Posts tagged biology
I ran across an article briefly describing a woman suffering from Urbach-Wiethe disease (UWd). UWd leaves calcification within the amygdala and in this case subject lost all sense of fear (this cas...
Recently I have been playing a lot of stellaris, " a strategy game that allows you to control a alien species and advance your way through the galaxy". In the game there is something called "Living...
Premise: Space lab is working on making synthetic cells out of different materials. Experiments are classified as too dangerous to be disposed of with conventional means, and are set on an collis...
The Scarlet King is an eldritch god formed as the manifestation of the tension between the modern world and the pre-modern world and the rage it creates. Originally it existing as the concept of th...
Is there an example of substances interacting with each other in the following way? A is a lethal substance, killing within minutes to hours when orally ingested; anti-A is an antidote for A (or ...
Ok, to be honest, I don't believe about dragons having a special bladder or organ that stores up gas (especially methane) and having flint-like teeth or whatnot, or even having six limbs. Here's m...
I'm working with this alien race that looks and functions essentially like a mammal - skin, muscles, hair, internal bones, large size, etc. - but evolved from an insect or other bug. They're a larg...
Tools Tools are the most used thing known to man kind, they help us build, eat, sleep, learn, and much much more. However I've grown to be curious if insects could use tools, so far to my knowledg...
How fast could run a humanoid being, how much damage could resist, how much weight could lift, how strong could hit, under the indicated evolutionary conditions? is there a limit? I have always tho...
Let's say there's a humanoid species that are essencialy humans but tiny, around 13cm tall. As their vocal chords are smaller they would have high pitched voices, but could that effect be minimized...
Let's say that there are some humanoid mammals that can talk like humans, and their voices are about the same (so not really high or low pitched). Some of them have different tongues too, really th...
In this world, women generally live naturally longer lives than men. The typical female lifespan would be 125- 150 years, and a male would be 30-35 years. Our society attributes this to an ancient ...
I'm designing a species of tiny humanoids. They are about 13cm tall. Normally that would make them have very high pitched voices but I want them to be able to also speak in a lower pitch. Siamang...
I'm thinking about designing an alien race. The race is carbon-based and evolved on a world with an average surface temperature between 40 and 60 degrees Celsius. Now, on Earth, almost all lifeform...
Now a change from dragon questions: Let's move onto aliens based on mythological creatures! Most land creatures on the planet of Antiquoloci have a strange sensory system in place of a nose, doing...
The image is quite old so bear with me. This dragon is similar in shape and movement to a snake, with light-weight armor plating on its back. Flowers, which honestly look like antennae, blooming...
I'm new to asking questions so please forgive me if i'm strange. I have a species of plant-based dragons. Small, covered in feathers and intelligent. I just want one thing backed up for me because...
In my fantasy world, wraiths are a species of shell-less, regressed crustaceans. They lay their eggs inside animal skulls, using them as shells. The wraiths' bodies are incredibly weak and they can...
Agriculture One of if not the most important factor to our survival, it allows us to feed the very animals that we eat and in general it allows us to survive. But could insects learn or evolve to ...
The animal I'm particularly focusing on is a cat, for which I'm curious how long it would take for said cat to evolve into a bipedal, intelligent, humanoid being capable of complex language and all...
Would it be possible to have an organism to be based on alcohol, rather than water? Complexity does not matter, but a complex organism would be favourable. their environment would be in oceans of i...
"Evolve" is a game that revolves around two teams, the hunters and the monsters. The hunters job is to kill the monster and simply survive; the monsters job is to kill the hunters and survive. Ther...
So, in my story, there is a species called the Telenoids. They have the ability to induce auditory nerve impulses so powerful they cause intense headaches and severe pain to nearby targeted non-tel...
In my fantasy world there's the race of trolls, vastly inspired by the ones one encounters in Baldur's Gate 2 (see here). Millennia ago, they've been driven underground by orcs and elves, as well ...
I want to know if there is a possible way to temporarily turn normal human into soup like caterpillar in their chrysalis state as they metamorphose into another being, either biological/chemical or...
