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Cephalopod strangeness:
I don't think this is very probable, but strange things happen. The most likely scenario I can think of is that an octopus has evolved to moving on land, and they are using actual skeletons to frighten the apex predator (humans) away.
Heikegani crabs are believed to have a survival advantage because their shells bear a resemblance to ...
16
I'm going to go ahead and say its not possible without being a 100% magical construct. Sufficiently advanced technology probably will be able to make skeleton size and shaped robots that meet your criteria, but I don't think biology can.
Take a look at the various groups that use exoskeletons: insects, arachnids, and crustaceans. They are mostly quite small ...
12
Bury your Wife.
You asked about Toucans nor Hornbills. But here is an interesting fact about Hornbill gender roles. They nest and lay their eggs in tree hollows. To prevent predators, some species enclose the female inside with her eggs. They leave only an opening large enough to pass several hundred figs per day, and the male gathers food for his wife ...
11
Since this is for Anatomically Correct, I'm going to assume a technological basis rather than magical. Of course Clarke's Third Law remains true, and so does its inverse, so implementing the concept is "left as an exercise for the reader"; pick whichever method works for you.
Mechanical bodies
Starting from the extremities, a skeleton clearly has ...
8
They are a divergent evolutionary branch of homo sapiens, to be more precise of the homo sapiens subspecies toppus modellus.
At the times around the transition between 20th and 21st century, a particular variant of humans were highly priced in the current society. These humans were called model, and their salient physical feature was being really skinny.
...
answered 2 days ago
7
Water holds much less oxygen than air
This is why gills are such fragile delicate things. The amount of oxygen absorbed scales roughly linearly with two variables. One, the concentration of oxygen in the medium it wants to absorb from. And two, the area of the exchange surface (as the rate is approximately constant per unit area). So gills need a much ...
7
"perspiring through the skin (something that apparently only mammals do; correct me if I'm wrong) "
If you define perspiration as squeezing liquid water our via the skin... many things do that.
Many Mammals, amphibians, snails, some TREES, etc..
If water contact with the air or dust forms acid, your inhabitants should stop breathing. Because the ...
6
First, let's examine some dances that humans do but that cats probably can't:
Body percussion: due to paw structure, cats likely can't clap or snap. Furthermore, their fur prevents using parts of their bodies as percussion instruments and their light weight makes stomping rather noiseless too unless they're on a prepared surface or wearing shoes. This lack ...
5
Yes - Ovotesticular disorder
Including a single documented case of someone with xy chromosomes getting pregnant, and cases of people being able to produce either ova in Male appearing bodies or sperm in Female appearing bodies. Theoretically both are possible simultaneously, giving self fertilisation potential, but hasnt been observed.
External genatalia ...
5
There are four fundamental forces. The stronge nuclear force and the weak nuclear force have to do with the way subatomic components interact. There is no way to control those biologically. But we do know how to make nukes, nuclear power plants, and particle colliders.
Then there is the electromagnetic force. Some animals such as electric fish and unicorns, ...
5
As someone who has had facial nerve paralysis. Not like you've described.
Facial nerves are grouped together, so tend to seize up and become restored in groups.
The neck, shoulders, and jaw muscles are routed through an entirely different path to those controlling facial expressions.
If he damages that nerve on one side, he'll get Bell's Palsy. I had a ...
4
Maximum size for flying vertebrates on Earth
Quetzalcoatlus reached 250kg with a wingspan of 10.4m. This is your best basis to work from. This paper provides a Relative Failure Force for Quetzalcoatlus' humerus of 1.85 (that is 1.85x it's body mass). This should equate to around 450kg (without accounting for any scaling) as a theoretical biomechanical limit, ...
4
There are problems
You can't be a cold blooded vertebrate flyer, you can't maintain enough warmth in flight to get anywhere without a high metabolism. wings are too effective at cooling. Also flight is high energy demand, so that s another reason you will not see it in a cold blooded animal (well not one that weights more than a few ounces). Also feathers ...
4
Your wyverns are giant hoatzins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoatzin
Using a neotenous hoatzin gets past the hardest part of your requirements: a flying quadruped. Hoatzin chicks have claws on their wings and use them with their legs to walk like a lizard.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/baby-birds-use-wing-claws-climb-through-amazon
In a tank of ...
