if you could turn into an animal at will what would it be.
Ok before I hit the hay. You can turn into an animal at will. Your clothes and such won't turn with you but mass is not conserved so you can turn into something much bigger or smaller. It has to be a real creature that does or has existed and I guess if you want a plant that would be fair game. For me its an albatross. could travel around the world. might even manage to carry something that is not to large if packaged right. I am a bit torn though as the ocean is large so maybe a sea creature would be better. like a killer whale. of course then its not great for getting somewhere inland.
143 replies
Orson Welles. I want to turn into 1970’s Orson Welles.
Cat.
Nothing deep sea, I don't want to deal with other creatures in an environment I can't transform back.
Nothing flying, heights would scare me.
I am between an elephant and a racoon. Probably a racoon.
you know that is a good point. I mean flyer you might be able to transorm briefly and back and crushing depths is definately a no go. Your comment makes me more go to flyer to think about something ground based like orangatang which I kinda am feeling from a guys gorilla choice.
Brontosaurus or maybe a giant manta ray
thing about huge dinos is its going to make it hard to keep the ability on the down low.
a brain eating ameba if I can choose a host.
otherwise, a Giganotosaurus. go big or go home, right?
Something with an incredibly short life span preferably
first thought is fruit fly but no gotchas so when you turn back you won't be incredibly old or anything. the transformation will not help you stay young or get old fast as a human but I guess if you stayed in fly form to long. that could be bad.
I think staying in fly from sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. I guess I missed the whole turning back into a human part. As long as there's not some bullshit reincarnation clause or something.
A worm
I need to check if he's telling the truth
Yikes, imagine having to learn to fly. Sounds rough. I'd be a different human that I would call Rex so I could go to the store without worrying about anyone recognizing me. I'd just rather not have to worry about seeing anyone I know when I'm not in the mood.
so the idea is no real gotchas. you would have whatever natural instincts and aptitudes needed to function like the animal without it overwelming your judgement.
Whale Shark.
is that a real thing?!
fuck yeah i'ma turn into a thylacine
i'd get so many scritches
Look, in fucking July, my species was renamed the fucking paradoxical sea Muppet (Australyichthys paradoxus), and I’m kind of fucking sore about it.
Fucking Muppet! I’m a fucking seahorse. Fucking look at me you fucking imbeciles. Human fucks! Always fucking with you, fucking shit up, fucking up naming shit, fucking up the sea, ffs they’re the fucking muppets
So, “seahorse” is my answer, thx
Some kind of big cat like a jaguar or tiger sounds cool. Agile, fast, and strong; but also cute, fluffy, and can cuddle in a warm sunny spot. Might be hard to be a vegetarian, though. Maybe I only eat in human form or something? Brb making a new Pathfinder character.
Golden Eagle. I could carry groceries.
Raccoon. Still got haaaaaands biiiitches
With the second part of that comment you sure give off raccoon vibes lmao
Hell naw man...
My favourite raccoon clip: https://youtu.be/rfbb4yRBH64
Do I get to turn back or is it a one and done thing?
If the latter, then probably a blue whale. I don't really want to live as a whale but I do want to know in my dying whale breaths that they'll never get the stench of my bloated 30 ton corpse out of the Australian parliament building.
no real gotchas outside of the stipulated it just your body and not what you are carrying. at will. keep your mind. no percentage life span carry over or such.
I am already an animal, but it might be fun to be another type of animal.
People say I am a pretty fungi. I would rather be seen as a human.
But also, being a squirrel would be cool.
When OP opened talking about hitting the hay, I figured his animal would be a horse.
Black bear. I could explore the woods around my house with my new bad ass senses. I'd be the toughest dude in the hood, no other animals could fuck with me. It's illegal for humans to shoot me and we all love our bears anyway. I could finally figure out where the deer sleep and track down the coyotes I've never got close too. Plenty of fish in the creek and the swamp it comes from and plenty of trash cans in the hood. I'd chill out on people's car hoods and porches just to freak 'em out. What a lovely life.
BONUS: If I see the redneck hunter out there that hates me, I'd follow him at a distance every time he sets foot out there. 😈🖤
90s Animorphs kid here. I've been considering this for 30 years.
And I'm not telling
Dhole (cuon alpinus). Wild canid in south/east Asia. Pack hunters that communicate with whistles and chirps. Barcode scanner dogs.
House cat seems chill.
Balls are overrated anyway.
A Rottnest Island Quokka. Highly promiscuous, well fed, no predators and beloved and protected by humans.
