Questions tagged [avian]
For questions about birds and birdlike creatures. Does not include machines designed for flying (consider [airships], [aircraft], [spaceships]). Consider also [flight].
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What evolutionary pressure would lead to parrots or crows developing human-tier intelligence?
Several avian species such as African grey parrots or the New Caledonian crow have demonstrated tool use, the ability to use new information in separate contexts, and other types of cognition that ...
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How to eat raw chicken without getting salmonellosis? [closed]
I imagined a French professional chef named Simon Charles. His favourite meat: chicken.
One day, he invents a new revolutionary recipe: chicken tartare.
So, I wonder how to eat raw chicken without ...
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Can birds fly with broken ribs?
So again, in the book I'm writing, and yes, I do understand it is not plausible for humans to fly, I want one of my characters to be hit while flying and continue to fly with broken ribs. Now along ...
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Is the way avians are used in warfare in my setting realistic?
In my medieval setting, bird people are about half the height of a human, have hollow bones, and have hands at the end of their wings.
In warfare, there are 3 types of avian units:
Scouts give the ...
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Plausible evolutionary path from modern birds to "dragons"
I'm interested in how you could get a creature that is broadly "dragon-like" to evolve from modern-day birds. Considering that some extinct early birds or proto-birds looked pretty reptilian,...
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Could a bird respiratory system still work without the same bone structure as a bird?
I have a creature that has a humanoid torso and abdomen except for it being larger to accommodate air sacs. The structure of the posterior air sacs is that it wraps around the organs; this means a ...
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What are the effects of making a woman as light as a duck? [closed]
With a pinch of handwavium, Clarabelle the witch causes an accident. She became permanently as heavy as an ordinary duck, while her body remained the same.
Her density was forever altered. She is five ...
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What technology level could an avian species achieve? [closed]
Let's take the traditional image of a harpy from Greek mythology: A sapient creature with avian wings and talons with a humanoid head (and presumably, cranium capacity). This creature does not possess ...
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How Tall Can Flightless Birds Plausibly Get?
These flightless birds are under strong selective pressure to be able to feed on high up conifer needles, and avoid predation from T-Rex sized predatory flightless birds. The forests the birds are ...
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99.9% of the flight-capable birds died at once. How screwed is the rest of the world?
When a massive handwavium accident happened on Earth, 99.9% of all flight-capable birds worldwide, instead of dealing with it, answered with "Nope, gone to heaven."
Basically, they died ...
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Would Birds Wear Corsets?
Corsets are a type of clothing which are typically worn to support and shape the waist and torso. While this makes sense for soft-bellied mammals, the benefits to other classes are hard to figure
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What Bronze Age Jobs Couldn't be Replaced by Extremely Well Trained Animals?
In this setting magpies and mammoths have been domesticated for hundreds of millennia, allowing them to become far more diligent and trainable than dogs by a wide margin.
The mammoths come in full ...
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How Big Can An Ancient Bird Powered Glider Get?
What are the practical limitations of a glider made of bronze age materials and pulled by well trained birds?
Due to psychics able to control animals, and a cultural fixation with domestication, ...
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Is it effective for a dragon to have a bat-like wing structure with feathers?
To elaborate further, is it possible to fly if a creature has the wing structure of a bat, but instead of membranous skin, they have feathers?
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What kind of Houses would a sapient Albatross build
I am wondering what kind of house would a Sapient Albatross build. I did a little researth and found out that they build very simple nests maid out of mud feathers or rocks. but my sapient race would ...
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Shimmering Bird
Leaving dragons a little aside, a memory came to my mind when I researched about mythological/folk creatures that fly and remembered a very peculiar one: the Firebird. It's basically a glowing bird ...
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Ecologically Correct Juvenile Phoenix
The phoenix is a bird that closely resembles a large eagle, but is distinguished by its life-cycle: Rather than laying eggs, they produce 2-3 small worms as they die and burn up, which feed on their ...
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What would a gondola carried by a giant bird look like?
In the world I'm designing there is an island with a kingdom there, people in that kingdom have learned to tame giant birds and use them for transport. One such means of transport is a gondola with a ...
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what tools would a sapient parrot use? [closed]
In a world where birds have become sapient, what tool would a sapient parrot use?
These parrots have discovered metalworking and can forge metal. They are not humanoid and still need to fly.
They ...
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How does the Carnifowl hunt?
The carnifowl is a bird of a unique shape
It is about 50cm long, with a wingspan of 110cm and legs only 5cm long. Its front half (chest, wings, beak) is like an eagle, though the head is feline and ...
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Liquid Fertilizer
In this post I asked if it would be possible for a species of bird to create saliva capable of curing animals (even those of other species) and stimulating plant growth. The answers and comments ...
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How do the eggs of birds that fly using their legs not crack?
I've been designing bird-like creatures that both fly and walk using their legs, saving the trouble of growing extra muscle mass for both. Because of this they have an odd look for birds: They have ...
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How would the anatomy of a bird that flies with its legs work?
I'm designing fauna for my story and I'd like to incorporate birds but with a twist! Instead of having wings adapted for flight their legs serve that purpose. Ordinary birds have most their muscle ...
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How large of a feather "parachute" would these flightless birds need to fall safely?
Flight is a very demanding task for avians both physically and anatomically. Everything about a birds anatomy is designed around flight and small injuries can ground a bird for good. Lot's of things ...
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Why have my intelligent pigeons not taken over the continent?
