Posts tagged biology
When thinking about a potential answer to this question about preventing flight in a cyberpunk dystopia, I had an idea that I do no possess sufficient knowledge to prove/disprove. Thus you'll be t...
In populating a fenland region similar to the Somerset Levels in England, I'm finding a need for an aquatic ambush predator to haunt the region and snack on the occasional disrespectful traveler wh...
These people inhabit an underwater city. In the city there are pools that connect the dry habitat with the outside ocean, this of course mean that the habitat is unpressurized and therefore the in...
Let's say you have a cyborg who's replaced their whole body, everything but the brain, with machinery. Next, you put them on a spaceship pulling dozens or even hundreds of gs. How are they going to...
To elaborate on the title, can alien plant life on an Earth-like planet look similar to ours, or would plants on an alien planet be radically different, unrecognizable, or incomparable to Earth pla...
Cancer works by making cells split and reproduce at an accelerated rate, slowly and painfully killing the afflicted. Its true weapon lies in its ability to surpass the immunity system. As far as ...
Alternate question title: From Fungi to a Fun Guy So, I asked a previous question about which non-animal would be the likeliest to evolve sentience. The answer turned out to be fungus, since mycel...
Today, most mammals have dichromatic vision, meaning that they have two color receptors. Which color depends on which species you're asking. For example, the real reason bulls charge at matadors ...
Supposing that we can create an entire synthetic being, what material would be best to make its bones of attending to: Weight Strength Durability Reparability Let's set some scenarios: Case 1...
For story reasons, I'd like one planet habitable, plausible, but in some noticeable way older than Earth. Just not all planets are 4,5 bilion years. Tidally locked planet that orbit red dwarf, save...
I'm designing planets for a hard (ish) science fiction RPG setting. So I want to find out if there are any clues or theories as to what proportion of planets with life will have the basic biochemis...
Let's imagine a near future where mankind starts to expand into the solar system. For various reasons, some humans start to be born and raised in space, in zero gravity and micro-gravity. What cha...
I recently learned about a chemical known as chlorine trifluoride. This utter abomination of chemistry reacts to almost everything, setting glass, sand, asbestos, and rust on fire (to name only a f...
Before you comment "dragons can't happen", we've been there before. Based on the question linked above, assume dragons are scientifically plausible. You may change what you need about the...
A race of complete female humanoids have DNA that is similar to humans but distinct enough to be consider a different species (think donkeys and horses). This species can mate with humans and othe...
Short version - some physicists have created a pathway that appears to permit near-instantaneous travel between two distant points. Objects propelled through one side on the correct vector will eme...
Let's talk about the visible light "rainbow" In almost all depictions of the electromagnetic spectrum, visible light is shown as a rainbow, and adjacent parts of the spectrum are monotone in color...
To My Valued Fellows, As we are all aware, our people have made tremendous progress both evolutionarily and technologically. Thanks to us, our species is protected from the ravages of cancer and w...
A pharmaceutical company begins drug trials of a pill that they believe can activate a previously understudied and widely unknown region of the brain. The trial begins and when the first participan...
Let's take our regular "Great Blue Star Whale", with a mass of about 10 000 tons. That poor, poor whale is reaching the end of its life for whatever reasons. (Damn you! Space whale hunters!). It w...
Many pets are very disturbed by the presence of mirrors or other reflecting surfaces where they see their own image. If there were many reflecting surfaces in nature I would think that it would rep...
I'm designing a sentient, aquatic creature, and trying to decide how many eyes it should have. This creatures biological strategy is one of redundancy - it has multiple mouths, multiple tentacles,...
Nature does some pretty interesting things with gender: This is a female trilobite beetle. Scientists have observed females extensively, yet for decades, scientists could not identify the male ...
I have two large continents on an earth like world. I would like for the dominate predator on the more desert continent to be a large cat. I have found the leopards and jaguars of Egypt, but am unc...
