Ok before I hit the hay. You can turn into an animal at will. Your clothes and such won’t turn with you but mass is not conserved so you can turn into something much bigger or smaller. It has to be a real creature that does or has existed and I guess if you want a plant that would be fair game. For me its an albatross. could travel around the world. might even manage to carry something that is not to large if packaged right. I am a bit torn though as the ocean is large so maybe a sea creature would be better. like a killer whale. of course then its not great for getting somewhere inland.

  • GhastfromthePast@sopuli.xyz
    1·
    1 day ago

    Some kind of raptor.

    Utahraptor for high power and combat capability.

    Microraptor for agility and gliding.

    Peregrine falcon for flying and speed.

    Dromaeosaurus or Troodon for those situations that are in between Microraptor and Utahraptor.

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 days ago

    Nothing deep sea, I don’t want to deal with other creatures in an environment I can’t transform back.

    Nothing flying, heights would scare me.

    I am between an elephant and a racoon. Probably a racoon.

    • HubertManne@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      you know that is a good point. I mean flyer you might be able to transorm briefly and back and crushing depths is definately a no go. Your comment makes me more go to flyer to think about something ground based like orangatang which I kinda am feeling from a guys gorilla choice.

  • BurgerBaron@quokk.auEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Migratory bird of some sort. I’d go with a species that dies migrating the least often.

    • HubertManne@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      you know someone said the artic tern and I had considered it but the albatross seemed more efficient but I see the albatross is not as good over land. I just found out sea birds have a gland that let them drink salt water to. So im leaning toward the artic tern now.

  • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world
    12·
    3 days ago

    Look, in fucking July, my species was renamed the fucking paradoxical sea Muppet (Australyichthys paradoxus), and I’m kind of fucking sore about it.

    Fucking Muppet! I’m a fucking seahorse. Fucking look at me you fucking imbeciles. Human fucks! Always fucking with you, fucking shit up, fucking up naming shit, fucking up the sea, ffs they’re the fucking muppets

    So, “seahorse” is my answer, thx

  • IlCaviale@lemmy.world
    33·
    4 days ago

    Well you didn’t add any caveats to the transformation and you said it’s at will so… If mass is not conserved then I’d just turn into something heavy yet compact like a rhino and harvest infinite energy from the toggling. If I get support from a State I might even choose a whale so we can extract the most energy per toggle. You can basically build an engine from it, and since whales are like 200 tons and I’m 70kg, the conversion ratio would be pretty damn good. Though it would require a dedicated facility, which is why I’d rather go with a rhino or something, which is however about 100 times less efficient so it would require 100 times as much toggling. You get the picture.

      • DoubleDongle@lemmy.world
        1·
        3 days ago

        You can sell power. I can’t be arsed to figure out how much money he’d make, but it might be a good living.

    • MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca
      26·
      3 days ago

      I remember reading something (might have been xkcd) that said Superman could do the objectively most “good” by simply powering a massive generator and providing free energy to the world. It would benefit the most people at one time, and provide a larger affect than simply beating up bad guys. So, in the same vein, your sacrifice will be remembered.

      Edit: it was SMBC, not xkcd.

    • OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish
      92·
      4 days ago

      It’s free energy, yes … but only a relatively small amount of free energy, in the grand scheme of things.

      Let’s say you go as big as possible with a blue whale, topping out at 200 metric tons. And let’s say the dedicated facility built for this has a height of 500m from which it can capture the energy of your descent. Each descent can (assuming 100% efficiency of the system) deliver about 980MJ (272kWh) of energy. A 500m drop in complete freefall would take about 10 seconds (disregarding air resistance). But since we need you to survive to do the process over again (rather than splatting into whale goo at the bottom), you’ll need to decelerate gently at the end, which will slow the process down. Capturing energy from the fall will also slow you down. Let’s say the drop takes 20 seconds, minimum. And, as unrealistic as it is, let’s go for a highly optimized scenario of lifting human you back to the top just as quickly, so 20 seconds for the trip back up. Assuming you can transform instantaneously, that’s 40 seconds per cycle – 90 cycles per hour, at the absolute maximum. 90 cycles x 980MJ means you can generate up to 88,200MJ per hour, which is equivalent to 24.5MW.

      A fairly average wind turbine like this one will generate 5MW at peak output. So you, as a blue whale power station, can generate a maximum power equivalent to ~5 large wind turbines. It’s not totally free, either, since the machine to capture this energy will be huge and expensive to build – likely bigger and more expensive to build than 5 wind turbines.

      (Not to mention, we’re ignoring a lot of minor inefficiencies here. Air resistance will be an energy-sapping factor on both the downward and upward parts of the cycle. Then there’s friction in whatever mechanical setup you build for the machine. Then there’s the energy cost of lifting human you back to the top. Then there’s the inevitable inefficiency of the energy capture, which would more realistically be in the 80-90% range at most, not 100%.)

      And to keep up that relatively meager energy production, you’ll have to transform every 20 seconds. 180 times per hour, every hour, as long as you can keep doing it. And assuming you need to be awake to transform, the power station will have to go offline regularly while you nap. It could also be a problematic power source because of its pulsing nature – 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off. That’s messy power to be dumping into a power grid, forcing other energy sources to constantly vary in order to make up for it. You could smooth that out with giant capacitors or something … but then that adds additional inefficiency and power loss into the system.

      Yes, it’s neat to be able to cheat physics and get ‘free’ energy … but on a grid level, the amount of free energy you can possibly get this way is pretty trivial. Not worth giving up your whole life for.

    • otacon239@lemmy.world
      2·
      4 days ago

      Now you just need to find a way to boil some water and… I feel like I’ve heard this one before.

  • Darkonion@lemmy.world
    6·
    3 days ago

    Yikes, imagine having to learn to fly. Sounds rough. I’d be a different human that I would call Rex so I could go to the store without worrying about anyone recognizing me. I’d just rather not have to worry about seeing anyone I know when I’m not in the mood.

    • HubertManne@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      so the idea is no real gotchas. you would have whatever natural instincts and aptitudes needed to function like the animal without it overwelming your judgement.