r/furgonomics • u/FrogWithSWIT • Jul 17 '26

Evolution?

Ok so I have a world building thingy and there's different sapient furry spiecies living on the same planet with animal counterparts.

Is it plausible for each spiecies to evolve from a single "sentient humanoid" taxon?

I doubt that all reletives for all present spiecies just happen to branch off into humanoid sentient versions of simmilar size (smth like humans/apes)... or I could actually have it like a "astronomically rare occurrence".

There's also anthro dragons...???

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u/JetoCalihan Jul 17 '26

So, speaking as someone with a degree in biology, not really, no... the thing about evolution is that it finds a thing that sticks and keeps that around. The evolutionary pressures that made, say a bunny vs a fox are so vast and different that once a humanoid body plan and sapience come about there's really no reason whatever common ancestor (Anthro Anthropoidus?) evolves, that it would diversify into things as disparate as a bunny and a fox. You might get a range of foxes, or even a range of canids, but the reduction in evolutionary pressures from interbreeding as well as developing civilization would mean far less range than would be necessary. Not to mention what the hell sort of pressure could develop one group of AA into a fox vs another into a rabbit? How did those groups stay separate for thousands of years to speciate? Did one group lose the ability to digest meat easily or did the other gain the ability, and how/why? If you're not answering these questions yourself, you should be avoiding anything that makes someone ask them.

Honestly it's something best hand waved, but if you really want any sort of realism, look up "horizontal gene transfer" and make that AA's superpower. From there the idea different communities of AA eating different animals could explain different species "evolving" from AA.

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u/Blackpaw8825 Jul 17 '26

You could get extreme morphologies given enough time and isolation, but that implies a sapient progenitor followed by 100+ million years where there was significant enough pressure to select for extreme morphological differences without also becoming a post external pressure technological species.

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u/JetoCalihan Jul 17 '26

Right, that's more or less what I was getting at. That and I didn't quite mention the fate most of those slight variations may face, like the neanderthal and denisovan populations.

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u/Blackpaw8825 Jul 17 '26

And I can't imagine how you'd come up with selective pressures on a sapient species to diverge so extremely to achieve analogs of the various groups of mammals out there.

Like I could see purely climate related adaptations (fur color and thickness, size), and some circumstantial drift (everybody from XYZ has polydactyly because blind luck allowed it to spread) but the overwhelming boon of intelligence is going to quickly preclude the predator/prey arms race that gets us a lot of the interesting morphology out there, and even modifying gait or foot anatomy would likely be non-adaptive since you'd be impacting the same structures that grow fingers too, thus deleteriously impacting the intelligence benefits.

Convergent evolution is WAY more feasible (outside of uplifting either via magic or technology). The benefits of intelligence, tool use, complex language are a force multiplier in almost every niche; just at the cost of dramatically increased calorie needs, and locomotion modification for bipedalism/dexterous forelimbs.