Questions tagged [behaviour]
For questions about the actions and choices of an individual or group, but at a generic level, not a specific book character. Think nature film documentary behaviors.
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Why do dragons need to roar before chasing down their prey?
The dragons are the size of a double-decker bus with a long wingspan of over 100 meters, despite their muscular build they lack both endurance and stamina so more often than not they would simply ...
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How would predation work in an empathic universe?
In my world, there is a plane of existence whose laws of reality work differently than ours. In this plane, thoughts are not private. The boundaries between the mind and reality are slim, and thus ...
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How would prolonged use of augmented-reality combat gear affect soldiers?
Consider a future soldier with access to the technological augmentation indicated below, and for whom it is reasonable to believe he would spend (while deployed) at least 18 hours a day attached to ...
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How to stop ants from learning philosophy and taking over Belarus
Something magic happened in the 1970's somewhere in Eastern Europe, causing people to develop psychic powers. These powers allowed ants in Belarus (and a large swathe of Eurasia) to learn human ...
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Why would a space civ trade with a primitive civ?
A human space civilization once established a colony on a planet. Now, several centuries later, the people on this planet are only at a medieval level of technology. Whether by accident or on purpose, ...
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What Purpose Would a Unicorn's Horn Serve in the Wild?
This famous tapestry shows all the "modernized" traits of a unicorn--basically just a pale-colored horse with a single horn on its head. Of course, single-horned animals do and did exist:
The only ...
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Would a warhorse allow its rider to approach a Dragon at all?
Would a horse (trained or otherwise) not be wholly spooked by a Dragon merely flying overhead, even more so trying to enter combat with it or just trying to approach it under any circumstances?
What ...
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Child sorcerers - are they a danger to themselves and others
Young sorcerers' talent starts to emerge when they are two or three years old.
The level of their power varies greatly and isn't correlated with their intelligence or sense of responsibility.
They ...
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Why would the serra destroy ships?
The serra is a large air-breathing fish, about 10m long, with a long serrated crest coming out of its forehead. It is predatory, and lives similarly to a shark. However, it has one unique feature, ...
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Using a Musical Instrument to Repel Wildlife
I have a setting where a nomadic man lives alone in a forest. Presume the wildlife is similar to a typical subtropical or temperate forest. I had the idea that before he sits down to cook, he would ...
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What would be a plausible reason for a prey animal to mimic its own predator?
The saying goes "a wolf in sheep's clothing", which is a biblical idiom to refer to someone pretending to be harmless. This got me thinking about if the reverse could also be true. So I came up with a ...
user71341
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How does a robot keep its own joints clean?
Robots in fiction, autonomous or self-aware, need ways to operate in mundane conditions otherwise they will eventually (without upkeep) fall to pieces. This includes events where one gets splashed ...
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How do serpentine aliens move their eggs to reach tall trees?
Imagine there lives a serpentine alien species on a hospitable terrestrial planet in a galaxy far far away, they are found around the swampy area and the entire place will become waterlogged during ...
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What could prevent concentrated local exploration?
In my world there is a village with a hot spring, the only one on the entire island.
The spring emerges from a local cave which has been filled / caved in by a past civilisation, since the water is ...
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Roombas scurry in my robot city, what kind of filth would humans be?
Roombas scurry everywhere in my robot city, cleaning every surface diligently using power provided by those very surfaces using induction. They aren't limited to floors. Their design, mimicking ...
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Ringed Planet: The shadow's effect on fauna
I am writing a fantasy novel centered on an Earth-like planet with icy rings like Saturn. This question deals with certain effects of having such a ring system. Assume the planet is Earth, the rings ...
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What would Mimics be like without human influence?
How would a wild Mimic differ in behavior compared to a dungeon mimic? What are the strategies they may employ? What would they mimic without human influence?
In D&D and other media Mimics are ...
user71341
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What good reason for a full metal humanoid robot with powerful hydraulic legs need to sit on chair?
Set in near future, the human and robot coexist together amicably and conflict is rare.
They are designed to resemble us as close as possible for our sake, so we feel at ease and less paranoid by ...
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How would civilized beings build nests?
The beings in question are human-sized that instinctively build nests when they are ready to have kids. The nests are similar to a drey but with the opening on top, like a bird's nest, and are roughly ...
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What animal would men ride, if such animal was the same size as a horse [closed]
I'm currently trying to build a world where there is no animal that is like a horse, for example mule, or donkey, or horse.
What animal could be ridden by humans if the animals were the same size as ...
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Predatory Behavior of a Dragon
EDIT: After reading a lot of great suggestions I've decided that these dragons will be a mix between warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. They stalk their prey and ambush them along well traveled ...
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Why can't autonomous delivery drones solve world hunger? [closed]
All advanced civilisations have to ask themselves how to best optimize their supply lines. Handing over that duty to AI would give an efficient and most importantly an impartial delivery system. ...
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What holds back this city of mages from declaring its independence? [closed]
Year 0. A great Empire, powerful due to its control over magic, collapses. A rival empire takes over their territory and scatters its people. They seek to destroy its capital and salt the ruins, but ...
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Why don't monster rulers work together to guard their dungeon against adventurers?
There is a huge dungeon that has been unexplored until recently it was opened up to the public by the authority, adventurers are encouraged to form party to ensure higher chance of survivability.
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How would short nights affect human life?
My world is a flat disc, with a sun orbiting around it, and a stationary moon in its center whose shadow simulates nighttime.
