Posts tagged evolution
If I take ten thousand healthy adult humans, strap them into a colony ship, and fire them off on a three-million year journey to a distant star, what will the creatures climbing out of the colony s...
The question is fairly straightforward but to put a bit of context: (Slice of life): I've often noticed how even though my eyesight really isn't great* I still somehow manage seeing a lot better...
A team of alien researchers get bored one day, and decides to conduct an experiment. Seeing that the great ape Homo sapiens sapiens turned out so well ( in terms of technological development and ...
I was thinking of a situation in which a creature lives in a region in which the levels of radioactivity varies from harmless to lethal from place to place and time to time. It takes millions of y...
My basic question is could life 'as we know it' (carbon DNA/RNA based, using water as the main solvent in metabolic processes) evolve on a planet where the temperature ranges from 16 degrees Celsiu...
Elementals are based on the 4 classical elements: earth, fire, air, and water, as those were all that the ancients knew of. However, with science we have learned that none of those are actually ...
I was thinking of a situation in which a life form evolves a biological screen somewhere on its body that can play videos. The life form would play videos on its biological video screen in order t...
The Hecatoncheires was the collective name given to three monsters; (Briareus, Cottus and Gyges) who were the children of Gaia and Uranus. They were not only known for their frightful enormity, b...
I understand that the human brain consists of many cells working together but could a single celled life form evolve something like a brain with similar intelligence to the human brain? I was thin...
I'm working on a planet wherein the dominant species isn't humanoid (in this case, mantids.) However, I'm unsure as to whether or not it'd make more logical sense for the dominant species to be co...
Let there be an Intelligent alien species of heavily armored but lightly armed folks. Think of sentient crabs without claws. The are physically incapable of fighting each other. They are filter fee...
The Setup A while back, I read an article in which the author compared the rise and fall of civilizations in the universe to a forest. In the forest, small plants come into being, grow, and die o...
I am building a fantasy world roughly the same size, elemental makeup, and atmospheric composition as Earth. In this world, there is an island (about the size of Australia) known by outsiders as th...
I was thinking, and I came up with an alien race, which enthralled me. I was just wondering if these creatures would plausibly evolve this way. (Info dump time These aliens are humanoid. While t...
Could something like this be possible? All humans have been replaced with highly advanced androids, indiscernible from humans, which have been implanted with the memories of the humans they were ba...
Picture, if you will, four planets sharing the exact same orbit and orbital speed, and separated by exactly same distance from each other. Each planet is the same size and roughly the same gravitat...
One of the main problems with creatures that they have tentacles instead of manipulating paws or hands. This isn't a big problem for developing sapience, but it is a problem for entering the realm ...
I was thinking of an organism that has evolved to get its energy through nuclear fusion. It has its own fusion rector inside its body that is capable of fusing hydrogen to helium to derive energy....
I have a species of creatures that live in packs off the coast of my fictional world's one super continent. Humans have lived there for millions of years. At one point these humans had achieved the...
James MacGuffin, famous archaeologist goes on one of many expeditions to Egypt. He crosses the Dead Sea from Jordan, and about halfway through, he is amazed at what he finds. A small group of large...
Somewhat related to this. I've already decided that both orcs and humans are subspecies of homo sapiens (homo sapiens praepotens and homo sapiens perpessio, respectively, because both species are a...
I was at a musical event a while back and as I saw the brass instruments a question popped my mind, could an animal come with an instrument built in? It seems far fetched but evolution has given us...
Would humans have to become "wild" for this to happen?
Cerebrospinal fluid is a thin layer of liquid that helps use avoid being knocked out (among other uses). Creatures with a thicker layer have more trouble being knocked out. I want my humanoids to n...
Context In the near future, humans will have manufactured machine sentience. Such a consciousness, the first of a new species, must operate on Earth. Constraints A memristor-based human brain a...
