Posts tagged biology
The year is 3030 and the robots (who have replaced humanity as the dominant intelligent beings on Earth) have decided to build a Dyson sphere around the sun. They're planning on disassembling Venus...
I have in mind this alien species that can reproduce with humans. The result will always be of the same species as the alien; the human is used only to vary the genetics so the newborn won't be a c...
Tau Ceti e is possibly a good candidate for colonisation as it has a yellow dwarf sun like earth. But it's mass is estimated as >4.30 ± 2.1 of earth. (See Wiki) I remember from a documentary th...
This new idea/story includes an ancient subterranean race, but they need to survive harsh conditions. Developing a nervous system/brain is important. Are certain proteins necessary to form a comp...
What I mean is: instead of a "rat" evolving into primates and those tree hugging primate becoming bipedal great apes, imagine a "rat" evolving into a dog-like or cat-like animal, then that animal b...
I am writing a book where organ printing has advanced such that humans can grow full hands, arms, legs, and every inside organ. This process is used to "make" soldiers in Earth's future because clo...
I've seen some articles about biologically powering devices through a glucose fuel cell, but from what I can tell this would only provide power on the order of a few tenths of a watt. While it's d...
My people are traveling in a generation ship. For some reason they can't make the ship radiation-proof. Their solution: genetically modify their descendants to be radiation proof. How could one mod...
Lichen are a symbiotic organism that involves algae or cyanobacteria living inside a fungus. The algae produce energy through photosynthesis, while the fungus protect the algae from the environment...
So to start, let's assume that this hypothetical life form relied on something similar to LNG (liquefied natural gas) - mainly relying on ethane - as a solvent in the same way humans rely on water....
Question The alien want to make some new virus (or editing the gene of existing virus) to increase human death rate, and they don't want human to know the virus has been edited. I have read some s...
I'm talking about ionized gas not the plasma in our blood. I have been reading science articles about plasma and they keep hinting at the idea of plasma based life. Here is my first example and an...
Don't scream zombies at this question. That is not meant to be what it is about, regardless of how it sounds. I have an interstellar war between humans and an alien race. The humans are winning, s...
So I thought up this alien parasite that enters through the mouth (usually of a predator) where it attaches to the throat and simultaneously takes control of the brain and replaces the esophagus of...
I am building a nocturnal humanoid race for my science-fantasy setting. They are slight, quick, sneaky and very good at being unobtrusive. They are pretty much the goblins of my setting; though not...
I've been working on an alien species, and I wanted it to have a blood colour other than red. I was going to go with Coboglobin until I found the sites I was looking at providing diametrically oppo...
A hypothetical species is divided into males and females that exhibit pronounced sexual dimorphism. The males are further divided into multiple morphs (e.g. α-male, β-male, γ-male, etc). This po...
Say we have an organism with the beak of a raptor (the bird type, not the dinosaur), but instead of a full beak, it only has a mandible on the upper jaw, while the lower jaw just has a jaw bone lik...
Polycythemia is where the hematocrit is above 55%. This can be divided into absolute and relative and absolute can be further divided into primary and secondary. Absolute polycythemia is where the...
Writing a story in which most alien races digest food physically, not useing any chemical stuff. Is this even possible? I know that some lizards and chickens eat rocks for similar reasons, but they...
In my world, an intelligent species has evolved to the point of space travelling. However, this species can eat only one single type of food (which is a product of another species on its planet). ...
In a world I am building, a race of humans exists on a tropical archipelago with a very hot climate. Their skin, naturally, is very dark, but I want to have their eyes [most, if not all of their e...
As fas as I know, there isn't a single plant on Earth that (naturally) produces any sort of luminescence. But it is seen in science-fiction worlds, especially Avatar. From an evolutionary point of...
I am currently working with a landmass roughly 1,000 miles (1600 km) in length and width. Would insular dwarfism or gigantism occur in this landmass? If not what is the largest a landmass can be be...
