Posts tagged biology
Let's suppose Paleozoic marine creatures (Trilobites, early fish, and many else) has appeared in oceans of 2017. What kind of advantages and disadvantages will they have when they compete with mode...
As a school project, I am designing an extraterrestrial animal, and I would like to include a multiple-hearted mammal-like organism. Is there any set of circumstances in which having 3 hearts would...
Suppose humans discovered a beautiful new world they wanted to inhabit, far from the political machinations and military affairs of the alien-populated universe. They established a few colonies on ...
How realistic is it that in the future someone invents plants that can live on top of the Antarctic ice sheet or are floating on ice like in the Arctic?
This answer states that "guided evolution" would help babies develop under constant 3-4g's. This answer has inspired me to ask , what sort of genetic tinkering would help humans adapt to life on a ...
I know that humans can naturally have more than 1 hair color, whether that is in a transition from 1 color to another or they are born with it. Like for example there are babies with both red and b...
Human (spoken) languages have a great variety in terms of grammar and what the basic elements are, but they have essential features in common in terms of being a time sequence of phonetic primitive...
Reading through the internet and countless questions here, I learned that most Earth's flying animals have beaks because they are lightweight and function well as a substitute to hands. Now, woul...
So in my world of Horizon, there is a sentient species known as the Jar'keth that lives in the inner ocean of Enceladus. They resemble a mix between eels and catfish, and are slightly smarter than ...
Has a loose base in this earlier question of mine, although today we will be working with modern (roughly) tech levels and bacteria. It was pointed out in the accepted answer that bacteria might be...
One lab accidentally developed a species of bacteria which doesn't naturally die, but multiplies at usual rate. (And the scientists didn't notice in time, so the bacteria escaped). EDIT after Alex...
If for a 'magic' Reason a second planetary mass of roughly equal proportions to earth appeared in the same orbit as earth. Is there any way that both masses could continue to orbit and remain in th...
In my world magic is conferred genetically. Their are five "types" of magic, which never mix. You either have one type, or you have another (or none at all, the sixth option), you never have a mix ...
In the great apes, there are two worlds--ground and treetop. Representing the ground is the largest primate on Earth, the genus Gorilla. Representing the treetops is genus Pongo, the orangutan. ...
The concept is simple: I want to create a horse species, that are like the Superman of horses and can easily pull of acts, we've seen them done in movies. One of the many steps in this is to cr...
Assuming the ocean is deep enough and not overcrowded is there any upper limits to the size a "sea monster" can grow? On land creatures are limited by gravity, they have to be able to generate the...
I'm creating a species of humanoid creatures that live their entire life in couples. From birth to death, they are bound emotionally, they work together as if they were only one individual but the...
I've recently come across a disease that I am unhealthily intrigued by: Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. Basically, instead of soft tissue healing normally, it calcifies and grows bone to rep...
In this world, there are certain genetically engineered creatures, that are able to tolerate the side effects of mouth breathing (like sore throat) without increasing the normal air resistance in t...
In this Answer I suggested that an animal could have a tampani acting as a loudspeaker, as in Vernor Vinge's The Blabber, later featured as the race called Tines in A Fire Upon the Deep. In the ori...
Let's assume we have three subjects: a giant (50 ft tall), a human (6 ft tall) and a fairy (6 inches tall). Common sense would lead you to believe that the giant would fair better in the cold, as ...
Within my desert landscape--in which the climate is similar to the Sonora Desert--there are many canyons, one of which sports large, clustered growths of Elbaite Tourmaline crystals, averaging out ...
Years ago, I was tinkering around with the idea of an engineered life form which could survive the vacuum of space and be made into a starship. I have since given up on the idea, but curiosity is s...
Assuming it just spins at the same rate, the other way. Axial tilt is the same, year length is the same. Perhaps winds and ocean currents? What would the effect be on geography? Would deserts or r...
I'm quite afflicted with a specific set of conditions I'm trying to figure out. I'm trying to find a way (if there is one) that someone could be unconscious for roughly twelve hours under some con...