DISCLAIMER: I'm new to this site and still figuring things out, this is my first question I've asked, so bear with me. Alright, this is a little hard to describe. This story I'm writing includes a...
Humans (even programmers :-) ) are used to having some access to natural light, but in a colony in space, on the dark side of a tidally-locked planet, or underground (for example) this won't happen...
A colony ship headed for its new home countless light-years from Earth suffers an unfortunate malfunction on the final part of its descent phase and crashes onto the planet. Thankfully, the ship cr...
Like take flu virus and switch its glycoprotein with measles? On my world there is warfare and I want science to well fit the story.
I made an organism called the Skarlix for a art/xenobiology project called Sagan 4. The Skarlix is a eukaryotic, somewhat amoeba-like organism that "eats" various metal compounds and "breathes" (o...
In my world there is a rogue scientist who wants to wipe out at least 90% of humanity. He's has a sample of measles which are very contagious but he needs something new. Could he merge measles with...
This is something I'm struggling to find answers for online. I need to be able to explain and justify the biology of a species that capable of surving in multiple environments including changes in ...
Basic scenario: An abundance of a simple Lipid is introduced to a large body of liquid (water for simplicity), there's some motion; wind or gravity or whatever, and the Lipids bump into one another...
In my story, I have two late renaissance era cultures discovering each other for the first time and I plan for the story to develop into more of how they both understand each other. However, I don'...
An old saying goes that if you have an army, it will want to fight a war. That seems to be true also for our personal army, our immune system: there seems to be various pieces of evidence that man...
What possible evolutionary reasons would there be for insects to increase their physical size over a long period? What benefits would be gained by an insect being larger? For example, say ants in...
As the title: What organs or modifications would be needed to have creature that can eat/digest hair without problem? (Preferably digested normal/quick enough, and they only eat hair.) This inclu...
In my fantasy setting, cyclopses are large (about the size of a rhinocerus), carnivorous humanoids. They have a single blunt horn on their forehead, which is their primary tool for taking down prey...
Good day fellers. My question is - how can one decrease the digestibility of consumed food? I mean, if two characters consume the same amount of the same food, the one with such ability will get...
My world is very earthlike and I am looking to create a bird that primarily eats bone marrow. I wanted my bird to crack the bones of the carcasses to eat the marrow inside. What would the ideal bea...
Question Context : Mars second moon Deimos has been converted into a generation ship. A considerable portion of its mass has been shaved off during the process & ejected backwards along its p...
Summary at bottom. I have a character from a homemade alien species. The species has silver/white hair and blue/violet eyes. I know these are traits of a melanin deficiency, but I imagined her hav...
In my story, something pretty insane happens during the 3rd season. The common conception was that an asteroid strike contributed to the extinction to dinosaurs, but unbeknownst to all it was not...
I've been thinking about worlds like Keplar-62e, thought to be covered in deep oceans, and wondering about floating reefs. Could a bio-structure substantially similar to terrestrial coral hold eno...
I want a character to be able to spit/spray from the mouth many different liquids created within the body. Liquids would include a strong acid, flammable liquid, strong poison/nerve agent, a stick...
I know that red dwarf stars are dimmer than ours. But I also know that red dwarf stars emit a lot of infrared light, so creatures on a world orbiting it would have eyes that see infrared light. I...
Which minimal order of magnitude is required to simulate single cells and microorganisms in cyberspace? In an utopian future, people will be possibly able to rapidly design new cures, be their rea...
This is a follow up question to my previous question: Rock/Mineral Ore Eating Organism So these things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithoredo They eat limestone. So I thought, what is limestone...
So, I'm building this world where most of the lifeforms, for one reason or another, are reptiles. Now, I know there have been reptile dominant periods in Earth's history, so it isn't impossible for...
Real-life octopi can travel outside of water for awhile, but not permanently. My race is amphibious, living underwater primarily, but also coming up onto the surface if their environment becomes to...
