Posts tagged biology
Bioaccumulation and Biomagnification are common concerns in marine environments, with natural examples like Ciguatera being a well known example caused by an algae that grows on coral that is th...
The Game Drive system, perhaps best exemplified by the "Buffalo Jump" of the North American Plains Indians is a hunting strategy in which large animals are chased into a preselected kill zone, su...
There are several mammals that are actually venomous. Several species of shrews, Solenodon and the Platypus are all venomous. While the platypus is the largest of these, it uses it in self defense...
For a book that I'm working on I am plotting out various points in time to make sure my plot is following accordingly. I apologize in advance for the lengthy post. It is a fungus-like infection tha...
This is a follow up question to: How realistic is the Swampus? What adaptations would current octopus have to evolve, to become land based, meaning that they spend at least 1/3 of their time on la...
In a specialised organ, the Vesica Spirite, which in function and makeup resembles a cross between the Ventriculus and the Vesica Biliaris, the animal creates and stores potent spirits by the me...
We all know how rabbits and hares escape ending up being a meal to a fox or a hawk, with long ears to hear danger coming, burrowing, long and powerful hind legs for speed and also living a social l...
Within my setting, insects, due to a rather long (millions of years) and convoluted (gods suffering from empty nest syndrome) series of events, have evolved their exoskeletons into an endoskeleton ...
Question: Are there are any serious biological or evolutionary plausibility issues with separating the energy storage/production function from the production of structural/regulatory biomass? Back...
So I'm working on this new novel with a fungal-like disease that is alien in nature and I have a question pertaining to spore germination. Some background - the disease is fungal-like, but not nec...
In the 2002 documentary the future is wild, numerous biologists and other scientists speculated about the future evolution of various species. In the '100 million years in the future' segment, the...
The Grey Alien trope almost always features a disproportionately large head, which often comes in unusual shapes to boot. There's nothing wrong with the trope, large brains are cool but what baffle...
I'm working on a first contact story set in the near future where an advanced alien species arrives at Earth and reveals itself to humanity, but is utterly baffled by the diversity of life that it ...
The Old Ones build continent-sized bunker complexes to protect themselves from the enemy, which followed through the cosmic ocean. The Hunter succeeded easily despite their efforts and their corpse...
If hawks or eagles (or any creature that can fly like a hawk) had the same ability to pronounce words as parrots but also had consciousness (what I mean by that is that they can scout and describe ...
The larger an animal, the harder it is to cool down. Ignoring the problem of bone/muscle strength vs size/weight and saying an animal could get to outlandish sizes, would a second cardiovascular sy...
I've been designing an an intelligent, bat-inspired avian race, and I've been struck with a question that I need answered. Now, I want to have these bats to fulfill different types of ecological n...
This famous tapestry shows all the "modernized" traits of a unicorn--basically just a pale-colored horse with a single horn on its head. Of course, single-horned animals do and did exist: ...
Assumptions: Jupiter's moon Europa has a salty subsurface ocean in contact with a rocky mantle. The ocean is populated by hydrothermal vents produced by tidal heating. Global heat flow is similar...
In a not so different fantasy world, whose physics and thus are similar to our own how would including penguins affect the look and function of a typical arctic ecosystem. For the purposes of this...
A world has grassy plains infested with larger-than-normal (perhaps even giant) blood-sucking ticks. Ignoring their main diet for the time being: They should be dangerous enough to threaten humans ...
The purpose of this question is to get an alien race with a diffused set of organs, which makes any part of their body interchangeable. Why would a species need this? Well for one it might be becau...
In the movie, Kong: Skull Island, there is a species called the Spore Mantis. When stationary, the Spore Mantis looks like a giant, dead log. When active, it looks like a giant insect - a giant,...
So as I was creating a variety of creatures I wondered if speed is exclusive to smaller creatures or if a large organism could move deceptively fast to take prey or predator by surprise. This is as...
In my narrative I have these aliens that don't experience time, they don't remember and don't predict events, which makes them completely reactionary. This is supposed to make them alien and diffic...
