A Dinosaur's Journal

Dec 15, 2021

I dont identify as Ripper. I DO identify with him; he's my legacy in this world. We couldnt be any more different from each other, in terms of circumstance. I got a huge, open enclosure, positive human interaction. He was locked in a cage, atrophied and full of rage; he was poked and prodded, often with stun rods..

Playing Jurassic World Evolution 2's Chaos Theory mode (essentially, what would happen if the movies went right) really makes you see how good care makes a huge difference for even the most dangerous of animals. I was a park animal. I was, in all definitions, spoiled.

But, there was a point in my growth and development in which interaction became hands-off, left to myself, only seeing handlers and guests from the other side of the plexiglass.

I cant imagine what it would have been like to not have had that formative interactions, like Ripper.

Dec 13, 2021

i feel more drawn to Masrani than Hammond (though it would make sense since Masrani would be the CEO at the time i was there, if he hadnt handed it to someone else)

How much involvement did Masrani actually have in the dinosaurs' lives? we see that he goes above and beyond for the dinos in JW, but how much personal interaction does he have with the animals?

im gonna have to ponder on that

Sept 23, 2021

{post is adapted from a discord conversation}

it will never cease to amaze me how often i hear raptor barks... when i dont live in the park anymore (for whatever reason my mom watches JP/JW every time she finds it)

just, all of a sudden "WHY BORKS?" oh.

the frustrating part is that i viscerally recognize raptor borks, but i dont understand them. at least, not well--i'm only part raptor. if i can study the raptor's body language, its much easier but

{"if you watch it enough you may recognize what the barks mean due to the time they're played /j?"}
i absolutely do lol but if i catch stray borks, it's way more confusing

{"could u talk bout the raptor communication lore?"}

from what i understand based on what i've learned on this earth, and what little i can remember, raptor packs have dialects, so i cant really speak for every pack or every member.

- borks are the "main" communication sound. they're loud, instructive, and more like... pointing? if i can put it that way? bork's tone can say a lot, but when you're in a mess of bodies, it's either "point at something (go here, theres the target, etc)" or "help i got lost" or "im over here, where are you". multiple borks are usually "need assistance" ,"danger", etc.

- purring is "thinking". purring can be interrupted or enhanced with chirps or hisses, based on the thought or in response to things.

- claw taps are the sneaky bork. find a good solid object to tap your killing claw on, and you can basically... morse code in raptor when hidden. or a stim! usually when you see a claw tap in the movie, it's "thinking" or "my mouth is preoccupied, but i need to tell you something". the indo in FK taps while thinking, essentially i can translate it to "i smell them, theyre here. WherE"

- screeches typically are "Stay out of my way!" or "back off!"

- growls are what you'd expect in an animal.

- hisses are "you dun messed up"

- chirps are... hard to describe. they're your interjections, ig? like "oh", "oops", "dang", "um".

so normally what happens when i hear the raptors on the movie, is i go "??!?!??!?? why am i needed??" just recently, while playing Jurassic World Evolution 2, i loaded up my game and my raptor pen started "Help" borking, and i very nearly moved the camera to the enclosure to see what was "wrong". my spouse has noticed that when i hear stray borks from my mom watching JP/W, i will turn my head--without me realizing what i'm doing.

indoraptors dont bork. they... Bornk
bork + honk = bornk

Dec 2,2021

i just had the cutest image pop into my head

i was wondering where my want to wear a harness comes from and like, can you put a harness on a full grown indoraptor???? something that is 20 feet long and almost a ton of sheer muscle??

and then i thought of the baby petting zOO, AND BABY ME TODDLING AROUND IN A HARNESS

{"...That does sound SOO adorable, but also potentially dangerous right?? Were they aggressive even as babies?"}
i have a feeling they would be taken out of public when they got big enough, or in my case, had a rubber band around my muzzle like the crocodile in my genes

so incredibly dangerous /j

this led to possibly my favorite art i've ever done

i identify with this concept, but i dont have any noemata about it. just lots of feels.

