Anatomically Correct Tomte
The tomte is a creature from scandinavian mythology. It's pretty small, humanoid and has clothes and a beard. They live on farms and in houses where they help out with farmwork and other labour, though they stay out of sight. They don't require much except being respected and having food (like porridge) offered to them once in a while. Their abilities include having the strength of several grown men despite their small size and being good at taking care of animals. If offended somehow, their behaviour switches around to vengeance and spite. They can destroy the crops, make the animals sick, assault the offender or just cause general mayhem. There is usually only one tomte per farm, they don't live together.
Is there a realistic way this creature could evolve? Could they have existed on earth with our current understanding of physics and biology and, if not, how close could we get?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/51326. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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There are some real-world examples we can point to that indicate the possibility of a realistic small humanoid. Since we don't need anything exotic like antlers, carapaces, or magic, this should be simple.
The shortest human on record was a mere 54.64 cm (21.51 in) tall. I'm not sure how that compares to anyone's image of a tomte, but I suspect we want to go smaller.
The smallest primate of all is the mouse lemur. Its body is only 6 to 12 cm (2.25 to 4.75 in); including the tail, up to 24 cm (9.5 in). I think this might actually be too small. But here we have a nocturnal creature with fully prehensile appendages. Just a few evolutionary advances in intelligence and it would make a nice farm helper.
Slightly better, the smallest "monkey" is the pygmy marmoset. They are just a centimeter or two larger than the mouse lemur, but have a more human-like overall anatomy.
I think some appropriate mix of an existing small primate and the right accidents of evolution could easily have produced the creature we want at least in terms of size, intelligence, and personality. The only problem is the strength. Here, I think we come up against an improbability due to an oft quoted rule here: the square-cube law. As the creature gets smaller, it will get stronger as a proportion of it own size but will be necessarily weaker overall. A marmoset stronger than a full-grown human would require bones denser than lead.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/51337. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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