13
Three fingers can produce all the necessary grips the only one that really suffers is the clutch grip, (AKA ball grip, AKA sphere grip, AKA ect. grip), but it still works it is just not as good, and almost half of the other possible hand grips only use three fingers anyway. A lot of the most important tasks (like stone knapping) depend more on the wrist ...
10
YES
The sense of hearing is exactly what you're describing! Although, a different sort of hearing, as you're not specifically interested in the primary sense of hearing through the ears.
Vibrations in the air impact the tympanic membrane (eardrum) & are transmitted through the ossicles, the three tiny bones that amplify the vibrations. Their motion is ...
6
A hand with three fingers is just about the minimum needed for the tasks humans use our hands for. I was once informed by a historical reenactor that early modern armies mandated that their soldiers have at least three functional digits per hand. (Recruiting standards back then were lower, to say the least.)
Tools, musical instruments, et cetera would need ...
5
Radical reorganization of the body towards staged growth or ecdysis/molting
This is going to be a little bit of a non-answer, but bear with me because it's going to highlight exactly what you need to address when designing a radiation-resistant human.
Cockroaches, scorpions, and other arthropods are much more resistant to radiation than vertebrates and most ...
4
The way I see it, you have several options.
Let nature do the work
This may not be an option for the villagers, as they might consider it immoral. If they don't, then getting pets such as cats, dogs, or hunting birds would be a semi-safe solution to the problem. However, pets may not be a thing in their culture, as it would go beyond "observing" ...
4
As others have mentioned, you didn't specify the technology available to your "naturalists." Luckily, this is a problem with many non-lethal solutions and we need only look to history to find them. Even at a very low tech level there are a several options.
Hang It Up
Just hang your food in wooden crates (or other hard-walled containers) by ropes, ...
4
It's all good if you eat the rats.
According to the question, humans' purpose "does not include the murder of any multi-cellular organism outside of nutritional needs". It seems that the murder of multicellular plants is just fine, though, so long as it is done to satisfy nutritional needs. By the same logic, killing rats is OK, so long as you eat ...
4
The largest animal ever, quetzalcoatlus, is estimated to have weighted around 250 kg, less than half of your dragon, and they had a similar wingspan to your creature, so the first problem here is their weight and size.
The main issues with Dragons as they're classically depicted in media are that
1- they need to be relatively heavy due to having an extra ...
3
I'm kind of winging this, but I think this might be pretty plausible as long as your readers don't have an extensive knowledge of how metals are assimilated and evacuated from the human body.
The main coloration of the whites of the eyes is typically caused by the accumulation of bilirubin, which is the product of dead red blood cell dismantling and is ...
3
Human eyes each have their own immune system which is largely independent from the rest of the body. While trauma, dietary changes, aging, and a variety of disease can cause a change in eye color, some of the mechanisms are not well understood.
A real life example of an infectious disease that can cause a persons eye color to change would be the Ebola ...
3
Add one more muscle to change breathing from a "2-step" to a "4-step" procedure
Your lungs are already able to expand and shrink - if you mess with the timing and add the ability to seal them up as part of a breath, you can use that existing muscle to compress the air and boost that oxygen pressure such that as far as the blood / oxygen ...
3
Your questions reminds me of a fish's lateral line, which according to Oxford Languages is "a visible line along the side of a fish consisting of a series of sense organs which detect pressure and vibration." Lateral lines incorporate pits or groves with jelly-like cupolas inside. Extending from the cupolas are cilia, little hairs, and since water ...
3
Block DNA damage sensors. Damaged cells will not kill themselves because they will not know they are damaged.
This is a riff on @user2352714 (rolls off the fingers, that moniker does) about cell reproduction.
Why does the bone marrow and gut suffer from radiation, but not the muscles? Muscles have DNA. Maybe because muscle cells are not dividing. But ...
3
Morbid obesity, specifically large enough that theres 42cm of water surrounding everything valuable.
Your people are obese giants, but where normal humans have fat cells, yours have water.
7cm of water will halve the radiation, and each additional 7cm will halve again. This will lower the absorbed radiation into the bone marrow, lungs, and gastrointestinal ...
3
They're modern humans in countries who drive on the left side of the road
Australians already do this 95% of us will navigate a large space anti clockwise. If you set up a grocery store and try to channel people into a clockwise rotation path, people will actually climb through displays to get back into the familiar anti clockwise behaviour.
