Posts tagged evolution
In recent years, the search for the origins of life is becoming complex. It turns out that oxygen is NOT a requirement for multicellular life to thrive. As stated in this BBC article, poriferans ...
I was thinking of a hypothetical species of snakes that join together for protection called Ladôni, due to their habit of mobilising in massive beds which make them resemble a large multi-headed s...
I've been thinking about dwarfs and their depiction in classical fantasy for while now and concluded that I find it unrealistic and lazy. Some research showed me that the current fantasy dwarfs hav...
I have a planned species of aliens that have many commonalities with longhorn crazy ants (cooperation with colonies of the same species, can live in a large variety of environments, and have the ab...
In my world, I have a dangerous virus that has evolved to subsist on Aether, which for now I will just call its secondary energy source apart from a normal infection of an animal. Yet on the planet...
I'm creating a large ungulate that is likely a part of the suborder Anclyopoda. Suspension of disbelief is expected, but there's a detail with the current design that's really bugging me. The cre...
In one of the documentaries he's featured in, Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about the evolution of the eye. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SXHMm5I-68 The part that's always intrigued me is this: ...
This question is based on a scenario on DeviantArt. The presented image is here: The description is as follows: By the start of the Cryocene, bamboo has become one of Serina's most successf...
On a world made up of many small islands, each island cannot support a very large population. Although sometimes individuals from one island make it across the ocean to another, this is usually a ...
I need to add a bit of descriptive detail on a species from a brief description. Essentially add a bit of finer detail to someone else's broad-strokes worldbuilding. An amphibious species' body lay...
What would happen to an earth-like planet where an event caused a large (think, the size of the Caribbean tectonic plate) section of the crust to get peeled away, exposing the upper mantle for a pe...
I'm designing an alien species, whose blood is highly acidic and can easily cause someone's hand to melt down. It's pretty similar to the Xenomorphs from Ridley Scott's Alien, except for the color ...
Insects and other land-based Arthropoda are stuck at the size they are due to how inefficient their respiratory system is. They were able to reach the size they did in the Carboniferous period beca...
So, I have thought about the evolution of my aliens and how they could evolve things like lactation but still retain their reptilian characteristics. Here is my best thought about it so far: Evol...
This is a classic of fantasy/sci-fi stories. A creature with two heads, two brains, two distinct personalities, sharing a single body. An entire race of Siamese twins. But the question is, what env...
Chaos plagues the land. In the West, the King in Orange blusters and bloviates endlessly in barely comprehensible gibberish. Perhaps he is attempting to call forth the Elder Gods? In the East, the ...
Could a species of aquatic mammals develop bio-luminescence? What kind of bio-luminescence would it be? What circumstances could lead to it?
I was thinking of a life form with a similar surface temperature to Earth, as well as a similar temperature variation to that of Earth. Could such a life form evolve an organ for generating temper...
Rats are commonly associated with illness and disease due to the role they played in The Black Death. However, some works of fiction portray rats as carnivorous swarms, devouring people indiscrimin...
In my setting, centaurs are related to other six-limbed creatures such as dragons and griffins (the "fur" is actually made up of tiny feathers). Assuming they were originally creatures similar to s...
Acording to current scientific knowledge, birds descend from theropod dinosaurs. This evolution had, as usual, some transitional forms, like Archaeopteryx. Following this evolutionary path, we not...
What would humans look like if they lived 50-100,000 years 20,000-30,000 feet / 6 to 9 km above sea level? Or 500,000 years? Would we have bigger lungs / chests? Bigger wider noses? Thicker skin a...
Right from the beginning, the xenarthrans--armadillos, sloths and anteaters--have been at a disadvantage. For the longest time, their home was an island continent, which made them extremely vulner...
On another planet there is a group of organisms that have colorful display patterns allowing them to attract mates. Eventually a branch of this type of organism evolves the intelligence of early h...
Given an unlimited time to evolve: what are the best ways to make any wild bovinae immune to its natural predators like the classic big felines (lions or tigers) and most reptiles (crocodiles or Ko...
