busybee comics

Juni [voice-over]: That "shrine" was left behind by our progenitors. It was designed for us, and we were designed for it.

[[A view of a platypus from above]]

Label: WiFi Antenna

Label: Beady eyes

Label: Webbed hands

Label: Egg-laying apparatus

Label: Venom spurs

Label: Rudder

Juni [voice-over]: When the Homin discovered our ancestors, we were an odd curiosity, a genetic relic from a long-gone era.

Juni [voice-over]: We were different enough from them that they used us to learn so much about all life on Dirt Mother.

[[A human scientist is displaying a platypus with several pups to two other humans]]

Scientist 1: The electroreceptive sense is both highly-sensitive and responsive to subtle changes, with at least as much perception as our sense of smell. By varying the field pulses we

have managed to train this specimen to take simple directions in order to find her reward in a completely novel environment.

Scientist 2: What about background EM radiation?

Scientist 1: She is from Earth, and still appears to react to the ship's Icarus drive, but her offspring are accustomed to it and do not.

Juni [voice-over]: From there we sort of became their pets, and when they came to Unity they began to experiment on us, and on themselves.

Juni [voice-over]: They realized they would eventually leave us, and they gave us the tools to survive to become "heirs."

[[A scientific paper displayed on a navipad]]

Image caption: Fig. 16b: Example breeding chart indicating heredity of pigmentation in hypothetical future generation; fur/iris color (left) is passed down from the father, while skin/bill color (right) is passed down from the mother.

Paper text: [...] program will be most effective. To that end, we have synthesized several different melanin-analog genes which produce several different "primary" colors which may be mixed by their varying expressions from the five sets of XX/XY chromosome pairs.

Paper text: Surprisingly, we have found that the resulting platypi have shown an extreme tendency away from mating with others with the same melanin-analogs; it would appear that they have already recognized this cue as a means of optimizing their genetic diversity. This has the particular advantage that while cousins may mate, they will still express a preference toward relations with a minimally-overlapping genotype, and perhaps this will accelerate the propagation of beneficial mutations throughout their population. Unfortunately, we can only speculate about their long-term viability, but we hope that [...]

Juni [voice-over]: I don't think they really believed we could last this long, but they wanted us to try.