Posts tagged evolution
What, if any, survival advantages could a testudine gain from evolving a bipedal stance, either permanently or temporarily? Essentially, is there a factor that would have to be introduced for this ...
I was thinking about how we differ from crocodiles and sharks in terms of teeth. Now of course we don't have carnivore teeth but we also don't grow new teeth unless you are talking about a young ch...
Spiders produce silk, a protein fibre able to construct webs and dens. But is there an existing animal (preferably a vertebrate) that would be able to evolve a similar ability of producing a silk-l...
In a story I am writing, some animals (including sentient ones) can touch fire without being harmed. Not any kind of fire, though. They can caress the fire of a candle with a finger, and they can ...
Elves have a long life and in most settings, they only have children after a century or two. Would sub races like, drow and aquatic elves really evolve without any magic intervening? Considering ...
The situation is that an alien race transplanted a single tribe of about 10,000 primitive genetically homogeneous humans to a distant but livable planet. I want to know how much this initial popula...
This is inspired by The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells. In the book - in the far future - humans have split into two races, the Eloi, who live aboveground, and the Morlocks, who live underground. The...
I have a sapient (alien) species that behaves more or less similarly to humans, and that includes their romantic interactions. However, although they court/date each other much like we do, there is...
In my world I am working on, the species is similar to humans in almost every way except for the following thing things: They a much more slender They have very light hair colors such as blond ...
This question is based on the articles saying that the Mongoloid body plan was all due to an individual mutation from 35,000 years ago. In science fiction, humanoid aliens that aren't of the human...
In my world there is a trading city in the middle of a vast stretch of wild, untamed forest. It was built to serve as an in-between for merchants as there is a peaceful kingdom both north and south...
Suppose we have an alternate earth where there in addition to the real species on earth are large hexapod creatures similar to mammals and reptiles. Where on the evolutionary tree is it most likel...
Imagine a species (the cause is largely irrelevant - could be alien meddling for all I know) that is Homo sapiens in all except one detail: they have additional organ which is kind of like gills - ...
Because vanadium dioxide experiences a sudden phase change at 67° C, instead of trying to make small changes to gradually contract or expand muscles, could an alien instead have many smaller muscle...
Many animals have ears that revolve and pivot when they hear noise. Humans have vestigial structures in their ears that allow them to wiggle their ears somewhat. How would elves achieve this same e...
Because I need a spine that works for massive and small creatures I'm thinking of making a plant-based spine (which has its own DNA). The spine acts kind of like a cucumber, in that when it sucks u...
I'm thinking of making a species that evolved in a planet that has a type of algae that secretes a nutrient rich sludge that the species only has to drink to survive. I know that this would make th...
Bioluminescence and/or extremely large eyes to take in the almost nonexistent light beneath Europa's ice sheet, or eyeless sockets and a transparent body with senses better equipped to detect minut...
Horizontal gene transfer via retroviruses that change an organism's germ line DNA exist, even in humans, and account for a minority but not insignificant portion of the genomes of many, if not most...
I am creating a planet which is similar to earth (but slightly smaller), with similar climates and resource distribution. It is inhabited by 3 races, one of which are humans, and the other relevant...
So Vanadium is present in fossil fuel reserves, and in present in some organics on earth, I figure that if a planet was rich enough in Vanadium a species could ingest it, then the vanadium could be...
So our muscles run off of oxygen, but I heard from my brother when posing this question (he's a bio major in college) that using phosphorus instead of oxygen to power our muscles would make them fa...
I've been spending a lot of time developing aliens for a comic I'm working on, in the skeletal structure department I've run into a bit of a roadblock, how to design a spine for a species that is k...
Although the fossil fuel coal had been used as a fuel since 1,000 B.C., it wasn't until the arrival of the Industrial Revolution from the mid-1700s through the 1800s that coal began to replace b...
I've recently been replaying Skyrim (for about the fifth time now), and I've stumbled across something I thought would make for an interesting question. The Greybeards are a group of extremely pow...
