Activity for SealBoi
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question | — |
Are there alternative ways aliens would think and feel emotions? Before I start, let me say that I know that what animals think and feel and whether they do it is a highly, highly debated topic. But, for this question, let us just assume that many animals think - in the form of pictorial thoughts - and can feel happy, sad, angry, scared, disgusted and surprised, j... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Designing a creature with jaws to crush iron bones In my most recent question, I asked for a material other than calcium and collagen that could form skeletons in alien creatures. My favourite answer was bio-steel; "Iron with a small percentage of elemental carbon". There will be scavengers on my world; scavengers as powerful to the alien carcasses... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Alternative skeleton material for an Earth-like planet On earth, the skeletons of Osteicthyes and all their descendants are made of a mixture of collagen and calcium. We can do this because Earth contains food sources for all these animals containing vitamins such as Vitamin C and D, but there's no reason why extraterrestrial food materials would contain... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Starting with a map of current landforms, how can I write the geographic history of my planet? The current worldbuilding project I have is going to be detailed - very detailed. It's about the life of an alien planet called Nemo 4, and I want to chronicle the evolutionary history of that life, from the arrival of unicellular organisms on a comet to its now flourishing ecosystems. But evolutio... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Can a planet harbor plants of different colors without one pigment outcompeting the others? On Earth, all plants are green because they contain the pigment chlorophyll, which photosynthesizes by absorbing all light except green light. However, it is quite possible - if not likely - that alien planets would have plant life (As in, organisms functionally similar to Earth's plants) containing... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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I've determined how many planets my solar system could plausibly have. How do I figure out what kind of planets they are? The 12 planets in my solar system orbit the G-type star of Nemo. It's about nine-tenths of the size of the sun, and has a stellar luminosity of 0.67 L☉, a diameter of 1.28 million kilometres, a surface temperature of 5,980 degrees Kelvin and (Starting from its birth) will live for 13 billion years.... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Can a large animal get nutrition from minerals? Lithotrophy is a phenomenon known from microscopic life, where an organism converts inorganic substances, usually minerals, into energy. So, we know that a single-celled life form can do this, but what about a more complex one? Could a macroscopic, motile, animal-like organism feed on minerals, like... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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How can I explain the geography and climate of my planet? I've recently decided to revive an old project of mine involving an alien planet. Unfortunately, however, I was not as good a worldbuilder then as I am now, and that's having some consequences. Back when I started it, I drew up a map of the planet - giving only minor consideration to plate tectonics... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Can a planet have warm or temperate climates within its polar regions? Note: an edit has been made to the main question at the bottom A couple of years ago, I had a worldbuilding project which I have recently revived. I was relatively new to worldbuilding back then, and I made the terrible mistake of drawing a map of my planet before deciding axial tilt. Now that i... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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What would be the physiological/anatomical adaptations of a 50 metre sea serpent? In my last question, How large could my sea serpents be?, I asked what length would be a) possible and b) necessary for a whale-eating sea serpent. My sea serpent is a constricting predator in a clade with Muraenidae. The only answer I got there was nevertheless rewarding, and I recieved a great met... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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How large could my sea serpents be? EDIT: (Important) M. A. Golding commented that the regalecid method of locomotion would be unfit for a constricting predator, so I have completely redone the taxonomy of the sea serpent. They are now eels, closely related to moray eels. The sea serpent taxon has been upgraded to family Serpentimarida... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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What kind of animals are my trolls? Edit: I've written an answer of my own now, and I'd appreciate it if any of you informed on the subject of evolution could review it, then inform me of its plausibility, via the comments (Of the answer). There are four other questions in my series of such, which I am asking to deal with problems ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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How can I explain the evolution of my giants? Note: this is not a duplicate of Anatomically correct Giants or What would be the tallest possible height for humanlike creatures in earthlike conditions? because my giants are far from humanoid. Anyway, the main question here is why they would evolve rather than how they would evolve. This quest... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Hydras as parasitic-mating, polyandrous amphibians? This is the second question in a series about my ongoing worldbuilding project, which seeks to explain the evolution and biology of various fantasy creatures. The first one was: Is petrifying vision plausible? Now, I ask you to review a concept I developed myself and inform me of its plausibility. ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Is petrifying vision plausible in an animal? Note: this question is not a duplicate. The accepted answer to the question "Anatomically correct Medusa" explains the petrifying vision via calcifying toxins spat from the snake hair. This a) wouldn't work with a cockatrice, and b) spitting venom does not achieve the desired effect of petrifying vis... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Optimal species body plan for agility in a complex environment An integral species in a large worldbuilding project I'm working on right now is based around the concept of extreme agility. The species shall be a megafauna (Is that grammatically correct - "a megafauna"?), about as large as a human or larger. It lives in an extremely complex three-dimensional jun... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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What would be the ideal terrain for promoting the evolution of blade feet that sink into the ground? So, in my last question, I asked "How could an animal run fast using blade-like feet that sink into spongy ground?" The premise was that on my planet, forests grow not from soil but from spongy, living mats. The creatures here have feet like blades, that sink into the squishy ground. However, while... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
How could an animal run fast using blade-like feet that sink into spongy ground? In my fictional planet, forests grow not on soil, but on vast spongy mats of fungi. Traditional Earth-like feet would struggle to get grip on the squishy ground, so most megafauna taxa have feet like blades that cut into the fungus. A very rough drawing of a classic fauna example from this world ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Could a predatory semi-sentient species survive, in the long run, without the emotion of fear? I was thinking of an idea for an alien species in a hard sci-fi universe, and I wondered if a species, with the same amount of emotions as bottlenose dolphins (Except for fear), survive as a species. In sentient/semi-sentient species, is fear to important an emotion? The main reason for me asking th... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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How long would it take for an array of introduced alien fauna to form functional ecosystems on a near-future "Dead Earth"? Imagine that, in the near future, pollution, overpopulation and war leads to a massive extinction where almost all chordates, some invertebrates and many plants are wiped out. Small, resilient plants, insects and the like remain, but all megafauna is dead. Then, mere decades later, an interstellar a... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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How would a big cat evolve to climb on and jump between ruined modern buildings? So, in a post-apocalyptic setting, when humans have gone extinct and their cities fell into ruin, I was wondering what animals might evolve to conquer the ruins of our cities. Notice: I know that all our structures (except for stuff like Mount Rushmore and Petra.) would probably be gone by 10,000 ye... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Is there any plausible way that my fictional island could be inhabited by animals from African and Indonesian origins? Okay, now this question is a bit random. But, I'm planning for a possible book project about a 2019 expedition to an undiscovered island. The island is near the northern tip of the Ninetyeast Ridge in the Indian Ocean. I think the book will be in a similar format to James Gurney's Dinotopia, existin... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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What kinds of animals does insular dwarfism affect and how large does an island need to be to escape it? I've been wondering about insular dwarfism, and would like to know if it only affects certain animals (Since some animals grow larger upon colonizing an island, often due to the absence of predators.) Do only big animals get smaller, and if so, how big is "big"? Are there any taxonomic groups that ar... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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