Posts tagged evolution
Just a fleeting hypothetical that crossed my mind. Say that no flowering plants exist. I don't know why - say a world has been terraformed with various Earth species. Bumblebees are present, but fl...
The terrestrial "vertebrates" of my planet must breathe air, and therefore must have lungs of some kind. They are descended from fish-like creatures, which breathe through gills. However, I would ...
What are the cost and restrictions or benefits of a creature being able to slowly morph from an animal to another while retaining memories? The creature morphs to giant eagle then morphs into fis...
On the planet Qualis, about 2 million years ago, their was a species of lizards, called "Quals". They were about as smart at the common Earth rat, not very smart. They dwelled in the semi-arid regi...
In my world, 3-inch humans live on an Earth-like planet. My question, provided by a comment on a previous question, is: What would an anatomically correct 3-inch human look like? How strong would ...
I am pondering a world, where life very early on took a slightly different turn. First some background sketch, to explain what I mean: Current theories state that life first evolved as protocells:...
This is a skeleton of a titanosaur, not quite the longest of the dinosaurs, but most certainly the heaviest! As far as we have found, we'd found no species exceeding 75 tons. This post focuses ...
So I have an alien biosphere in which trisexual reproduction predominates. As far as we can tell, trisexual reproduction does not offer an advantage when it comes to shuffling genes. The biological...
I've asked a whole array of questions, so far, centered around an ongoing project of mine that features a world, in an alternate evolutionary timeline, where a variety of well-known mythological cr...
The Objective Lots of questions at this site consider how humans could be enhanced with genetic engineering. But, if you are an alien, you may have the opposite priorities. These aliens are civil...
Say that you have a medium-sized, bipedal, vertebrate-like creature. It no longer has the need to have arms, so they atrophied until they disappeared entirely. Now imagine an animal that shares s...
Today, dinosaurs, alligators, crocodiles, gharials and caimen are all that remains of a special group of reptiles called the archosaurs. Recently, it has been accepted by the public that birds did...
This is question is related to the medieval world from my earlier question in which several types of intelligent hominids evolved in isolation, until they were rediscovered, conquered, and bred int...
Scansoriopterygidae was a family of theropod dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic, the most well-known member of which was Yi Qi. They are thought to have been arboreal insectivores, and conver...
Background: In my world, there are a number of species that stemmed from the 'original base' (humans) who traveled through space for years before a collapse in organized government crippled logist...
So, I've been designing an alien species, actually a redesign of something from childhood. However, I've recently come into an issue with its limbs. The creature possesses two arms. The right arm ...
I'm designing an alien world on which its creatures evolved from four-eyed early life forms. However, there is a fair amount of other beings that have six or even eight eyes. How could such creatur...
Brown dwarfs are celestial bodies in the gray area between planet and star. They're huge, gaseous, hot compared to planets, and come in all different kinds. (1) Is it possible for life to develop...
How plausible, or implausible, would it be for a lineage of birds' feathers to evolve into sharp, hardened plate-like scale armor (and/or blades), comparable to that of pangolins? And if it is plau...
A few days ago, I saw this very nice reconstruction of a Machairodus giganteus by Peter Hutzler: More recently, I've been thinking about it, and I'm wondering A) if it would evolve without getti...
This question is almost exactly like Could plants develop intelligence, but now I wonder (how) could plant life develop sentience, to the point where it becomes as intelligent as humans? Is a brain...
Inspired by today's XKCD comic How could a creature, momentarily called XKCDius lethalissimus, evolve to have the following features: Be radioactive (intended as more radioactive than the envi...
The largest animals alive today--and to loom into the human imagination--are the whales, a group of mammals that had been going from skinny-dip to full-blown dive in just 53.5 million years. Due...
I'm designing an alien plant soecies that has evolved to produce electric shocks, as a way to keep insects away from it. My question is, how would it produce electricity in the first place? Also, c...
This scenario is based on the kea, the world's only alpine parrot. Even though it eats plants like other parrots, it also eats meat, and therefore could be New Zealand's answer to the smaller d...
