Questions tagged [reproduction]
For questions about the means and methods any species, organism or entity uses to propagate itself.
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How many members of a species would be required to prevent inbreeding? [duplicate]
I’m writing for my Safespace series and I’ve hit a snag: I want Homo sapiens to have been abducted from Earth about 10,000 years ago so that when humans expand to the wider galaxy, they find “...
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What are the parenting options available to species that reproduce by fragmentation?
How would a species that forms new life only when the parent fragments, do parenting?
Like sea stars and molds, my species forms a new child when the parent is broken. However, this is the only means ...
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Is a species that mates by "tribadism" possible?
In real life, there are planarians that are hermaphroditic, which means that they produce both eggs and sperm, however, they have penises and scrotum without clitorises and vaginas. They sexually ...
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How would "barbie doll" anatomy work?
A fairly common trope in fantasy is "barbie doll anatomy". Effectively, a species completely lacks any visible orifices besides their mouth and nose. This brings up two major questions. ...
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How can I make this mode of reproduction make sense?
I'm workshopping a sapient fantasy species, that, in lore, was designed by external forces to be a biological weapon. This species accomplishes this with a form of sexual parasitism that enables them ...
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Would an asexually reproducing Humanoid species have any form of romance or sexual pleasure?
So I have a setting where the main sapient species is a very closely Humanoid race. In this setting, Humans, along with many other species across a number of dimensions, are all descended from an ...
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How might a race of humanoids with haplodiploid sex determination reproduce artificially? [closed]
I'd like to have unique fantasy type 'races' in a world which appears as a typical fantasy world, but is in fact set far in the future after an apocalyptic event.
I'd like one of these races to be '...
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Is it biologically feasible for a humanoid species to have both types of germ cells?
I thought up a race of humanoids called Daemons for a Homestuck-inspired video game/webcomic. I won’t go into a ton of detail about them, though if I wanted to, I could fill up nine whole questions. ...
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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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Formula for calculating aging rate of a decaying half-elf dynasty
A powerful human king had a child with an elf princess. His life expectancy is about 70 years (human average), hers is 2000 years. The half-elf prince is expected to live for about 1000 years, more or ...
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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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What chemical agent can cause both nervous and reproductive effects?
In a realistic dystopia, warring religious sects turn on each other using chemical warfare, resulting in mass destruction. Because of the nature of their beliefs, these sects avoid technology; thus, a ...
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How could a species have two sex-determination systems?
I imagined a tetraploid species of teleost. This species has both XY and ZW sex-determination systems. I call this strange thing the VYW sex-determination system.
Genetic females have three V ...
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How does Jimmy Hopkins the giant unicellular organism reproduce?
(Previous Question)
Recap:
Jimmy Hopkins (yes, that's his name) is a extremely weird organism.
For one thing he is extremely large, but on the other hand, he is
extremely weird, because of one thing- ...
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Is it possible to breed extremely peaceful humans?
There is a dictatrix (female dictator) who is a well-intentioned extremist. She wants to make humans as peaceful as capybaras by only permitting humans who are empaths/sympaths to reproduce, humans ...
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If human babies are born underdeveloped, how long would pregnancy need to be in order to be considered fully developed? [closed]
In my world there is a certain sapient species with height around 3 meters, whose bones are more durable than humans, meaning they can afford wider pelvis than most human women
I personally believe ...
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Is there a paternity test method given medieval level technology with low false positive rate?
Determining genetic fatherhood is very important in my worldbuilding experiment for lots of reasons, one being succession, but regardless it's the genetic component that's important But it's possible ...
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What characteristics would my Enslaver Aliens find attractive in each other? [closed]
Each photo I have here is that of an Enslaver Alien. Thank you midjourney for helping me create these creatures. They are an alien species that can grow to the size of a fifteen story building and are ...
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How can sperm become embryos without ovum or eggs? [closed]
How could I make sperm become an embryo or turn sperm into ova so the embryo is grown inside the sperm and then grows in size until hatching in water like external fertilization and get paternal ...
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What are the evolutionary advantages of males wanting females to mate with other males? [closed]
What would cause males to evolve to want the females to mate with other males?
Males use mate sharing as a bonding method for males and to combine their bloodlines with unrelated males to gain ...
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How would men survive without women?
What could make a male-only human reproduction system exist, which makes women obsolete, expendable, and also gives men full control over their paternity?
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How to make sperm competition impossible for males?
How to make an reproductive system where the males have 100% guarantee of their paternity and make cuckoldry and sperm competition impossible similar to seahorses,where the males get pregnant and can ...
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How would sexual reproduction work in a species with three different sexes?
For the purposes of this question:
The species is multi cellular and from an animalia like kingdom.
Sex is only physically possible when 3 individuals of all 3 sexes are present together. With only 2 ...
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Is it possible to have a planet where most of the sexually reproducing organisms are monoecious?
Creatures on Earth has 2 modes of reproduction, sexual and asexual. Most species employ only one of the two strategies, but a handful use both. Those that engage in sexual reproduction are either ...
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Would humans crossbreeding with animal people cause more birth defects? [closed]
I am working on a world inspired by witcher where humans and animal like race live together.
would for example, human crossbreeding with water dwelling humanoid cause something like mermaid syndrome?
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Do androids left on their own have any hope of replicating?