This correlates ...
3
Cat Urine.
Spray real or synthesized cat urine around the food storage sites. The scent will keep rats out of your grain silos. I am sure other pests can be persuaded in similar ways.
Of course the easiest way to access a lot of cat urine is to own a lot of cats. Or just introduce cats into the area and let them run wild. Some cats will remain in the city to ...
3
Radial Predators and prey:
On the planet they have evolved on, there also evolved a substantial variety of coiled radial life forms (animals or plants with motile functions). These forms use their coils as a spring function for their attack and defense mechanisms - generally a sizeable scything blade. Their body plan is such that as the spring releases, the ...
2
The region where they live has a strong and homogeneous magnetic field, and their biologic process for vision makes that whenever they are looking at something they develop a net charge.
Thus, being charged objects moving in a magnetic field, they are forced to obey the right hand rule and move counterclockwise due to the Lorentz force.
If a positive ...
answered 6 hours ago
2
They're crab people
A mirelurk, a humanoid crab from the Fallout series of games
Like most crabs, they have an easier time walking sideways than forward. They exhibit laterality so one side is always the "front side" when they walk sideways. Most of their population might be right walking so they would walk widdershins when examining things, while ...
2
Ask Walt Disney. Anyone who has ever visited any of his parks has been subject to obligatory directed motion implemented through various methods including one way corridors, conveyor belts, and tracked carts.
If you want to increase the obligatory aspect of the direction, you could implement one-way doors or turn-styles along the observation path so that ...
2
Option 1-use traps: just like there are traps that kill rats, there are traps that...trap them. Trap the rats, put them in a carriage and send them away....except taking them anywhere other than their own habitat is against your rules, plus can you imagine how expensive it'd be to maintain a rat sanctuary? If you're taking care of them like that you might as ...
2
They could use the nature to deal with them and let the nature do the work.
Snakes and eagles and owls eat rats iirc.
Build better storage for food. I don't know the level of technology you have on your world but there are other ways to avoid rats other than killing or harming them, if there's none, they probably should start thinking on developing something....
2
QUITE POSSIBLY.
Iron workers were probably the closest human workers have ever gotten to working in Weyland's smithy.
Do take note that in the 19th century, the fashion for iron workers appears to be britches, vests and bowler hats; or else top hats and frock coats.
Asbestos has been known for ever, and according to this resource, seems to have been known ...
2
The stretching of the human will only activate when any part of their body is pulled or pushed farther than our normal limits.
I can't see how this would be an advantage at all.
Let's start from a newborn, just out of the mother's womb. The first advice when handling a newborn is "hold their head". Why? Because their neck muscles are not strong ...
answered Jan 17 at 4:51
2
It is really difficult to change iris color!
Green eyes have relatively less pigment than darker colored eyes. One would think that things that affected melanocytes would thus produce green eyes in people all the time. But it does not. Vitiligo can turn all skin white but spares the iris. Certain small molecule cancer medicines like pazopanib or ...
1
You will need to remove heat from the workers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_suit
900 F is too hot to breathe. The workers will need diving suit - like helmets to provide cooler air. Since they are in suits they can also have a water circuit to cool the suits. The hose providing cool water will itself stay cool from the water inside it and the ...
1
The human body is already very elastic. Your skin is amazingly stretchy. Most of your soft tissues and organs can be moved around to a significant extent. The most significant limitation on our ability to contort is those big, hard things inside of us that don't bend, known to the lay man as bones. Cephalopods such as octopods and squids, have no bones at ...
1
There are a number of evolutionary treats that would make humans more better suited for aquatic life. Some ideas are:
Losing all hair (or most of it) and developing a smooth body would make them more aqua dynamic and that would make them faster for escaping predators and "hunting" under water.
More hemoglobin in the blood, this is actually what ...
1
"Vaccinate" against an idea does not work exactly like vaccination against a pathogen. But you ask if it is possible? I firmly believe so.
The easiest way is respondent or classical conditioning (rejection of the forbidden idea is positively reinforced) plus operant conditioning (the forbidden idea is negatively reinforced).
Also, if the idea ...
1
In order to answer this, we need to answer several questions:
How much "fuel" (sugar) can we make available?
One source suggests a 40% solution is reasonable, or 1546 KCal/L. The same source suggests that some strains may tolerate as high as 60-75%. However, this also appears to have an inhibitory effect on yeast, with 20% being more amenable.
Let'...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
