Questions tagged [evolution]
For questions about the long-term change of a specific species, type of creature, or trait, usually through the process of natural selection and reproduction. Ideal questions focus on traits, not entire creatures. Consider also [creature-design].
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How can my puny naked apes possibly become the dominant species? [closed]
I have been building my fantasy world for the last fifteen years. The world has satirical elements. In particular the world is ruled by puny naked upright apes. I am having difficulty justifying this ...
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What evolutionary traits would make human child-to-adultsize growth be extremely fast, and how fast can it get?
In my setting I have a species of anthropomorphs (basically humans) that grow from baby to full-size in the shortest time period possible. The babies are the size of human babies. How short can that ...
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What changes would be expected of Earth plants on a low-light planet?
I've read about plants on worlds orbiting red dwarfs potentially having black leaves due to the higher infrared radiation, but what kind of changes would be expected of plants on a planet like Mars ...
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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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Plausible evolutionary changes for fauna on a terraformed planet?
My planet is a tidally locked rocky planet (90% Earth surface gravity) orbiting an M-type star. This M-type star orbits a G-type star at roughly 1.5AU.
This means that it has a kind of day/night cycle ...
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What level of phenotypic change is plausible over 10-15,000 years?
I'm developing a story with 4 distinct group of humans who inhabit 4 geographically separated and ecologically distinct islands (Iceland to Greenland sized). These groups descend from a single diverse ...
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Why would bioluminescence evolve in a Europa-like world?
In my sci-fi universe, I have a planet called Tateos Prime. It is a Pluto or Europa-like world, which orbits too far from its twin red suns to support liquid water at its surface. However, geothermal ...
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Can a species with the ZW sex determination system be viviparous?
I imagined a hypothetical species of squamate from the Anguimorpha clade. They are my dragons. They are a rare example of viviparous nonmammalian tetrapod. However, like all anguimorphan squamates, ...
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If humans colonized a world with .75 earth gravity, would they evolve to be thinner and taller?
Humans are stranded on a world with .75 Earth gravity. How would that affect their physical evolution?
Specifically, would they be taller, thinner, and have less bone mass?
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How to stop interstellar civilizations from becoming too dissimilar?
In this world there are humans have developed the technology to allow for interstellar travel, accomplished by light speed engines. However, this has created a problem. Is there any way for those who ...
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How can advanced aliens seed life in a way that will likely grow to the same humanoid form
Let's say you have some advanced aliens seeding life on multiple earth like worlds. They want sapient roughly humanoid creatures to evolve from this starting seed. However, they are not dropping ...
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Nose-wrestling for political power - Is a human trunk possible in terms of evolution?
In the far future, a planet in the Milky Way that was colonised by humans 500,000 years before has developed nose-wrestling as a means of establishing dominance.
This is thought to have begun with a ...
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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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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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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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Could life exist on a planet orbiting a T class brown dwarf?
Note: Please try not to overcomplicate it for me. I might sound mature, but I'm actually a minor and as much as I like complex wording, I want it to be understandable.
Hey! Basically, I'm drafting up ...
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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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Evolution of animals with more than two sexes [duplicate]
On Earth, while there are organisms with more than two sexes, especially fungi with their many "mating types", such breeding systems have never evolved on larger creatures, the main ...
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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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Would creatures with many limbs find creatures with fewer limbs funny looking? [closed]
My story’s alien planet is dominated by eight-limbed vertebrates. The design and purpose of these limbs varies greatly depending on the creature, as it does on Earth, but they generally tend to retain ...
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Would a carnivore that can only see in infrared be an effective predator?
I'm trying to design new animals. One animal I came up with is a type of nocturnal & carnivorous predator that is shaped like a very large wolf. This predator sees in infrared light instead of ...
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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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How can bonobo that evolved sapience maintain their 'conflict resolution' strategy without risking spreading of STIs?
If humans die out tomorrow the two most likely candidates to achieve sapience after us are our closest genetic relatives. One of these, chimpanzee, has been discussed quite thoroughly in stories such ...
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What would cause glass to replace calcium carbonate in shells?
Sea creatures have some very pretty shells. Unfortunately, these shells are quite opaque, and much more boring to look at than they could be.
So what if they were made of glass. It’s not unheard of, ...
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How plausible is the idea of aquatic humans/humanoids having respiration like a frog instead of things like gills?
I was reading about frogs, which led me to think: what if, instead of gills, aquatic humanoids had a respiration system like frogs (absorbing the oxygen from the water through their skin)?
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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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Could fish (such as a moray eel) evolve chromatophores as advanced as a cephalopod's?
Could fish (such as a moray eel) evolve chromatophores as advanced as a cephalopod's? Also how long would this take? I'm working on a speculative evolution project where moray eels are the only marine ...
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Why would two different biological forms of magic form in the sexes? [closed]
I understand mixing magic and evolution is ... a bit of a no-no, but why would the sexes develop magic differently?
