Questions tagged [fauna]
For questions about animal life in general.
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In a setting in which South American megafauna and current African animals coexist, which if any could be suitable for domestication?
In my book series, there is a large area of the Planet Aurea called Zebusylvania with a similar climate, flora, and (some) fauna to the Cerrado and Caatinga regions of Brazil in our world. ...
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How would sensible waste disposal be accomplished for terrestrial creatures in a primitive society? [closed]
Necessary context: Various real animals like birds, foxes and snakes plus fictitious ones like qilins/kirins, gryphons and gloomstalkers (raven-like birds with some minor serpent features) possessing ...
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Which animals do nocturnal humans prefer as livestock? [closed]
Imagine humans as predominantly nocturnal, save the occasional day lark. They have eyes like strepsirrhine primates that grant improved low-light vision but inferior day-vision. For the purposes of ...
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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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Designing barrier to stop only non-hooved animals
We have barriers that stop hooved animals by taking advantage their hooves fitting into slats between metal bars/rods, meaning they refuse to pass the barricade because it limits their mobility. ...
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Birds flying or swimming in space
I had a dream. Imagine the Moon as a bird nest the size of a dwarf planet. Flocks of adult birds travel through space to Earth in order to hunt their prey. (imagine gannet birds swimming in space)
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Would crab-cavalry work? [closed]
Basically, giant crabs ridden by humans as cavalry, I just don't know if it's a good idea, and I could use some answers on how to make it work.
The setting is medieval fantasy.
The Giant Crabs won't ...
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Can I have a world without females?
In this world, most things that could be considered animals or animal-like reproduce in a genderless, sexless, or asexual manner, primarily through processes like apomixis or other means excluding ...
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How would life, that thrives on the magic of trees, survive in an area with limited trees?
In my fantasy world, there's 'magic' which is produced by trees; flowing from the roots up to the branches, which send out the magic into the atmosphere, allowing it to flow through all life. Humans ...
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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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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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What features will make this creature OP? [closed]
I'm designing several alien worlds, I want each to be very unique. One idea I had (thanks to an online alien fauna generator) was a planet where one species has wiped out all other creatures. It ...
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What would be the easiest way for a fictional civilization to feed carnivorous mounted animals?
Many fictional worlds have their civilizations (usually the bad guys) ride some sort of carnivorous animal, usually something like a wolf or a creodont. Think something like the Wargs from Lord of the ...
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Critical animal species for temperate rainforest climate
On my terraformed exoplanet, the largest habitable land masses are primarily covered with temperate rainforests (average temperatures from 8 to 18 C)
Assume for this question that the bottom of the ...
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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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How effective would this spider's technique be in getting it food/shelter(for its young)/transportation/protection?
So I have this idea for this unique species of jumping spider.
Basically it is around a foot long/medium sized hat size and has pretty big fangs for its size. It jumps on to people's heads and uses ...
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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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How can I give Henry Ford's customers what they want: a faster horse?
I'm working for Henry Ford's engineering department and thought I'd gatecrash your "worldbuilding" forum to do my job for me. Our customer research department tell me that our customers want ...
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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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Justifying why nonhuman sapients would not develop civilisation [closed]
I am imagining a project where the development of more advanced brain-computer interfaces allow humans to communicate telepathically with animals, and so discover that numerous species on Earth are ...
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Colonization of the Siberian taiga by engineering crops and ecosystem
(REVISED)
It usually is common sense to believe that any crops would just die within Siberian soil. But I just thought about creating genetically modified crops which are adapted to boreal, permafrost ...
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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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Designing a bipedal/quadrupedal canine
So, in this sci-fi scenario, humans create uplifts or “algernons”; sapient animals created through genetic engineering. Torn between making these animals identical to their counterparts or being more ...
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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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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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Balancing ecosystems with monsters [closed]
When worldbuilding, I am trying to fill my world's nature with a lot of dangerous monsters. However, there was something I realized I forgot to do, and something that I notice many fantasy creators ...
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Introducing animals to a terraforming Mars by air-drop
So, the moment has arrived: Mars is habitable. Plants, fungi, and even insects have been introduced by air-drop, along with fish and crustaceans introduced as eggs. However, what larger animals could ...
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How can a cold blooded animal survive in an arctic environment?
I have found numerous questions on how cold blooded humanoids or at least an intelligent species could survive the cold on this site, but this is not the question I am asking.
I want to know ...
