| Cerebralbore101 said: Convergent evolution is the answer you are looking for. An example of convergent evolution at work is both Dolphins, and Sharks having dorsal fins, and powerful tails. Even though Dolphins are mammals evolution has selected for them to have dorsal fins, because it is advantageous. The same goes for why birds, insects, and bats all evolved wings independently. Being able to fly is a huge advantage and having wings is the best way to get there. Taking Convergent evolution to the world of Splatoon, we can say that since Octolings and Inklings both started raising and caring for their young, evolution selected for them to have mammary glands. (Yes, I realize Inklings don't have nipples, but that doesn't disprove the young rearing hypothesis at all. Why? Because evolution is a slow process, and we are likely seeing Inklings in the middle of the process of evolving complete mammary glands, with nipples and all.) |
Whenever a game or movie has humanoid aliens or species that evolved to be more humanoid, and the females have breasts, and someone says they can't take it seriously because of the breasts or the humanoid aliens, I always point them to convergent evolution. Convergent evolution by no means says that all aliens have to be humanoid or mammalian, just that it's perfectly believable that they could be, because if an evolutionary path creates a planet dominating, spacefaring, civilization building species, it's obviously a very successful path for evolution to follow and not all that crazy to think that it could work more than once.
As to the lack of nipples, I don't take that as necessarily being canon, since it's doubtable that Nintendo would consciously choose to not render nipples on a surface that isn't supposed to be seen anyway. They could easily pull a Mario Odyssey and in a later game just suddenly decide to put nipples on the Inklings. But even if they don't have nipples, you're right, Inklings could develop the ability to produce milk for raising young without developing nipples. Just look at platypuses. Platypus moms don't have teats, they sweat the milk out of pores that pool in grooves on her abdomen for the babies to lap up.
