Questions tagged [creature-design]
For questions regarding the viability of a life-form design. These questions should focus on biologically plausible creatures.
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How much Sociality is required for a Population to develop Technology?
It seems that most of the technological development of humanity is dependent on our ability to form a society. The sharing of ideas and building on the discoveries of others is how we have advanced. ...
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Science behind a naturally invisible creature
Suppose a planet developed a peculiar form of life that was naturally invisible, but only within a 15-ft. (4.57 m) radius, by bending or refracting the majority of light around its body due to its ...
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Evolution of species with separate sapient and non-sapient forms?
This question is inspired by the last paragraph of my answer here: Negating the negative effects of childbearing
(A follow up question to this can be found here: Methods to ensure gene flow in ...
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How can glass people survive?
I have been trying to imagine a world which was also created by a Big Bang. Following is something that I have created so far:
Another planet which was created also has species like us but they live ...
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Would a gelatinous mass be possible?
In the world I have been working on my planet has a gelatinous mass of cells coexisting but not a technical single creature. It bridges the gap between single celled and complex and it grows in size ...
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The strength of gemstones
Somewhat related to this question, now that we've established how useless gold is as anything (wow I was such an idiot), what about crystals? For instance, something like the diamond armor from ...
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The "Golden" Horde
In Hellboy 2, the titular protagonist and his party face up against a so-called 'Golden Army', which consisted of golden colored automatons who could constantly rebuild themselves after death. For my ...
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Pack animals for forests
My setting takes place in a densely forested continent, with huge trees and rushing rivers. The problem is that this forest stretches on for thousands of miles, only occasionally punctuated by some ...
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Sympathetic links with flight
I am adding dragons to my current world. However my world currently uses a sympathetic style of 'magic' and qualifies to the laws of thermodynamics (much to 'The Kingkiller Chronicles'). In this case, ...
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How could ghosts be explained without an afterlife?
I've always loved well-done ghosts. However, I've always hated the afterlife-speculation that they engender if used in a story. So I need a way to get ghosts without the fluffy spiritualistic bits. ...
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How to make a realistic 'giant'
Imagine a race of what we would call 'giants', each of them possibly around 8 to 10 feet (2.40-3.00 meters) tall. What differences would they need compared to us regular humans in order to function? I ...
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Could a non-material living being exist?
I'm imagining an electromagnetic wave that could deliberately alter its wavelength. It would be a totally unfamiliar type of creature, but actually, we material beings act because of the electical ...
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Human survival without eating
In this question, the most "realistic" idea is to have the human have an oxygen tank strapped to his back and connected to his nose at all times (preferably through a mask of some sort). However, this ...
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Would a species evolved for very high environmental pressure necessarily die in lower pressures?
I'm aware that deep sea fish don't actually "explode" when brought to the surface but any air sacs in their bodies would expand and cause them possibly fatal damage.
However, what other physiological ...
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Alien race similar to human but without anything in common
(First of all, perhaps this is a duplicate of this question, but I'll give it a go since I'd like to focus on something different. Or the answer is there but I couldn't quite catch it. Oh boy... *...
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What could make an insect race intelligent?
TL;DR: I want a society which behaves as a hive. Is it plausible and how to achieve this?
The setup: Different planet in our universe. In other words: Normal, physical rules apply, there is no magic ...
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Consistency of Giant Spider Webs
Giant spider webs in fiction always seem very thin compared to the scale of the spider itself. (See: Hobbit 2) I would expect giant spider webs to be like cables, but that might not be the case.
My ...
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How does animal size affect individuals' agility and speed?
This question is a bit of an outgrowth of Can you simply scale up animals?, but it does approach it from a different angle.
"All else equal" (which it of course never is, but we're good at pretending ...
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An enviroment where a bird-like creature can survive on passive feeding
The question about a diet of dust brought up a few creatures that survive on dust, however they were all insect-sized or smaller. This got me thinking about the Blue Whale, which survives on a diet of ...
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Human/alien breeding generating an alien
I hope my question isn't too vague or broad. It's a follow-up to this one.
So, we have a human (genetically modified in order to support life on another place, from previous question) on an alien ...
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An alien that eats everything
I'm thinking about creating a creature that can eat anything. Perhaps a rock, if it looks "tasty", or a chunk of a spaceship, or even a piece of itself if it wishes.
Of course, it seems silly, so ...
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How realistic are four legged aquatic animals?
On earth most of our sealife is fishlike (excluding a few other species such as squid/octopus). As far as I'm aware there are no legged creatures which live solely in the sea.
In my world I'd like to ...
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How big could a living thing be?
Simply put is there an upper bound for the largest possible living creature in a scientifically rational world without incorporating anti-gravity, magic, the force, or other physical concepts we are ...
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How do I prevent my turtle from collapsing under its own gravity?
Suppose the universe contained a species of planet sized turtles1 that can travers at least interstellar space. How can I explain (without invoking magic) that these turtles are not spherical?
If ...
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Is it more likely that merfolk would evolve with horizontal or vertical tails?
Another mermaid questions I'm afraid!
Fish have tail fins which are vertical, whales have fins which are horizontal. My race of merfolk are:
Very active (more likely to be warm blooded)
Have gills ...
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Assistance to fight off a silicon-based lifeform
I am a survivor of the United Nations Space Corp's 2nd Exploration Fleet. On our travel to the distant Epsilon Canares system, our scouts encountered a strange lifeform.
We call them 'shapeshifters'. ...
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Microbe transforming humans to plants
Note: This question assumes an earth-like biology.
Could a microbe (probably virus) be created that transformed humans into plants? What I mean by this is that the microbe would take human cells, and ...
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What fantasy race has an affinity for water? [closed]
I am designing my own fantasy world. In it, I am trying to tie various aspects of the world, such as water, fire, life... to a particular race that has a magical affinity for that aspect. Dwarves ...
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Is it possible for a species to have more than two sexes?
Every species I'm aware of on earth has two sexes (with the possible exception of species which change their sexes to allow self fertilization).
Is it possible for a species to evolve which could ...
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How do creatures with a hive mind communicate?
Suppose we have a civilisation which is made up of many creatures sharing a single hive mind. Each creature can see, hear and remember what each other member of the species (or possibly hive) has seen ...
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Are dragons cold or warm blooded?
My world is science-based with an earth-like biology. The dragons fly when they're young and then grow too heavy and can only glide if at all. They breathe fire by expelling gas and igniting it. They ...
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Is there a maximum size an ocean bound creature could grow to?
Assuming the ocean is deep enough and not overcrowded is there any upper limits to the size a "sea monster" can grow?
On land creatures are limited by gravity, they have to be able to generate the ...
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Can you simply scale up animals?
There have been a number of questions focusing on mythical creatures where the logical approach to answering has been to scale up an existing animal. For example dragon's wings can be extrapolated ...
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How could dragons be explained without magic?
Dragons are a grand classic of fantasy. For this question, let's assume we're talking about the following stereotype:
hatches from an ostrich-sized egg and can grow to mountain size if nothing limits ...
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