Posts tagged biology
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...
I am writing a medieval fantasy story in which there is a race of humanoids who have multicolored eyes. Their eyes may change to bring out one color or another if they are experiencing very stressf...
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...
The Gaals are a satient humanoid race, of magic origin. They were created by the last of the dragons as a legacy of his race to the world. They are humanoid, but with no hair and scales all over th...
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...
Demonic possession occurs when an evil spirit hijacks the biological system of an organism, corrupting it and taking control of its functions. Although powerful, the possession eventually breaks do...
This question has its origins in the word "dendraphile" used in a YouTube comment. It was used in an insult used by dwarves towards elves. My chain of thought then was that the dwarves would use pl...
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...
From an answer to a previous question of mine: A planet spinning fast enough to allow geostationary orbit near the surface would result in odd side effects. Any object at rest on the equator w...
In my world, officials dealing with sensitive information have their tongues amputated. Naturally writing and a special, government-only sign-language are the main forms of communication, but crea...
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 ...
How could trees in an environment with 23% Oxygen (The atmosphere is identical to earth in all other respects.) grow bark with Starlite-like qualities? Starlite is a material claimed to be abl...
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...
Photosynthesis does not provide enough energy to allow animal activities on its own (see this post for example). But can we think of a species using photosynthesis as a secondary energy source? Her...
What sort of fireproof liquid could be used by carbon-based life without causing harm to the organism? Whether it be absorbed from exterior sources or produced in the organism's body. I say organis...
I am working on a world which is very dark due to an opaque gas layer in the hight atmosphere; but it is opaque mostly in the terahertz range. The creatures in this world therefore rely very little...
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 ...
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...
For context, I'm currently working on a short story series centered on a young man living in a dystopian America. This U.S. government keeps its 'undesirables' in medically-induced comas (long stor...
Could a creature be made entirely, or mostly of magma or lava? Could it sustainably live in or near a volcano for an extended period of time? Rocks around the outside are optional, and encouraged. ...
In lots of barren, deserted or otherwise destroyed landscapes, there are bones of long dead animals to be found. Sometimes, it's a skull, sometimes, these are rib-cages, or ribs alone. And somet...
Edit: I am asking in the context of alien life, should have specifyed that to begin with. I have many ideas for fantasy/sci fi races, and one that I kept coming back to is a species with bones th...
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 ...
Blood of most vertebrates contains hemoglobin, which contains iron. I've imagined a world where someone once had a seemingly stupid idea of using blood as a source of iron. Now, the world is analo...
I'm imagining a scenario where there is a conflict between humans and intelligent octopuses. The humans' main mode of transport is the bicycle. The octopuses decide to stage a night raid whereby t...
In the movie Guardians of the Galaxy (and a few others), we meet a bipedal raccoon known as Rocket (who I am aware did not evolve to be bipedal, but I am using him as an example). I honestly love t...
Can we increase life expectancy by replacing important organs for life such as the heart, kidneys, young blood, etc. (but not the brain)? Most organs can fail and, for the ones which we already hav...
Often in films and television shows when a person's brain is 'injected' with more information than it can handle, they suffer from immense pain. What would actually happen if you did supply a huma...
I have searched for a while now, but I cannot find a definite answer. A character I am writing has been captured by the antagonist, operated on and released, now completely mute. I've looked ar...
I was thinking about how an MRI uses a strong magnetic field to align the spins of hydrogen atoms in the body. What I was wondering about was if the human body experienced a magnetic field much st...
In my pre-plastic world there is a killer who removes unblemished skin from their victims and replaces it with a non-human 'skin', so that one can't tell the replaced skin from the remaining human ...
Information I am writing a fantasy sci-fi, that is almost the same as our reality, the only difference being humans in this world are capable of using drugs (serums in their world) to improve thei...
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...
Answers to this question note that human (and by extension mammal) wings would use naked skin instead of feathers, as we see on bats. However, with feathers, birds can have wings with shaped more l...
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...
In my current work, I want same sex couples to be fully integrated in society. As it is set in a medieval fantasy world, survival of the human species relies on having children, so same sex couples...
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...
In a hibernating speculative evolution project called The Speculative Dinosaur Project, the "speccers" feature a species of shark called Jasconius pelaganax, the Gigamouth, which is basically a meg...
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...
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...
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...
Please note: This has no relation to any real persons on this site or elsewhere and should not be taken to be such. In my world there is a human nomadic desert tribe. They have a long-standing cus...
Please assume the following: There is a item on the ground and I want nothing but bare earth touching it. I cannot move the item myself. The item is impervious to fire. I cannot afford to guar...
Think of this alien life form as something resembling earth bats, placed in a planet with Earth-like conditions. Micro-bats have small and poorly developed eyes. Similarly, this alien species is ...
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...
In 28 Days Later the Rage Virus causes uncontrollable aggression and changes in personality. Is such virus even possible in principle? I'm not talking about rabies but rather about a genetically en...
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...
I've been playing with the idea of living nests for insects for a while now to help populate my worlds. The idea is that they don't build a static nest out of wood pulp and other material but have ...
