Posts tagged creature-design
In my last question, How large could my sea serpents be?, I asked what length would be a) possible and b) necessary for a whale-eating sea serpent. My sea serpent is a constricting predator* in a c...
EDIT: (Important) M. A. Golding commented that the regalecid method of locomotion would be unfit for a constricting predator, so I have completely redone the taxonomy of the sea serpent. They are n...
I'm developing a silkworm that spins webs of a particular kind of "silk" and weaves thin, fragile webs. The magic part of this is that it also spins wind. The following addresses how this works and...
Why this question is different from existing questions... The closest question to mine is Anatomically Correct Cerberus. It is clear from the answers to that question and indeed it's axiomatic to ...
Could humanoids similar to the cubic-based beings found in Minecraft be physically plausible? The requirements are not that human can take such a shape, but rather that a being of such size and sha...
Note: this is not a duplicate of Anatomically correct Giants or What would be the tallest possible height for humanlike creatures in earthlike conditions? because my giants are far from humanoid. A...
This is the second question in a series about my ongoing worldbuilding project, which seeks to explain the evolution and biology of various fantasy creatures. The first one was: Is petrifying visi...
I understand that Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen are the source of a lot of great cheap chemistry and I understand why aliens could be made out of those elements. I don't understand though ...
Context In the arms race of survival many animals have developed ways of evading predators, but the animal I am interested in for this question would be the tiger moth. So basically these guys jam...
I've seen bird-human hybrids before in popular fiction, where they have legs, wings, AND arms. So I was wondering if this was really plausible. Humans don't want to give up the ability to manipulat...
Note: this question is not a duplicate. The accepted answer to the question "Anatomically correct Medusa" explains the petrifying vision via calcifying toxins spat from the snake hair. This a) woul...
This is part of a series of questions about biological hydraulics, the fist one being here. My tetrapods have hydraulics in the thighs of their hind legs. To push or pull fluid from closed chambe...
Question definitions: "safely" - the metal would be strictly beneficial; there would be no health problems caused by it (perhaps at least for most, there may be "birth defects" which cause some of...
A problem I've run into is the use of ultra massive beings due to the effects of the square-cube law which means that I cannot within the current laws of physics have the world I envision. My world...
Life had been good for a certain class of tetrapods. They evolved two layers graphene in a specialized collagen creating a relatively thin yet seemingly impenetrable hide. All of their natural pre...
I'm working on a class of tetrapods similar to mammals with warm blood. I am planning for their metabolisms to be quite high on average, among the carnivores especially. They range in size from tw...
So my Keplerians have a menstrual cycle that typically lasts 45 days on average. My proposed menstrual cycle is dependent on ovulation. So multiple ovulations without a period could occur but multi...
In my fictional world I am planning to have a humanoid species living on an arctic continent, and I am wondering what type of biological adaptations a humanoid (as in, anatomically modern humans or...
In Japan, there is a legend about scuzzy little creatures known as "akaname". These things are said to have a humanoid shape, red skin, stringy black hair, and long slimey tongues. They are said to...
For my group of alien tetrapods, I would like to have them evolve a sort of built in protection against the elements and other organisms. While researching, I came across information on graphene, a...
Yay my second alien sex question, I hope I am not arrested. Context Okay now to nitty gritty, So I got an intelligent species of Ostrich/flamingo looking creatures(this refers only to the shape, ...
I have a creature in which its main feature are its alligator-like jaws. It's carnivorous, incredibly aggressive, and is a reptile. Let's call them boom-agators. Now reading through many different...
As a parody of the super soldier questions and as an efficient way of organizing these questions I will now start this series of questions about Pseudo-Arthropod Primates. Previous questions from ...
The Background On a single fairly sizeable continent live two intelligent species. Regular humans, and a species of intelligent wolf-people. The latter aren't actually descended from wolves, but ...
Background As a parody of the super soldier questions and as an efficient way of organizing these questions I will now start this series of questions about Pseudo-Arthropod Primates. Questions fr...