4
You describe an absence seizure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absence_seizure
The hallmark of the absence seizures is abrupt and sudden-onset
impairment of consciousness, interruption of ongoing activities, a
blank stare, possibly a brief upward rotation of the eyes. If the
patient is speaking, speech is slowed or interrupted; if walking, they
stand ...
3
You describe congenital adrenal hyperplasia
In extreme virilization a elongated clitoris with a phallic like
structure.[8][9][10] Ambiguous genitalia, in some infants, such that
it can be initially difficult to identify external genitalia as "male"
or "female" Early pubic hair and rapid growth in childhood Precocious
puberty or failure ...
3
"Sentient skeletons" are clearly a variety of undead. They may even be zombies whose corpses have deteriorated to the point that no soft tissue remains.
Mind you, we are talking about a supernatural undead. These aren't your "freak virus causes zombie-like behavior" zombies of 28 Days Later, nor even the "we want it to be a microbe ...
3
Translucent fungus
This is a slight cheat on your condition that there be no visible muscles or ligaments, but imagine something similar to a slime mould, that has colonised the skeleton of a deceased human. I specify translucent because in low light, it would look mostly like just a self-moving skeleton. In real life, slime moulds are in a half-way state ...
3
Cats already can dance
P.S. For more inspiration, search images for cat dance gif
answered 17 hours ago
chasly - supports Monica
37.9k12 gold badges119 silver badges238 bronze badges
3
There are many problems
There has to be decomposers. If there are consumers on land, there will be consumers that figure out they can eat dead things, which do not fight back as much. If they can digest living organisms they can digest dead ones.
Also stomach acid is produced to kill bacteria, if it does not do this is is useless. It can't do this if it is ...
3
animals themselves in general need a certain amount of acid in the water they drink, as their bodies do not produce stomach acid on their own. This acid assists in the breakdown of food in the stomach and is therefore absolutely necessary for the digestive process.
I think here is a flaw. If animals and plants are able to live in an environment with acid ...
answered Oct 20 at 3:27
3
Ethylene (C2H4)is an important plant hormone. It is best know for helping to control the ripening of fruit - but it is also associated with many complex aspects of plant growth including seed germination, root development, shoot and root growth, leaves dropping in autumn and flower and fruit development.
Ethylene is also produced in response to a variety of ...
3
I will ignore the fact that realistically in your world life would either have developed around this acid such that its interaction with water wouldn't be a problem at all (kind of like we aren't cowering from the dread power of oxygen, it's everywhere and a basic part of our biochemistry, some organisms might need to avoid it but most have biochemical ...
2
The post-apocalyptic biologist who is looking for options for naming the trihorner, an animal which has a genome derived by artificial means from several parent species, will start from the very obvious observation that it belongs to a new genus, as it is visibly not a Komodo dragon, nor a Jackson's chameleons, nor an iguana, and not an alligator.
Now, for ...
2
Nerve damage due to a physical injury is not intermittent as described in the question. What can be intermittent is a psychological issue that might be related to either the self-inflicted injury itself, or the situation that led the character to cut his own face.
Rather than nerve damage (and in fact, he might well have nerve damage, but it would be much ...
2
Your sentient skeletons are actually a colony or swarm of stick and leaf insects working in unison. Many insects have a swarm, eu-social decision making ability that can border on sentience at times.
Rather than explaining why leaf and stick insects are working in unity, you could have the stick and leaf characterisitcs be based on male/female sexual ...
2
I'd have to agree with marvin's answer. If the simple contact with air is enough to form highly acidic substances, your creatures, assuming them to work exactly like vertebrate life on earth can't really:
Open their mouths (which are damp since saliva has water. This also means panting like a dog to cool down will likely be an unpleasant experience).
...
2
The example image you've shown matches wing types to flight characteristics. One good thing to consider is how you want your manticore to fly. Does it cruise like a vulture? Hover like a hummingbird?
Since they have a lot of physical characteristics in common with large cats who are hunters, I imagine them behaving more like raptors in the sky. With that in ...
1
The problem isn't that we lack control of the four fundamental forces; we control them fine. We use the electromagnetic and gravitational forces for basically everything in our macroscopic world. We do have direct control of matter: we can move our bodies (made of matter) and use electromagnetic and gravitational interactions between our bodies and other ...
1
is there someway for us to control the four fundamental forces
No, these are immutable and we don't even have complete understanding of them yet. So we cannot control them. The best we can do is use them to the best of our understanding.
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