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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What kind of environment would lead to the development of traits typical of fantasy races? [closed]
I'm not actively working on my world, but I'm currently thinking about races for it. I want this world to seem like a typical fantasy world at first glance, but have scientific reasons behind it. So, ...
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How would future humans be able to evolve large heads? [duplicate]
In my story there are future humans that managed to build a time machine and for research purposes decided to travel back in time to change past events from taking place. These future humans have a ...
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How would future humans be able to evolve large heads? [closed]
In my story there are future humans that managed to build a time machine and for research purposes and decided to travel back in time to change past events from taking place. These future humans have ...
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The Evolution of Flight by Six-Limbed Vertebrates
Among Tetrapods, flight has mainly evolved three times. Firstly among the Pterosaurs - on the front limbs. Then among the Birds - on the front limbs. And finally by bats - mostly dealing with front ...
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How reasonable is my hypothesis regarding ring-tailed orthostatic bipeds?
So, in my process of designing humanoid/humanesque sapient aliens, I often find myself wanting to have a species which are orthostatic (upright) bipeds like humans but which nonetheless have long ...
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What evolutionary pressure would lead to parrots or crows developing human-tier intelligence?
Several avian species such as African grey parrots or the New Caledonian crow have demonstrated tool use, the ability to use new information in separate contexts, and other types of cognition that ...
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What are some evolutionary bugs in the human genome that could be ironed out by a god that is essentially intelligent evolution? [closed]
In my setting, humanity's gods are real and benevolent, but not omnipotent. They did not create the human species, but rather showed up early in its evolutionary history (equivalent of 300 kya in our ...
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How can erect intelligent hyenas evolve?
I am writing a story about a man who survived a plane crash and found himself on a desert island after some time finds out that he got to another planet, and then there he meets a reasonable upright ...
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Possible reactions for Artillery Plants?
I am looking for a chemical reaction which can generate a lot of Gas in a short period of time, on the order of seconds, to build up pressure and allow a plant to propel a seed like projectile.
The ...
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What is different about nocturnal humans' European manor houses?
Edit: Originally I asked this question about "houses" in general, but several comments made it clear to me houses was too broad a scope. So I've edited this question to restrict it's scope ...
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What could cause super-strong hair?
In the anime Hunter x Hunter (and others, I presume) a character is shown as having super-strong hair, strong enough that a single strand could be tied around a wounded arm to stem the bleeding. I ...
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How large of an initial population would it take for these new traits to average out into the standard population of the world?
Let's say, many years ago, hybrids between humans and other mammalians were created and introduced into the world for various purposes. They have the same cognitive abilities as the other humans, and ...
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Would isolated populations of humans still be the same species after a million years?
Let's say we drop a few hundred thousand people on several different planets. We'll have intentionally picked the planets to be similar in physical attributes (temperature, gravity, etc.), have ...
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Feasibility of a convergent neural code across species?
I've got a sort of "mind-reading" system involving interpretation of electric fields/impulses in the brain, basically an advanced BCI (brain-computer interface), but the key point of this ...
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Living in natural satellite having an orbital period of 90 earth-minutes to a gas giant that covers all light. How would animal hunters thrive?
Imagine a earth-like planet where life is beginning to thrive at the bottom of the ocean. So far it is an elegant carbon-based lifeform, not different than the one that has burst in our earth.
But ...
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Which natural process could make the surface of a planet temporarily uninhabitable for some, but habitable for other species?
I want to tell a story about two sentient species inhabiting the same planet, but never meeting. Essentially, some kind of random event (every couple of days up to every couple of months) causes ...
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What evolutionary pressures would lead to Canis major?
In my world, there is a species of canid named Canis major, commonly named giant wolves or giant coyotes or giant dogs (the name was based on a famous constellation). They are the world's largest ...
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What protein could humans lose to become more carnivorous?
A more developed version of this question.
The Premise
As in the original question, 100k-200k years ago a population of homo sapiens ended up on an alternative version of Earth through a rift that ...
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How credible is an extremely lethal virus dying out due to genetic inheritance patterns?
As a preface, let me apologize to knowledgeable people if things I say make them wince, I have no genetics or virology background whatsoever and my science-speak is taken straight from Wikipedia.
The ...
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Is there any plausible way for dry-vacuum based biology to evolve?
Basically instead of being what we would call wet nanotechnology which is what our biology could be described as, imagine if you will, organisms that evolved from 'dry nanotechnology' who are native ...
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Plant life on a planet with extremely bright "moon"? [duplicate]
The planet in question is part of a Binary Planet pair, both of which are tidally locked to each other at a fairly close distance (~129,000 km) from each other, meaning that the "moon" is ...
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Evolutionary path of action/anime humans [closed]
In story I'm considering writing, a branch of hominid that had been trapped on another alternate earth after being crossing over through rifts are able to return to our earth after these rifts started ...
