the show ended up introducing.
I didn't expect the "except birds" stipulation to be there, but I appreciated it.
10350216
Oh, thank you for the kind words, I’m glad you enjoyed it. (And I honestly feel a little bad about the state of this old story—it’s currently undergoing a rather massive rewrite, mostly in terms of flow and intelligibility, but I also want to reference a few things in a more refined manner and cut some pointless filler.)
I have to admit I haven’t seen the last two seasons of the show, so I was completely unaware of this. It indeed makes little to no sense. Though now I kind of want to check out the episode it came out from.
I’m glad you did. I try to usher in a thing or two about modern biology—especially evolutionary biology and taxonomy—into my stories. I‘m sort of hoping to educate a tiny fraction of the populace, maybe even teach them some (bio)logical thinking.
10350258
You're welcome, I look forward to reading the rewrite!
It's from "Molt Down" in Season 8, which also introduces a previously unseen species (the roc) and new information about dragon biology to the series, so it's at least interesting for biological worldbuilding.
Well this is Strange Truth again and I have some hints for you to look into for starters there is a more naturally created sentient creature called a Lake Bunyip (no relation to the incorrectly named tricorned Bunyip) who bear some connection to the creature commonly called a chimera they are also more amicable if you have food that they like and unless you address something inappropriate they are liable to talk your ears off if they like you
10445208
Also, thank you for reading and leaving all those comments, Strange Truth, I really appreciate it. I hope this story gave you some inspiration for your own fic!
Interesting, I’ll have to look into it
10445605
Hey uumm sorry if my goofy comments weirded you out Strange truth is at least if I actually turn this idea into a story the main character of the fic I'm trying to write and what I was doing was kind of imagining how he would react to the information in this story as it is displayed as an informing text on wild life which that character I was kind of role playing as is into...again sorry if I made you uncomfortable
10446077
Oh, you got me a bit confused with the name, but your comments definitely didn’t make me uncomfortable or weirded out or anything. No harm done, no need to apologise
I did. Very much so.
I just fear that, in retrospect, I would not have read this fascinating work to begin with, seeing as I don't tend to snoop around in other ponies' houses. But hey, apparently it was meant to be read.
Thank you for writing!
11170217
Thank you for reading!
I would say... eventually, yes. That's the great thing about evolution, it's a process that just does not stop. (Except for the total annihilation of the entire ecosystem.) We might observe something and just assume 'this is how this is', but in truth, it came from somewhere and is going places. Maybe the parasprite population is dwindling already. Maybe the birds haven't developed that technique quite yet. Maybe the parasprites are already recovering from that change by developing a countermeasure of sorts. Possibilities, possibilities.
You're quite welcome. I hope I didn't annoy you by swamping your feed. I just... really, really like world-building and you did such a fine job.
It is a chimera living in a world of magic, but explaining everything away as just 'magic being magic' is boring. I'm glad you like the idea.
Once a hydra is old enough, the oldest heads might even stop being sentient and just act as an additional sensory organ for the rest. Two indicators how you can tell you're facing a truly ancient hydra? First off, there's a ball of flesh with dozens upon dozens of extending necks and a myriad of heads rolling towards you. Secondly, it's really cranky because of all the constant headaches.
Tragically, being animals, we are part of nature and as such-... no, we do not need to have this discussion.
Indeed. And we would never dare, of course.
...
Could we drag that 'dark'-tagged Twilight in for a moment? The one that constantly screams 'for science' for somesuch? It's for, uh, scientific purposes.
Your kindness brightens my day a little.
11170275
I have to wonder: are you familiar with the Red Queen hypothesis?
No worries. Your comments brightened up my day.
11170291
I am not. Care to enlighten me?
11170346
All right, lecture mode on. If you're familiar with Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, you may remember a sequence where Alice and the Red Queen (depending on where you're from, it may have been the Black Queen) have to race through a rapidly moving landscape if they hope to stay in the same spot. This exchange takes place during that scene.
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Alice_queen2.jpg
An evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen and his followers used this as a simile to the arm's race--yes, it's also sometimes likened to the Cold War--between parasites and hosts. Both have to keep evolving, arming themselves and learning to exploit the others weaknesses, over and over. Should one of them stall, they lose and go extinct. If they want to stay alive, that is, remain in the same spot, they have to keep evolving, keep running forward. This is the short version, but I believe it'll suffice. And of course, it works for pretty much all interactions, both inter- and intraspecific one (e.g. the hypothesis can be used to explain why women tend to have an hourglass-shaped figure). Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature is a great book that popularised this hypothesis, so if you're into evolutionary biology, I highly recommend reading that one. Some of the information in it (e.g. humans having around 75,000 genes), is rather dated, but most of it is minor details.
11170394
Well, I do love a good, old lecture. Thank you! (For both enlightenment and the book recommandation.) I was not aware of its name or the origin of that name, but I do understand the principle.
There might be a story that tells all there is to tell. Most don't, however, preferring a considerably narrower focus, usually to make a point. Which results in narratives offering a brief glimpse, a window into these races. We do not tend to focus on the possibility that a race has taken place, or will take place, as it can be hard to correctly identify indicators of such. Instead, we tend to see an ongoing race - which means we can watch one side win, or gain an advantage, or lose one, or both sides struggling. There's always movement.
It's just that, usually, we seem to have a tendency to take things at face value. They just 'are'. Because it's easier than trying to figure out where things came from/how they came to be that way or where they are heading/how they will evolve.
Eh. I feel like I’m rambling. I shouldn’t be allowed to comment at this hour.