I. ah. did not think about sexual aspects.
My thought process when choosing:
What increases happiness? Food, sex, safety, community.
What decreases happiness? Hunger, loneliness, fear.
https://www.rottnestisland.com/see-do/wildlife-nature/Quokkas
Turn into an animal? Wtf are you? I am an animal. Humans are animals... so confused.
You know damn well what they mean
Doesn't mean the question isn't speciest. Sounds like they are the type of person that says shit like "animals don't have souls and can't feel."
Animals dont have souls. Souls are made up.
Don't spout your religious views as facts.
Well you didn't add any caveats to the transformation and you said it's at will so... If mass is not conserved then I'd just turn into something heavy yet compact like a rhino and harvest infinite energy from the toggling. If I get support from a State I might even choose a whale so we can extract the most energy per toggle. You can basically build an engine from it, and since whales are like 200 tons and I'm 70kg, the conversion ratio would be pretty damn good. Though it would require a dedicated facility, which is why I'd rather go with a rhino or something, which is however about 100 times less efficient so it would require 100 times as much toggling. You get the picture.
Others: I like this animal for reasons.
You: I'll be a power plant.
That sounds like slavery with extra magic.
You can sell power. I can't be arsed to figure out how much money he'd make, but it might be a good living.
I remember reading something (might have been xkcd) that said Superman could do the objectively most "good" by simply powering a massive generator and providing free energy to the world. It would benefit the most people at one time, and provide a larger affect than simply beating up bad guys. So, in the same vein, your sacrifice will be remembered.
Edit: it was SMBC, not xkcd.
Reminded me of this video optimizing flash. You basically en slave one person so everyone else can live easy life.
"Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
He's an alien being capable of freely traveling the universe that is itself filled with hyper advanced societies and advanced technology. He could literally just go pick up an asteroid of solid gold, go to a planet of hyper tech, and buy an advanced tech to Bing back to Earth.
He's also a god like being, he could just personally deal with each individual that currently contributes to a complex systemic issue in an afternoon.
Like those cats with buttered toast strapped to their backs.
https://youtu.be/Z8yW5cyXXRc
it's Saturday morning breakfast cereal but my 5 minutes ddg couldn't find the source. there's a (urgh) reddit post about it that added some repeating flashes for the powerplant superman had to operate.
Yup! That's it, good find.
I wouldn't want to spend my life stuck in a power plant.
Beats being stuck at a desk.
YFW power plant desk
Be careful what you wish for
::: spoiler Collapsed comic because it's kinda long: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Zach Weinersmith
:::
@[email protected] Posted this before I read your comment lol
Funny you assume this would not lead to almost immediate enslavement.
It's free energy, yes ... but only a relatively small amount of free energy, in the grand scheme of things.
Let's say you go as big as possible with a blue whale, topping out at 200 metric tons. And let's say the dedicated facility built for this has a height of 500m from which it can capture the energy of your descent. Each descent can (assuming 100% efficiency of the system) deliver about 980MJ (272kWh) of energy. A 500m drop in complete freefall would take about 10 seconds (disregarding air resistance). But since we need you to survive to do the process over again (rather than splatting into whale goo at the bottom), you'll need to decelerate gently at the end, which will slow the process down. Capturing energy from the fall will also slow you down. Let's say the drop takes 20 seconds, minimum. And, as unrealistic as it is, let's go for a highly optimized scenario of lifting human you back to the top just as quickly, so 20 seconds for the trip back up. Assuming you can transform instantaneously, that's 40 seconds per cycle -- 90 cycles per hour, at the absolute maximum. 90 cycles x 980MJ means you can generate up to 88,200MJ per hour, which is equivalent to 24.5MW.
A fairly average wind turbine like this one will generate 5MW at peak output. So you, as a blue whale power station, can generate a maximum power equivalent to ~5 large wind turbines. It's not totally free, either, since the machine to capture this energy will be huge and expensive to build -- likely bigger and more expensive to build than 5 wind turbines.
(Not to mention, we're ignoring a lot of minor inefficiencies here. Air resistance will be an energy-sapping factor on both the downward and upward parts of the cycle. Then there's friction in whatever mechanical setup you build for the machine. Then there's the energy cost of lifting human you back to the top. Then there's the inevitable inefficiency of the energy capture, which would more realistically be in the 80-90% range at most, not 100%.)