Aug 31, 2021

this post contains for animal death and illness tw

I can't imagine what sort of vitamin deficiencies and poisonings the dinos at JW had. the paleobotanist in JP brought it up slightly--"how do you know which plants they're eating? some of these are poisonous."

there was a cut scene from JP (iirc) where Wu and Hammond mentioned the animals don't live long. their bodies are under such stress from growth hormone flooding that they konk out after a year and a half at most (iirc is the oldest dino they had on JP)

while it would be beneficial to fix that for JW, I have to question if it did.. (rexy is the outlier here, we know she's many years old, and we have no idea how she has survived this long honestly)

but if the JW dinos did have longer lifespans than their JP predecessors, this brings up a nutritional problem.

a) we don't know the protien:fat ratio of extinct dinos. feeding JW dinos cows and goats could easily have led to fatty liver disease or possibly even B deficiencies.

b) if they were feeding the dinos other dinos, (especially ones from the same timefram) that likey still didn't solve the problem bc every single dino in the park is a genetic mishmash

c) BECAUSE every dino is a genetic mishmash, even different individuals within a population (re: raptor squad) you couldn't feed them all the same items bc each of them would have different nutritional needs. making it impossible to correctly feed a healthy diet unless they were ACTUALLY monitoring the dinosaurs' blood content and there's a distinct part of me that days they didn't...

masrani wasn't as decoupled from the happenings of the dinosaurs as Hammond was, but I wouldn't guess "Spare No Expense" hammond/masrani to have veterinary staff for regular, dangerous checkups

(the only ones I could see actually having this was the raptor squad as they had specific gear/pens built for what looks like getting hands on vet care)

this isn't even touching the animals being underfed, overfed.. pack/herd squabble..

and the poor plant eaters... meat is meat at the end of the day, but plants, ESPECIALLY between then and now, are so varied..

Feb 3, 21

{this post is adapted from a discord conversation}

re "watching" (listening for background noise) to a jp youtuber and the first video on the playlist is a speculation of what the Indoraptor is, having come out before JW2. he says that if the indom had an emphasis on the rex dna for size and power, then speculatively the indo would have an emphasis on the raptor for intelligence and quickness.. now, taking into account the indo from JW2 is a prototype, there werent a lot of opportunities presented for the indo to, if it had it, display a high level of intelligence.

if it had raptor, or beyond, level intelligence, we dont get to see it other than it using a raptor handle to open maize's balcony door--but we've seen raptors use that level of intelligence and greater. was it, because it was a prototype, far less intelligent because of the balance of dna in it's genome? imo it shouldnt have. the indominus rex was extremely intelligent--it figured out it had camouflaging abilities, baited a trap, and used a power it should never have been able to know how to use because they didnt feed it live bait thus never naturally learned to hunt for gods sake. the indoraptor, being MORE raptor than the indominus, should have had far higher intelligence than it's predecessor.

could it be the indo was, developmentally and medically speaking, mentally retarded because of the way it was kept? in a tiny cage with no social, parasocial, or enrichment activities? if we take into account a deleted scene where the indo breaks the lightbulb in its cage and subsequently kills the maintenance worker that goes into it's cage to fix it, had it been in the movie that could very well have developed how much we know about the indo's intelligence! but instead we're left with a theme park monster that destroys everything in it's path because violence is what we as the viewer is all it is assumed to know.

it could very well have been that it was of low intelligence because it IS a prototype. something in it's genome could've been fucky. we know it can be ""trained"" for lack of a better term for being inflicted with a violent pavlovian response. ((it's hinted and speculted that the indo was TRAINED to respond to the ultrasonic targeting system with stun batons)) but that doesnt.. speak for it's level of natural intelligence.

and it's bothering me.

not to mention that the indoraptor was created for the army as a weapon. we know this, because Hoskins in the end of JW1 says "take that, and size it down" @ the indom. they wanted to emphasize intelligence and trainability ((and loyalty but we're not talking about that rn)) (re, needing blue's DNA to make it "Tameable") in order to have the most astounding and destructive animal possible for the battlefield.

where was i in all of this. what was My role? i want answers.

the speculation that i have is that i was "made" to be more of a water unit, thus the more crocodillian form.

that leads me to believe that in my timeline, the original indo testing was a success, and they were seeing trainability and use on the battlefield.

that leads further to believe that i was FAR more tame than previous iterations--or at least, they wanted me to be. to lose your animal in murky water is a no-no, they had to have some guarantee they were getting this iteration back.

i feel like i was intelligent as an indo. angry, but intelligent enough to know that displaying my anger was a detriment except in deployment.

the thing that throws me is that i dont feel like i ever actually saw battle. was i the prototype for my iteration? i feel more contempt for people than downright all-or-nothing destructive like the canon indo. i feel like i remember lush forests with water features. was that my permanent enclosure? a testing enclosure? was i part of a park? was that because i escaped? i dont know for certain

addendum: later after i wrote this, (originally posted on 2/03/21 as a discord post; added Dec 16, 2021) i found a theory that the scene in maize's bedroom when the indo is shot by owen, it acts injured to lure owen closer/let him let his guard down. i'm skeptical--it really looks like it was hurt, but it's so used to pain at this point that taking it slow to stand up is literally just a reaction to the pain.

i also didnt consider the cage scene with the hunter, where ripper lured the hunter into thinking he was asleep. it's a very good display of planning and setting traps, but it still doesnt feel like they let his intelligence shine.