How can a humanoid creature achieve the lowest possible terminal velocity with its own body? What kind of anatomy would decrease its terminal velocity?
Zerg Overlords are flying alien creatures that aid their broods by managing lesser members of the swarm, transporting units within their carapaces, and alerting a hive about any danger they perceiv...
In my fictional planet, forests grow not on soil, but on vast spongy mats of fungi. Traditional Earth-like feet would struggle to get grip on the squishy ground, so most megafauna taxa have feet li...
There have been countless online articles that go into painstaking detail about the implausibility of Godzilla existing in real life. But, let's just assume that a creature like Godzilla naturally ...
So, in my last question, I asked "How could an animal run fast using blade-like feet that sink into spongy ground?" The premise was that on my planet, forests grow not from soil but from spongy, ...
A submission for the Anatomically Correct Series. The plant genus Mandragora as we know today are nightshades that contain highly biologically active alkaloids that make them poisonous, with the...
So I've created a Cerberus creature that is a group of three hyena-like dogs instead of one organism. The three individuals are linked together, much like an ant colony or bee hive. They would be l...
How would a four-legged bird's flight differ from a regular two-legged one? Would it be slower in flight but have more power taking off? The bird in question is modeled on a bird of prey. (four leg...
For my a story I'm writing, I have 3 species that are from the same evolution line; Kitsune's, Tanuki's, and Bakeneko/Nekomatas. All three are familiar in the lines of shapeshifiting animals. Thei...
Previous parts here: Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 1: Skeleton Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 2: nervous system Creating a scientifically semi-...
Life Cycle Their life cycle is complicated but in the simplest way I can put it, a Keplerian is considered a baby for the first 2 years of its life. Then it is considered a gender neutral child (I...
I am still working on my intelligent detrivore alien species and so far I have gotten some great help from you guys. But after searching online a lot about detrivore psychology I still cannot find ...
Part 1 here: Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 1: Skeleton Part 2 here: Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 2: nervous system In most movies, comics an...
Previous parts here: Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 1: Skeleton Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 2: nervous system Creating a scientifically semi-...
Part 1 here: Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 1: Skeleton This question is about a complete rebuild of the nervous system. The question as proposed here: Improving human re...
I was thinking of an idea for an alien species in a hard sci-fi universe, and I wondered if a species, with the same amount of emotions as bottlenose dolphins (Except for fear), survive as a specie...
We all know what the minotaur is and what it looks like, a buff man with the head and tail of a bull. But could this creature evolve? Could it even exist? If a Minotaur could exist, what environmen...
So I am making these giant(human sized) amoeba-like aliens and to have something this big it requires a skeleton to maintain shape and to support its body but also needs to be flexible so it can do...
I'm trying to develop a planet which has somehow developed sentience. By sentience I mean more of an animal intelligence than being a person. So far I've got a couple of ideas: It's actually a sp...
This is part of the Anatomically Correct Series. I've been wondering how an anatomically correct pegasus could evolve. Pegasus characteristics They are pretty obvious, but just in case: Horse ...
I am creating a species for my alien world that will be seen as 'holy' by the planets dominant religion. I'd like to know if my 'holy' species could viably exist biologically/evolutionarily. Assu...
There's this creature that swims over the surface of water and it's giant, almost the size of a whale and has thick scales as armor over its back. This creature almost never dives underwater so fro...
Piggybacking on this question: Can you simply scale up animals? how CAN we scale up living creatures to be giant sized? What would need to done to make truly giant animals (Dragons, Kong, Godzilla,...
How could an organism (anywhere from animal to monster to humanoid) induce and control lifelike hallucinations simulating reality in (possibly unwilling) humans? The aesthetic thought was of a mon...
I actually have a couple of questions here. My dragon is very small, just about 3 meters long from beak to tailtip, 20 kilograms, with a 5 meter wingspan. A bit like a velociraptor-sized Rahonavis...