And to keep up that relatively meager energy production, you'll have to transform every 20 seconds. 180 times per hour, every hour, as long as you can keep doing it. And assuming you need to be awake to transform, the power station will have to go offline regularly while you nap. It could also be a problematic power source because of its pulsing nature -- 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off. That's messy power to be dumping into a power grid, forcing other energy sources to constantly vary in order to make up for it. You could smooth that out with giant capacitors or something ... but then that adds additional inefficiency and power loss into the system.
Yes, it's neat to be able to cheat physics and get 'free' energy ... but on a grid level, the amount of free energy you can possibly get this way is pretty trivial. Not worth giving up your whole life for.
Now you just need to find a way to boil some water and… I feel like I’ve heard this one before.
Lobster.
I'd continue to live my normal life during the day, but transform every night to sleep, and don't age during that time. Hell, any time I'm not doing something that requires a human body, just push pause on the aging process for a few hours. Careful application could get me an extra ~40-50% lifespan for free.
The lobster's biggest problem is always having to grow new shells. If every transformation puts me back exactly where I left off, that could be an issue, but with a part-time human to stock my own tank/pool, getting enough to eat as a lobster to get the energy to do that shouldn't be an insurmountable hurdle.
What about a tortoise? Don't they live longer?
Outclassed by rejuvenating jellyfish.
Yes, we're making tier lists about hypothetical animal transformations now.
needs a tierzoo video on this
This came to my mind aswell. Made me also think about why we age and if sleeping in an area without background radiation could have a similar effect. Like sleeping in a lead coffin or underground bunker. But i guess these would still inherit the background radiation from the body itself.
I watched a few videos about mink (minks?) a little while back, and they seem pretty neat. Semi-aquatic, tough as nails, and slippery little guys.
I'm thinking a goose, or a swan. Something where I get to fly but can also hang out on the water and just float.
Let's not forget Zeus turned into a Swan to have sex with the Queen of the Spartans. So that'd also be on the table.
Nobody said cats? I'm very disappointed. I'm going to comb my hair, look at you reproachfully, then go to sleep.
https://lemmy.world/comment/26476522
Hey OP, have you read the Animorphs book series? They're a YA series, but it actually gets into some heavier shit surprisingly (child soldiers, PTSD, etc) and are not half bad. I bring this up because the premise is some teens are given powers to morph into any animal they "acquire" DNA from by touching. Really gets into the mindset of each animal, what it feels like, how awesome (or terrifying) it is being each animal, etc. Give them a read if you haven't already.
Most useless power is being able to perfectly know the time 🕰️
Eh, it was kinda necessary with the 2-hour time limit. You can imagine how many Andalite scientists were trapped in random morphs before they added that.
I loved that series as a kid. IIRC, one of the most useful morphs they had was a house fly because of flight, hard to catch, and most people ignore you as long as you stay out of their way. This allowed them to be a literal fly on the wall in some private meetings with the bad guys.
Yeah, but how gruesome were the fly morphs. Even Cassie couldn't make that look good lol.
no although the belgariad gets into that a bit although its magic. a wizard does not like the instincts he gets from flying forms so prefers to run as a wolf.
Bird. Daily commute will be fun.
A raven doesn't sound too bad. Can fly, smart, doesn't really have a predator so I can explore the world at ease
how about a writing desk
smart won't really matter. no real gotchas here so no matter what you would keep your normal intelligence and ego and such.
what would you do to cross oceans, plop down on a ship and travel along?
You can go back and forth between animal and human. Save on airline tickets by being an emotional support raven for someone and ride for free. No friend? Fine, buya human ticket and zhwooop, now and have a seat 5 times your size. Never wait in line to poop. Fill up with one meal. So awesome.
Plane crashes? Easy, just open a door as a human and transform in the air.
Raven is the winner.
I dunno I'll try to befriend some nice sailors, most ppl are reasonably nice to ravens... Into the ocean is out of the question unfortunately
A small and cute goat in a petting zoo. You get fed and you can headbutt people and kids to oblivion while everyone thinks it’s cute.
A sperm whale. So I go to sleep knowing you'll be swimming in everything that comes out of me.
See username. I could probably name a better bird for what I want, but hawk is literally right there. Not actually what it means in my username, but hey, if the shoe fits...
...as to why, it's basically just flight.
And those eyes
yeah something flying would be nice
what's the apex bird?
jumbo crow
Turkey Vulture probably
thats a good question. In my area I feel its the hawk but globally no idea?
Pterodactyl I think
your ability is going to become public fast.
oh man that's not a bird and not even a dinosaur but I pick pterodactyl
First thought is a very small insect, especially a small flying bug, so I could effectively vanish instantly and escape from most any situation.
