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Description
From the story "If you wish" by John Rackham I read in the number of November 1959 of the IF magazine some weeks ago.

Aside from the idiotic, predictable and mysoginistic plot, I found the few descriptions of Venusian life embedded within rather enticing. Here are the relevant passages about this creature:

"Because of perpetual turbulence, airborne life never got started. So -no birds or insects- plant life has to struggle along by other methods. Micro-lizards fill the gap, but not as efficiently as bees and such."

"There, in an endless hot twilight, stunted struggling vegetation fought its ceaseless battle against the elements, and a myriad tiny, gemlike lizards."

"That [...] is, in essence, the ecological problem of Venus. The lizards are the fertilizing mechanism, the symbiotes, but they are also damned voracious. So, over the millennia that life has been struggling there, very little progress has been made. It's more of a check than a balance!"

"There is no naturally occurring liquid water on the planet, although the atmosphere is loaded with it. Humid but not liquid. Only the plants and the lizards can accumulate liquids"

In this setting, Venus is wet but it has no bodies of water. Life evolves at a glacial pace too.
This makes me think: On such a world, crawling lifeforms never went through a swimming stage during their evolution. Their most primitive macroscopical ancestors (likely worm-like things that slithered or leaped over the soggy mud) developed legs directly, instead of evolving them from fins.
So, these micro-lizards may be legged, but they are still as primitive and underived as lancelets or conodonts.

Since they have no predators, I imagine these "lizards" would lack environmental-awareness adaptations such as a flexible neck, hearing or complex eyes. The varied, bright skin colors are merely the result of random genetic drift and a layer of microstructural elements designed to keep UV radiation out and they play no role in camouflage or mate selection. The skin is very thin and permeable.

Description
From the story "If you wish" by John Rackham I read in the number of November 1959 of the IF magazine some weeks ago.

Aside from the idiotic, predictable and mysoginistic plot, I found the few descriptions of Venusian life embedded within rather enticing. Here are the relevant passages about this creature:

"Because of perpetual turbulence, airborne life never got started. So -no birds or insects- plant life has to struggle along by other methods. Micro-lizards fill the gap, but not as efficiently as bees and such."

"There, in an endless hot twilight, stunted struggling vegetation fought its ceaseless battle against the elements, and a myriad tiny, gemlike lizards."

"That [...] is, in essence, the ecological problem of Venus. The lizards are the fertilizing mechanism, the symbiotes, but they are also damned voracious. So, over the millennia that life has been struggling there, very little progress has been made. It's more of a check than a balance!"

"There is no naturally occurring liquid water on the planet, although the atmosphere is loaded with it. Humid but not liquid. Only the plants and the lizards can accumulate liquids"

In this setting, Venus is wet but it has no bodies of water. Life evolves at a glacial pace too.
This makes me think: On such a world, crawling lifeforms never went through a swimming stage during their evolution. Their most primitive macroscopical ancestors (likely worm-like things that slithered or leaped over the soggy mud) developed legs directly, instead of evolving them from fins.
So, these micro-lizards may be legged, but they are still as primitive and underived as lancelets or conodonts.

Since they have no predators, I imagine these "lizards" would lack environmental-awareness adaptations such as a flexible neck, hearing or complex eyes. The varied, bright skin colors are merely the result of random genetic drift and a layer of microstructural elements designed to keep UV radiation out and they play no role in camouflage or mate selection. The skin is very thin and permeable.