Cloud habitats

This was originally going to be specifically about cloud fish, but my question kept expanding and cloud fish alone could no longer hold the topic, unfortunately this means I lost my nice hook title. :)

Being just unrealistic enough for them to exist, how would the constantly changing clouds support relatively consistent life, and why would clouds matter in supporting life anyways.

I'm thinking that the clouds are like a source of water for them, maybe some creatures up there are responsible for how clouds can just fade/dissipate because they drink/absorb them.

I'm thinking that, though I hate hand waving problems, that maybe the world these are in has much more consistent cloud coverage, though on the other hand, maybe it could still be pulled off without that, since some animals regularly have to journey long distances to get water, like in the savannah/desert.

edited 16th Apr '14 3:58:27 PM by Zoraxbrooks

I imagine that a lot would depend on the climate, and in particular how often clouds form: a place that regularly has a lot of cloud cover might be similar to a marsh, while typically cloudless skies might be deserts; places with variable cloud cover might make for creatures more inclined to move about significantly, or creatures adapted to store water until the next clouds. Highly seasonal climates might see huge migrations.

(In fact, the cloud ecosystem might somewhat mirror the ecosystem below, as wet areas would presumably correspond with high cloud-cover areas, and dry areas with low cloud-cover areas.)

Normal clouds aren't dense enough for fish to float in and the water's not abundant enough to deliver oxygen to their gills at a high enough rate, of course, but ignoring that—

Ignoring water, there aren't enough nutrients in the air or in the clouds to support a lot of life. There are some bacteria (...which may be sites for water to condense on to make clouds form in the first place) but larger life forms can't subsist on the stuff that's there. If you've got a lot of life in the first place, you sort of solve that because you can recycle the nutrients... more realistically you need input from somewhere because it'll be impossible to just prevent nutrients from, say, falling out when it rains, until eventually there isn't enough left to support life. On Earth, ultimately minerals could be gotten from the ground, but cloud-living organisms don't have such easy access. But anyway, if you find a way to explain the clouds having nutrients, that alone would be a reason for clouds to support life while the rest of the air doesn't.

You would also need to have the organisms capable of indefinitely keeping themselves at cloud level without landing, unless the clouds are magic and you can actually stand on them. Buoyancy is better than powered flight for this, though such a world probably has floatation magic.

To drink water, the organisms might have traps that collect water so the organisms can take a drink or something, unless you're just having them suck up a lot of cloud all the time to filter out the water internally. Look up "fog collection" to see how people take usable water out of ground-level clouds.

Clouds don't only disappear when they release their moisture, but also get blown around on the wind. Do the cloud-living organisms get blown around with/follow the clouds, or do they move around relative to the surface of the planet below?

If you had a whole ecosystem in the clouds, from small light-to-oxygen plankton-like creatures all the way up to sharks, it wouldn't as big a problem.

So here's my idea. A combination of Eureka Seven (environmental effect that allows creatures to fly passively) and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (an ecosystem that removes certain elements - toxins - to a different one). Enormous plant-like organisms that grow high enough to deposit the necessary elements into the sky, which quickly gains its own ecosystem adapted to low pressure.

This isn't something you could pull off in a realistic and modern story - you'd have to sacrifice one for the other, at least - so I'd just make it a fantasy world. Then I'd hand it off to Yoshiyuki Tomino, to see what he'd make of it. (The theme song will be sung by Sasaki Isao, and performable by a military band.)

that would fit perfectly in the world I'm making.

Say... How about a migratory forrest (sort of like ents), they're already in the world, but I haven't done the geology yet as I'm still working on what's in it, they could migrate up the mountain carrying the birds and other creatures that have made their home there, like salmon swim up stream to lay there eggs, not sure what exactly the trees would do there, or when they would go.

I suppose they could plant/disperse seeds, which could then be carried through the clouds by various cloud creatures. If the cloud creatures evolved from animals that would live in trees, then perhaps they would have a sort of fur or feathers, maybe sometimes scales (sometimes you see a lizard scurry in a Forrest), therefore perhaps the seed would be like a sort of sticker that would stick to a cloud creature and then be carried by them across the world, and at some point reach ground with various results

edited 17th Apr '14 11:55:02 AM by Zoraxbrooks