My story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where there are no humans. On the island of Manhattan, which has been abandoned for a long time, there are communities of animals with human-level ...
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What would make good weapons for literal birds?
These birds are Australian magpies, but with human level intelligence. No other differences. They have a near future level of technology available. There are 2 limitations:
It can't be suicidal, the ...
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Could penguins evolve to become herbivores?
In a science-fiction story I am writing, there is a species of penguins that has evolved to consume seaweed rather than fish, arthropods, cephalopods, and echinoderms. They are my trolls. Also, they ...
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Are "bicycles" for flying species possible?
Flying is hard. Most flying species can lift comparatively minuscule amounts of mass in the air beside themselves. Flying is also exhausting, there are only so many species that can soar in the sky ...
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How advanced could a society of intelligent magpies get with help from humans?
How advanced could a society of smart magpies get with help from humans? The magpies have the assistance of near future humans. These magpies are regular Australian magpies, aside from their ...
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How to estimate the price of an animal in a fantasy setting, or why does a duck cost more then a chicken? [closed]
I realise now that this is not the right place to ask this question, but for anyone else who happens to stop by and is looking for a good reference to use to price their animals, I've found a resource ...
user86853
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Is it possible for a wild parthenogenic dodo to exist in real earth? [closed]
so imagine, there's parthenogenic species of dodos that lives in a remote island with no predators or man have never set foot, it has some similar traits of a brush turkey (not an actual turkey), like ...
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Ideal large flightless birds for domesticated* cattle [duplicate]
Ideal large flightless birds for domesticated cattle
(Just a note about this question being a duplicate. Some of the points people raised on a basis to close the question were fair and some... weren't....
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Could a mechanical bird with the wingspan of Vermont be able to fly?
I know it sounds kinda stupid, but I’m trying to create a really ominous figure that would always watch the player in this a hypothetical video game that I’m writing with my dad.
We both agreed that ...
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Will owls become extinct without airglow?
Given a planet in most ways very similar to Earth (gravity, daylight, atmosphere etc.) with a full transplanted biosphere (all the familiar plants and animals), where the main difference is that as a ...
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Ideal large flightless bird for domesticated* cattle [closed]
Ideal large flightless bird for domesticated cattle
So, just to be clear, when I mean "giant birds", I mean the families that presently consist of giant flightless birds (think moas, emus, ...
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How Could my People Avoid Altitude Sickness While Riding Giant Birds?
In my book series, some of the people of the planet Aurea use giant vultures called Argentavis for transport and aerial combat. These domesticated, selectively bred birds are far larger than their ...
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Naming the "hand" of a humanoid bird
I'm creating a humanoid bird character. In essence, they are still human with the usual four limb package and upright walking. However, they have two wings on the back for flying, and the feathers, ...
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How could a winged human hide very big wings [duplicate]
So I've seen a question similar to this one, but the wings were much shorter.
I've got a character that's about 5ft tall and has wings from about his shoulders to his calves. Think avian-human hybrid (...
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What physical conditions should be present on a planet for humanoid bird-creatures to exist? [closed]
I'm writing a fantasy novel with a sentient human-bird species. These creatures magically transform, growing feathers etc. becoming essentially giant birds.
What would the general conditions on this ...
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What would "medieval" weapons made by birds look like [duplicate]
I previously made a post about vehicles for birds. Now I want to know what their equivalent to swords, spears and other weapons would look like? I based the birds off of corvids, like ravens and crows....
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Where would flying humans store air sacs?
The philacry are humans with wings like dragonflies, crystal clear and barely weighing anything, yet able to withstand the rapid wingbeats of flight. Though they can fly from childhood, buzzing about ...
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Air vehicles for birds
I want to make a race of sapient birds,they are starting their own industrial revolution. Is it possible for them to develop air vehicles even though they can fly without them??
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How effective/plausible is vibration sense in the air?
I am developing a fictional species of raptor or raptor-like bird, with incredible senses, for a fantasy setting. One element of their combined sensory picture that I thought of was the use of sensory ...
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Could falcons evolve to become flightless?
I am writing a science-fantasy book series for adolescents (or people aged from 10 to 24 years old if you want) about a weird creature called Céleste Bizarre. One of their friends is an ...
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How to tell bird people apart when their visual differences are more subtle?
One problem that fantasy suffers from is that it is hard for human viewers to differentiate between actual non-humans when the differences are subtle. I'm not talking about dwarves and elves, but ...
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In a society of bird people, what would the gender roles be, based off of bird society IRL?
In my worldbuilding project, I'm currently thinking about the society of my bird people. I like to put actual science (or "science") into my worldbuilding, and I'm trying to include as much ...
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How to make a bird/human hybrid language
In my world, through the work of magic, a group of humans were mutated into half-bird people. I've figured out most of the anatomy so I wanted to know how their speech would work. If it matters, ...
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Wild and Domesticated equivalent of a Chicken
I kinda want to write a story similar to the Warriors series, but with chickens. I sat down with a pen and paper and then realized, I need a different animal. Chickens just can't survive in the wild. ...
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Could birds evolve to become similar sizes to large theropods?
Birds are relatively small compared to other theropods. For example, the Moa, the largest known bird, is 12ft from head to toe, which is the same height as a T. rex at the hip. Two problems that I ...
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Which birds could replace pigeons as message carriers?
Pigeon post has a long tradition in human history. The first mentioned uses of pigeons as message carriers go back to ancient Egypt and proofs of their usage are found all over Europe, northern Africa ...
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