31
votes
Why would humans carry around live plants in a post-apocalyptic world?
The Plants Filter Out Toxins
Part of the process of converting CO2 to O2 is storing the C (carbon), which is used to build the plant's biomass. So for a single plant to produce enough oxygen for a ...
- 3,541
25
votes
Reductive instead of oxidative based metabolism
Any oxidation reaction is also a reduction reaction; at least one reactant is oxidized, and at least one reactant is reduced.
Here on Earth's surface, most animal life eats its reducing agents, ...
- 612
18
votes
Accepted
What are the effects of stopping mitosis?
death in 24-72 hours
real toxins that do this exist, look up miotic inhibitors or for a more direct example Colchicine poisoning.
symptoms of Colchicine overdose, profuse vomiting and diarrhea as the ...
- 75.7k
15
votes
Why would humans carry around live plants in a post-apocalyptic world?
The average leaf produces 5 milliliters of air an hour. while a human uses around 16 liters of oxygen an hour, which makes for a need for around 3200 leaves. Assuming an average plant weighs 5 kilos ...
- 35.6k
15
votes
Why would humans carry around live plants in a post-apocalyptic world?
Breathing OUT is dangerous
Imagine a world with some kind of insect that is attracted to the smell of human breath. If they smell you breathing, they will swarm you and tunnel through anything they ...
- 81.4k
15
votes
Accepted
Aside from humanoid, what other body builds would be viable for an (intelligence wise) human-like sentient species?
It can be assumed that two basic conditions must be fulfilled:
Manipulators
The being must be able to change its environment (for example, a whale could be more intelligent than a human being - it ...
- 235
14
votes
How might this creature evolve a biological gun
So, what you've described (whether intentional or not) sounds eerily similar to the Tyranids from WH40K and their Bio-Weapons:
Details here
In the Lore - there's different types of Ranged bio-weapons, ...
- 11.4k
13
votes
How could a sapient creature lose its intelligence?
Intelligence is costly: it takes time and resources to build such brain, and the environment has to be above certain standards, otherwise the result can be intelligent but emotionally dysfunctional ...
- 2,009
12
votes
How might this creature evolve a biological gun
So how did it evolve?
Other answers seem to be focusing on what the end point might be, but you asked how a gun could evolve, that is, what the stages of evolution could have been to result in a gun.
...
- 5,651
12
votes
How might this creature evolve a biological gun
PENISES
This is an example of Nature did all the hard work for you. A gun is, essentially a tube of some length from which a projectile is expelled at some velocity. Every male on the planet knows ...
- 39k
11
votes
Accepted
How would vision be affected by eyesockets placed diagonally from each other?
No beneficial effect
Assume there is a human that's got his neck crooked so that it's tilted sideways irreparably. Eventually his brain would accommodate to his eyes being at uneven height, producing ...
- 4,172
11
votes
What are the effects of stopping mitosis?
Just look at what happens when humans get lethal doses of radiation.
Mitosis stops because the jnstructions on how to do it get garbled up and death happens within days.
Same here, with just less ...
- 267k
11
votes
Reductive instead of oxidative based metabolism
Oxidation reactions bring the atoms involved in a configuration of lower free energy, therefore they are energetically favored and lead to the release of energy, which life can use.
Reduction ...
- 267k
11
votes
How could a sapient creature lose its intelligence?
Environmental Pressure
As other answers have stated, the environment dictates evolution. Take, as an example, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. For millennia, the Eloi have had their needs met without ...
- 111
10
votes
How would vision be affected by eyesockets placed diagonally from each other?
You mention the misaligned ears without explaining why owls have misaligned ears.
First why do some owls have ears at different heights?
A: to change the arrival time of sounds.
With ears on either ...
- 1,391
8
votes
How might this creature evolve a biological gun
I imagine any answer will require a decent amount of handwaving. The two methods I could think of would be a biological spring, or two chemicals that when mixed together produce a large amount of gas.
...
- 766
8
votes
What are the effects of stopping mitosis?
Look at this photograph
That is Hisashi Ouchi, a technician at a Japanese nuclear plant and one of the people with one of the most tragic stories there is.
What happened to him basically answers your ...
- 14.1k
8
votes
Accepted
How would an animal produce oil that creates a purple flame when burned?
You're on the right track in identifying that the Potassium ion is the most common ion that flame-tests something that might be described as purple; and Potassium is abundant in sea water, and ...
- 1,371
8
votes
Accepted
Surviving Organ Failure
Look no further than the scary Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis fungus.
The way the Cordyceps fungus infects ants (and other insects such as moths and beetles) is fascinating, effectively creating a '...
- 20.7k
7
votes
Why would humans carry around live plants in a post-apocalyptic world?
This plant needs to clear several major hurdles:
Rate of Oxygen Production
Option A: Ridiculous rate of oxygen production
Oxygen is "generated" by plants taking carbon dioxide and water and ...
- 941
7
votes
Accepted
How can I make this mode of reproduction make sense?
Let me give your biologically weaponized aliens a menacing name for convenience. I'll call them cheese (pronounced "cheece"; singular female "choose"; singular male "chander&...
- 727
7
votes
Can just heat be used to power ATP production?
No, heat alone can't power any engine.
If you had a high temperature reserve and a low temperature reserve, you could extract part of the energy difference between the two as useful work, with a ...
- 267k
6
votes
Is it possible for an intelligent species to have non-red blood?
Absolutely. There is no any reason to believe that hemoglobin is the optimal protein and life can't possibly evolve any other way. We couldn't be sure about it even after we found a few independently ...
- 1,926
6
votes
Reductive instead of oxidative based metabolism
A tail of two fluids
What is a hydrocarbon world like?
There are methane lakes on Titan. And rain and rivers! But water is actually more abundant on Titan: just dig a hole and once you get past the ...
- 355
6
votes
How could a sapient creature lose its intelligence?
Idiocracy
The movie Idiocracy so famously answered this question, that the movie's Title has become a bit of a trope. Idiocracy predicts 3 evolutionary pressures that work in tandem to reduce ...
- 81.4k
5
votes
Why would humans carry around live plants in a post-apocalyptic world?
Alternate answer: It's cultural.
As other answers have already demonstrated, carrying a plant as a source of oxygen would not be practical, at least not with plants as they function right now. Instead,...
- 766
5
votes
What are the effects of stopping mitosis?
At worst days
Assuming that whatever stops it does not instantly kill you, you are suddenly under about the same effects as someone that suffered about 6 to 20 Sievert equivalent dose of acute ...
- 15.2k
5
votes
How would vision be affected by eyesockets placed diagonally from each other?
Peripheral vision is kind of like 2 overlapping circles. Having them in the horizontal plane lets you see wider in this crucial orientation to spot lion, bear or rabbit, while there are fairly few ...
- 1,230
5
votes
Accepted
Effects of thermokinetic cooling on a person
The biological term is cold shock.
The average ground temperature on earth is 55°F or around 13°C. If you instantly cooled a human to that temperature a few things would happen.
They would be almost ...
- 75.7k
5
votes
How could a sapient creature lose its intelligence?
Two environmental factors, perhaps working in tandem:
Brains are expensive in themselves, costing energy, taking time to build, etc. If they are excessive, so that a stupider being lives better and ...
- 26.1k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible