• Agent641@lemmy.world
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    1 年前

    Octoria are scientifically impossible, the grazing territory requirements alone for a sustainable breeding colony would be immense. Any reports of them in the wild are either misidentified pairs of quadferrets copulating, or hoaxes perpetuating the psuedoscience.

    • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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      1 年前

      quadferrets copulating

      That’s where you’re messing up. Those are pentacoyotes, not quadferrets. The contact side between two polygonimals mating is actually obscured, so the actual number of sides in a copulation configuration is the sum of the sides of all involved polygonimals - 2. Therefore the octorca could not be two mating quadferrets, but could be two pentacoyotes, or a chain of duodugongs.

      • Agent641@lemmy.world
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        1 年前

        Youre quite right, rookie mistake by me. You would think a Polyphylogenonomist would know better.

        However, wouldnt it be more accurate to say that the actual number of sides in any given copulation configuration containing n polygonimals would be n*(sides per polygonimal)-(n-1)? Assuming we exclude tricopulations of hexbears where any given individual may be contacting two other individuals’ sides at the same time in a tessalation layout? I must admit im not certain though, my field is polyphylogenomics, not polyphylogenomatics. Im sure there are some edge cases Ive missed, pardon the pun.

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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          1 年前

          My bad, I was thinking in terms of simple intraspecies pairing like they taught us as undergrads. Once you get into polypolys and tessellations the math is frankly beyond me. Well spotted though.