Posts tagged xenobiology
This is a science fiction intelligent alien biology question. I'm imagining a race of large (around 2m in height) insect-like species on a distant planet who discovered astronomy VERY late in thei...
I was thinking of a creature that uses ultrasound to echolocate and infrasound to communicate with its species. The current idea is a dog-like creature that hunts in packs, due to a large avian pr...
This was an idea I had for an alien life form but i thought it made so little sense for a science-based story that I didn't further it. The idea is a tree-like life form that instead of bearing fr...
My jet-propelled squid uses a scavenged shell for its pulse jet deflagration chamber, I am trying to determine how often he'll have to replace it. Including the shell it's a 5 kg animal using a ...
An idea I'm toying with for a sci-fi story is a species where the individual organisms are colonies of smaller eusocial organisms. The idea initially came from "hey if a bunch of single-celled orga...
Okay so i have this world that is inhabited by an alien race that outwardly is basically undistinguishable from an ordinary earth-human. Due to the specifics of this planet they live on they can br...
Body: Boron-based lifeforms that use ammonia as a solvent and respires methane & hydrogen, with an atmosphere of mostly methane, hydrogen, nitrogen and in smaller percentages, acetylene & ...
There is a planet called Galileo with life on it. The life is getting extremely complex, in fact, with some of the life on Galileo beginning to form tribes and clans and learning language. Humans w...
Here a laser raptor Pew Pew'ing in its natural habitat and timeline. (From the Kung Fury movie) So I want to know how a biological organism can develop to spew laser beams through their eyes. W...
Would it be possible for an alien species to have liquid nitrogen for its blood? What would be required for that to work? What kind of environment would it need to exist in?
Let us assume we have a rocky planet by the name of Pyros orbiting a single star, the Star of Random. It has an atmosphere consisting of 77% methane, 21% oxygen, 1% water vapor, and 1% other gases...
I will be making several posts on this community regarding questions which involve the design specifications of an alternate human species I designed. Because I'm not a biologist, and I have no ide...
While pondering "Can radioactive moon affect life on a planet?", I got to wondering about plants that send out a tight beam of ionizing radiation. What kind of evolutionary pressure might lead to s...
This pure-blood vampiric race is not immortal, but their lifespans are about five times that of mortals. This race has lived in a vast city beneath a small mountain range for thousands of years (th...
Wait ... what? Basically, this: Most land predators on Earth use their mouths to kill their prey. That is, they have to stick their precious, irreplaceable heads into harm's way every time they ...
Some humans have been genetically engineered to be able to detect ionizing radiation to better survive the harsh environments found outside of earth's protective magnetosphere. What could be the ph...
A sentient species of water-dwelling aliens achieve space-flight. Their living quarters contain water [no free gases]. They have evolved over millions of years to regulate their buoyancy at will...
Could alien life use nitrous oxide, N2O, as its oxidizing gas, like oxygen on earth? What biochemical reactions would be needed to produce and utilise this gas? I've also heard conflicting messag...
so in my world the rivers and lakes (not sure about the sea yet) are made of blood that'll never dry up. The blood maybe fresh or not (I still haven't decided yet,probably both anyway) i also haven...
I am making a fish folk race, and I want to figure out if tattoos/ piercings could be possible. My ideas for piercings would be on the flesh itself or on the fins. If they had piercings in these ar...
Humanity has discovered entire worlds filled with creatures that would question their understanding of biology, but one creature, if it can be called, has brought up many many questions. Appearanc...
I apologize if I continuously ask different questions about different concepts for stories. It's just that I can never make up my mind on what to write, and sometimes, my ideas change. But anyway...
I'd really like to write a story taking place on an alien world that involves a totally new kingdom of life, and I'd like it to be at least somewhat realistic. The idea I have right now is a whole ...
As a thought project, I wanted to make an alien species that eats without any use of the tongue, but I've run into the problem that it's almost impossible to swallow solids without choking without ...
How would a biological drop pod make it into the atmosphere and land safely? I have a race of aliens that use biological tools instead of technology. Their ships are living beings that can travel t...
