Posts tagged evolution
There have been a number of questions focusing on mythical creatures where the logical approach to answering has been to scale up an existing animal. For example dragon's wings can be extrapolated ...
Even disregarding the blatantly supernatural examples of demons and the like, some humanoid races in fantasy are depicted as having horns, or at least something similar to that, like bony protrusio...
I'm creating a planet inhabited by beings who have a body temperature that is colder than humans. What conditions on the planet would require them to have evolved this trait? Thanks
Hominids lost any tails we had before we evolved away from the rest of the great apes, which is related to why you should never call an ape a monkey. What could lead to a hominid species re-evolvin...
This probably sounds fairly ridiculous- I know, but in short I've been developing a sort of future earth. It's not extraordinarily accurate, but I've been trying to at least keep the obvious in che...
Original post: Imagine a world in which both left- and right-handed chirality appeared and evolved into a variety of complex organisms comparable to post-Cambrian Explosion Earth (both plant an...
Fantasy tends to have several races that are shorter than humans. With Dwarves, the size is explainable by the fact that they're usually depicted as subterranean-dwelling, and height would be a dis...
What would cause a short fantasy race, like dwarves, hobbits and/or goblins, to maintain their smaller size outside of the environment that produced it? I know that the exact height of these races ...
The world is a steamy tropical ball reminiscient of Earth in the time of the dinosaurs. There is no permanent ice cover anywhere on Earth. An arctic continent, entirely within the polar circle, is ...
Ten thousand random adults have been magically transported from Earth to an Earth-like planet with a surface gravity of 1.5g. The planet is otherwise completely habitable (enough sun, the right te...
Many creatures - humans among them - have binocular vision, where two eyes side by side allow good depth perception. There are quite a few other advantages over one eye, including a larger field of...
In a hypothetical world where multiple humanoid races develop independently of each other (such as a world that contains Elves, Dwarves, and Humans for instance) what are the conditions for half-br...
Say I want to make wolves intelligent like people, to create a Canis Sapiens of sorts. What sorts of tests should I conduct to develop human-like intelligence? If it helps, the sort of traits I'...
Human evolution has a reasonably complete fossil record pointing to the fact that we and apes evolved from a common ancestor within the last 10 million years or so. But I want a world where it coul...
Below is a diagram showing transverse cross sections of skulls representative of the two subspecies (A and B) of the Trilateral* species. Is it plausible that such obvious differences "“ noting the...
Aside from very simple or colonial organisms, all animals on Earth have only one mouth for eating. Many organisms have multiple spiracles or even multiple anuses, but not mouths.
Setting: Earth, 5 million years in the future (see note 1). Continents are still recognizable but sensibly altered by tectonic movements. Climate is drastically changed. Civilization does not exist...
For a species I am working on, there is a specific genetic trait that I want to introduce into the population. The exact nature of either is not important for the purposes of this question, but the...
By active night-vision I mean that it emits light in a wavelength other animals can't see, but it can perceive that wavelength, so it can see even in zero-light conditions. Being able to emit lig...
Let us assume that my new world has within its rings, shells, and blobs of remarkably cool magnetically-involved stuff such that its magnetic field is toroidal (shaped like a donut) rather than sph...
I know there are questions similar to this, but I'm not very scientific minded, and wanted to check with you guys how this would work exactly. I don't care what else I need to add into the equation...
So I've created this planet that's about 90% the size of Earth, orbits a binary yellow dwarf star and has an extremely electrified atmosphere. Cloud plumes coming from volcanoes contain various con...
So I was thinking of a land animal with a biological harpoon, I'm not 100% sure why it would evolve with it. Details of it would be: Quadrupedal Medium-sized (similar to a pony) and would hunt s...
The Ahuizotl is a creature from Aztec mythology. It is aquatic, and appears similar to a small dog with grasping forepaws like a raccoon or monkey's, and a very long tail ending with an extra hand...
An organism lives and reproduces inside the body of other animals. This organism pays back its host by protecting the DNA from viruses and radiation damage in 100% of all cases. The organism itself...