Premise Let me begin by citing the intellectually charged and equally comical banter between physicist Brian Cox and "Doctor Who": (aliens appear on console) Dr. Who: "That's a silent; yo...
How could, for example, wolf and cat evolve to walk in two legs, have fingers and the ability to speak, reason and build civilization? The conditions: This works not only for these two species, ...
The Nachtkrapp is a german version of the bogeyman or in a more general term a kind of bugbear. Nacht is the german word for night and Krapp is used in southern germany and austria as a word for ra...
I was thinking of a scenario in which a population of snakes gets stranded on an island in which they are literally the only animals. This hypothetical island does not even have insects for the sn...
Is it realistic for me to write about a time period where silicon-based sentience have evolved alongside humans? Perhaps they could have evolved to sentience when driven by nanobots (which could be...
I'm imagining that a group of humans was transported to a different planet almost 100 thousand years ago. The planet is similar enough to Earth that they can survive, and already had other earth-...
My experience with mousetraps has intrigued me to think that way. They exploit every flaw again and again to get the food out of the trap. Once a trap holds on to one they all learn to avoid it. Th...
On earth, as far a we know, there are two main ways that bacteria gain energy. there is Photosynthesis, the transition of light into chemical based energies such as ATP. there are chemical proce...
I have devised a semi-aquatic sapient species known as the Hexapi who until now I thought were trichromats. However, after doing my research on the evolution of the eye, I found out that colour vis...
Appearance The ''vipers'' are semi aquatic humanoids species with webbed fingers on both hands and feet, they also have 2 fins on each leg and their legs are covered in scales from the feet up to ...
Once I heard a scientist saying the following: Imagine an ants' nest and all the ants living there perfectly organized, each one with specific duties to perform for the well being of the...
Need ideas for the fox's tails. In case you're wondering, this is for a speculative evolution book I'm doing which is suppose to build a structure for...
I've been dreaming up what I would consider to be an "ideal" sentient being and there have been a variety of fantastic responses to some of my other questions that got me re-examining my design. F...
I can imagine our own civilisation becoming autotrophic eventually, if biological life gives way to a population of machines that need only sunlight. However, the history of that situation still in...
Which natural conditions are needed to force the evolution to immortality? I've read on a page (I don't remember the page) that if the environment is safe, the animal would evolve to have a shorter...
For example, a half-cat half-human hybrid might have a zone partway down their tail, or a human might have one in an unusual place e.g. their scalp, shoulders, whatever. I've seen this used in fic...
I have been working on the idea of a mammal following an evolutionary path similar to whales, which started as semiaquatic before becoming fully dependent of its underwater enviroment. So how could...
I love the game Inside. Like its predecessor, Limbo, it is a game where you cannot fight; only running and hiding are allowed. The game ends however, with you coming across a large ball of meat str...
I'm creating a fantasy planet with an interior that has a god phasing in and out of our dimension, adding to and taking away mass in mysterious fashion while keeping everything but the influence of...
I am designing an semi-aquatic sapient species known as the Tetrapi. They have an appearance similar to that octopi, only with 4 tentacles comprised of 3 opposable digits. Unlike octopi, they are a...
Is it possible for an organism to evolve to biologically generate its own nuclear power? If so, how would this evolution occur?
Could a species, over centuries of evolution, evolve a special organ that stores pure energy and allows it to control its own magnetic field? What possible steps would have to happen for this to oc...
In a non-magical world where homo sapiens has evolved into several races or breeds (like dogs) or even species as in Q10102 and Q12190, that can interbreed for the most part, how can one model the ...
Humanity is often said to have 5 senses, but this isn't entirely accurate. This is one question of several in a series I am asking regarding going beyond the 5 senses. Magetoception is one of the...
I'm making an alien race that's kinda like the Tyranids. My problem right now is that they're starting out on a planet. How would they actually leave this planet using only their biological abiliti...
