Posts tagged biology
Ok, assuming a planet that's tidally locked to its sun, but is otherwise roughly similar to earth in gravity and atmosphere. Classic tidally locked planet: one side is covered in ice, the other is...
On one hand, heavier gravity would make flying more difficult, owing to greater weight restrictions on the flying creatures' bodies. On the other hand, the greater density of the atmosphere on ...
An extension to another question about Why would humans be the dominant species? In my story Giants, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to why...
I'm working on a bioweapon created by an extraterrestrial agent. The being is 2.5 m tall, humanoid, digitigrade, intelligent and mostly predatory. However, it does not require water, food or oxygen...
I am creating a science fiction worldbuilding project, in which humanity has colonised distant exoplanets. One such planet is a Venus-like planet in the sense that it has a perpetual cloud cover, a...
We've found a habitable planet orbiting a red dwarf star some light years away and conditions are Earth-like enough that a colonization project was initiated. Before any humans landed on the planet...
I'm thinking about an alien race that evolved from large terrestrial crustaceans and has developed a somewhat large brain. Like crabs on earth, these creatures have pinchers wich they use for self ...
If we assume a terraformed Ganymede has a global ocean roughly 800km deep, that food is bountiful, and that it has been populated by a variety of life from Earth, how large could these creatures gr...
The Greek gods were sufficiently advanced aliens with access to powerful technology. In the begining of our worlds formation, Zeus created mankind from his own flesh. These mortals were made in the...
One of the respondents in this thread suggested a 7-sex system with the following features: An idea I came up with years ago was a variation on the male/female/carries-offspring idea. This spec...
For context, I was reading about various research groups installing implants and cameras onto insects to use them as reconnaissance drones in high risk areas. I'm wondering how feasible it would ...
I'm working on a story where there is a crime scene where the protagonist (who has a superhuman sense of smell) notices a scent that smells like human corpses due to their abilities. I'm wondering ...
I know theoretically the human stomach is above the centaur's stomach so the obvious answer would be no. But seeing as centaurs aren't real and we don't know what their internal biolody would look...
In the deep, outer reaches of our galaxy, there is a rogue gas giant which, due to an unfortunate event, was flung from its native orbit into interstellar space. It has a mass 12 times that of Jupi...
I'd like to create a land-based mammal that uses its electricity NOT for navigation or hunting, but only as a defense (enough to stun creatures approximately its own size or marginally larger, with...
Humans are not the fastest mammals on the planet, but for very long distances (more than 40 kilometers) we can overtake any species living on land. Except some dogs. The best runners on ultra-long...
My postulated creature will look something like this: or like this: Its description is as follows: it's a non-obligate carnivore its height is, on average, about two feet it lives in arid h...
The MC1R gene turns pheomelanin into eumelanins but there are another kind of pehomelanin called pheochromes. So if a brunette or black person used a cosmetic gene therapy to turn off this gene how...
Suppose, for instance, you lived in a world filled with nasty monsters and other creatures of the night, all of whom wanted to kill you and eat you in various ways. Now, the good news here is that ...
I was thinking of a story with a Werewolf as a detective, using mostly conversational skills and his sense of smell to solve crimes similar to many of the UK types of detective stories (Morse, Lewi...
So how large of an organism can a diet of strictly of blood support? In a modern Earth setting it might be a bit hard for a large hematophagic organism to find a suitable group of prey that it won'...
Death, most if not all of us fear it. However, it may be possible to postpone death for a while, and hopefully entirely. One major way of postponing death for awhile is through the biological route...
Giant dogs aren't uncommon in works of fantasy. Sif from Dark Souls comes to mind. What I want to know is: what's the largest a canine could realistically get, what differences would they need c...
In my story an area was formerly beneath an ocean or lake. Some form of life leeched the soil of a specific mineral or substance. Technology level is that of ~1700 Spain. Now that the water has ...