The sun is perfectly fine, but for generations, not a single human has seen sunlight. Earth is completely covered in black fog, reaching high up into the atmosphere, so that not even skyscrapers ca...
I want to develop a water-dwelling, intelligent species that could ultimately reach space.1 My question here is about the biology of such creatures. I want my creatures to live in the water, not ...
Basically, my current thought process is to have a virus that causes one to all vital organs to fail upon reacting to its components. It has to make contact with as many people as possible, therefo...
Sort of a jumping-off point from my last question, I speak of the "binding problem" that currently plagues neuroscience and cognitive studies, and which plays a large role in debating AI and whole ...
Zombies are reanimated corpses by definition . If so, then they decay as a normal corpse does. Without any preservatives ( for corpses ) what should be the maximum and the least amount of time peo...
Suppose a creature or human(oid) regularly underwent a metabolic stasis. Would this contribute to a longer overall lifespan? Or are there other factors at play here? ... I'm looking at using this...
Most of the AI's in films/books/series seems to turn out evil or using destructive/harmful ways of achieving what they want in critical situations because they can't understand the earth's biology....
I'd like an alien to be warm-blooded, but have external gills. Imagine a kind of giant crab or woodlouse (pillbug) which spends part of its time on land and part of the time in the sea. However, ex...
If a typical human were shrunk down to be 3cm tall weighing 2.5 grams (ignoring all problems that would cause), would the blade of the grasslike plant described below be able to stop its fall from ...
EDIT: There were some great answers here, and I realize this is a kinda broad question, but I'm accepting Monty Wild answer as it provided me with the info I needed to push this forward. Now I have...
I'm drawing from Norse mythology on light and dark elves to write about an alien race and planet with one humanoid 'tribe' residing on the sunlit side and the other on the dark side. I mention bloo...
An illness has been slowly spreading throughout the inhabitants of my agrarian society, decimating villages. The first sign of infection is the excessive production of slimy yellow saliva, and sinc...
For no apparent reason (this is a song, not a story, so I'm pretty economical with exposition) nearly every tetrapod on Earth has vanished, and water is gone from the oceans. Just sort of hand-wave...
Through a short amount of research it seems most blood is cleaned in the liver and most toxins are neutralized before being passed into urine or the bowels. If this is how most toxins are excreted ...
Supposing you took Earth or a planet like it and doubled its mass, the gravity would obviously increase in whatever proportion to that. As a result, humans as we know them would be ... thicker, (...
In my fantasy pre-industrial world pollen production and plant reproduction has been disabled by some sort of curse. The curse has a limited geographical span, but the region affected is very larg...
How might such a species evolve? How would they swim, navigate and breed? How big could they grow, and what complications might arise out of their growing very large?
Is it possible that there might be a virus (of the giant, ancient, frozen-in-glaciers type) that is, for lack of a better explanation, double-layered? As in the first layer affects the host and the...
(I'm talking binary:Male and female) This is post apocalyptic scenario. I'm writing a short story and storyline"‹ is as follows: In a distant future: After the world war there are only a few thous...
One of the strangest and most effective weapons in the wonderful world of arthropods in the proboscis of the famed assassin bug, with even the head of the insect working as part of the weapon. T...
Would it be possible, with genetic engineering, to create a form of tree which produces wood with the same strength/hardness as granite, capable of being used in place of stone for castle-style wal...
In the year 2020 A.D. , the inhabitants of earth are visited by a not-so-friendly race of techno-pathic AI aliens ,numbering about 500,000, and originating from a type 2 ¾ civilization from a gala...
If we were to encounter alien species of, lets say approximately the same size as us, would there be any reason to expect them to communicate in the same frequency ranges as us? Human beings have ...
A group of 35 superhumans from the future get trapped on the alternative Earth still in the Dark Ages. Banding together they take control of a small country and establish themselves up as kings and...
Previously, I asked several questions about living in a massive banyan tree whose branches were about 600 feet up. Though I can't find the comments, I was informed that there would be very high win...
