Stem-birds by any other name

[Spoilers for the Jurassic Park novel, and JP1-3, JW, and JWFK movies - none for Dominion because I still haven't watched it, and if any of this post contradicts its events, please don't tell me in too much detail]

The last I checked the JP fandom wiki refers to the T. rex family from TLW as "buck" (the adult male), "doe" (the adult female), and "fawn" (the juvenile) on the animals' pages. Things written on fan-maintained wikis aren't automatically canon, of course, and it is also mentioned on the wiki itself that this isn't necessarily official terminology, but I find interesting where this terminology came from, and what the things some of the characters in-universe call the animals says about how they see them.

Kitten bites from Velociraptor chicks

[JW Fallen Kingdom spoilers]

Today's raptor thought is that I just realized something further indicating that baby Delta's terrible, horrible, vicious (/sarcasm) attack when Owen pretended to be hurt to test her reaction was 100% play and not meant to cause harm.

Indominus rex and Indoraptor hand thoughts

(Spoilers for Fallen Kingdom, not much for Jurassic World,
and none for JW: Dominion)

As it was recently brought to my attention in a comment to a picture I drew of indoraptorlet Sunny using her opposable thumbs, the movie hybrids' hands are a bit weirder than I'd previously noticed: They seem to have two phalanx bones on both the first and second digit, when I'd assumed it's only the first, and that the second would have more than that like the third and fourth do.

In addition to scrutinizing the movie, here's a screenshot I took of the hands of Jurassic World Evolution's Indominus rex model, which was created using the model from the movie. Yep! Looks like two phalanges on the second digit. Okay, why does that matter?

Whose eggs?

(Jurassic Park movie and Jurassic Park: The Game spoilers)

A new surprise contender enters the list of candidates for what dinosaur's eggs do Dr. Grant, Lex, and Tim find in Jurassic Park. Velociraptor? Gallimimus? There are arguments for both. But we don't see exactly how far from the tree they slept in they are when they stumble upon the nest, or how many fences they may have crossed along the way, i.e. what paddock they're in. Topps' comic adaptation of the movie takes a lot less ambiguous approach (my copy is in Finnish, but the dialogue is not much different from the movie's, and you can find an English version at the JP wiki):

The nest is under that very tree.

Given that the characters were just woken up by Brachiosaurus like in the movie, that would mean they're still in the Brachiosaurus enclosure. Is that whose eggs those are?

Jurassic Park and Jurassic World scientific name thoughts

[spoilers for JP/JW movies out so far, as well as for Camp Cretaceous, and a tiny bit for the novels]

Raptor logi(sti)c(s) thoughts

Today's Indoraptor thought concerns the logistics of his escape and the space it takes place in. How did he get from point A (the display cage in the auction room) to point B (grabbing the two mercenaries who were with Mills during exposition about Maisie)?

My first thought, because it's the route most explicitly featured on screen, was that what if in addition to accidentally getting the elevator doors to open, he managed to get the elevator to move, too.

"Didn't I just tell you to hold the door? Rude."

JP/W raptor nesting thoughts

Some speculations on Jurassic Park Velociraptor nesting and pack composition, mostly based on the two JP sequels, in which we see raptor packs that are living in the wild and confirmed to consist of animals of more than one sex.

(spoilers for twose movies, and for the other JP/W ones a bit as well)

I've concluded earlier that each sequel possibly features two female raptors, and that with JP3 it actually looks certain that it does. Most of the raptors seen (clearly) on screen are males, though. How representative is that of the packs in general?

Unless they figure out how to open doors

Latest Indoraptor thought: Though it was entertaining to watch him fool a human into opening the door of his cage for him (or not, your mileage may understandably vary), had he been left unattended in that display cage for long enough, could... he perhaps have been able to open it himself?

The door seems to lock with a simple latch, not needing a key or similar, only dexterous hands like humans tend to have and the animals intended to be kept in those cages tend to lack. It's just. You know.

You gave that damn dinosaur opposable thumbs.

(Pictured: not a dinosaur, but you get the idea)

 

Collision, pages 20&21

Comic can be found here at my site (all pages in one), and here at deviantart (link to gallery folder that also contains all pages).

(Warning for mostly obscured dead animal on both pages, but no visible blood)

These are the last two pages of the comic.

Collision, page 19

Comic can be found here at my site (all pages in one), and here at deviantart (latest page).

(Warning for a mostly obscured dead animal on this page, though no visible blood)

Raptor obedience thoughts

(Spoilers for Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom)

Eli Mills about the Indoraptor: And thanks to Owen Grady's research, it follows human command.

