Creating Animal Species

Creating your own animal species can be fun when writing fantasy. It can help distinguish your world from the thousands of GenericFantasyLands out there. And really, who hasn’t wondered why the only fictional creatures in so many fantasy novels are sapient(ish) species like elves, gnomes, or trolls?

But to take a spoonful of your world’s primordial soup is to assume knowledge of the delicate ecological threads that hold animals in place in their environment. And if you create something that those threads can’t hold, expect to tick people off. Like me. I don’t care if the animal is biologically impossible. It’s fantasy after all. It could have a prehensile tongue or the ability to inflate itself like a balloon and float away for all I care. I do care if they create couldn't have survived in its environment.

For starters, don’t just make giant/miniature versions of real animals and call it a new species. It impresses no one. If you want to do it, that’s fine (maybe you’re writing a story set in an alternate Earth when the Haast’s eagle or direwolf still roamed), but if you’re making a new world, why not make new creatures to populate it?

The first thing to do is get an idea of exactly what this creature is. Consistency is a must. Write your dimensions down somewhere. If you can, draw a picture. If you can’t, just make sure you don’t mention its tail being covered with spines on page 56 and then have a character grab it barehanded by the tail and not feel any pain on page 192.

Now, here are some questions to ask yourself when designing a new animal. You don’t have to devote huge amounts of time and energy to this if said animal is not going to play a major role in your story, but if it appears a lot, make sure you’ve got it right.

1. Does it make sense in its environment? If it lives in a taiga, tundra, or other polar environment, it should have thick fur (at least in the winter) (possibly fur that changes color throughout the year) and a stocky, compact build with short ears and a short tail to minimize heat loss. A (hot) desert animal should have light-colored fur to reflect heat and stay camouflaged, and large ears to cool down faster. Don’t sacrifice functionality for form. Why would an aerial predator in a taiga environment be bright gold? Prey could see it coming a mile away (unless it hunts in tamarack forests during the autumn).

2. What does it eat, and how does it get it? If food is scarce, then your animal probably shouldn’t be choosy about what it eats. If food is plentiful, it can afford to specialize. If it eats plants, what kinds does it eat? Fruit? Leaves and grasses? Shoots? Tubers? Nuts and seeds? Nectar? How does it get them? Does it have any adaptations that help it? If it eats nuts with tough shells, it will need strong jaws to break them open. If it eats tubers, it will need some way to digging them up. Also, bear in mind that leaves and grasses are not very good energy sources, so grazers and browsers (especially large ones) will have to be eating almost constantly.

If it eats meat, same question. Does it have some amazing adaptation that lets is catch prey, or does it rely on more traditional methods? Does it go it alone or hunt in a group? If it hunts solitary, it probably won’t be preying on anything larger than itself (though there are exceptions, like the wolverine or anaconda). Does it use a more covert method, such as trapping, ambush, or poison? Maybe it uses something else to catch its prey. Maybe it uses magic to create the smell of its prey’s favorite food, or can read minds and create visual illusions of what the prey wants most. Predators like that could potentially be huge threats even to humans.

3. How does it protect itself from being eaten? There’s always a bigger fish. Most animals have to worry about being eaten at some point in their life (sometimes even by their parents). How does this animal keep itself off the menu? Does it rely on superior size and strength to fight off predators, or speed and agility to elude them? Does it have armor or spines to deter attacks? Does it stay really still and hope the predator doesn’t see them?

4. Could it exist without wiping everything else out? Predators should not be perfect. If they were, they would wipe out everything else in the ecosystem completely unopposed. There need to be ways for prey to escape, fight off, or go unnoticed by a predator. That holds true in every Earth ecosystem. African wild dogs are the most successful large African carnivores, and even they fail over 55% of the time. Large, powerful predators need large, powerful prey. T-Rex didn’t go around munching on deer and cattle as so many fantasy dragons do. She (female tyrannosauruses were bigger) sought out prey that was just as large, or even larger than they were. And they didn’t always win. A blow to the thigh by an Ankylosaurus? Bam! Slow, painful starvation death because of your snapped femur.

5. How does it interact with its own species? Some animals regard members of their species as bitter rivals (except, of course, when it’s mating season), like wolverines. On the opposite end of the spectrum, others live in huge extended family groups, like penguins. Then you’ve got animals that live in smaller groups, like wolves, animals that start out in large groups and then go off alone or in smaller groups as they age, like dolphins, or even animals that may fly solo but don’t really care if there’s another member of their species on the next rock.

One final warning. Beware of the Smeerp Syndrome. If you have an animal with tan fur, long, thin legs, sharp hooves, and antlers, people will think “deer”, even if you call it an olonka. This can easily annoy readers. And agents.