Genetic chimerism is a condition in which a single organism is composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. Elves inhabit this world, but do not possess magic in this reality. Instead, t...
Around 5 million years ago, a group of primates diverged from early Baboon ancestors migrated into Sicily becoming Triclopes (here's a rough mock up of what a Triclops skull might look like): som...
I have a species of megafaunal carnivore that are extremely mobile with territories spanning hundreds of square miles and lifespans of 120-150 years. They lay clutches of 2-3 eggs every 20-30 years...
I recently started to wonder what a tree would be like on an alien world, and one thing that popped in mind for these trees was their color. The hosts star and environment would have a effect on sa...
In some birds especially owls, we can observe a structure called facial disk, which is mainly composed of feathers and helps to direct sound to their ears. While being more common in owls, adding u...
as the title, my question is how big a pelican like creature with its pouch mouth need to be in order to carry grown up human and still fly. since as far as i know hollow bone is to fragile for hu...
This is a post-apocalyptic setting I'm working on. The world has been overrun by invisible monsters from another parallel universe. They can be heard and smelled, and they can form claw prints on t...
The Diclonii are an evolutionary offshoot of modern homo sapiens from the Elfen Lied series. Most Diclonii can get distinguished from humans thanks to small bone and cartilage horns resembling cat ...
So, it is relatively common to have various creatures grow crystals. This generally happens outside of the body (at least partially), but internal crystals aren't unknown either (see for example, e...
I want to create a glutton creature that can open its mouth wider than the prey item like snakes do, but also can bite through that big hard object and even chew it; this creature doesn't swallow p...
Is there a way for a species to essentially become a living incubator of sorts? Not the other way around, as in Plausible ways for the alien species to be able to impregnate every and any species?,...
I found a previous question on using chitin from giant insects to make weapons and armor, but the answer left out something I had considered for the medieval fantasy setting I'm developing. The ans...
Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and, therefore, one of the key components of life as we know it. There are many amino acids in nature, but they all stem from the same basic structur...
In this world, humans have a strange way of reproducing. When partners decide to conceive, A female must be inseminated at specified intervals by a male in order to pass on her genes. However, male...
I've seen several people independently come up with the idea of three or more sexes where one sex is responsible for brooding the young (pregnancy, pouch, feeding, something along those lines) but ...
Imagine the ability to shoot long streams of hot fire like a USM2 flamethrower from the palms of your hands. or shooting them out of your feet so you can push yourself off of the floor. An answer w...
On plain Pilar forest biome of planet X, you have mostly 3 types of vertebrates: those who burrow under the ground those who run through the widely separated trees those who live above ground le...
The antagonist of my story trades steel with a non-human, and non-humanoid, race, in return for a magical substance. They place great value in steel as they cannot manufacture it themselves. That i...
We played with technology too powerful for humans to wield and opened a gateway to a parallel universe, on a dark world with a dying sun. The dominant lifeforms on this world are semi-sentient flyi...
The human brain is a jackass. Your senses are capable of processing large amounts of information to the senses. However, the brain blocks most of this out of the consciousness in order to allow thi...
In a world that takes place during the Victorian era (1837-1901), how effective would period-accurate firearms be against something similar to a dinosaur? As a brief aside, I will accept weaponry f...
Marsupials in the majority of the world are overshadowed by their placental cousins, with the notable exception being Australia. There they have convergently evolved many similarities to their plac...
is it possible for certain creatures that can use infrasound or even vibrations as a defense mechanism, like: - causing them to get a severe headache or even weaken them - temporarily stunning its ...
When elves decide to conceive, a male must add his genetic material at different intervals over several years to the female. Genetic material could come from a single male or various ones with no c...
I am wondering if it is possible for whales to fly. I'm considering two different cases. How could we alter earth conditions (thickness, gravity) so that whales could actively fly (without changi...
Genetic chimerism is a condition in which a single organism is composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. In animals, this means an individual derived from two or more zygotes, which c...