Questions tagged [xenobiology]
For questions related to the biology of extra-terrestrial organisms. This tag implies the use of the science-fiction tag. Use the science-based or hard-science tags to impose greater scientific restrictions (see warning in tag wiki). The goal of this tag is to answer the question using known science.
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Would it be possible for a creature to change to be able to live in most extreme environments
My world of Find out is somewhat like earth having all the same environments in addition to many more of the extreme ones. For example: bigger temperature differences during seasons, more underwater ...
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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 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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Reductive instead of oxidative based metabolism
Is it possible to have a cellular metabolism based on reduction instead of oxidation? All known life currently uses some sort of oxidation in cellular respiration, either from oxygen or from oxidizing ...
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Why might a civilisation of robots invent organic organisms like humans or cows?
In a civilisation of robots (of unknown origin) on an isolated, desolated planet, what motivation might they have for purposefully trying to invent organic organisms?
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On a planet whose waters are super rich in iron, could life forms use the iron as a basis for their skeletons?
One of my planets has surface waters that are incredibly rich in oxidized iron, and I was intrigued by the possibility of alternate materials for bones when I came across Stephen Gillett's Clorox ...
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Aside from humanoid, what other body builds would be viable for an (intelligence wise) human-like sentient species? [closed]
Sentient alien species in fiction are almost always at least vaguely humanoid. Is being humanoid required to have human-like intelligence and sentience? If not, what other body builds would be viable ...
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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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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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Exotic life in a brown dwarf
From what I have seen in the discussions here about possible life on brown dwarfs, it’s concluded that no complex chemical life (even metallic or CNT based ones) can survive the radiation and gravity ...
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How fast would this astronomical macromorph be?
I’m taking inspiration from Robert A. Freitas Jr.’s theory about alien metabolisms based on gravity rather than electromagnetism. He imagines astronomically sized beings that derive energy by ...
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What would life be like that uses liquid nitrogen as a solvent instead of water? [closed]
I'm working on a worldbuilding project and want to have an intelligent species from a planet where liquid nitrogen is the dominant solvent, not water. I plan on building the planet backwards from here ...
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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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What would a planet with fifty foot tall arachnids need to make this possible?
I'm writing a race for my series. They are a large terrestrial arachnid-like species, with fifty feet being their minimum height. The idea is that they evolved over millions of years, leading to their ...
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On a planet with larger gravity, would aquatic creatures be larger or smaller?
It is somewhat common knowledge in the worldbuilding community that larger planets leads to smaller land creatures, because larger planets means more gravity gets bigger and that makes it harder to ...
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How would a bioengineered warbeast get energy from fossil fuel products?
In the somewhat far future, mankind has become fairly adept at wet nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Allowing them to not just modify what exists in nature, but build beyond it with almost ...
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CHOS Biochemistry: Is it even possible, and what would it actually be like? [closed]
For weeks now, I have been trying to find a significantly different alternative to normal biochemistry; I've had some good ideas, but I sadly don't know enough about Earth's biochemistry to be sure if ...
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How would copper based skeleton evolve in an alien species
I'm working at a special biology project for my art degree. Of course, as an artist I am lacking when it comes to chemistry.
I want the organic compounds that make their skeletons or exoskeletons ...
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Software for diagramming food webs?
My friends and I have a huge hyperrealistic worldbuilding project (yes, I do suffer from Worldbuilder's Disease) that involves speculative biology. I am currently using diagrams.net to make the ...
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Would an XNA based organism be immune to all pathogens?
XNA is a nucleic acid analogue that could hypothetically be used by an organism in place of DNA. and is "invisible" to natural biological systems. In medical applications, it has the ...
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How do I design a scientifically plausible alien being that is a network of space dust?
My alien is a consciousness physically embodied in a network of space dust. It lives in the interstellar void.
How could I make this scenario semi-realistic? What would be the being's source of energy?...
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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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What is the most air-tight substance an organism can produce?
Organisms need oxygen, or at least require an atmosphere. The idea is that life with a fraction of earth's atmosphere would have a hermetic membrane that allows them to maintains the optimal ...
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What kind of world could have humanoid size spiders
It is a classic RPG trope to have the humanoid adventurers battle some spiders that are roughly the same size as the humanoids or even a good deal bigger. There are a number of questions about giant ...
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Can I use carotenoids to make a creature's blood and flesh purple?
I've done research and I've decided purple carotenoids and/or carotenoid protein complexes is what I want to use to color a creature. It doesn't involve a different type of blood, and its antioxidant ...
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Clothing for my Alien Species
I have designed an alien species with a non-humanoid build, and I would like some help with figuring-out what plausible clothing for it would look like.
