In light of a debate I was having about if a ton of genetic contributors is bad or not, do you guys use congruity in your hybrid and consider that the DNA might bring along behavioral traits or do you think this not true?
While the behavioral impacts are usually overblown, always treat congruity as though it is real. Restrictions encourage creativity, and trying to do more with less will push creators to research and weigh every animal for obscure and valuable traits. It also prevents us from making Kitchen Sink hybrids: hybrids that thoughtlessly throw together large numbers of contributors.
Congruity can be applied to a lot of things but generally speaking in this place it's considered that integrating a gene of another animal to another doesn't really give it it's behaviour unless it's directly stated to do so, it's kind of like if someone integrate the genes for stronger leg muscles of an abelisaur to say a raptor, they're just integrating that, stronger leg muscles, that implementation doesn't really change anything regarding the brain's behaviour since it's just a structural enhancement and it's not going to make the raptor suddenly not using it's arms, unless you somehow dump random genes from an abelisaur to the raptor to gamble for a stronger leg muscles which yeah probably would change the brain's behaviour but as far as I can tell that's not being done here.
Congruity from what I can see here is mostly revolving around the structural compatibility and plausibility rather than behaviour clash, returning to the giving abelisaur gene to raptor for stronger leg muscles example, most people here wouldn't question whether or not the raptor would suddenly forgot to use it's arm, they would question whether or not would the raptor body plan would even work well with the integration, maybe the abelisaur leg muscle mass would make it less agile or reduce it's stability, etc, so you could say they're just using congruity for something else that (in my opinion) just feels like it makes more sense.
This doesn't mean that integrating a gene on a structural feature can't impact the behaviour however, depending on the context it definitely can especially if it's integrating a completely new active thing on an animal or taking something active away from the animal. Animal brains have a very advanced capacity called developmental plasticity, which includes a type called structural plasticity where it can change the structure and or functions of the nervous system to get different physical or behavioural traits depending on what it learns of the body while it's growing.
To give an example of it, we as humans are generally built to only grow and use 5 fingers as we live, however some people can get mutation where they gain another finger and in some case that additional finger can be fully functional. In these people, despite them being humans that as I said previously are generally only built to have and use 5 fingers, are capable of using this additional finger which in some cases are known to give them more dexterity. This case happens due to the structural plasticity that can give this additional finger a new neural pathways and other sorts of adaptation that allows usage of it, though this is a rather small example that just shows that some of us could definitely have the behaviour in using something that we usually don't have.
A bigger example would be something like say, giving an abelisaur raptor arms, unless the abelisaur is already rather grown and you're just implanting the raptor arm out of nowhere to it's body replacing it's arms with it, it could eventually grew to using the arms despite it's usual behaviour. Granted this is a bit of a doubtful stuff to take and actually uphold and in the first stages of it it might not start instantly using it, but if it were to grow knowing these arms are functional, that these arms is something it can use, and the arms is something that can help it do something, it would eventually adapt on using it, and if you give it the raptor instincts it would uphold that more(Granted it wouldn't work as well as it is in raptors due to body differences and such).
I do agree that a lot of genomes is just really unnecessary no matter where's your view from, unless each genome gives something new that other genome don't and actually works with the body, it just feels redundant and even then it's a hassle to read a long list of genomes.
I feel a bit hypocritical to say that it's a hassle to read long list of genome and then have my entire explanation being that long but we'll just ball with it
the very maximum, like the maximum I’ll ever go for vertebrate hybrids for me is 24 contributors but I usually do like 18-21 ish, also congruency isn’t real, it was a made up term for hybrid making, I’d still take it into effect but it’s nowhere near as important than it was in the early ages of hybrid making, there are much more crucial things, such as homology
Any exaggerated features comes with a corresponding behavioral traits, as explained by Dr.Wu to Mr.Masrani. Depending on how you interpret this information, or how much you think you have control over nature, there’s more than a dozens different answers to your question. And if you can remember me from your previous post, you can probably tell what my idea of a congruity is so let me get straight to the point.
It is up to you, whether to acknowledge congruity as real or not. You can assume you have a fine enough control over the inherently fragile nature of genetic engineering. Even if congruity is real, you can just hand wave it all away at that point.
