Questions tagged [biology]
For questions about living things. Does not exclude aliens, but additional information is usually necessary (consider using "xenobiology" instead).
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Biodiversity through radiation
I was wanting to make a species on an alien planet that reproduce purely asexualy, and their star produces enough radiation to cause common mutations among the children to cause something similar to ...
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Creating a blue-skin look
There are several previous questions on this group regarding blue skin but none of them fit the needs of my world.
I need to allow a group of very pale skinned aliens (albeit with typical mammalian ...
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How can muscle atrophy due to long gestation in artificial wombs be avoided?
Lebensborn is a Schutzstaffel-led state-supported program led by the Eternal Reich with the stated goal of increasing the number of children who meet the Nazi standards of racially pure and healthy ...
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Reality Check: Decay in Intense Radiation
What would decay look like in an environment so intensely radioactive that no bacteria can survive it for any appreciable amount of time? This is in a bunker that's been hit by a malfunctioning 'dirty'...
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Could bioengineered nanobots be used to grow/develop organs and tissue inside the human body?
Like the title states, could a bioengineered organ meant to produce specially designed nanobots, be placed into a human body, and once properly activated is capable of developing multiple organs ...
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Scientifically Possible Sound-based Incapacitation
Ok so, recently I just rewatched the first Kingsman’s movie (the first one to be released, not the first canonical one) again with my mates for the first time in years and because my attentiveness has ...
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What is the most efficient design for an IR sense organ
Deep beneath the ice-crust of Europa, lies its famous subsurface ocean. Having existed for billions of years, this ocean now harbours a huge range of life forms on its sea floor.
However, in trying to ...
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Boss attacks for a purple worm [closed]
I am making a boss fight themed quest in Dungeons and Dragons, and I am having trouble coming up with "Boss Attacks" that would be physically possible as well as add diversity to the purple ...
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Would humans on disparate planets with little to no contact with one another continue to evolve along different lines?
Would humans on disparate planets with little to no contact with one another continue to evolve along different lines?
In this universe, humans left Earth a hundred thousand years before. Or if it ...
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Why are my Orcs so Big and Strong? [closed]
Here are the usual "Since warcraft 3" Orcs.
Men are between 2.0 and 2.7 meters tall.
In women from 1.7 meters to 2.5 meters.
Almost no fat.
Much stronger than humans "One orc is as ...
user100265
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What are the physical symptoms of standing for too long? [closed]
Someone being forced to stand for seven hours give or take with no possibility of shifting position. It would last seven hours a day for about a week as a form of punishment. All I've been able to ...
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Could this animal exist on my planet
Im working on a project where I'm designing a theoretically possible planet with life and I had an idea for a massive sea animal (500-550 meters in length). Water animals get help from buoyancy but ...
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Could a gene be added to people that would stop them drinking?
I'm writing a dystopia where the authoritarian state messes with people's biology, like in Brave New World.
Can they do alter people biologically in some way that makes alcohol not a thing in society ...
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How to allow a sentient cephalopod to live a long lifespan?
In this alternate earth, during the Permian period, a sentient aquatic cephalopod species evolved intelligence equal if not superior to humans. Unfortunately, there's a big problem to a cephalopod ...
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What would a crystal-based creature look like? [closed]
One kind of alien concept I want to explore in my sci-fi is Jean Schneider’s hypothesis about a non-chemical crystal biology. According to Schneider, the organism’s primitive ’central memory’ is based ...
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What life could survive in a backrooms-like enviroment [closed]
you know what the backrooms are, you're on the internet.
for those who somehow don't: the backrooms is an internet urban legend that entails a pocket dimension that you can get to via no-clipping ...
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Anatomically Correct Chupacabra [closed]
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series.
The Chupacabra is a legendary cryptid animal from North American folklore. It is a strange bear-like or reptilian creature that sucks the ...
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How much food/drink would it take to properly feed 6 inch vs 72 feet people if the amount they need to eat stayed proportional to normal sized humans?
So say that a 5'6/6 feet person is shrunk down to action figure size(around 6 inches tall/12x smaller) or comes from a human/humanoid species that is naturally that size, how much food and drink would ...
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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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Humans breeding with dragons [closed]
Firstly, by dragon I am referring to the type with 4 legs a tail and wings. Their actual sizes vary greatly, from the size of your average house cat to feasting on planets in one bite. Most are ...
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How large would a tree need to be to provide oxygen for 100 people?
The idea is that a population of beings have a superior claim over others for the privilege of oxygenated air in a city/large settlement.
I wanted to make this work that the other residents in the ...
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Could a biological organism have organs that perceive entropy?
A biology textbook I once read described humans and other organisms as "moving zones of low entropy", referring to the fact that our bodies display a high level of organization and ...
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How would a group of people inspired by European ethnic groups maintain their lighter skin in a desert climate?
Messing around with different aesthetics and groups for this story, and I'm wondering how to go about this. I wanted to do a setting where a region is full of basically ancient Egyptian inspired ...
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Is it possible for a living creature to have no need for oxygen or some other gas
Is it possible for a multicellular living creature to have no need to intake oxygen or some other gas?
So this question came to mind when I was pondering the plausibility of space-dwelling life forms. ...
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Hydrostatic skeletons on a low gravity world
So I'm working on an inhabited planet with around half the gravity of Earth (assume everything else is the same, just the gravity differs). While thinking about what kinds of terrestrial creatures ...
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How would I go about explaining the science of a world where everything is made of fabrics and craft supplies?