Women's magic comes from a core located near their hearts where they draw and store ...
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Could a planet support life if its only energy came from antimatter striking its atmosphere?
This planet is a rogue planet without any star or without being volcanically active. Antimatter continually collides with the planet, and annihilates with hydrogen in the upper atmosphere. This ...
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Could sapient life evolve in 2 billion years?
I am imagining a race of beings called Loshp, who evolved on a planet orbiting an F-type star. These stars live for only 4 billion years tops before evolving into a red giant, and half that time was ...
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What catalyst would make redtail catfish rise from the rivers and lakes and gain sentience? [closed]
so, writing up a post-apocalyptic fantasy world where humanity has left Earth and all it's cities and factories and farms behind, and, due to unknown catalyst, a race of amphibious humanoid catfish ...
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Could underground bushes feasibly develop to have this?
In my Dungeons and Dragons setting, the deep gnomes (svirfneblin) and dark elves (drow) have been fighting an underground war for several decades. The drow have managed to subjugate the svirfneblin ...
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How could crustaceans evolve lungs?
I am trying to imagine a scenario where, on an abandoned terraformed planet, decapod crustaceans (more specifically, carideans such as shrimp) evolve lungs and colonise the land as insects have done. ...
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How do I Make the "Anime Girl Warrior Physique" Realistic?
In some Anime, Women look nothing at all like men, yet are capable of nearly the same exact feats of physical strength:
Image from Dragon Ball Super
Is there a way to manipulate biology and ...
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Is there a point in a planets gravity that complex(human intelligence) life can exist but space flight is impossible?
Title but I've always wondered if there's a scale of a planets gravity and possible advancement of a species. If the gravity is too high what does it limit for technology? If the gravity is too high ...
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A natural light source on Europa
In our solar system, Europa, a moon of Jupiter, has a large and warm ocean under the icy crust. However, due to it having a rocky core and the icy crust, there is no light in the ocean. I want to make ...
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Could an animal evolve to smell by throwing scents into the environment and waiting for them to get reflected back?
I was thinking about how some animals emit sounds, and then wait for the sound to bounce back to their ears letting them detect other animals to eat as well as obstacles to avoid. Some animals in the ...
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Lateral bipedal centaur [closed]
I keep finding createures that are centaurs but with only two legs one behind the other.
How or why would this evolve? A low gravity environment is the first thing to come to mind, but also the only ...
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Would human intelligence evolve if humans had access to infinite food?
In a world with infinite food (each organism had access to an infinite amount of food/energy from another universe), would human intelligence develop through some evolutionary mechanism?
If resources ...
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Is there an Evolutionary advantage for 10% of my mammalian species from the Homo genus to have Von Willebrand blood-clotting disease?
In my world, there is a species of human called Homo hematophagous (blood eating human).
Traditionally, these vampires are a cannibalistic race: In war they often drank the blood from their rivals' ...
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Why would a semi-aquatic creature develop bioluminescence?
Why would a creature with a similar lifestyle as seals, sea-lions and amphibians-living near water and diving for food-evolve bioluminescence?
These creatures are roughly the size of a dolphin or a ...
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What types of adaptations might alien life have to survive high atmospheric pressure?
I’m wondering if anyone has any scientifically plausible ideas for adaptations to a high atmospheric pressure (10 atm) environment. This pressure would be too high for humans to survive for extended ...
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Shape and diversity of chemotrophic plants [closed]
I posted a question similar to this but that was about how these plants would work, this is about how they could look like.
So in a tidally locked planet I'm working on there are plants which inhabit ...
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A perpetually noisy world
I want to have an alien species have trouble communicating with the hero(s), I've decided that this will be done in part because they don't even understand the concept of hearing, as in none of the ...
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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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How would airborne plants work?
For a low gravity planet I'm working on I thought of airborne rootless plants, but there's a problem, how would they get their nutrients?
Plants on earth use their leaves for photosynthesis and their ...
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Reproduction in aeroplankton
I'm working on a low gravity planet, and I've thought that aeroplankton might be able to exist here, floating on wind currents using dandelion-like wings.
I only have one problem:reproduction. The ...
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What evolutionary pressures would lead humans to evolve to be able to see ultraviolet light?
In my world, there is a species from the Homo genus named Homo maritimus (which means marine human) (there are still humans, just not Homo sapiens). They are commonly named merfolk. However, they do ...
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Island-hopping, gigantic-sized predator?
I wish to create the necessary/sufficient conditions for an island-hopping super predator. Relevant characteristics below:
In terms of size, it is to be massive, perhaps akin to a
Tyrannosaurus while ...
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How could humanity colonizing multiple planets and solar systems prevent speciation of the human species
I am exploring the idea of humans leaving planet Earth and colonizing different planets. However, I would like the humans to remain "human". By "human" I mean that the different ...
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