My objectives for what I would like this ...
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How would a photon-based intelligence work in regard to relativity?
I want to do something interesting with Caleb Scharf’s speculation that hyper-advanced aliens could make themselves immortal by uploading themselves into the cosmic background radiation. These light ...
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How my species powers work? [closed]
My species live in a planet which was like prehistoric earth where dinosaur lived. My species name was trialsapien. The bones on the arms of evolved trialsapien become kinetically charged and ...
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What would a crystal-based creature look like? [closed]
One kind of alien concept I want to explore in my sci-fi is Jean Schneider’s hypothesis about a non-chemical crystal biology. According to Schneider, the organism’s primitive ’central memory’ is based ...
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Is it possible for a living creature to have no need for oxygen or some other gas
Is it possible for a multicellular living creature to have no need to intake oxygen or some other gas?
So this question came to mind when I was pondering the plausibility of space-dwelling life forms. ...
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Could my planet sustain life?
Could my rogue planet sustain/evolve complex multicellular life in its oceans?
Details
The planet is very volcanically/tectonically active.
The planet is about 1.25 the size of earth.
The planet has a ...
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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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Hydrostatic skeletons on a low gravity world
So I'm working on an inhabited planet with around half the gravity of Earth (assume everything else is the same, just the gravity differs). While thinking about what kinds of terrestrial creatures ...
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Would it be biologically possible to have a species that use a photochromic material instead of an iris to control light intensity?
So in real life there is glasses that use photochromic lens to adapt to the light intensity
Would it be biologically possible to have a species that use a photochromic material instead of an iris to ...
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Alt. Biochemistry - Which of these is a suitable alternative/mirror to DNA?
This question is tied to the “Glass Trees” question I asked earlier which everyone seemed to like. Since y’all had such good opinions on that, I figured I’d bring this particular quandary to y’all in ...
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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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Glass Trees - how feasible is it?
Edit: For clarification, this question is in regards to silicate use in carbon-based biochemistry, not silica-based biochemistries.
The microorganisms you see above are called diatoms; they are a ...
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Could a plant analogue have a temporary motile phase?
I've seen somewhat similar questions to this one (mostly about outright mobile plants or "planimals") but the idea I'm trying to conceive for my worldbuilding is not exactly that so I wanted ...
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Can a creature have an endoskeleton of chitin and silica?
I've been doing research for the worldbuilding of my planet and I'm going back to design the details of the basic body plan for all creatures. I was interested on using something different than Earth'...
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Could supercritical co2 act as a biosolvent?
Let me break it down:
Having failed to terraform venus, I am now trying to the process of pantropy to inhabit this world, (pantropy = to adapt humans/Terran life to other planetary environs through ...
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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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What kind of material could tooth enamel be made out of to change the tooth colour besides iron?
The world I'm making isn't hard science fiction nor science fiction, really, but I'd like to be somewhat realistic in some aspects, like this one.
I'd like my humanoid fantasy/alien species to have ...
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What do you call fishing on a planet where there are no fish? [closed]
When Plato gave Socrates the definition of man as “featherless bipeds,” Diogenes found and plucked a chicken and brought the poor creature into Plato's Academy, placed it on the ground and announced, “...
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Could this alien species of scorpion lemurs exist?
I’m working on a third-person shooter game within my sci-fi Safespace setting. The plot isn’t complete, but basically this training robot named Obby is reprogrammed to be a Mechanid (robot with free ...
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Replacing proteins with starch in alien biochemistry
So, I am trying to come up with forms of alien biochemistry that are different but not so different that these life forms are drinking battery acid or breathing methane. One idea I read about on Orion’...
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Could an alien creature plausibly detect human magnetic fields?
I am designing an alien species that evolved to use magnetoreception to aid in navigation on its homeworld in a manner similar to some terrestrial animals. What would it take for an alien creature ...
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What are the best shapes plants can use to condense water?
I am currently designing the ecosystem for a planet within my world building project.
The quick rundown is that it's tidally locked with its host star and is a very dry planet.
I was thinking that one ...
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Manage Exotaxonomy [closed]
My story is set on a huge ring megastructure (Banks' Orbital), with properties (E.g. axial tilt, diameter, rotation) that allow it to have an Earth-like atmosphere.
The biosphere is similar to the ...
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Could alien organisms evolve to utilize Thermoelectric cooling(the Peltier effect) to cool themselves down?
I was brainstorming ideas for my sci-fi world building project and I wanted to make a planet that had more interesting organisms. I had the idea for an extremely hot planet with perhaps a day ...
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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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