The scenario goes something like this: In the not so far future a fully automated exploration vessel crashes on an uninhabited planet not unlike earth. Unlike earth however, this particular planet is ...
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Impact on genetic diversity with 6 person mating groups
Context
I know enough about genetics to know I need to ask others. I'm writing an alien humanoid species that revers the number 6 as part of their culture and religion. Their marriage equivalent forms ...
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What kind of reproduction methods would allow for an only male animal species to exist?
I was reading that there are certain species of starfish which fission made them in some locations to have a scarcity of female starfish and in other locations there are species which only male ...
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Why and how would a species reproduce exclusively by converting other sapient beings into more of their own kind?
In a story I'm just beginning to write, the aliens who have invaded Earth have a ghastly secret that is about to become known: They reproduce exclusively by transforming other sapient beings into more ...
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Can fertility be tied to an individual's strength?
So I've got this species of nocturnal humanoids that reproduces asexually, or rather, they use a form of parthanogenesis for their reproduction and have only one sex.
I've got them figured out for the ...
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What is the stumbling block for a world of "Alphas"? [closed]
In 149597871's utopia, there will be no need for that as only a small minority of "alpha" males would be allowed to impregnate girls while the rest of the (beta) men will only support them ...
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How could my hybrids from species of the same genus with radically different appearance have more fertility issues but still be mostly fertile?
I want to know if my interspecific interbreeding is realistic or a total fiction.
Most animal hybrids are sterile (mostly the heterogametic sex according to Haldane's rule). Some famous examples ...
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How long would a species have to have this brain symbiote to prevent early puberty?
So, a race of sapient aliens I designed for a series of short stories owes its sapience in part to a symbiote which lives in their brains and produces hormones that induce the brain to grow faster and ...
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Minimum Group Size for Sterile Workers?
Essentially, I'm planning on designing a race of sapient aliens with a sterile worker caste, but I have one big problem:
On earth, sterile workers castes are only found in groups of thousands or ...
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What is fastest believable growth rate and reproduction cycle for a 150-300-meters-tall tree?
The trees in question are 150-300-meters-tall, 18 meters in diameter and have no branches except at the very top where each branch has a single leaf that takes up the whole branch. Its bark is thick ...
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Self inflicted extinction in a modern setting - Plausibility and Duration?
Suppose there exists a species of humans which are better physically, mentally and aesthetically(in a conventional way) by at least three standard deviations(any large margin will do) when compared to ...
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Can a plant or alien plant have fruit and shoot seeds as well?
On my planet Chlorea there are desserts and in them is a tree-like plant. During the dry season nothing really happens; the plant saves water, they lose leaves to save water etc. But in the wet season ...
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How do the eggs of birds that fly using their legs not crack?
I've been designing bird-like creatures that both fly and walk using their legs, saving the trouble of growing extra muscle mass for both. Because of this they have an odd look for birds: They have ...
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What is a good rate of growth of size and numbers of creatures that start with a microorganism?
I am thinking of a story where a meteor carrying a microorganism lands into some hot spring mountain caverns that between a city and a desert and evolves to be able to able to take DNA samples from ...
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How could these aquatic humans survive and reproduce?
The aquatic humans resemble regular terrestrial humans almost perfectly as adults. This means they have hands, feet, and all of their bodyparts identically to humans (H. sapiens sapiens)
As children (...
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Anatomically Correct Vegetable Lamb
The vegetable lamb is a plant that has a sheep for fruit. These sheep are quite similar to natural sheep, with legs, guts, and wool in the same anatomy as a sheep, and are attached to the rest of the ...
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Reproduction via male gonad transfer
A major issue for many earth species is finding a mate when you need one. This problem is particularly acute for species that live in sparse environments (e.g., deep sea benthic zone) and those that ...
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Choke on the bitter fruit of my demise
In death a new beginning is certain, for the jaws that bit my flesh will suffer a tragic end and no amount of laments or tears will ease the pain.
My blood will flower and fruit inside their bodies, ...
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How can a male klepton species sustain a settlement without kidnapping women?
The male klepton is a unique humanoid. It has no females, and reproduces by mating with other humanoid females, who bear children that are clones of the klepton father. No females are born, and all ...
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Reptilian beauty standards
This isn’t limited to lizard folk but humanoid reptiles in general. The most common mistake I see when designing females of a reptilian race is to give them human breasts and proportions, despite them ...
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Winning the game of life
all lifeforms alive today want to live and reproduce as much as possible, because those with differing ideas are extinct or about to be.
Clearly the meaning of life is nothing else but to keep your ...
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Any given couple is either only capable of having sons or only capable of having daughters [closed]
Consider a world in which every human is divided into two groups: call them Group 1 and Group 2. There's a completely random 50/50 shot for everyone to end up in each one, and it's not genetic or ...
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Would marriage exist in a parthenogenetic human society? [closed]
I'm working on something about an all-female human society modeled on real single-sex parthenogenetic species like the famous Whiptail Lizard. A few of the things I'm borrowing from Whiptails are:
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Explain the concept of "two haploid eggs fusing to produce a single diploid embryo"
So I'm creating a society that is hermaphroditic (specifically what I really want is a society where there's only one gender and both sexual partners experience pregnancy) so I've been doing research ...
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Could an intelligent alien species reproduce via pollen?
Could a sapient, animal-like alien reproduce with pollen and ovules, rather than directly producing sperm and eggs?
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