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Can a plant or fruit evolve or be made to look as if it evolved to produce blood?
My question is Can a plant or fruit evolve or be made to look as if it evolved to produce blood? I want to have a story well a benevolent super being not a god a being with powerful tech; transplanted ...
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What would cause protein shapes to be the same across unrelated species?
One sort of “rule” I’m working with in my world is that among carbon-based, protein-having species, even those from different planets with no shared evolutionary ancestry, proteins that may be ...
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Biped species with trunk evolved to use for locomotion
So currently in my speculative evolution scenario, I have a creature with an elongated trunk that it uses for rock climbing. This species transitions to a savannah like lifestyle and I was wondering ...
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Gas giant ecologies with more realistic weather. Sky anchors
I've always enjoyed stories that explore ideas about life in the clouds of gas giants. The Algebraist by Banks is my favorite. Though one thing that never quite rang true to me about stories like The ...
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"Hard" SF reaction to "Soft" SF Aliens
When we consider what alien life might look like, it seems more likely that life would be, well, very alien. There is no reason to expect bipedal, human-shaped and human-sized creatures. Or to expect ...
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A planet *without vertebrates. (*mostly, restrictions apply)
I'm thinking about the evolutionary history of life on a world very similar to earth in many ways, carbon based life, life began in the seas, creatures like cephalopods, and arthropods, evolve.
But, ...
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How can a matriarchal society be maintained?
Any matriarchal hierarchy is in constant danger: any male dictator wannabe would hit evolutionary jackpot with a succeeded putsch. (Stop giggling, Shenzi—human sexual dimorphism favors the males ...
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What could lead to an ability to “share instincts” to evolve? [closed]
So there’s a small animal species that live pretty simple lifestyles of eat, don’t be eaten, reproduce, and that’s it. They live in forest/jungle or swampy environments, eat a wide diet of insects or ...
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How could a sapient species lose its intelligence?
A relatively common idea in Sci-Fi and especially speculative evolution is the idea of humans or some other intelligent species ending up losing their sapience(often done for the sake of horror).
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Social and Technological Constraints in an Aquatic Society [closed]
If humans had evolved as aquatic mammals, as opposed to terrestrial mammals, what aquatic resources would be available which were not available to terrestrial societies.
Some foundational technologies ...
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Can this animal glide?
I'm designing an animal that's kind of like a draco lizard that has evolved to be semi-bipedal like a theropod but is still maintaining its ability to glide. On the real draco, the wings are elongated ...
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Environmental triggers for evolving broader visible spectrum
Taking some inspiration from the finding that a small proportion is able to perceive significantly more colors than the rest of the population, I would like to explore to what degree similar traits ...
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Habitable zone of this red giant
I have a Red Giant star of about ~4.15 solar masses (a number I generated from what I found to be the average size of red giants).
My question for right now would be "What would be the habitable ...
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Effects of metal-augmented skeletons on behaviour and evolution
In the planet I'm working on, strong tidal forces meant early on in evolutionary history most organisms developed a nacre or chitin-like composites with calcium carbonate, even in internal skeletons.
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How might this creature evolve a biological gun
I recently started to wonder how an animal could evolve a gun. So I decided that here was the best place to find people that are smarter and/or have different ideas than me.
This creature has an ...
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Is it possible for a race of alien humanoids to evolve a diet based of semen?
On this planet there are two species of alien humanoids creatures , one group evolved an omnivore based diet and the other has a semen based diet, both groups are bipedal and share a common ancestor.
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What star would cause a planet to have white plants?
Okay, I'm trying to make a planet that has at least part of its surface, or at least part of its underground, habitable for humans (breathable atmosphere at a suitable pressure, a suitable level of ...
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How could evolution favour decreased sexual dimorphism in a humanoid species?
What the title says, how can a biped human-like species evolve with decreased sexual dimorphism without compromising their survivability over the span of time?
Constraints:
The species inhabit a ...
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What adaptations would allow a being to live in tritiated water? [closed]
I am interested in having the monster of the week for an episode/arc be a creature that lives in a stream of tritiated water (T2O).
The said creature is a colony of microorganisms that have evolved ...
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Alternate universe where life is more common; is it feasible?
Let's imagine a story where the "aliens" leave a lot of super-advanced technology somewhere in the solar system. Scientists spend years excavating this technology and while it seems too ...
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How might these anarchic 'olm-men' originate? [closed]
The olm-men are a group of troglomorphic stygofauns found deep in the earth. Uniquely, they have no king, a court, or even an elected parliament; they have no leaders at all. All members of their ...
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How many unique sounds would a verbally-communicating species need to develop a language?
A species with limited capacity for making different vowel/consonant sounds, pitches, vocalizations, and so on, has a limited capacity for the creation of different words in a compositional language. ...
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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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