This is related to the question as to whether or not cetaceans in an alternate Earth be related to a different group. The small but mercurial falcons belong to one order and one family--Falconifor...
The Hydra is a Greek mythological creature known for its many head that only increase in number as you fight it. Alcaeus was the one to solidly state the the creature started with 9 heads, a large ...
In the short story, a man is swallowed by a giant, fictional fish. In fact, he is swallowed whole along with his log cabin and a bunch of hand-crafted tools. In a "The Martian"-like narrative, he m...
Medusa is a legendary myth about a woman with snakes for hair that turns anything she looks at into stone. How can I achieve both of those features in an animal realistically? And how would these f...
All hail to the Hypnotoad! I am interested in creating anatomically correct Hypnotoad, mainly known from the Futurama series. While in Futurama the toad itself is pretty big, but I am actually ...
The snallygaster is a cryptid from Maryland. It is often described as resembling a half bird/half reptile like creature with large wings, a metal beak, tentacles like an octopus (sometimes depicted...
I've recently became curious about the moon wide super organism on Pandora known to the natives as Eywa. Eywa is theorized by human scientists to be a superorganism of all living things on Pand...
I'm trying to envision a creature that is highly dexterous, and adept at using tools, but every time I try to think of a possible grasping appendage, the only two I come up with are either tentacle...
I have a humanoid species that developed a third eye in their forehead and was wondering what could be the reason they evolved this way or what advantages it would bring?
embryonic diapause is a reproductive strategy that is used by a number of mammals. In embryonic diapause, the embryo does not immediately implant in the uterus after sexual reproduction h...
This is part of the same world I am making that this question I once asked is set in: How to evolve a reptile into a wyvern, 100 million years in the future? I might call these questions related ...
I'm considering a situation where, in a certain environment, there are two specially adapted (to the environment) animals, a predator and its prey. I'd like, for the purposes of a story, for both...
I have a species that is humanoid but has two sets of arms and I was wondering what reasons there could be for why they evolved that way?
Often times a mongoose will prefer easier prey than a cobra. However, getting down to brass tacks, should the two fight, it's fairly axiomatic that the mongoose takes the win the majority of the ti...
Edit: some answerers seem to be slightly misunderstanding the nature of the premise. Remember that the concept here is this; In the Precambrian of Earth, bacteria evolve to extract the abundant chl...
In the media myth of King Kong, there exists a gorilla; 50 feet tall. The largest great apes ever to exist were Gigantopithecus Blacki which, stood up to 9.8 ft, and weighed up to 1,190 lb. While t...
Specifically, arthropod eyes that are neatly in their respective sockets, much like the human eyes. Could that work?
In a story I'm writing, there is a species of extremely rare cave dwelling bird. A scientist and a plummer have to find a specimen of this bird before it goes extinct. When they finally find it, th...
I'm designing an alien race that in structure to humans. One exception is that they have long muscular tails. I remembered while I was designing them, the reason why humans have no tails is becau...
I'd like my world to have humanoid protagonists, while still reinforcing that they are ultimately not human, but have simply evolved in a similar way due to convergent evolution. To provide a const...
After the extinction of all humans and most large animals, what would be the most plausible explanation for arthropods to grow much larger like during the Carboniferous period? Then, the oxygen wa...
From the movie Tremors, behold the graboid: These are vicious, SUV to bus sized sandworms that have acquired a taste for human flesh. They are known to "swim" through the earth really fast too. ...
So many millions of years ago their was a lobe finned lung fish named tiktaalik that led to the evolution of all tetrapods and the diversity they hold today. And I wanna do that again, but instead ...
I have a super-earth world. The surface of the world is shallower due to extra gravity, so shorter mountain ranges and less ocean depths. The world orbits a binary star system at a distance of the ...
I've a creature that can focus CO2 laser through the len of the unique eyeball as means of self defense mechanism via natural selection. Now using the same natural selection process how can such cr...