Apr 8, 2022

{post is xposted from tumblr}

today i learned the canon indoraptor has deinosuchus dna.

i... it’s really hard to describe how learning something about your kintype, that you thought was just overreaching to make things make sense, is actually canon. for years now, i assumed that because the indominus had sarcosuchus dna, i would too, but just, more of it to adapt me to the purpose i was prototyped for but... this is way cooler.

i found this info in JW Evolution 2.

...also hold up--i didnt even finish reading this paraGRAPH

MY NOEMA OF HAVING CAMOUFLAGE WAS ALSO CORRECT?????? AAAAAAAAA????????????????????.

May 6, 2022

{this post is adapted from a discord discussion}

[conversation about face masks making human face emoting impossible]

i've been doing a lot of head bowing at people, especially when i cant find my voice for whatever reason.

it's almost like the mask makes me feel like i cant talk--muzzle maybe?? oh gods now that i'm thinking about it, yeah, that makes sense. as a hatchling, it's likely i'd've had my jaws rubber banned..

{"Ooohhh you were muzzled as a hatchling? * shudders * that must've sucked!"}

as a human, i think back and say the same thing, but when i think of it through my eyes as an indoraptor, it makes a lot of sense, and why i like the aesthetic of a muzzle!

i assume i was a prototype, housed at jurassic world, and to gauge the effectiveness of my genome, wouldve been put through human handling. little crocodiles are routinely rubberbanded around the muzzle so they cant chomp, and it doesnt hurt--crocs dont have very good muscles for opening their mouths, all those muscles are for closing the jaws.

it's not a bad thing to me, if anything, it meant that i got to go out and be with people, get pets, interact

kinda like how a service animal's vest tells them it's time to work, a rubber band would mean fun human times

Oct 17, 2022

{this post is adapted from a discord discussion}

i lov this video so much its so cute, but also very accurately describes my noema of pack dynamics of successful indoraptor prototypes


{"That’s adorable and also I didn’t know you had packs!"}

yee! I don't remember being IN a pack, personally, so that's why I call it noema of knowing how pack dynamics work bc how do I know that? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but they were tight knit family units that were mostly dumb and playful until they were signaled they're in work mode and then they became a terrifying wave of destruction.

the Atrociraptors from Dominion remind me a lot of my indoraptor noema, it was so fulfilling to see them on screen

my thought on it is that they're all cloned and raised as a unit, similar to the Raptor Pack from Jurassic World, so they learn each others' strengths, weaknesses, and how to work as a team

{"Oooo yeah, makes sense! Fascinating, I had not thought indos would be social creatures but it makes sense"}

yeee! unfortunately the only one we see in canon was the very first prototype, but the context behind it was they learned how feral he was and wanted Blue for the next iteration not only for her unique, semi-"domestic" (-cough- not immediately killer-cough-) Genes, but also to be the leader of the pack, as she was with the Raptor Pack, because she can "communicate" between human and dinosaur (ie, translating human wants to dinosaur behavior in the rest of the pack)

(why the situation in the movie went wrong is because we know from Camp Cretaceous that Wu loathes losing any process in his projects, meaning not destroying even abject failures)

the other bit is that they have a focus on their raptor majority of Genes. extremely intelligent and capable problem solving and making rudimentary educated decisions, is due to the focus on selecting for those raptor genes and made them into the perfect weapon. the pack/flock instinct of raptors would only be a bonus, so you can employ a tactical force all at once for terrifying precision

huge, dumb babies off-work is probably just a result of a genetically modified domestication gene

{several hours later}

thinking about it again, the phrase "genetically modified domestication gene" is probably the most horrifying thing i've ever said. coming from someone who regularly deals with some of the darkest thoughts from my own exomemories on top of my headmates',

i think the concept of "InGen figures out how to recreate/artificially simulate the domestication gene and creates dog-level obedience and behavior in dinosaurs. dinosaurs... is,,,, anxiety...

{"Surprised they didn't try selling it to get used unethically in people"}

i wouldnt put it past InGen, but as a dinosaur, i dont know the meta on whether they did. it fucking scares me how as a genetically modified monster, i'm so nonchallant about gene editing, because it was my whole existance, but then THAT SHIT is possible..