Posts tagged creature-design
For a space-based story I am writing, I was hypothesising about how to have organisms that can thrive the vacuum of space. Ignoring plausibility of such a creature evolving, I realised a few probl...
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...
If a person had control over each and every single cell in his body, I.e: Cell growth Cell multiplication Shape and form of cells How cells bond/bind with each other Cell Function Would they be...
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...
There is a forest in my world with a special property: All the trees are optimised to shade as much as possible during summer and give as little shadow as possible during winter, to regulate the te...
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...
Subarenaceous animals are those which can move long distances through dry sand - like sandfish lizards, or Dune's sandworms. The main problem they have to tackle is turning the sand immediately aro...
Let's create a creature with the ability to create a loud boom with only its body. We'll start with a terrestrial predator, that gives us a good reason as to why it needs to do this. It uses the th...
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...
How might a carnivorous tree look or work? The following conditions must be met: Consumes members of the biological kingdom 'Animalia' Possesses something resembling a trunk or stem of any kind ...
Imagine a creature much like ourselves that can control the usage of their own mind. For example, a dying ancestor may tell some parting words which are so important that the individual explicitly...
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...
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 am wondering what kind of physical qualities (E.g. Short, thick pillar-like legs) a creature such as this would need to support such an incredible size. The world that it evolves on in almost ide...
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...
If a three-month dark period was a normal, recurring, part of a 15-month calendar, and plants had evolved to be bio-luminescent, could they survive? Would only some survive and, if so, would it be ...
As the title says, you know stuff like minotaur, lycanth or werewolf, cat or dog folk, etc especially for the female specimens. I want to know what happen if quadrupedal mammals which usually have...
This will be a companion question for How plausible is my monster?. My previous question dealt with a story treatment for a hard science and realistic take on Kaiju/ giant monsters. While that sto...
I am designing a creature that is quadrupedal but can run after prey on its hind legs. What kind of hip bone would allow for the excess stress to be put on it during bipedal locomotion? The animal ...
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...
There are lots of examples in fiction of lizard people, bird people or beast people, but I'd like to expand my phylogenetic horizons in conceptualizing my world. To that end, I have conceptualized ...
In the mythology of the Lambas people of Zambia, there is a creature called the Ichisonga. It is a herbivore, and very rhinoceros-like in appearance. Upon hearing a hippopotamus, it allegedly sne...
I am designing a mammal living in a warm environment (like a warm desert) which has developed a switchable metabolism, so that during the day it is cold blooded and during the night (when it is col...
Of the six limbs of classic dragons, the forelegs always stuck out like a sore thumb. They're dead weight in flight, etc... However, since in my setting you can find any sort of armament, short of ...
In my world there human-animal hybrids. My protagonist is a snow leopard-human girl (outwards looks almost completely human, except for the tail). These hybrids have been created through experiment...
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...
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...
A while back, I asked this question about the plausibility of giant floating whales and received an excellent and high-scoring answer from Dubukay demonstrating that, given the assumptions that Dub...
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...
Foreword: I'm aware of the limitations of the square-cube law involved in sizing an animal up, as these limitations have been relentlessly stressed in every discussion of realistic fantasy creature...
I had an idea of a concept a while ago. If a planet that for some reason or another had only one giant continent like Pangea, but bigger, for more distinct habitats and giant lakes assuring isola...
Huldra are forest creatures from Scandinavian folklore, best known for their seductive natures. They are frequently depicted as beautiful women, with the additional traits of a cow-like tail and oc...
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...
Looking at the case of Mike, I realized decentralizing the brain might not be infeasible. The idea is if Horus, the brown falcon, doesn't have enough room in his skull, then why not move various fu...
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...
Most dragons (before Skyrim and GoT) had six limbs in total, four legs and a pair of wings. The question is how would a dragon's forelimbs be placed? It's obvious they have good terrestrial capabi...
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 ...
Okay so, this is kind of a disgusting question... sorry about that in advance, guys. Say you are super strong, super fast, and super durable. There is a not so strong, fast, or durable normal human...
A while back Demigan had a running series of posts about various aspects biological enhancement for the purpose of designing super-soldiers with an element of (pseudo) science behind them. You ca...
I am considering the possibility of having massive cephalopods evolving on my world and having them fill the niche of whales. I've heard about how whales have evolved to increase in size for the p...
I've designed an alien race of bipedal humanoids with digitigrade legs. This race's advanced scientific progress means that they use traditionally human-associated technology, or similar (such as ...
We all know Pikachu, fuzzy, small rodent, with the ability to discharge electrical energy as an attack. But could Pikachu ever evolve in our world, and how would it do so? What's required: Rod...
I am working on an extraterrestrial class of tetrapod-like organisms. To give them an evolutionary advantage, I am considering biological hydraulics to supplement the muscles in the hind legs. Ev...
What other kind of mouthparts might an alien (intelligent or non-intelligent) have besides the typical jaw with teeth or mandibles? To avoid being too broad a subject, let's assume the aliens need...
I wanted a creature that produces something in its blood to protect itself from SEP (solar energetic particles) and GCR (galactic cosmic rays). The skin of the creature is normally sufficient prote...
I recently came across a game called dead space and a certain main antagonist species inside of the game. In this game you play as the main character who is trying to protect humanity from sentient...
You all probably know what a starfish is. When a starfish is ripped in half, if each half has part of the central disk, then it can regrow into two starfish. Worms can do something similar, if they...
Is there a way to make retractable tusks anatomically plausible in a creature design without relying on an articulated bone structure? Basically, relying fully on musculature instead of articulatio...
Assume these homo super-dwarf aka fairy and homo sapiens come from a common ancestor, and somehow they evolved a pair of wings and can do vertical takeoff. The average adult is approximately the ...
