Posts tagged biology
There is a really obvious problem with going to a planet we have deemed "habitable". Even if the temperature is perfect, the air composition is perfect and the terrain is perfect we still have the ...
All known life forms have life cycles that are not time symmetric as they look different when time is reversed. I was wondering if there could be a life form that would have a life cycle that wou...
First off, let's get definitions out of the way: A "race" here is defined as stable, heritable, phenotypic, clearly visual distinction between large demographic groups living in different geograph...
Situation: A knight wants to kill me. I have a night to prepare. It will be a duel. Me: I'm a time traveler (and I ended up in the worst possible timelines of the multiverse) I have a laser w...
I'm creating a world my protagonist will visit with humanoid inhabitants that have a peculiar feature: their eye sockets are in the palms of their hands, not unlike the Pale Man Pan's Labyrinth. ...
If I'm writing a sci-fi story and I wanted to include humans with modified eyesight that see into the ultraviolet and infrared bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, what would I have to change abo...
This human population developed in a mild climate region, with fair abundance of food, water and shelter. However, though they have the skills and the means to explore forth, the population is unab...
So here's what I'm trying to do. I've got a setting that at a medieval level of technology and is rather similar to Europe with knights, castles and all that jazz. However to give the setting some...
A common trope in zombie mediums in to base the virus off of rabies. While this choice does have some obvious reasoning to it, it has been long over done. Relatively recently, The Last of Us came o...
Biradial symmetry occurs in ctenophores: the body plan consists of two halves which independently display radial symmetry. Spherical symmetry occurs in Volvox algae: any cut through the center of t...
I am imaging a world in which a minor plot device is that there is a strain of dogs that were genetically engineered so that they are even more loyal than ordinary dogs at first, but at some point ...
Because water ice is less dense as a liquid than a solid (as an aside - this is due to the basic structure of the oxygen atom) it floats when frozen. Without this property ice would sink, basica...
In the creature type I asked about in my last question, there are some lower caste members who seem to have metal limbs. However I don't think they would waste resources to build the legs for lower...
Something I was working on in the past involved a species of sentient insectoids. The idea was the two sexes usually live in two very different environments and rarely come into contact with the ot...
I was thinking of an organism that lives its entire life in interstellar space It eats, defecates, moves, grows, ejects eggs, attracts mates, and has sex in interstellar space. It has skin that p...
Xenomorphs are one of the most dangerous, deadly aliens in movie history. They breed in massive numbers, live in an ant-like society, and have blood that doubles as concentrated acid. Most of tho...
I have devised an alien species for a universe I am working on. They originate from the same planet as my high-pressure creatures (What would happen to a high-pressure creature in a low-pressure at...
I'm writing a story set in a Middle Ages type setting (Game of Thrones, LOTR style). In the story, I have a race of people who are "faeries", based off of Celtic legend and lore. They're associa...
The purpose of the machine was obvious from the elegant cruelty of its design: The seat restraints and the seat's solid, one-piece, gold-colored metal structure made it clear that whatever it did...
We're in a military space cruiser, designed for in-system patrolling. We're selected to test out a prototype FTL drive. The initial tests are supposed to be short-ranged in-system hops. A disaster...
For purposes of this question, assume whichever body position and/or axis of acceleration is most likely to provide a successful outcome. And if it is not possible at all, what is the maximum lengt...
I'm (slowly) working on a semi sci-fi world, set in a WWII-ish tech level (Semi sci-fi being how they got to this world). Except in this world, aircraft have developed significantly later, and batt...
A bit of background on what I'm developing: I'm trying to develop a language for an alien race with completely different biology to humans. It's still in the very early stages, so the exact form is...
If we were to pull the following races out of a D&D players handbook and remove them from the setting/history of Faerun and look at them from a biological/non-magic perspective (no other planes...
Traditionally we recognize 5 Senses in humans, but in building an alien race for my world I wanted to go beyond that. This is the first in a series of questions. This one is: How can a race express...