I'm working on a little project called Scrapbook Street where everything is made of fabric and or craft supplies, but while working on the world of the project, I've started to wonder how the world ...
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The effects of seeing in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum? [duplicate]
The ability to see in infrared is a common trope, and there are several examples of this in fiction and with animals. Ultraviolet vision has been less thoroughly explored. I know it is common among ...
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How to make chocolate safe for Keidran? (Basically Dog-people)
Backstory (skip if desired)
Let's take our cute and self-conscious protagonist, Jayden! (For the people that read and responded to the post about the genetics behind keidran and the colonization of ...
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How many children could a human have in one pregnancy (with safety being no concern)?
There's a nation with extreme fertility and population problems. Someone suggested the government could induce certain candidates to have a great number of children in a single pregnancy... at the ...
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Abiogenesis ocurring inside an organism
Some time ago I pondered about where does our gut microbiome come from, and upon research it apparently comes from outside, of course, but then in a speculative biology kind of way I envisioned an ...
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How Would Metabolism Work For A Zombie? [closed]
In this story I am planning to write, zombies are real! A bacterium has resulted in the reactivation of the nervous system in recently dead humans, who will now seek to feed on the flesh of the living!...
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What would the technical problems be of mass genetic editing? Keidran Animal-Human Hybrids
The Setting
I hear you, I'll make this brief. It's been almost 30 years since the Aurea slow cargo ship arrived at Ilus. When they launched the Aurea, almost a century ago, they had the technology to ...
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Could supercritical co2 act as a biosolvent?
Let me break it down:
Having failed to terraform venus, I am now trying to the process of pantropy to inhabit this world, (pantropy = to adapt humans/Terran life to other planetary environs through ...
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Dragon people with colorful horns
Dragonfolk have skin that looks like rock, but sometimes, some of them turn colorful with very bright horns for the same reason salmon turn from grey to red, while others are always bright and colored....
user100394
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Replacing proteins with starch in alien biochemistry
So, I am trying to come up with forms of alien biochemistry that are different but not so different that these life forms are drinking battery acid or breathing methane. One idea I read about on Orion’...
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Could an alien creature plausibly detect human magnetic fields?
I am designing an alien species that evolved to use magnetoreception to aid in navigation on its homeworld in a manner similar to some terrestrial animals. What would it take for an alien creature ...
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What conditions could fish people evolve to be in their current humanoid form?
My fish people live in underwater nations. They look like a mix between the Creature from the Black Lagoon (left)
and the sea creatures from Luca:
with the exception of some minorities that resemble ...
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Would compound-like eyes that gave a "pixelated" image be possible/practical
The title is horribly worded, but I have no idea how to otherwise title it.
Basically, the idea behind these special eyes is that they would be structured much like real-life compound eyes, but the ...
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Manage Exotaxonomy [closed]
My story is set on a huge ring megastructure (Banks' Orbital), with properties (E.g. axial tilt, diameter, rotation) that allow it to have an Earth-like atmosphere.
The biosphere is similar to the ...
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Breathing Capability Up Really High [closed]
So my setting is a bunch of islands in the sky above an ocean, and I've toyed with the idea of having a barrier around them so I don't have to Science This Out, but having just discovered this magical ...
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Could synthetic pheromones affect female fertility?
In a previous post, I asked what chemical agent can cause both nervous and reproductive effects.
The chemical agent in question should have the potential to be fatal and preferably exert its effects ...
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Biology of a dyson-tree
The concept of a dyson tree is a genetically engineered plant that can exist in vacuum conditions, and uses the raw materials found in extraterrestrial regolith (I.e. comets, asteroids etc) to produce ...
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Using "smart" bio-machine fungus to terraform a planet?
Backstory
Ok let's start from the top. A kardashev type 1.2 civilization (a humanity maybe a couple decades to a century ahead of us) builds the beginnings of a dyson swarm, suddenly having unlimited ...
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A planet with acid rains but its atmosphere is breathable
I am trying to create a planet that rains acid, and that has acidic oceans of water, but a breathable nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere.
This planet has native lifeforms that have evolved to withstand these ...
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Can we modify sportsmen to have muscle latches for spring-action punches and kicks?
Given that safe and reliable genetic modification are relatively common and accessible in my setting, I got interested in all the possibilities and implications that would occur by this, one of these ...
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Eyes that work like mirror telescopes [duplicate]
So the thing is, I made a question regarding seeing all of the EM spectrum(or at least all that it's possible through biological means) and someone pointed out that the image would be distorted ...
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I can shrink myself to 3 mm and teleport into someone else's body. How can I make them die of a "natural" cause?
The world is, as we all know, in a sad state: corrupt politicians constantly trying to diminish democracy to increase their own power; international corporations ignoring laws; mobsters taking over ...
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Supercaviating Aquatic Creature
Ever since I watched this video theorizing about how Aquaman could dislocate in water at supersonic speeds via supercavitation I got interested in implementing this hability in some sort of aquatic ...
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How could an animal have a truly unidirectional respiratory system?
How could a large ectotherm (say, the size and shape of a horse) have a truly unidirectional system of respiration? Not a looping system as found in birds and other archosaurs, but a system where air ...
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What greenhouse gas could increase the temperature of a planet with the least damage to living beings?
Following this question. After a certain incident, my Earth-like planet now only receives 0.3% of the sunlight it was originally receiving.
To compensate for this, someone, as an answer to my last ...
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