Cosmic rays are energetic particles coming from space that hit the Earth's atmosphere and produce a lot of secondary radiation (some of which we see in visible light as aurorae). Would it make sens...
In a novel I am writing, everyone carries a small device in their head. The device is fragile, but the human head isn't. How can this device be destroyed by another person quickly (i.e. within sec...
The Lorting are a very strange race. Not only are there multiple genders (the actual term for which is more like 'castes' or 'classes'), but when any member of their species is 'born' it is born at...
A human-like creature that doesn't have gender, can not procreate, and was engineered by humans. My story is stuck with a creature that is not possible in real life; I just went from science ficti...
I am creating a race of aliens that are amphibious and mammalian in detail, they have six tentacles, bunny ears and also fur covering their bodies. They are about 3-4 ft in length, if this species ...
Spinny McSpinface is an ancient generation ship, invented and launched before the creation of Wrap drive and recently arrived at its original destination of A Long Way from Anywhere V. All the crew...
Microraptors are cretaceous-period dinosaurs with feathered wings on both their forelimbs and back-limbs. Despite this, they are not considered 'true flyers' as it is believed they used their five...
Here are some lists of North American and South American megafauna that went extinct during the Quaternary. In Eurasia, many species of large mammal were domesticated, most particularly the 'big 4...
In a world where man entered North and South America without causing a mass extinction, all of the paleofauna which became extinct ~10,000 BC in the Americas are still around. There are several fam...
I am an average person being hunted down by a homicidal cyborg. He is about 90% metal, with his only remaining organ being a brain and all other meat on him being tissues which serve only as an anc...
Anytime one thinks "flightless bird" and "aquatic bird" put together, one would immediately think of Sphenisciformes, the penguins. But during the Late Cretaceous, there swam a different kind of f...
We are in a future where genetics has advanced to a point where arbitrary modifications can be done to living beings. Now a geneticist wants to make a flying human. That is, he wants to modify a hu...
I would like to create a sentient creature with telepathy and/or telekinesis. Can either (or both) of these concepts exist biologically? If yes, what would the biological mechanism be? Would ...
Okay, so my character is relatively short (5'6 feet). Her bones are hollow,but similiar to a birds-very dense to make up for strength. Her wingspan is 16 feet. I want her to stay as humanoid as pos...
Is there any way to explain how did humans in my planet end up with extreme dimorphism without resorting to polygyny nor "magic"? I want men to be around 6ft (183cm) - 230 lb (105kg), while women ...
Let's use Mercury as an example, we can pretend it orbits in the habitable zone of the Sun, would Mercury's magnetic field be able to protect an Earth like atmosphere? And would the lower gravity m...
Assume humans have the technology and motivation to genetically engineer humans capable of breathing underwater and on land. Also assume for this example mechanical technology is somewhat constrain...
Say we had a planet which was a gas giant. Is it possible that at the core of the planet where meteors, asteroids, and comet debris had collected that there could be a layer of atmosphere similar t...
Generally, when you run a long distance or do something particularly strenuous, you start breathing heavily because of a decrease of oxygen in your blood. Your gasping and weezing is in an effort t...
Every species I'm aware of on earth has two sexes (with the possible exception of species which change their sexes to allow self fertilization). Is it possible for a species to evolve which could ...
Though the job of breastfeeding is typically known to the women, there are documented cases of men producing breast milk. However, these reports are few and far between, which means that while men...
In my fantasy world I want fantastically large trees, particularly in the height category. The tallest trees on earth grow just over 100 meters tall. Why can't they get taller? What circumstances w...
So, to make it normal for a human to have tetrachromacy, having four color receptors, would make our night vision nonexistent. In an answer in the question linked above, someone brought up the tap...
How might a fictional parasitic superorganism like the Halo franchise's "Flood" function? Put plainly, how would the biology of a parasitic superorganism that grows by converting the biomass of o...
I was thinking about how one of the reasons humans have been so successful is that we can adapt to live almost anywhere. A big part of this is that we can put on more clothes when it's cold, and ta...