That's obviously very false advertizing if he's talking about the prototype, but it's pretty baseless of an assumption even if he means the Indoraptor project in general, and the future versions they haven't created yet. Because drawing the conclusion that raptors can be made to obey humans from the raising and training of Blue and her sisters is just incorrect. They never followed human command, either.

That's what I recently claimed in one of my update commentaries for Collision, at least, so elaborating a bit on that topic.

Collision, page 15

Comic can be found here at my site (all pages in one), and here at deviantart (latest page).

(Content warning for blood continues. Also this post has minor spoilers for various JP/W movies.)

New page featuring some strange, scary creatures that a family runs into in the woods.

Dinosaur tranquilizing thoughts

(spoilers for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. TW: needles)

I've seen a few people express confusion about how Rexy was captured during Isla Nublar's evacuation - how did they get her in the cage when she's obviously not even tranquilized since she's making noise? That part was never all that confusing to me (where exactly did they capture her, though, and where did she go after crushing that poor Carnotaurus? Where was she when the pyroclastic flow Owen was apparently immune to reached the cliff? Who knows).

Two clever girls per sequel

That is, each Jurassic Park sequel possibly features two female raptors. It's not made very clear and the raptors in those movies are usually talked about by fans like there's just one in each, so some notes on that to clarify.

Two of the clever girls that are not from a sequel, for good measure

(spoilers for The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Jurassic Park III)

What's your favorite Jurassic Park scene

A question surely asked at every good introductions conversation, along with favorite dinosaur (mine's the Troodon/Stenonychosaurus/Latenivenatrix tangle). For each movie from the original trilogy separately, these are my picks. Not ranking them against each other or anything, but here are some thoughts on their merits to me. Naturally, the post contains spoilers for these movies in case you haven't seen them.

Jurassic Park

The answer is too obvious, so to not make things too easy for myself, I'm disqualifying both the raptors in the kitchen and the T. rex escape. They're great, but there are a lot of great scenes in this movie. Such as:

Don't watch the mouth, watch the hands

About time I applied these wise words by Peter B. Parker to JP/W raptor behavior, because what do I not use as an excuse to wonder and ponder about that.

While not quite as much hand-talkers as humans can be, the raptors in these movies do sometimes use their sharp bunny-hands in a way that can be used to read something about their intentions. When I looked at another behavior of theirs, snapping one's jaws at someone, I concluded from its use that the Raptor Squad do see Owen as part of their pack and even part of their family, and even though things got tense between them several times, the raptors didn't actually want to hurt him. Another detail in the paddock confrontation also points at that the raptors' aggression towards Owen in that scene is posturing rather than a genuine attempt at hurting him, because they're angry at him for stealing their prey and need to express that, and may consider Owen's actions to be overstepping his place in the pack, but he's also their dad, and a squishy human who would get seriously injured more easily than a fellow raptor would and they know that.

I think how they hold their forelimbs during their unrestrained interactions with him also fits this.

"How would it know to do that?"

(Jurassic World spoilers)

The Indominus rex is shown to have some extraordinary abilities the humans around her seem to not have known about, and which prove quite useful for escaping and avoiding capture.

How did she realize to do all of this, and what exactly does she actually do?

Indominus rex Protection Group

Thinking about how humans portray animals again, so I guess this is a "good and bad monsters, part 2", now with less focus on raptor shipping.

(Spoilers for all the Jurassic Park/World movies out so far)

Damnit, Billy

[spoilers for mostly Jurassic Park 3, some for The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom]

Billy: I was photographing the nest.

Actually, was he? Billy lies to Dr. Grant by omission about having taken two eggs from the raptor nests they stumbled upon, but what he says he was doing instead is a good lie. Why would he not have taken photos? ...Why did it not occur to anyone, possibly up until that lie, that they should photograph the nest while they're already there? Maybe Billy was the only one with a camera, and certainly getting out of the raptors' territory as quickly as they could was a good idea, Billy splitting from the group while in raptor territory being a lot less of a good idea, but... just a couple of snapshots on their way out? And did he actually take any in addition to stealing the eggs?

Baby fights

When it comes to fan depictions of Blue and Echo's big fight that got big enough it left Echo with permanent marks, I usually see it set in when both raptors already look just as they do in their first appearance in Jurassic World (apart from Echo's scar and misaligned jaw). As much as the raptors are probably still very young adults in that movie, though, I wonder if they actually were nearly even that old at the time.