How would gripping of different objects, such as rocks and sticks, work for an organism that has radially symmetrical hands, resembling starfish in shape. They have four to five digits, depending...
Is there a plausible makeup for a lifeform which is highly resistant to even very advanced firearms (or any ranged weaponry for that matter), but can be injured more readily (albeit still a major f...
A class of organism, lithotrophs, use minerals (inorganic substrates) for energy conservation/reducing equivalents in biosynthesis. However such organisms on Earth are limited to single-celled pro...
Yes, the title is strange, but hear it out. The inhabitants of my earth-like planet live high up in the atmosphere - living on giant trees. However, I don't want them to be able to see the surface ...
Would it be possible that other planets, or even other random celestial bodies, contain different types of pathogens? According to Wikipedia, the known types of pathogens are: virus, bacterium, pri...
Heating youself in cold conditions is quite easy. You can produce internal heat and keep it in(warm-blooded) or get it from sun, find hot springs... or even eat something warmer than you. However, ...
My world is science-based with an earth-like biology. The dragons fly when they're young and then grow too heavy and can only glide if at all. They breathe fire by expelling gas and igniting it. Th...
On Earth, land vertebrates generally have four limbs. Other creatures such as insects can have more limbs, but those creatures tend to be small. I'm thinking of creating an alien ecosystem with rel...
Would a species which developed on a world with no atmosphere (i.e. the moon) survive on a planet with an atmosphere, such as Earth?
Certain anatomical features distinguish the alligators, crocodiles, gharials and caimen from the other reptiles. A four-chambered heart, something also found in birds and mammals A unidirectional...
Disclaimer: This question is the first of a new series of questions of mine about introducing hexapedae to the fauna of my conworld. There are/will be other questions addressing i.a.: ecosystems, e...
We are talking about those comrades who come out on wet autumn days - you're right, normal earthworms, Lumbricus terrestris. Playing an important role in ecology, earthworms stand at the lower end ...
A common theme in older novels and some more modern publications is that of body parts (potentially from multiple species) being 'swapped' on to new bodies and recombined in (usually grotesque) way...
Could an artificial planet be created considering there is a perfect void, the core is a super-magnet(an artificial planet core made of magnetic metal) that is coated with earth as is our planet an...
I'm effectively looking to change the 'Could' in this question to a 'what' or 'How'. Could higher land-based life exist on a planet with a pressure of about 1 MPa? I'm working on a story in which...
In some of my first questions on this site I asked about a world with a day that lasts 9 years. Many people agreed that life on this planet could survive via migration, but not evolve.The problem l...
This hypothetical marsupial species raises young in a manner loosely similar to seahorses. Only the males have pouches: after gestation the female deposits the fetus into his pouch to compete devel...
If an alien species ate minerals (aka a lithovore species), how might their bodies differ from ours? How would they eat/digest the materials? Do those answsers change if they eat substances like di...
Assuming that there's not an issue with diseases spreading around, and that there's little to no issue with food allergies, what would the effects be of taking someone from a tropical climate to on...
I have left a link to the NASA video in case you are not to sure what I am referring to or to get a better picture of what I am talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKFaAS30X8 With th...
I'm building an alien world for a game mod, and want to avoid any blatant mistakes from a world-building perspective. The world has three moons visible in the night sky - two on one side near each ...
Pathogen virus work in a simple way: they inoculate their genes (DNA or RNA) in the host cells and let them replicate huge amounts of the attacker while hampering the host vital functions. As react...
This is inspired by GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire, where for millennia House Targaryen wed brother to sister at all possible opportunities, and Aunt to nephew, Uncle to niece, and cousin to cousin ...
There is this idea that we find in a few books, mainly The Swarm by Frank Schätzing and in the Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card, that some species could communicate via DNA exchange. Technically, y...
Suppose a civilization in which every possible appliance is a bio-machine. There are automobiles, but each one has a human-like head under the hood. Each datacenter is a bunch of over-grown brains....
