Posts tagged biology
I am thinking of copying the design of an electric eel to create the horn, however as air is not a good conductor of electricity it cannot discharge any electrical shock unless there is a physical ...
In my conworld, the inhabitants have futuristic technology and use armour that is made of primarily wood but will absorb bullet impacts and even armour-piercing rounds. It is cited as being very fi...
I was thinking for ideas for new species for the planet I'm currently worldbuilding, and it occur to me if there could be a species (humanoid) where everyone looked exactly the same, and if this co...
Are there bacteria or other types of lifeforms that feed on rocks and other ground minerals? And if there aren't, is it technically possible? It can eat other things but the majority of its diet sh...
How would an alien organism survive on a diet of rocks and mineral ores, and what kind of materials would be the most sufficient? Also, what kind of teeth and evolutionary traits would they possess...
For starters, I'll describe what I'm going for with this species (I'll call them White Hairs because, you guessed it, they have white hair) They are humanoid with pale gray skin, tall and pointed, ...
I've got this ferret shaped land creature from a dream that can make its body expand so it looks sorta like a fat sausage with limbs. It sucks in air with its big mouth to expand. It lives on a wor...
I was answering this question about how a living planet-organism could be possible, and realized I didn't know how such a planet-organism could produce a magnetic field. I postulated that it could ...
Say a snake-person was between fifteen and eighteen feet long on average (this includes the "human" part of the body). That's around the length of an anaconda, but I imagine it would have to be thi...
I recently came across a few examples of a "quantum slime" entity, namely from Starfinder and Slime Rancher, that has the ability to make copies of itself via quantum superposition, and then cause ...
In the story I'm working on, a rift in space time opened up between our world and a layer of oxygen in a gas giant at some point in the past. Eons earlier, a species of fish symbiotically linked wi...
I am working on a super-earth, about 1.5 more massive than Earth. On this planet, there's a large variety of megafauna and flora across the world. The biggest trees over there can grow to be 36 met...
In this new fantasy setting I'm building, then after getting the tectonic plates and their movements covered, I've found that the land would be very mountainous, plus numerous valleys, and the isla...
The other side of this question can be found here: How to use heavier soldiers Imagine if tomorrow we find a way to create soldiers that are almost exactly the same in every single way as our curr...
Working on a story right now where parasite-controlled humans essentially become the apex predators in the world, and harvest uninfected humans to further spread the organism. These kinds of mind-...
The other side of this question can be found here: How to use lighter soldiers Imagine that tomorrow we invent a way to create soldiers that are almost the exact same in every single way as our cu...
When one thinks of a shelled cephalopod, odds are high that the first thing to come to mind are the ammonites. They were one of evolution's success stories, thriving from 400 to 66 million years a...
The aliens in question aren't of a hive mind in the strictest sense (instead of many drones answering to a leadership caste each organism acts as one cell, all of them are essentially 'the same ran...
This is completely ignoring the fact that lifeforms that aren't based on carbon are entirely hypothetical. Could these lifeforms breathe oxygen like us, or would they need to use some sort of techn...
I'm working on a version of wormhole-based FTL travel, and one of the side effects of passing through the wormhole is going to be instantaneous heating of every molecule of the thing passing throug...
I know that this would, perhaps, be biologically impossible, but suppose it's possible, how would such person see? I know that cats have a vertical adjustable pupil and goats have a horizontal one...
A bigfoot is hiding in the Canadian Pine forests. Why haven't the thermal imaging satellites picked up the huge animal all this time? Is there some way an animal can hide from thermal imaging came...
Why I've Chosen Not to Handwave: The fictional galaxy in which this humanoid species (I'll refer to them as Empaths from here on out) lives is protected by a space-faring military/law-enforcing leg...
Ignoring the plausibility of their evolution and sources of food, could a whale-like creature which internally consists largely of hydrogen bladders/gasbags realistically stay aloft? If these cr...