I am attempting to devise a mechanism whereby a species may reproduce in a communal manner. A number of individuals, ranging from two to arbitrarily high, may contribute gametes to a mass spawning ...
Humanity has spread out in the cosmos, colonizing various worlds, cataloging countless creatures, the usual interstellar species activities. One day, however, humanity finds a species that is argua...
I am working on a planet with life composed of prokaryotic cells, like bacteria from earth but which have formed large organisms. What perplexes me is that I haven't found a single example about ba...
here what Xing Tian look like and the description in the wikipedia. Xingtian appears in chapter 7 of the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas), which states that he fought and lost agai...
I was wondering what anatomy would allow a humanoid creature, where the height of the body is around 4 feet tall, to be able to fly like a hummingbird. I have read that scaling up a hummingbird ev...
My first quest on this platform was, could the Kraken monster from "Evolve" (the game) feasibly exist, which I planned to follow up with the rest of the playable monsters. Appearance The height o...
Recently, I've taken a small break to establish a story bound universe, so that these questions can actually prove useful in the future Recently, humanity has discovered a vast earth-like planet,...
Tzeentch, the weaver of destinies, the architect of fate, originates from the Warhammer 40K universe and is the god of knowledge, change, and evolution. However, I will take away the god like attri...
The question is in the title, but I have bolded the main details to reality-check. I hope that makes it easier to read. Details: I had the idea of a fantasy/sci-fi animal that never stops growing,...
Nurgle comes from the Warhammer 40K universe, he is described as being the lord of plague or the god of diseases, decay, and destruction. I will, however, take away his god like attributes, and tr...
Basically, could a gas stick together enough to be internally coherent, and act like animal cells? Or is there zero chance of that happening?
So, I thought I had the hunger related bioluminescence for my Keplerians figured out. That once the hunger hormone reaches a certain threshold, the hormone receptors on some cells of a bioluminesce...
Consider a race of humanoid, winged tree-dwellers. They can fly and generally spend most of their time either in the air or climbing around their tree-homes in the upper reaches of a forest. In ord...
In a distant future, humanity has colonized and catalogued countless worlds in their home galaxy. However one day humanity has discovered a few habitable words in the Andromeda galaxy. After a wh...
Nyarlethotep (the crawling chaos, the evil with a thousand forms, the messenger of the outer gods) originates from the literature of HP Lovecraft and is by far one of the most evil, sadistic, and i...
This is a question regarding my little critters that hijack of their victim. By doing so they get direct access to a steady flow of nutrients through the bloodstream and get shelter with optimal te...
in the Cthulhu mythos, yog sothoth is depicted as a mass of splitting and fusing orbs, it is the past, present, and future and seemingly knows everything. but for the sake of trying to make it real...
In the future, humanity has discovered countless worlds, some filled with life and others not. Likewise, they discover another world that is habitable, they study its various ecosystems, it's var...
On a distant, habitable world, humanity has observed a biological marvel. A creature that is primarily carnivorous, roaming its planet jungles and deserts, has been observed to be capable of manip...
Would it be possible to have a humanoid, a human looking species with a roughly equivalent brain to humans, without iron in circulation in its blood or body? I have found that reptiles could be a...
Say one day humanity has found a planet that supports life. It's filled with luscious forest and barren deserts, and various ecosystems that resemble Earthly ones. After a single year of researchi...
To help imagine it and my inspiration, it's basically similar to pictures from Abrahamic religions with burning trees like this one. They can't speak though, they are just trees or plants that are ...
A type of dragon in my world, simply named the Thick-horn, has a well-known mechanism to use to defend itself despite its clumsiness. They are freakishly large, tend to be slow, and find it hard to...
How quickly could a bacterial colony / virus / pool-'o-prions / [whatever] digest, disintegrate, or otherwise liquefy an ordinary terrestrial biological system? Think something along the lines of ...
On a terrestrial planet with a high amount of ammonia vapor in the atmosphere, would any organism have a strong enough incentive to develop some form of autotrophic chemosynthesis that derives ener...