Due to this, the central and outer regions experience a state of perpetual ...
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How to eliminate male on male competition? [closed]
What behavioral and biological changes would be needed to make males not fight each other over females and for females to fight each other for males and to not make males expandle and extremely ...
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How could a humanoid species with non-retractable claws strike someone with a fist/closed hand gesture?
In my story there are a species of humanoid bipeds (i.e., two arms, two legs) that have a more-or-less human arm anatomy but differ in having non-retractable claws instead of nails on all five fingers....
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Mating ritual where female chases male?
Mating rituals are various behaviours, serving as a precursor to copulation in almost all animal species. In general these serve to aid the females of the species to pick out a mate. They can be ...
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How will the future of work look like? [closed]
A few observations.
Actual job - which fill directly and efficiently real human basic needs - are getting scarce, there is a surge of bullshit jobs, an accrual of complex and rhetorical organizations ...
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Anthropomorphic animals and chew toys?
So, I have a world not unlike Zootopia, i.e. populated with all sorts of anthropomorphic mammals.
There's a scene in my story where a wolf-person and a cat-person are looking at chew toys in a pet ...
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How CAN You Justify Melalo's Dorsal Casque?
This, ladies and gentlemen, is Melalo, described in the Book of Creatures website as "the oldest and most feared of Ana's children." His name literally means "filthy", "dirty&...
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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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How do general all-purpose robots know a person's nutritional status?
How do robots know that a person has been well-fed? The setting is set in the near future where helper robots have become commonplace and are often assigned to help around households, hospitals, ...
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How Would a Filter-Feeding Marine Turtle Feed?
Back home, many large planktivores have ingenious ways to trap food and not water. For sharks like the basking and the megamouth, that is no problem, as they have modified their gills into rakers to ...
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Superheroes position about drugs [closed]
We often see superheroes confronting drug dealers and their henchmen, after all, drug use and commercialization in most countries is considered illegal. However, there is a growing current of thought ...
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What kind of creature would be able to provide nutrients to my floating plant mat?
My ocean biome is almost entirely covered by a mat of linked free-floating plants. You can read further details on my original question "What challenges must oceanic plant life overcome in order ...
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Why do the toe-ticklers tickle toes? [closed]
Toe-Ticklers are unique beings. They are around human-sized, and overall resemble tetrapods, with 2 key differences: They have 2 pairs of forelegs in sequence, each of which have a mass of dexterous ...
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Can humans be conditioned to become non-violent and forget how to defend themselves?
Okay, so here's a quick scenario. Humans over the course of time have been selected to breed based on how docile they are. The violent ones are exterminated and all outside sources have been shut out. ...
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What can a great animal (Hyppogriff, Gryphon, etc.) learn from an elf? [closed]
I am in the midst of creating a fantasy subrace of winged elves. The history of the race in brief is that during a great war with the dragons, one elf riding a gryphon was struk down by a dragon. As ...
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How incite civil unrest? [closed]
In order to achieve their goals nefarious agents want to incite civil unrest. This might take form of revolt, riots, other violence or labor disputes. Generally to disrupt function of civilian life as ...
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Genetic enhancements to breed docility, intelligence, empathy, and acceptance?
I'm beginning to build a post-apocalyptic world wherein rulers want to breed humanity in such a way that: 1) does not end up again in the ecological mess we see in the real world, and; 2) human beings ...
user47438
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Does spraying oxytocin in the face of a ferocious dragon pacify it?
Instead of a pepper spray I like to adopt a more friendly approach towards hostile animal such as a fridge sized dragon, with an aerosol spray containing oxytocin of course. I think this chemical can ...
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Realistic behaviour for Children in traumatic situations [closed]
Startup
The premise is the following. A group of children is abducted from a country, officially in order to train them to become commandos later on. The officials knows such things are inefficient, ...
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Developing a society with no military or defense force [closed]
Would it be outside the realm of possibility for a species to develop with no major species competition for land/food and grow into a society of peace and cooperation?
I've been trying to develop a ...
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Very unusual approach for Alien to disarm rifle wielding human [closed]
I'm writing a plot to video game (i hope i'll learn unity and make it one day). It will be 3D Adventure from First Person Perspective.
Player Character is a modern day professional hunter. He is ...
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Can knowingly and willingly murdering someone interfere with a women's menstural cycle? [closed]
On Peacemaker, Harcourt, one of the characters, mentions that when she first killed someone, her periods stopped happening for quite a bit.
My question is this: Just how realistic is that?
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Do aliens gamble? [closed]
I have read a number of sources that indicate that gambling behaviours in humans are the result of evolutionary adaptations.
If gambling is the result of the specific evolutionary history of our ...
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Selection pressures acting on the Goliath from 'Evolve?' [closed]
I know someone's already asked wether this thing was feasible, but I had a slightly different question: I wanted to know what kinds of things could drive something to... well 'evolve' the way the ...
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I Need Help With Human Degenerative Disease (HDD) [closed]
I am currently working on a post-apocalyptic world where roughly 90% of humanity get infected by HDD (Human Degenerative Disease). HDD causes the human brain, glands and tissues to change quite ...
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Is running away from 'the humans' a good way to go in terms of survival or just delaying the inevitable of being found? [closed]
In this context related in terms of my last question.
I've seen this lots of times in fiction and TV shows where sub-species, such as Marvel's Mutants and Inhumans or anything considered 'super' or ...
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