164
votes
Realistic Santa and Reindeer
How many kids?
This is the toughest factor to find. While Santa isn't specific to a single religion, traditions differ in various parts of the world, and belief rates in Santa Claus are not tracked ...
- 7,235
122
votes
Accepted
Why isn't a magical obligate parasite living in a wizard library exterminated?
Regarding:
There is no benefit for a wizard or mage to keep this creature around.
I disagree.
The parasite feeds on remnants of magic power used from experiments or
spell casting. Often, it ...
- 5,775
86
votes
Accepted
What clothes would flying-people wear?
Everyone else is speculating when there are proper reality check examples.
Flight suits that allow for free movement of wings, legs and tail are a thing. Some also contain diapers, so that your bird ...
- 136k
85
votes
Anatomically Correct Succubus
Warning - answer below might not be suitable for some readers.
Sounds to me like a parasite is the most likely evolutionary track. We can imagine a creature like Cymothoa exigua - but instead of an ...
- 2,298
82
votes
Accepted
Why is clothing turned inside-out my weakness?
Totally different perceptual system.
Mythical creatures clearly don't prey on humans because they have to; they do so because they can. They have not evolved with human beings, they often come from a ...
- 55k
79
votes
How would tiny dragons strike TERROR?
Cities in the Middle Ages were flammable. Like, really flammable. London suffered from two devastating fires and several smaller ones before the Great Fire of 1666 that destroyed most of the inner ...
- 14.2k
78
votes
What Purpose Would a Unicorn's Horn Serve in the Wild?
It could be an organ for communication.
As we know, Dolphins and Whales communicate by sonar sound waves. The teeth of dolphins are arranged in a way that makes them act like sonar antennae (read ...
- 15.5k
74
votes
Accepted
How do I keep my slimes from escaping their pens?
Bundt cake pen.
Frisky slimes gotta move! If it hits a dead end it will start looking for cracks or go up the wall. But if there is a path of least resistance the slime will take it. It will head ...
- 304k
72
votes
Accepted
Anatomically Correct Medusa
Before you read on, I’d like to first apologize for the length and any glossing over of subjects in my answer. Not sleeping well will do that ... and I doubt I’ll be sleeping after having written this....
- 1,508
68
votes
Accepted
Plausible reason for gold-digging ant
Why would ants unearth pieces of gold? What evolutionary purpose would
this behavior serve?
It makes their chimneys work better.
The workers gather the gold and bring it to the colony. The soldiers ...
- 24.1k
67
votes
Physically, how do dragons grasp and *transport* the contents of their hoards?
If you're a dragon, why are you gathering coins one at a time?
If I'm a dragon, the biggest baddest dude on Middle Earth or Faerun or wherever, I'm not going to pick-pocket people. I'm not robbing ...
- 85.1k
66
votes
Why isn't a magical obligate parasite living in a wizard library exterminated?
Easy. They can't.
Why are rats not exterminated easily? Cockroaches? Pigeons (in big cities, I remember an anecdote about one city that had a population of 50k pigeons, killed 120k over a few years, ...
- 3,179
62
votes
How would tiny dragons strike TERROR?
just to add to the other answers: Tiny dragons setting an entire city on fire not only is realistic, we have something similar in our world too:
Let me introduce you to the Australian Firehawk Raptor
...
- 962
61
votes
How to not starve gigantic beasts
The creatures eat rocks. The excreta from this is fertile loam that is ideally suited to farming.
They can be trained to eat from rock formations in such a way as to create walls and fortification.
...
- 49.3k
60
votes
Accepted
How do I scientifically explain a specific type of wood piercing through armor when not even bullets can?
The monster doesn't have armor - it has blubber.
Bullets don't bounce of the monster - instead they penetrate, but not deep enough to pass through the protective layer of blubber. The blubber ...
- 7,360
59
votes
Accepted
What kind of deadly ranged weapon can pixies use against humans?
Don't bother killing humans, kill their stuff!
When you kill a human they go crazy. Humans with weapons and blue flashing lights appear with big scary dogs that can smell pixies and chomp them down, ...
- 44.1k
57
votes
Werewolves have the same fur color as their human form's hair color. What gave humans the idea that they're all gray?
It was night time
Werewolves are smart and deadly predators. It's rare for someone to see one and survive, and actual colours are hard to tell when all you see is a flash in the moonlight. They're ...
- 45.9k
56
votes
Shapes for an infinite animal?
You specify "creature", but would a fungus fit your requirements? Taking inspiration from Armillaria ostoyae, one example of which is the largest living organism, covering 3.4 square miles of the ...
- 1,186
55
votes
Kaijuu-like monsters killing humans: What is their viable reason to do so?
They don't need one. Let's say you take a walk. You're killing millions of microorganisms every time you breathe. You might step on ants and hardly notice. Crunch a snail when you aren't looking.
...
- 7,884
53
votes
How do I keep my slimes from escaping their pens?
Glass jugs
Make them big enough to accommodate your slimes; the slime should fill the bottom few inches and most of the jug should be empty space to prevent escapes.
A slime that climbs up the wall ...
- 85.1k
52
votes
What Purpose Would a Unicorn's Horn Serve in the Wild?
Display.
A peacock's display feathers have no practical function and exist solely to demonstrate the animal's fitness as a potential mate. From a practical perspective, its display feathers are ...
- 1,090
50
votes
Realistic Santa and Reindeer
If people are living in a virtual reality, Santa will be a parallel process that can scale up as needed to handle everyone at the same time. Since the virtual realm will have been designed with Santa ...
- 69.2k
50
votes
What does the Minotaur eat?
Insects
Tasty tasty insects. If insects aren't plentiful enough in the Labyrinth, he can supplement his diet with spiders.
The Minotaur needs food which is calorically dense, but doesn't require ...
- 46.2k
49
votes
Why isn't a magical obligate parasite living in a wizard library exterminated?
The librarians like them.
Wizards don't like the creatures, but librarians like them.
For one thing, it keeps the wizards from casting spells in the library. Any librarian will tell you that spell-...
- 11.8k
48
votes
Anatomically Correct Medusa
Snakes for Hair
This is pretty easy, actually. In fact, you could even have "realistic" hair-snakes, that move independently, without direct control of the medusa. Each "snake" is, in reality, a ...
- 12.3k
46
votes
Anatomically Correct Phoenix
Birds evolved from dinosaurs, but the Phoenix evolved from dragons.
A baby phoenix has the vestigial need to eat ash, a trait it maintained from its ancient dragon ancestors. This is to due to a ...
- 48.5k
46
votes
How could a magical, sentient library defend itself?
Since the library can manipulate memory by making people forget itself, I would just use that. Make people forget any plans the library (or whoever set the protection spell) does not approve of before ...
- 43.2k
46
votes
Accepted
How to not starve gigantic beasts
We have a historical precedent for a world with monsters the size of houses.
The difference was arguably higher carbon dioxide, and tropical temperatures, leading to richer and more vibrant plant ...
- 10.5k
45
votes
Anatomically Correct Sleipnir
Something that evolution very seldom does is create extra limbs. One of the best reasons for this is that there's no viable intermediate forms; you have to grow the new limbs to the same length as the ...
- 20k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible