Questions tagged [bio-mechanics]
For questions about the mechanical processes that allow organisms to live, including respiration, consumption, excretion. Focus on shapes of body parts and connections between parts.
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High Gravity Giant Shell
I am designing a genus of eusocial, high-temperature, extraterrestrials from the planet 61 Virginis b. They are based on tungsten chloride and use sodium chloride as a solvent. This species has ...
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How much would raptor-like talons on the hands affect tool use?
Imagine you had a race of "fantasy bird folk":
Humanoid head, torso and limbs down to the ankles/fingertips
wings from the back (implausible for flight, but irrelevant here)
bird-like (...
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To what are humans from one world allergic to humans from another? [closed]
Assume that there are two types of humans. One is your bog standard Earth like. The other is slightly biologically different. A few extra glands and hormones, maybe even an extra organ. The ...
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How much diamagnetic levitation can a human handle?
One of the limitations to human space travel is acceleration limits. We'd really like to just shoot spaceships out of a cannon to 99% the speed of light, but the resulting pressures on the human body ...
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How would a bioengineered warbeast get energy from fossil fuel products?
In the somewhat far future, mankind has become fairly adept at wet nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Allowing them to not just modify what exists in nature, but build beyond it with almost ...
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What is the Nutritional Value of Earth?
This is Timmy. It’s a massive planetary eating monstrosity (don’t ask about Timmy), who likes to target inhabited planets. On this occasion, Timmy has chosen to feed on earth. What would the ...
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How do my genetically altered people survive a smokey environment?
I have a world heavily polluted. A war long ago sustained by automated factories has kicked up a significant amount pollution and debris into the atmosphere. This has caused a permanent mist/fog of ...
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What is good Armament and Protection for a Quadruped Mecha? [closed]
I have been looking for real robot models for a long time to create a realistic mecha for my story.
I decided to model Peace Walker from Metal Gear and a quadruped robot with wheels that I found on ...
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Why is my organic computer the only thing capable of manipulating my special particles?
I have a few fictional particles in my setting that can do many things, however getting them do something specific is the challenging part. There are a class of particles that only work while in the ...
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Is an "catfish-like" armored skeleton system still practical at larger sizes?
Essentially, I've been trying to make a world of arthropod-like creatures, but as a result of that, the more I researched arthropods, the more I understand the limits their structure has on size.
...
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Could biological radio be limited to family members?
I have a creature with high-frequency biological radio transmitted via an antenna growing from their heads. However, the creatures can only freely communicate at range with their blood relatives (...
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What chemistry other than that on Earth could support life on an alien planet? [closed]
I like designing aliens, similar to how Biblaridion did it on his videos on YT where he establishes the world conditions and chemistry of the world and proceed to create an evolutionary tree from ...
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Superbabies can walk right from birth. How many times are they stronger than a normal baby?
XXIII century genetic engineering creates superbabies that can walk straight out of the LDR (labor, delivery, and recovery) room right after being born.
These superbabies are enhanced by a set integer ...
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Would communicating through an external, circular "larynx" be viable?
These aliens live on a planet with a thick atmosphere and light gravity, and spend most of their life in the air.
They communicate through a series of piercing whistles and sound-wave vibrations, and ...
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Fire heat organism [closed]
My organism produce cooled plasma for defense .It lives in planet with very exotic flora and fauna which have super powers . It preys big whales and trex like organism. My question is that how my ...
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This organism can survive temperatures of 45°C. What's the next overheating-related threat?
This is a sequel to my previous question in this vein, in which I handwaved away some issues related to Bob overheating.
As DWKraus pointed out when answering said previous question, cell membranes ...
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Explosive biology
My organism live in planet full of water . It has only small percent of land about 5% only. It is big as gorilla. It eats metal ores and gains sustenance from it. My organism developed an powerful ...
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Super powerful dragon biology
The lower jaw is hollow, to support the breath weapon, but the upper also has a weapon pocket. Each gland secretes a chemical that reacts with the other - the upper secretes a magnesium-rich oil that ...
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Altering the muscles of giant creatures to let them stand without collapsing by changing their proteins
One of the problems with scaling up creatures without increasing their proportions is that their muscles won't be strong enough to support their weight due to the square-cube law, which I'm sure you'...
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Organic metallic compound [closed]
My organism have a weight of 270 kilograms. It have height of 2.49 metres. My organism is reptile and it lived in animals with metallic shells . My organism has bite force enough to crush car in ...
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Superheating furnace stomach
My organism lives near volcano. It consumes large quantities of rock and digests specific minerals, expelling the remaining rock, super heated by his furnace like stomach, as lava. What mechanism ...
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Alien biochemistry [closed]
My creature was alien which home was destroyed . It got into another planet similar to earth . Its organs are not like humans. It sustains itself with by passively drawing in body heat and the ...
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Scientifically plausible powers : part 1 [closed]
My creature was capable of creating plasmoid flames from thin air not requiring oxygen and combustible objects similar to this "The user can create, shape, and manipulate plasma fire or fiery ...
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My creature's cells mix water and some of the stuff in pee to cool themselves. How does it get that stuff to its cells?
After reevaluating the creature that cools its blood with lye and sal ammoniac, I removed the middleman - the cooling chamber and use of blood as coolant - and replaced the potassium hydroxide/...
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Is there space in an average animal cell that I could cram some extra organelles into?
From what I can tell, there's lots of room available inside a cell; certainly, all the graphic representations of them I can find seem to show that a lot of the volume of the cell is cytoplasm, as ...
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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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Possible mechanisms for life near absolute 0
The overview:
Would any form of complex life be possible near absolute 0? At least for my personal standards, the "life" merely has to be:
a self-sustaining,
self-replicating machine,
with ...
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How can we maximize the speed of a bipedal digitigrade humanoid?
How fast can a digitigrade bipedal ape possibly run?
I've raked through any question I could find on here talking about speedy bipeds or digitigrade bipeds (that aren't robotic/synthetic), but none ...
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A creature has one heart per bodily extremity. How large does each have to be?
The creature has several hearts, each supplying blood to one limb. For all other intents and purposes the creature is human. Of the six smaller hearts, one supplies each arm and leg, one supplies the ...
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How does my symbiotic fungus silicify its own cell walls to armor its host's bones?
Fungi have cell walls which - unlike those of plants, which are made out of cellulose, xylan, and lignin - are instead made out of chitin, glucan, and mannans.
A fungus I'm planning on writing about ...
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Shock resistant brains
Being hit in the head with a blunt object, or accelerating too fast (in a rocket) can cause serious brain injuries for people.
There are animals who seem to fare better, like woodpeckers. Apparently, ...
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I'm not a biologist or an engineer. How do I design legs for a large animal that leaps very long distances?
For designing fictional animals, I'm trying to design one with four appendages that is meant to jump large distances vertically and length-wise and is as large or larger than a human, with hands or ...
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Knuckle-walk in snow / very cold climate
Is knuckle-walking efficent on snow / ice / thick snow ?
Can a predator large as a polar bear evolve this? Is protecting the claw in such way, to far fetch considering the fact that the beast need to ...
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Science of speculative biology [closed]
My animal lives in planet full of rocks, so it evolved a drill-like mechanism in his hand. What material is that biological drill made of that crack granite like stones with ease ?
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I’m making this story that has a blown up planet, and I’m trying to have some animals and creatures that live here that have changed or been modified [closed]
So In this story the main planet has been blown up way before the point of the story taking place, and well I have most of the architecture down I’m stuck on coming up with creatures to inhabit it and ...
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Chameleon harpoon tongue - plausable or not?
My future “chameleons” have evolved a harpoon-like tongue as an adaptation for catching larger prey as their own body size has gotten significantly larger over the milions of years. I drew a simple ...
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Could a creature breathe carbon monoxide?
In real life nothing breathes carbon monoxide, but it still binds to the things that are supposed to carry oxygen around the body to my understanding. Could a form of life be able to actually use ...
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Vampiric kiss with effects similar to nitrogen narcosis
My story has vampires in it. Within my story's universe, I want a human kissing one mouth-to-mouth to result in nitrogen narcosis-like symptoms for said human, and for said symptoms to intensify as ...
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How much salt juice does my bioelectric pulsed field magnet need?
I'm making an organism which generates its own magnetic field - specifically, a magnetic field which pulses on and off repeatedly. Said organism uses said magnetic field to communicate with other such ...
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How big can a young mad scientist make their homemade Clifford before he overheats?
Long story short, a child mad scientist wants to scale up their pet dog - they read about Clifford, and wish to replicate that story, as a young mad scientist generally does. The billionaire mad ...
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Bones with iron like beaver teeth. Would it work?
Beavers, asides from being the largest rodent in North America and making rather fetching hats, also have iron compounds within their teeth enamel which allows said tooth handle higher amounts of ...
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If endotoxemia and proteins denaturing are no longer problems, what's the next overheating-related threat to an organism?
Let's say that it's impossible for a hypothetical organism's proteins to denature - unfolding and loosing their structure - due to high heat, and that, as such, temperatures equal to those required ...
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How do I stop blood from clotting except upon exposure to the atmosphere? [closed]
Blood clots in order to stop bleeding.
The problem is that sometimes it clots when it's not supposed to. This is called thrombosis. It kills a lots of people each year.
I want this to stop happening. ...
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Limpet-Style Metal Superbones
Some context, right off the bat: I am a mad scientist. This means that evolution has been defenestrated; as such, I am not interested in determining what evolutionary pressures might lead to the ...
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metal/alloy based lifeforms? how would they function?
I've been working on an alien race for a while, and the look of them have changed a lot In the design process, but right now, I've stuck with metallic lifeforms..
essentially living machines, made ...
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How long and heavy can a tentacle tail get relative to the animal it's on?
While looking about for references on how to make a strong, prehensile tail, I found ProjectApex's answer to that exact question. The solution is to make the tail a muscular hydrostat, a bodily ...
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Electromagnetic physiology [closed]
An electromagnetic ray fired from the my organism mouth, the EM Beam is incredibly deadly to those on the receiving end as the beam’s magnetism is up to 1 quadrillion gauss and strong enough to ...
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What would the effects of a muscle-wrapped mesh of a circulatory system be on a human?
Let's say that there is a biomodified human. Their circulatory system is something of a mesh; there are artificial connections between their blood vessels wherever physically possible, generally at ...
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Dealing with Arc Flash For Viji
I asked two questions (see here and here involving lightning for a species I created, called Viji. Viji are a race of metal-armored humanoids, and they live on mountains, so it seems obvious lightning ...
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What material would my animal have to be reinforced in in order to fly at Mach 1? [closed]
My organism is a bird-like organism that lives on an earth-like world. My creatures speed clocked at mach 1. What material is my organism reinforced in in order to reach mach 1 just by flapping its ...
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