Of course this comes with some assumptions, such as magically keeping my intelligence. And not aging at hyper speed while transformed, etc.
Yeah my intention was no real gotchas outside of whats listed. so you could effectively disapear as you said as a fly but your clothes and such would fall and you would be naked when you turn back. Honestly the clothes effect would likely that much more make people think you vanishe or teleported or were destroyed or something.
Instantly vanish and escape, yes ... but pretty significant chance of getting squished or eaten by some predator while in bug form, and likely to happen so fast you don't have time to change back.
Having human intellect should help, like knowing to stay away from corners because of spider webs, knowing how windows, doors, and vents work. Also I wouldn't just stay a fly - I would switch back as soon as feasible. (But might head for a clothing store first)
My human intellect is pretty situationally unaware. I don't think the risk of being stuck in a web, paralyzed, and slowly drained of life by a spider is worth not hearing about Sharon's sister's wedding in Colorado over the weekend.
So you can buy clothes?
Too bad your wallet is left in the heap of clothes you escaped from...
Oh, good point
In that case, I would choose a quaking aspen based on the specimen named Pando. I would have a vast array of sizes at my disposal, from as small as a single seed to as large as the 106 acres that Pando covers.
I want to escape from somewhere? Turn into a seed. I want to destroy an environment? Turn into a giant network of trees.
Tapeworm. Just hanging out in a warm cosy intestine, protected from the outside world and food dropping on to me so I don't even have to move.
This dove:
I wanna fly away.
3 toed sloth is about my speed
Orca. Sure it wouldn't be useful on about 25% of The Earth's surface, but at least nothing in the ocean is gonna successfully fuck with me.
and you gotta watch out for moose
Orca eat moose, polar bears, and almost everything else, don't gotta watch out for shit. Except humans. Orca don't eat humans.
I always only have 2 answers for this question.
House cat. You’ll be pampered and have a comfy life. And unlike a dog, you don’t have to show affection to your owner. You can just not give a shit and they’ll find it adorable.
The only other option is some bird that can travel long distances and isn’t easy prey. That way you get to travel.
Bear
Wolf/husky.
Beaver. Any day. Favorite animal period. No doubts or worries at all.
I think a cheetah would be my go. Mostly chill, very cute, excellent at sunbathing, could still play with my dog, and very fucking fast sometimes.
nice combination of mobility and self defense. I had not thought about playing with pets as being a nice factore before.
Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant
Then I would go around abolishing the state.
thats a real animal that has existed?
It is in the land of Ooo
so the criteria is real animals that exist or have existed.
I know, I didn’t pick it
I’d pick something from Star Wars cus that existed a long time ago in a galaxy far far away :p
Human
A tiny bird. Maybe a sparrow. Or an elephant, so that Iive in a forest and have a thick skin.
yeah I thought about doing a smaller bird that can fly far like a tern but I figured maybe I could manage to have a bundle with shorts and a tshirt with the albatross.
What do owls see in the night sky?
A dead one.
dark
A gorilla so I could still use human technology, but I'd be 200 kgs of muscle.
this is tempting although maybe an orangatang for me. don't get the travel but yeah close enough to a super strong human.
Orangutan would be extra fun in forests. They're way better climbers. You'd essentially be an unusually strong acrobat.
yeah I figure not as strong as gorillas but like pretty close and then the mobility would be cool. its honestly so hard to choose. would be great to be beast boy.
This one?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_Boy
yes
Cool. I had never heard of him before.
you know teen titans seemed pretty popular so I did not think much of throwing it out there. they seem to push cyborg into everything.
I'm thinking either hawk, raven or seagull. Definitely something that can fly and is big enough to not be a target for too many other animals (I don't wanna get randomly murked by a cat). Also something that can swoop down on people and steal shit.
Yeah I think one thing that is a bit scary is you have to think about how vulnerable an animal might be. I mean you could turn back into a human but thats not so good in mid air and off course if you don't see it coming.
An arctic tern.
I actually thought about this as an alternative because of the ability to hide and survive extreme conditions. Its very tempting along with the travel you could do.
Dönertier
what is that?
Tabby cat
European Lion or some other interesting extingt animal to push sience in that specific field. Or an authentic "Auerochs" to boost efforts of renaturation in Europe with my genes. Also lots of sex for the good for a while. The beastiality could become a problem tho since im not into animals.
Horse. No further questions, please.