The Phoenix appears in Greek mythology and are most commonly seen as beautiful golden birds that burst into flame and are reborn from the ashes. Is there a realistic way that they could evolve? Usi...
If all humans on earth died out from a deadly plague, which species is most likely to take over the role us Homo sapiens left behind? Which species is intelligent enough to build their own civiliza...
It's Earth and the moon with all parameters as they are in real life with one exception, the moon is twice as reflective as usual. Instead of an albedo of 0.12, the moon has an albedo of 0.24. This...
The core of this question is this: Given what we believe we know about the requirements for a tool-using, space-faring race to evolve, how viable would a species that has a hybrid exo/endoskeleton ...
Some speculation on a neurological supercharger for a sapient alien species: The supercharger is a natural biochemical compound of some sort produced and stored in a specialized brain-adjacent o...
In the anime Vandread, the antagonists (earthlings) had a goal that I find interesting. So I am going to use them as the premise and hopefully expand it well enough to work for a world I am working...
The world consists of actual humans who were moved to another planet by aliens, during biblical times, hence having an influence on their religion. The planet is terraformed with earth-like conditi...
Let me explain further the idea. Nowadays (as thousands of years earlier) many people bound themselves in their mind to a particular nation, country, town, neighborhood etc. And very often these p...
I'm currently working on a semi-aquatic humanoid race of aliens, the Soliil. The majority of the race has proportions, anatomy and heights close to that of humans, however, I am working on a much y...
Note, when I say hydrogen-based atmosphere I mean replacing the 20% oxygen with hydrogen1. Let's just say basic plant life2 has developed on our fictional planet (which has the approximately all t...
The Anatomically Correct Series can be found here. The Chimera is another freaky specimen from Greek mythology. It is described as having the body and head of a lion, the head of a goat sprouti...
I was just wondering how would a humanoid like Ant species develop communication. I know how they communicate with each other in nature using pheromones and touch. Would it be possible that this sp...
Well, Luminescence really but I liked the alliteration. Would there be any reason or mechanic why plants may develop that glow in the dark? Ideally they would do so in response to stimulus such as...
Snares are anchored cable nooses set to catch wild animals. There are two types, active and passive. An active snare has the wire under tension and a trigger to cause it to snap closed, while a pas...
Imagine a tidally locked planet that revolves around the star at just the right distance that a habitable zone can be formed in between the scorching desert side of the planet and an icy desert sid...
I need someone to fact-check me and tell me if there's anything immediately bogus or physically impossible with the scenario I'm about to propose. Billions of years ago, under the ice of Europa, t...
I've seen a lot of questions on here about the possibility of more than two sexes but I've found nothing on the possibility of only a single sex. The closest thing I've found is isogamy, is there a...
Imagine a planet where there are extremely cold temperatures and water can be found only in frozen state. To cope with harsh conditions the creature evolved so it can melt ice with its body surfac...
Roughly how long would arthropods have to evolve before they could reach sizes analogous to current day megafauna (like today's mammals)? Assume an alternate earth where tetrapods never colonize...
There are a lot of acids in the world, many of them present in biological creatures. Humans, for instance, have hydrochloric acid in their stomachs. What I'm wondering here is just how nasty it cou...
Exactly what the title says. I don't know to exact pH level of the water but it's at a level that it would kill a human should they drink it. What/how would a creature evolve to deal with drinking...
I want my world to contain a fruit that electrically shocks you to the point where it's painful, whenever you bite into it. Now, there are many organisms in nature that produce sensations similar t...
I am writing a story (well, developing one) in which a humanoid intelligently genetically engineered species is effectively immortal. The creature maintains its lifespan through a thick-shelled see...
My world - basically Earth all along, unless told otherwise - is populated by humans and few fantasy-based "races" (actually, species - any interbreed offspring, if possible, is infertile): elves, ...
So I am aware of this question, which deals with large plants (trees) and animals, but I am interested in adaptations present in smaller animals on this planet, and how those might be stretched in ...
