Default avatars of EQBio-OS
The default avatars of EQBio-OS are 393 square portraits, each 100 by 100 pixels, that the software of Molecular Reality Corporation gives to members of EQBio-OS who have not uploaded a picture of their own.[1] An image model generated them in February 2026 from prompts that drew on a list of 99 odd animals and a list of 99 molecules. The set holds animals, and it also holds stained-glass windows, mandalas, hearts, molecules and chess pieces.
Making the set
The portraits come from a thumbnail-maker tool in the company's software, which its March 2026 code still contains. An operator types a prompt with the placeholders [molecule] and [animal], and for each image the tool fills in one name at random from a list of molecules and a list of animals, each of 99 names. The prompt box suggests, as an example, "A glowing [molecule] fused with a [animal], digital art, vibrant colors". It asks an image model for a picture 512 pixels square; the code of that date names the model FLUX.1-dev and counts each image at $0.04.[1] The operator can delete images from a batch and save the rest, which are shrunk to 100 by 100 pixels. By the tool's rate the 393 saved portraits cost $15.72.[1]
The file names carry the time of generation, in UTC. Nine of the portraits date from a run of four minutes that began at 05:07 on February 20, 2026. The other 384 were generated between 05:32 and 06:11 the same morning, which is one every six seconds.[1]
Assignment
When an administrator creates an account, the software picks one portrait at random from those that no member has taken. If none is left it refuses to create the account and tells the administrator to generate more.[1] Members who sign up on their own are given a cartoon face from an outside avatar service instead.[1] A member who uploads a picture of their own earns 1.2 experience points, once.[1]
Animals on the list
The animal list is a file of 99 names, among them the bird-dropping spider, the fried egg jellyfish and the panda ant. The portraits carry no captions. Sixteen of the 99 animals are described here.
| Name on the list | Species | Note |
|---|---|---|
| aye-aye | Daubentonia madagascariensis | A lemur of Madagascar. It taps tree trunks, listens for hollow chambers, gnaws a hole and pulls out grubs with a thin middle finger.[2] |
| axolotl | Ambystoma mexicanum | A Mexican salamander that keeps its larval gills as an adult. Its genome, of 32 billion base pairs, was assembled in 2018 and lacks the developmental gene Pax3.[3] |
| barreleye fish | Macropinna microstoma | A deep-sea fish of the North Pacific with a transparent, fluid-filled dome over its head. Its tubular eyes, once thought fixed upward, turn within the dome to look forward.[4] |
| blobfish | Psychrolutes microporos | Photographed in 2003 on a research cruise, and later the mascot of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society. At depth it looks like a compact, ordinary fish; the sagging face is the damage of a sudden drop in pressure.[5] |
| hagfish | Class Myxini | A jawless, eel-shaped fish. Its slime swells to 10,000 times its size in 0.4 seconds, and the fish ties an overhand knot in its body and slides it along to scrape the slime off.[6] |
| ice cream cone worm | Family Pectinariidae | A marine worm that builds a conical tube of sand grains, up to about 5 cm long, and lives in fine sediment with the wide end of the tube down.[7] |
| mantis shrimp | Odontodactylus scyllarus | Each strike of the peacock mantis shrimp gives two force peaks 390 to 480 microseconds apart, the impact and then the collapse of a cavitation bubble. Impact forces of 400 to 1,501 newtons were recorded.[8] |
| naked mole rat | Heterocephalus glaber | A rodent that lives in colonies with one breeding female. A 2013 paper traced its resistance to cancer to a very large form of hyaluronan.[9] |
| platypus | Ornithorhynchus anatinus | An egg-laying mammal whose male has a venomous spur on each hind leg. Its genome was sequenced in 2008.[10] |
| saiga antelope | Saiga tatarica | An antelope of the Central Asian grasslands with a swollen nose. A mass death of saigas in 2015 followed weather of unusually high humidity and temperature and was caused by an opportunistic bacterial infection.[11] |
| sarcastic fringehead | Neoclinus blanchardi | A fish of up to 30 cm from San Francisco to central Baja California that backs into shells, bottles and cans. Rivals open their mouths to four times the closed size and press them together.[12] |
| sea pig | Scotoplanes | A deep-sea sea cucumber of 10 to 15 cm that walks on enlarged tube feet, typically at 1,200 to 5,000 m. Groups of 300 to 600 have been recorded.[13] |
| tarsier | Family Tarsiidae | A small primate of the islands of Southeast Asia. Each eyeball is about 16 mm across, as large as its brain or, in some cases, larger. It turns its head up to 180 degrees either way.[14] |
| yeti crab | Kiwa hirsuta | Found in March 2005 on a hydrothermal vent of the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge, about 1,500 km south of Easter Island, at 2,200 m. It is about 15 cm long, and pale bristles on its claws carry bacteria.[15] |
| yoda bat | Nyctimene wrightae | The nickname of a tube-nosed fruit bat of Papua New Guinea, formally described in 2017 under the local name Hamamas, "happy", for the smile that its broad jaw gives it.[16] |
| zombie worm | Osedax | Marine worms whose females eat the bones of dead whales through rootlike extensions. The males are dwarfs that live in the tubes of the females. The genus was described in 2004.[17] |
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g "Company records". Molecular Reality Corporation. October 2026.
- ^ "Aye-aye". Wikipedia. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "The axolotl genome and the evolution of key tissue formation regulators". Nature 554: 50-55. 2018. doi:10.1038/nature25458.
- ^ "Macropinna microstoma". Wikipedia. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Psychrolutes microporos". Wikipedia. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Hagfish". Wikipedia. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Pectinariidae". Wikipedia. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Strike forces of the peacock mantis shrimp Odontodactylus scyllarus". Journal of Experimental Biology 208: 3655-3664. 2005. doi:10.1242/jeb.01831.
- ^ "High-molecular-mass hyaluronan mediates the cancer resistance of the naked mole rat". Nature 499: 346-349. 2013. doi:10.1038/nature12234.
- ^ "Genome analysis of the platypus reveals unique signatures of evolution". Nature 453: 175-183. 2008. doi:10.1038/nature06936.
- ^ "Saigas on the brink: multidisciplinary analysis of the factors influencing mass mortality events". Science Advances 4 (1). 2018. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aao2314.
- ^ "Sarcastic fringehead". Wikipedia. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Scotoplanes". Wikipedia. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Tarsier". Wikipedia. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Kiwa hirsuta". Wikipedia. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "York scientists discover 'happy' bat". University of York. August 10, 2017.
- ^ "Osedax: bone-eating marine worms with dwarf males". Science 305: 668-671. 2004. doi:10.1126/science.1098650.