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Roshar insects?


Koloss

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There are, to the best of my knowledge, no insects on Roshar anywhere but perhaps Shinovar because they simply wouldn't survive the highstorms. The cremlings fulfill those functions of the ecosystem instead. If there are some in Shinovar, I'd imagine them to be larger than they would be here due to higher oxygen in the atmosphere like Earth had a long time ago and subsequently everything got massive.

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6 hours ago, Koloss said:

Are there flying insects like cockroaches and dragonflies, or grasshoppers on Roshar? How big are the leggers and amphibian-things? Are they small enough to be eaten by something the size of a Cardinal or Chickadees

TWOK - chapter 4:

Insects buzzed into the air; larger crustaceans - crabs and leggers - left their hiding places.

TWOK - chapter 7:

"... using her open drawing times to sketch the insects, crustaceans, and plants of the manor gardens.

Now, we are dealing with an alien ecology. A Rosharan crustacean is a result of convergent evolution,not relatedness. Something small similar enough to an insect that flies.

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1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

TWOK - chapter 4:

Insects buzzed into the air; larger crustaceans - crabs and leggers - left their hiding places.

TWOK - chapter 7:

"... using her open drawing times to sketch the insects, crustaceans, and plants of the manor gardens.

Now, we are dealing with an alien ecology. A Rosharan crustacean is a result of convergent evolution,not relatedness. Something small similar enough to an insect that flies.

Nice!  So between that mention of actual flying insects and the fact that there are other small flyers like the Larkin, we know they exist in some form.  They may not actually look like earth-norm insects, as most of Roshar's native ecology doesnt, but it means they are able to avoid the Highstorms, Im guessing they can burrow down when they feel the air-pressure change of the stormfront, unless they have some more supernatural/spren-based mechanism.  The Purelake itself retracts down into the rocks when the Highstorm approaches, so bugs knowing to duck and cover makes sense. 

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2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

TWOK - chapter 4:

Insects buzzed into the air; larger crustaceans - crabs and leggers - left their hiding places.

TWOK - chapter 7:

"... using her open drawing times to sketch the insects, crustaceans, and plants of the manor gardens.

Now, we are dealing with an alien ecology. A Rosharan crustacean is a result of convergent evolution,not relatedness. Something small similar enough to an insect that flies.

I forgot about that!

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An additional point for there being insects... They are more common in the West (Shin environment most likely), and the Sleepless can imitate them to. 

Quote

Questioner

Are all Hordelings Cremlings and vise versa?

Brandon Sanderson

Cremling is a synonym in Roshar for both, insect and small crustation, right? And so you would see one and you would see that's a little crayfish. Cremling is not an exact term if that makes sense. It's like bug. The word "bug" people can use to mean a lot of different things.[...] So, yes, they look like Cremlings, because they've been bred to look like Cremlings, so they will not be noticed on Roshar, but there are Hordelings that do not look like Cremlings. But they would still be called a Cremling by the people on Roshar. The occasional people (?) used the word insect, 'cause that word does exist on Roshar. Usually make refers to like little flying bugs that you only find in the very far west of Roshar near the mountains, but yeah.

Leipzig Book Fair (March 24, 2017)

 

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  • 7 months later...
On 2/11/2019 at 6:28 AM, Koloss said:

Are there flying insects like cockroaches and dragonflies, or grasshoppers on Roshar? How big are the leggers and amphibian-things? Are they small enough to be eaten by something the size of a Cardinal or Chickadees

Sorry for coming back to this, but there other references:

  1. Flies that soemtimes appear around rotting fruit - looks like fruit flies to me
  2. Weevilwax in Oathbringer, chapter 4 - earth weevils do not make wax in large quantities

This looks to me like we have two kinds of insects on Roshar. Imported ones like fruit flies and native products of convergent evolution. And possibly a third batch related to Aimians. Depending on what a Larkin is.

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