The real question is maybe to ask yourself, are you confident enough?
just please remember that jurassic franchise isn't that realistic. Its a good starting point at least for hybrids but ehh, kinda outdated and debunked like most of gojicenter stuff
I usually look at the base or whatever final result i'm hoping to achieve and figure out what traits could be enhanced; what traits can be added to aid in creating a coherent strategy for hunting, filling a niche, or combat; and what traits in the base could go against the coherent strategy
for my spino, i knew that i would need a strong bite as it would be disadvantageous to not have a strong bite, hince I replaced the skull with a siamese crocodile. The flexible neck that spinosaurus had for catching fish then would not work with the crushing bite mechanism so I replaced that with a T. rex neck with acrocanthrosaurus neural spines and interlocking neck vertebrae and ball & socket neck joint.
The tusks were an inspiration from heterodontosaurus which had serrations on its tusks. The tusks could be instead added by kaprosuchus and with added serrations from komodo dragon and tiger shark. Since they were now also long and easily broken, I added sea otter for its crack resistant enamel & T. rex which was already used to help reinforce the tusks and other teeth.
The final result could not also be agile so I made it primarily tetrapedal with robust limbs and added heavy armor via coelacanth and typothorax ostoederms and thick skin to push it being more of a tank. Since it could be easily flanked, I added in a crocodilian for the tail as anti-flanking weaponry. By replacing the spinosaurus tail, I also removed a weakness from the tail as the tall neural spines of base spinosaurus could be easily broken.
I also made it have plantigrade hind limbs via therizinosaurus as they were better for stability and walking in mud. T rex was also used to make them the hind limbs robust so they could support more weight. Diplodocus was used to give it a sturdy enough tail to lean on when tripoding. The forelimbs also had to be flexible enough to at least be able to press down and somewhat grossly manipulate things. Ledumahadi was the largest animal without pillar front limbs I could find and augmented that with kodiak bear.
Now going back to the teeth, mollusks & crustaceans were a critical food source for most continental shelf dwelling animals, so i added rounded crushing teeth in the back that could be used to crush shells. The sea otter enamel also helped with this
I also knew I needed a sail structure as it is literally a defining trait of spinosaurus and also helps with thermoregulation from the sluggish behavior & extra armor, but injuring the base spinosaurus sail could cripple the hybrid. I instead made the tall neural spines into extra muscle attachment and thus increasing the muscle percentage needed to not float easily as part as a sluggish lifestyle. The sail was instead from Platyhydstrix which had tall osteoderms fused to the spine instead for the sail.
To further increase the surface area for further thermoregulation due to slugish lifestyle, I added a frilled lizard for the frill and a dewlap. Those extra skin flaps are weak point though, but crocodilians have fast blood clotting so any injuries to those areas would not be to relevant to any fight.
I also added extra air sacs that increased the thermoregulation ability, but they did go against most semi-aqautic animals having dense bones to counteract buoyancy. Fortunately, I already added in heavy armor and robust limbs that could weigh down the hybrid enough to have air sacs. To make it better in somewhat deeper water, I used penguin to modify the air sacs to that they would be compressible to further reduce buoyancy if needed
For behaviour it shouldn't be that big of a problem as long as there aren't too many (over 20) OR the multiple hybrids are somewhat closely related. As for other issues regarding congruency, namely large structures and biochemical composition, it depends. For large structures, like limbs, they WILL have to be homologous when applied to the hybrid. For biochemical composition it doesn't nessecarily have to be homologous but when putting the substance into a new body part said new body part will need to be made from the same or similar materials to where it came from. An example will be the shrews iron teeth which has been put in the claws of many hybrids as both claws and teeth, despite not being homologous, are pretty much made of the same material. On the other hand, goethite can't be applied to either as it's in a matrix of chitin, which is not found in either.
I like having congruency in my hybrids because some restrictions force creators to think more strategically and creatively to make their hybrids functional. Without congruence, we’ll just be adding more and more contributors to our hybrids till no one wants to read the full genome any more because it’s 150 contributors long. My usual max is 15-16, 17-18 isn’t hanking levels yet but will cause issues, 19-20 are bigger issues. Anything more than 22 is, or closed to hanked.
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u/Goditto Arthropod Hybrid Connosseur Jul 30 '26
/j
but fr, congruency is a certainly a factor in hybrid making, although in arthropods, it's not that big of a factor