I've created a species that, instead of eating multiple times a day like us, eats one tremendous meal and survives off of the fat stores for long periods of time. My question is about feasibility....
Moreover, could a culture of microorganisms form a collective hive-intelligence similar to ants or bees? I'm trying to design a scientifically plausible hive-mind, and I'm trying to decide whether ...
This question on Physics.SE asks whether other colors are possible for the sky. I would like my planet to be inhabitable by normal humans. It has 768 days and they are living in a temperate/Medite...
Simulation of artificial panspermia, in inter-galactic travel, as a model for the study of reproductive isolation. Case 1: If we send a mass of proto cells(kept alive by some mechanism like cr...
Mythbusters did an episode about trying to foil a blood hound, when Adam played a convict who tried to make the dog lose his trail. Every trick he did failed like washing, changing clothes, going ...
A good summary of the Zerg race is given on wikipedia as follows: The Zerg are a collective consciousness of a variety of different races assimilated into the Zerg genome. The Zerg were origina...
Knowledge has come to me recently that mussels can suck up pollutants, making them crucial cleanup crews in the New York filth. This knowledge is the inspiration for this alternate scenario, in wh...
Not a duplicate of "Overcoming language barrier; no speech" which confines answers to nothing that is clearly a form of communication; it focuses on translation, not physiology or evolution Not a ...
Let's not delve into specific genuses, families, orders etc. Broaden your definition of "classifications" to words like "mammal" or "fish", "crustacean" or "avian". Science fiction depictions of...
Due to a thick cloud layer(at approx the same heigh as Earth's) surrounding this planet, it's plants have evolved to stay above the clouds so that they can absorb sunlight from their nearby star. I...
Development The females ovulate on average 5-15 eggs per cycle. Unfertilized eggs get reabsorbed and fertilized eggs start developing a shell. The shell takes 2 weeks to fully form. Once all the f...
Diurnal vs Nocturnal These aliens have genes that influence whether the alien will be diurnal or nocturnal. Hatching time also influences this. Genetics: DD - Diurnal NN - Nocturnal DN or ND -...
BioSteel is a substance produced by goats whose DNA has received the silk-producing genes of spiders. While silkworms are generally social creatures, spiders are reclusive, meaning they cannot be...
I'm writing a science fiction novel set 100 million years in the future, but humanity is still the same basic form we have today, biologically speaking. Would 100 million years of evolution drastic...
I want to create a world set on our Earth but with humans shrunk down as much as possible to allow a huge population. As the population increases they genetically modify their bodies to be as smal...
It's easy enough to figure out how a species might evolve a third biological gender in general (e.g. some sort of asexual drones/workers, ala insects). But what I want to build is a system where t...
I trying to describe colonization of an Earth Like planet orbiting a red dwarf in its habitable zone. It is NOT tidally locked with the star Similar to Earth though somewhat larger Magnetic field...
I am trying to build a truly alien form of life, and easily found several replacements for water, such as methane or ammonia, with there own unique advantages and disadvantages (Wikipedia has a won...
A person is born with no senses, so he can't hear, speak or sense. The only way in which the world can communicate with him is through brain signalling. So they can send different signals to his b...
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." "” H.P. Lovecraft One example of this is the universal fear of the da...
In the overly sterile environment my characters live in, the AIs supplement probiotics with food servings for the humans. Let's say one type of gut flora went extinct. The AIs are trying to fix t...
Suppose there is a culture on earth that sees dead bodies as holy items and letting them decompose is a sin. I have seen many examples of mummies preserved so well that they almost look like their ...
A lot of species on earth do not care for their offspring; they spawn thousands of eggs, that hatch into larvae, and then grow up towards full size. If a hypothetical species was sentient in the f...
I'm designing a "adaptive" humans where repeated physical contact, skin on skin or exchange of bodily fluids, over prolonged period affects the development of the individuals. The effect I want t...
I'm trying to build a semi-plausible world where there is native flora and fauna, but the world is subtly not quite right for human habitation. I thought that having significant amounts of copper i...