Humans show aggression by baring their teeth, dogs show aggression by growling and cats, by hissing. All groups of animal show aggression in a way that makes it clear to attackers that they are agi...
Can non-intelligent life forms evolve to leave their home planet and travel in interplanetary space, for instance, grow on atmosphereless icy moons and transfere spores over interplanetary space?
Yesterday I was driving at night on an unlit road (nothing nefarious, I swear), and there was a truck behind me with a ridiculous amount of headlamps on, and catching a glimpse of it in my mirror i...
There is a cold planet (maybe a moon of a gas giant) far out in a solar system. It has a solid core and the surface is a thick layer of ice. Because of nuclear fission in the planet's core it is w...
This question is intended as a follow up to this one: Naturally occurring wheels - do the 'mech' vs. 'tank' comparison apply to organics? I agree with the arguments against wheels evolving in plac...
So, as the title suggests, I have a reptilian alien species capable of human-tier thought. Anatomically, they are centaur-like (four legs on the ground, two manipulating limbs up top), standing sli...
I have a bipedal, primate species that I want to be able to move quickly for short periods of time. In other words, rather than possessing the "perseverance" of humans, I want this species to work...
In the answer to this question, it is said that that is needed to be done to make the solution feasible is to increase the growth rate of human hair. But the problem is that I cannot think of any e...
Much like how certain cultures have adapted to live at extremely high altitudes, what would be the evolutionary effects if humans today were taken to a planet with atmospheric pressure not unlike a...
What would the implications be for a humanoid species to excrete only gaseous waste from themselves instead of solid or liquid waste? Public bathroom facilities would not be needed, but how would ...
Melanin is what causes the color to appear in the skin, hair and eyes. But in humans there seems to be a limit to this. For example human hair can be orange(gingers) but not green or blue. iris's c...
In many famous alien species you see that the iris is so large that it almost appears that it replaces the sclera. What evolutionary history would support the irises growing to that size. The only...
There is a place that has a natural boundary that allows all animals and plants to enter that place but any animal that can't fly is unable to leave that place. This place is large enough to have ...
Pretty much what it says in the question title. Suppose a non-human, social species of Earth animal found itself on an evolutionary path that favored increased intelligence of a kind not completel...
I am thinking on a small group in the current Humanity, having only around 2-300 members. They have the most important positions in the world politics (i.e. politicians, media holding owners, key d...
The idea is simple, our intellegence is so far above a chimp or bonobo as to make us something different. There are things we can do intuitively that no Bonobo or chimp will be able to, and becaus...
This answer to my question about light-as-a-weapon came up with an interesting concept: The Reflecting-Oven-Jay This is a small African predatory bird with a perfectly smooth set of wings ...
On our world we have any number of creatures that use: Noxious Chemicals Poison(Spiders and Snakes being the obvious examples) Sound Electricity as an alternative to their teeth and claws. One...
Let us consider two persons who can feel what the other senses and know what the other thinks. Now do these two persons have a common or single consciousness?If so,will it do good, if we succeed to...
Imagine a planet with the same climate all on the surface. There is only one living creature on this planet (let's say a plant to avoid food problem). It is perfectly adapted for the climate. And ...
The trope here is a world with 3-4 X earth atmosphere with high oxygen content (30%). Nice things about this are it enables heavy beasts to fly, and the high pressure smoothes out the negative effe...
In this question someone suggested that the classic 'elf' ear could evolve for the same use as whiskers. How (un)realistic is this idea. Lets assume that the humanoid species that evolved these ear...
Meet the following specimen of Armatae Bestia. I'd describe it, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll just put one here instead (Feel free to drag it into browser window to get a much bi...
Let's assume I have a planet and the planet itself is made out of something solid. Around the floating rock is a layer of gas, then a layer of liquid and then a layer of gas again. Thus the sea fl...
I'm aware that deep sea fish don't actually "explode" when brought to the surface but any air sacs in their bodies would expand and cause them possibly fatal damage. However, what other physiologi...