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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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Thermotrophy: An open-ended question [closed]
Something I've been thinking about recently is the viability of thermotrophic organisms - that is, organisms that are able to obtain energy by absorbing heat, and then - by some mechanism or process - ...
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Does prey necessarily have to be bigger than predator when it comes to larger animals?
I am trying to create various fictional animals and monsters to inhabit my world. Many of the animals I am creating are huge, and some are even bigger than elephants. Some of these include the ...
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To what extent can fauna/flora migrate northward from Central America as the climate warms over time?
My story takes place thousands of years in the Earth's future after a climate apocalypse. It centers around Alaska and western Canada, but the climate in that region has transformed to more closely ...
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Could animals/plants survive off of coolant instead of water?
Say there was a source of water that animals and plants alike were surviving in, a sort of desert oasis situation, here we have Fred, he is an animal who lives off of this body of water. Buts let's ...
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Can my city be full of giant rats?
The rodents of unusual size in question are not implausibly large from a biological standpoint, being roughly the same weight as an American Beaver, but much more adapted for land living and with an ...
user71781
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Hydroponically growing animal feed in a space ship
Same game i mentioned in my other questions. Artificial gravity, robotic harvesting/replanting, and plenty of energy are available on the ship. The farming block is 50x70x10 meters in total but i ...
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water producing creatures
I'm trying to create a desert planet, and I plan on having water be produced by slug-like beings that consume oxygen and hydrogen from the atmosphere and produce water as a by-product f their ...
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Can an animal have a body covered with "hearing" hair?
Since our ears have small hair inside which (at least partially) make it possible to hear, is it possible for an animal to have hearing based on hair on its whole body? Like highly specialized small ...
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Could advanced Aboriginal Australians have domesticated the Emus/Cassowaries?
In an alternate universe where Eurasia is less advanced and the native peoples of the Americas and Australia build powerful civilizations, what animals could be domesticated that weren't domesticated ...
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How strong does a rope need to be to hold back a harpooned elephant?
Relating to a previous question, say that a group of people is hunting an elephant-sized land animal. For some reason, this animal needs to be harpooned so it won't simply run away to an inhospitable ...
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Could cavemen domesticate the Tyrannosaurus Rex?
In pop culture, there are ideas that paleolithic humans and dinosaurs lived together. The Flintstones is the most famous example of this idea. This obviously wasn't the case in reality, but what if by ...
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Which large marine animals could live in an ocean 60 m deep? [closed]
The setting I'm currently working on, has a sea that is large in area, but even the deep ocean, far from land, is only sixty meters deep. (It's a Banks Orbital, but I don't think that matters in and ...
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Could the Malagasy domesticate the Dodo bird?
In an alternate universe where other groups explored the world before Europeans, what new animals could have been domesticated? In my alternate history world, the Malagasy that came to Madagascar not ...
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Would intelligent humanoid carnivores start a civilization?
Let's say in an alternate world, Homo Sapiens died out but another Homo species evolved. Homo Carnivorous is very similar to Homo Sapiens with one big difference. Homo Carnivorous can only digest meat ...
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What sort of music could octopi play?
It can be really hard to distinguish between sounds and find the source of a sound underwater. How could an octopus musician play music with defined notes that are not blurred (significantly) or ...
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Is Island Gigantism Necessary to have Megafauna even if I have Solved the Other Problems of Energy, Weight and Heat? [closed]
I want to have megafauna on my world. I have already solved the structural problems related to megafauna by having strong but light bones, and the animals breathe a "magic" air that provides ...
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How could creatures in a zero-G but otherwise Earthlike environment move around?
Humanity has just discovered a massive, derelict space ark containing its own ecosystem. Its artificial gravity has long since failed, and it's been drifting undisturbed for millennia.
Assume that:
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How could an animal grow hair overnight?
I am trying to create scientifically accurate werewolves. Of course, werewolves are not really possible, but I am trying to make mine as believable as possible. How could they quickly grow hair/fur in ...
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Could a photosynthetic plant form a symbosis with fish in an oceanic environement to get nutriets from the sea bed?
On Earth their are thousands of animals with symbiosis with plants such as honey bees and flowers. However for this question I'm focusing on a very specific kind the one that leaf-cutter ants have ...
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My cows lactate oil instead of milk, how do I stop them from igniting?
Starting off, these domesticated herbivores, much like cows, exist on a terrestrial world 15-20% larger than Earth. With a higher gravity of 11.2 G, Earth-like atmosphere, and if it existed in our ...
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