I am thinking of writing a story about a Martian civilization. It might involve humans, but, I think it will be more interesting if there are creatures adapted to the Martian lifestyle as well. So,...
If a dichromatic mammal had better night vision than a human, including tapetum lucidum, could they see large (red) and medium (green) light wavelengths but not small (blue)? Would something simila...
So, I was thinking about flavouring psychic damage and thought "If I'm anime > western civilization, then wouldn't it make sense for me to reflect it a bit more?" In an anime, I watched, there ...
So I'm not really sure whether I get it right or not, but apparently most mammals are dichromatic. Humans have three cones that detect light wavelengths, small for blue, medium for green, and large...
As the title says, what modification is needed, so a creature cannot fart while still being able to excrete their waste? So creatures that can't excrete or doesn't have an anus like the Demodex i...
The "Weird" spell in my world is basically a magical version of the US government's goals with the "MK Ultra" project from the 1950s: it induces a shared hallucination in every creature within a 9....
Carbon dioxide turns supercritical above a pressure of 73 atm and 304.25 K (31.10 °C). The surface of Venus fullfils these conditions. The density of the air at the surface is 67 kg/m3, whi...
In large doses, the body's ability to change cyanide into thiocyanate is overwhelmed. Large doses of cyanide prevent cells from using oxygen and eventually these cells die. The heart, respiratory s...
Background: It is sometime in the late 21st century. Several unmanned probes have recently been sent to land on and investigate Jupiter and Saturn's moons. Two sites in particular, Europa and Titan...
Based on one of the comments in my previous question about What is the max size for underground creatures before the square-cube law takes a toll? Makes me want to know the limit size for a long c...
Iron planets are planets which lack a significant mantle. These planets are essentially lone planetary cores. Since water and iron are unstable together iron pentacarbonyl and other exotic metal-ba...
Imagine a world where human beings can be organically enhanced to peak physical strength/ speed/ agility and maybe even gain telekinetic abilities to some extent. This enhancement is caused by the ...
I would like to have giant sand worms similar to the ones in the 'Dune' novel. What should the planet be like so that they are realistic? Giant sand worms are roughly 100m long and 5 meters in diam...
As you see my other question What would be the major changes to our body if we were herbivores?. Instead of being herbivores, what would happen if we were obligate carnivores?
And you thought I was finally done with centaur questions. I have a centaur race called the Draconitaurs. They're essentially centaurs, but with western dragons instead of horses. The dragon trop...
I'm thinking about making a dark (and I mean darker than Grimm dark) short adaptation of Cinderella. The gist of it is that, after a life of manual labor and emotional and verbal abuse at the hand...
As far as I understand for land animals, the max size is as big as an elephant. For water or underwater animals there's no limit, or at least as big as biggest blue whale. So what is the max size...
If somehow Mars suddenly had our exact atmosphere, could there be lots of life in a few million years? Would the temperature rise quickly? Would the ice caps melt? Could the life be as advanced as ...
I have a new creature from my complex remembered dreams. It's skin color is a dark color similar to the skin of a Silkie chicken. The thing I saw in the dream also has white feathers. It's body is...
In an alternate Earth, there are no bats. Instead, there are "flying monkeys" (which are actually lemuriform primates, rather like bushbabies or lorises.) And even though they have batlike ears, ...
In many movies, alien species often have the ability to impregnate "every and any" species and have their mutant offspring. I have a story setup where some, not so conscientious, scientists decide...
In theory, could any organism using protein folding or another biological process "assemble" the diamond allotrope of carbon, if it were at the correct pressure to do so? In other words, could some...
The Akashic Records are a catalog of all events, thoughts and feelings that have happened on Earth. Supposedly its stored on the etheric plane. I'd like to have this information existing in the t...
In an alternate Earth, a mass extinction wiped out a percentage of the most successful phylum ever--Arthropoda. All that survived of the class Arachnida were the really small varieties--the ticks,...
Physical transformation relies on evolution, which typically works n the scale of millions of years and in accordance with environmental needs. However, is there any plausible way maybe through th...
