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A one-way air passage
When we (humans) inhale and exhale, the air enters the lungs and exits them through the same passage. So minimizing the distance to the trachea from any part of the lung is an energy-saving optimization in our lungs.
But if your organism has two different entries into the lung, this allows us to use valves to have a directed, one-way ...
11
Result
Permanent hurricane, one order of magnitude more powerful than your run of the mill ones.
And you can forget "the eye of the hurricane" - that happens when the hurricane gathers energy over large expanses of warm ocean water.
For this one, it is the center of the thing where the energy is pumped into the air column - you will get a permanent ...
10
What Qami said about one way passages, plus what Nyakouai said about increased gas exchange surface, but let me add one more thing: voice organs.
Your aliens might not have vocal cords like we do. Instead they vibrate different sections of the conch in order to speak. The larger the piece the deeper the voice. So an alien's vocal range depends on the sizes ...
9
Because we lack a subtle understanding of their features.
If I look around myself in the office today I see many different homo sapiens: they are all homo sapiens, but just to cite two cases, Jim is tall, blonde, has green eyes and his body is covered in blue woolen fabric, while Janet is shorter, has dark curly hair, brown eyes and her body is covered in ...
7
Demon Bodies are Like Spacesuits
The demons are, ostensibly, from hell. Though with the "no magic but they have tech" caveat they could just as easily be aliens. But since you're calling them demons we'll assume that at a base level they're from another dimension. In that dimension, all demons look pretty similar. Their "souls" as ...
7
I assume you're asking, "what happens when the magic runs out?"
Your island is maintained by magical means. Therefore, the only weather patterns inside the limit of the magic is what is defined by the magic. Paradise. Wonderful!
Outside that magical limit we have standard polar behavior. Bears. Days that are six months long (give or take). Cold. ...
6
Countercurrent heat exchange
Not quite sure the exact kind of spiral you mean but if an organism needs to maintain a very different body temperature from the gas around it in an extreme environment and is otherwise well insulated then having incoming and outgoing gas spiral around each other through counterflowing passages might allow a stable temperature to ...
5
Besides the health consequences of regular tattoos and low-quality tattoos, not many, even fewer.
Aluminum oxide, the main component of rubies and sapphires is considered inert (and frequently used for implants with essentially no ill effects).
Emerald is basically a silicate, which is also largely inert with regards to being under your skin (or even over ...
4
They Exhibit an Extreme form of Polymorphism
Polymorphism is the tendency in a single species to come in multiple, distinct forms where a single lineage may possibly produce any one of those forms. We humans are considered dimorphic because our male and female forms are distinctly different, but some species have more, and more different forms such as ants.
...
4
Magic doesn't exist? No problem!
This can be explained genetically, funnily enough. First of all, the existence of succubi/incubi in mythos. When sperm and egg meet, the result is the two chromosomes required to get a fully functioning human being, right?
You'd think this can only happen with related species, but if this is any indication, you'd be wrong. ...
4
Extraction
First off, it is a nice idea, but not practical. The air is more difficult to push through the long winded pipes, costing more energy.
That out of the way, you can have super extraction. Lung lining is designed much like the intestines. It's made so there's a lot of surface area. The difference is that lungs are made to easily replace their gas ...
3
An internal cooling coil.
Building on Qami's idea of a one-way airway, a coil-shaped "lung" could also serve the purpose of cooling the body from the inside, in the same way a cooling coil would, by running a colder fluid through and around a warmer body or tube.
That might come in handy e.g. for large animals with active metabolisms that generate ...
3
Health
From a health stand point there are no health problems due to being tall, so long as it isn't gigantism or another medical disorder. Professional basketball players are often over 7 feet tall and don't have unusual health issues.
Lifestlye
From a lifestyle stand point Height doesn't stop you from doing most things, but it might make working in cramped ...
3
What an alien idea. I like it.
I suppose your weird shape could somehow increase the total contact surface of your lungs, making them more efficient compared to boring old regular shaped lungs. There could also be more major blood vessels running in the coils of it, allowing for a quicker transfer of oxygen into vascular system.1
Or (weird idea), it ...
3
Mutations and selected adaptations.
Maybe once upon a time this race from another universe had a more consistent appearance, but a combination of radiation from interdimensional travel, which led to the technology that allowed them to alter and repair their genetics, which then led to them being able to borrow traits from other creatures around them.
Over ...
3
Scenario, technology is the key:
They exist in a society (Demon world) which has for most of their history been prosperous. They started much as humans had, gradually growing, going to war discovering medicine until.... their technology gave them an edge so they could eliminate poverty, starvation, and manual labour (and most other work). Socially, the ...
2
Reality Check = FAIL!
The first important consideration for this kind of breathing system, the conchoid lung, I believe, will be dead space.
The other important consideration is that your system isn't set up and doesn't function like a bird's respiratory system.
So, what will happen? --- Dead space is the term for air that sits in a tube that can not be ...
2
This is not an answer, because I can't provide a yes or no.
In the original question, there were a number of things that exacerbated the effects of the setup, but also make the problem a lot easier to analyze and then find comparison terms to put the consequences in perspective.
"sunlight" shining over the land only - low albedo - light-to-heat is ...
2
Frame challenge
Food is the limiting factor, so we can see how we can improve this. First of all, we can check where nutrients go. Most of the nutrition is found along coastal waters. This is because the light can still reach most layers, while biological debris used as nutrients can't float out of reach. This seems most important. Maybe food can be gained ...
1
Two crazy ideas
For symbiosis: posit another creature which normally lives in spiral shapes (like a conch/shell) but sometimes found its way into the lungs where it supplied a symbiotic function like producing oxygen and helping the critter stay underwater longer, or filtering blood and converting waste product into useful product or less toxic waste ...
1
A spiral-shaped lung could be good for separating out different-sized particles from the air that your creature inhales. The shallower curve at the outside of the spiral will allow smaller particles to flow around it, but the centrifugal force will push larger particles into the lining; and so on, as the curve gets sharper towards the centre of the spiral.
...
1
Start with the right scaffolding
As illustrated in these images, barnacles such as Sacculina carcini can become parasites, creating new structures within a crab host. Your barnacles were adapted by bioweapons specialists to present appropriate HLA antigens and signals such as OX40 to suppress the human immune system. Infected swimmers become reclusive, ...
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