My question: What is it that needs to be improved or added to the human body so that it can withstand critically (fatally) low and high (if, my genetically modified person is underwater or a very d...
The response time of the human visual channel in a relatively quiet state is approximately 40 milliseconds, which provides a" frame rate " of 25 frames per second. At the same time, it is not just ...
In the movie, Arrival, there is an advance alien race that arrives on are planet, with a few landing in specific places. The aliens species are called "heptapods" (by our standards). They have 7 a...
Writing a story in which a human is trapped on an alien planet with an average temp of 6 Celsius, and I want to have the atmosphere be too rich in oxygen, but not to the point where an air tank is ...
As the tittle says what would the ecosystem look like if predator and prey were to switch places? The cause of this change is either handwavium or a very unlucky sorcerer. The transformation is mai...
Radiation is the ultimate bane of all organic life. Its particles punch holes in our DNA, causing mutations and giving us cancer. But, is there a way to make an organism that is unable to get radia...
I'm attempting to flesh out the history to a sci-fi novel I'm currently writing, which is set in the future. Several hundred years prior to the beginning of the story, lack of resources lead to s...
This question asks for hard science. All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this req...
In my fantasy setting, slimes are a species of giant (about eight cubic feet), single-celled amoeba. They have the ability to freely change their state and viscocity, being able to "melt" into a sl...
In the middle of the night, while J. Random Human is sleeping, A. Hypersphere picks him hyper-up extremely carefully (so that none of his matter falls out in a direction he doesn't have), flips him...
Previous parts here: Creating a scientificly semi-valid super-soldier, part 1: Skeleton Creating a scientificly semi-valid super-soldier, part 2: nervous system Creating a scientificly semi-valid ...
I've got an intelligent, stone-age species that looks a bit like an Azhdarchid pterosaur. It is around the size of a large eagle. They have a proboscis and a finger on each wing used for manipulati...
Taking into account the some limitations of the square-cube law, biology, and aviation, I have tried to make a dragon-like creature and a hominid that participate in a symbiotic relationship. For ...
So, there is this entity in my story, Slenderman, who's ultimate technique is the Blackout. Blackout causes electronic devices and light-based communication to fail within a 5 km radius of a chose...
my question is as follows: How cold temperatures can withstand a genetically modified person who has the opportunity for a long time (more than a day ) at low temperatures (below -30 ° Celsius ) t...
Could a creature carry its own ecosystem around with it? What traits would it need to make this viable? These self-sufficient creatures are native to planet which is for the most part frozen and ...
As you know, mythical animals like the gryphon, dragon, wyvern, roc, etc can carry things as they fly. For a big creature to fly, it either needs to massively increase the spread of their wings or...
Given the perfect environment, denser atmosphere, oxygen rich, maybe lower gravity, how large can a flying insect get and still be able to walk upside down on a surface? This question starts to ta...
Animals on Earth have 2 or 4 legs they use for walking. On another world, however, animals have 3. I want to know how these animals will walk. How will their legs be placed and how will they move t...
I want to make my unicorns use the horn as their male genital. Is it biologically possible to put the genital on their head? I know there are many strange genital locations for animals, for example...
I recently asked a question about' "The feasibility of the coral highlands", which come from a game called "Monster Hunter World". In the game, there is another place, called, "The Rotten Vale", wh...
In Stellaris fungoids are, well, intelligent funguses; some Earth-like, two looking like intelligent species infected by funguses, and the rest looking alien. Let's get into the actually basics an...
What properties and side effects would an organism have if it were formed entirely from cancerous cells? Scientists collected a sample of a tumor from a patient for studies. Once cultivated the ce...
The song Diggy Diggy Hole makes some questionable assertions about dwarven anatomy. Specifically: Born underground Suckled from a teat of stone Raised in the dark The safety of o...
This is for a story I'm working on. These creatures are what the Native American myth of the Wendigo originated from. Their origins are a mystery, but they need to feed on human flesh at least once...