Posts by ohwilleke
In pillbugs, sex is determined by two chromosomes: Z and W. Individuals who inherit two Zs develop as males, while ZW individuals become female. But in some populations, these rules are over...
I am imaging a world in which a minor plot device is that there is a strain of dogs that were genetically engineered so that they are even more loyal than ordinary dogs at first, but at some point ...
Imagine that the average number of children born per birth without any artificial intervention was three (i.e. triplets were the norm) and that 98% of pregnancies gave rise to 2 to 4 children, with...
An octopus is one of the most intelligent non-human species on Earth, can manipulate objects, and has lots of other interesting adaptations (e.g. the ability to change color). But, an average octop...
Lots of animals, e.g. dogs, can hear sounds beyond the frequencies that humans can hear. Would it be realistic to have a basically humanoid species which had two sets of vocal cords - one similar ...
Image people with roughly the same brain and nervous system layout as a human as a first approximation using the same kinds of cells and chemicals, etc. But, these people have organs that can dire...
Horizontal gene transfer via retroviruses that change an organism's germ line DNA exist, even in humans, and account for a minority but not insignificant portion of the genomes of many, if not most...
There are many organisms that sometimes reproduce asexually and sometimes reproduce sexually (even snakes and sharks!). There are also a fair number of organism that reproduce sexually but have a ...
There are thousands of species of spiders on Earth. Ditto insects. And, prehistorically, there have been times when there have been several, or even half a dozen species of hominins in existence on...
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...
Diseases in nature tend to naturally become less virulent over time, in part, because the disease vector changes and in part because the host population develops immunity to it. How possible is it...
A small minority (on the order of one in one million to one in ten million or so) of men and women in this world tend to suddenly manifest their supernatural heritage/psychic abilities/superpowers ...
This question is partially a spinoff of some points that came up in another recent question at Worldbuilding about interstellar space travel. Runaway Truck Ramps I live in Colorado, and on the do...
