We’re continuing into Spectober with another anonymous request, this one asking for: “Hominids that evolved with 6 limbs, 2 of which are wings. Limb placement is up to you.”
Living several million years in a possible future, Anomalangelus anthropogenis is a bizarre case of a six-limbed primate.
Its additional pair of upper limbs originate from a heritable form of notomelic polymelia, similar to the Developmental Duplications condition seen in our time’s domestic cattle. It has a rather chimeric genome that appears to contain ancestry from several different hominid lineages, suggesting that this strange little creature actually descends from something that was originally genetically engineered.
It’s a tiny dwarfed species, only about 25cm long (~10″), with a highly arboreal omnivorous loris-like lifestyle, spending most of its life clambering around in trees. Although its extra limbs can’t move independently, lacking a lot of functional musculature and nerve connections, they’ve been exapted into brightly-patterned display structures and also serve as attachment for a large gliding membrane – Anomalangelus uses its forelimbs to grab hold of these “wings” while airborne, spreading them out and stabilizing them to form a composite wing.