The Guivre is an amphibious dragon from French mythology: Many of its aspects are typical of Western dragons, but there are two which distinguish it from others: Its breath causes disease It c...
Suppose we scale up a human to about 10m in height and their skeletal structure have evolved to ensure they won't succumb under their own weight. Due to their unique blood circulatory system they c...
Mariliths are these D&D creatures that are basically nagas except with six arms. OK, technically this image is from Final Fantasy, but you get the point. What environmental factors could cau...
One of the oddest of cryptids is an octopus haunting the lakes of Oklahoma, a landlocked state. The reason this is odd is that although freshwater mollusks are common, Cephalopoda (the class consi...
Demons have been a staple of multiple religions for thousands of years, just like angels. While some of the points brought up in the Anatomically Correct Angels post (and other posts on flying huma...
I was wondering whether it would be feasible to have a tree that at times may have light green, at other times dark green leaves. Why would a tree evolve to change the shade of its leaves? Yes, I...
In haplodiploid sex-determination system, female/diploid individuals are developed from fertilized eggs by means of sexual reproduction, while male/haploid individuals are developed from unfertili...
You're a lone immortal who's decided to breed raccoons to a human-level intelligence (over the course of hundreds of thousands or millions of years). To do so, you need to both feed a significant p...
I've included more background below, but the TL;DR is that you're a lone immortal who's decided to breed some species of animal to a human-level intelligence (over the course of hundreds of thousan...
Scenario: In my Evil Overlord plan, I release a poison into the wild which should kill all humans. However I made some sort of mistake in my poison design and I killed all Vertebrates bigger than 0...
I want to have a group of space colonists get stranded on a planet where the only way they can get enough nourishment is to gather or cultivate edible plants.
On another planet there is a life form that has the same level of intelligence as humans on Earth, but it has no appendage to manipulate its environment. It has similar social structures to humans...
In my world I find it simplest to have iron-based blood. The problem is that iron-based blood is red, and I want it to be black. Two things come to mind; one is making the blood denser, resulting i...
Background: An Elven nation that once thrived for thousands of years as a predominantly agricultural race was forced underground because of unexplainable occurrences of extreme weather conditions ...
Larry Niven's "Known Universe" (KU) features "The Outsiders" as one of its most prominent alien races. As per KU canon, the Outsiders evolved in a frigid moon (similar to Nereida) and they sustai...
How to justify evolving pointy ears that stick out from your head, on a humanoid. Like this: They can either start from the usual round-eared human(oids) with ears close to their heads, or hav...
A cool thing to imagine would be a world where the land was dominated by megafaunal frog-descendants, as it is/was by mammals today, dinosaurs before the mammals, and non-mammalian synapsids and cr...
As part of a series on plant animals, plantimals if you will, I am now asking about ears. All surface life has them or some sort of equivalent to them and with good reason. Other than sight, hearin...
The dragons in my fantasy world spit fluid from their mouths when threatened, which upon contact causes a burning sensation. I could have this liquid be standard venom, like modified saliva, but I ...
In Wayne Douglas Barlowe's classic book "Expedition" he has many strange creatures. One that intrigues the most is this one, the flipstick. It has two feet on either side and uses them to flip th...
Sonic weapons are frequently used by military circles as non-lethal irritants to deter opponents. My question is; could a naturally evolved organism kill, or at least incapacitate, small prey using...
Slimes are seen as merely base-level enemies which don't really challenge the heroic main character, the Chosen One. My question is how to make slimes incredibly powerful without using magic. The...
This is the latest in a long series of questions I've asked on my fantasy world which contains many mythical and folkloric creatures. I won't link the other questions since at this stage the series...
In Invertebrates, Muscular Hydrostat, which is a form of biological hydraulic, is used for locomotion. On Earth, (as far as I'm aware) no system exists where hydraulics perform in conjunction with ...
Fear has been a helpful trait that has kept our race alive since back in the day. It continues to be necessary for survival as a species. However, it can be just as harmful. When faced with death o...