Questions tagged [adaptability]
For questions about how a certain species or object can change to fit a new criteria of living or other.
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How could (a group of) humans "forget" their language and start a new? [closed]
In my setting, modern humans have colonized a habitable planet, with no ways of communicating with the Earth. After a few centuries, 3 main civilizational centres arise, 2 of them located in areas ...
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How could life possibly evolve to the extreme conditions of the day side of a tidally locked Earth? [closed]
I'm currently brainstorming on a post-apocalyptic Earth. I initially thought of a massive asteroid collision event that drastically slowed down Earth's rotation to be around 1 Earth day = 1 Earth year ...
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On a planet with a 2 atm atmosphere, how would atmospheric pressure affect plant evolution?
Leaving aside the atmospheric composition (let's say there's the same amount of oxygen, despite the higher pressure), would the pressure itself have any effect? Would plants need to be stockier and ...
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How would humans adapt to suddenly gaining new senses?
I'm working on a magic system for my story. One of the ideas I'm toying with is magic users gaining extra senses, depending on the kind of magic they can use.
One example is Reachsense (WIP name), ...
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What adaptations would be needed for life and water around a blue star?
Of course it's very obvious that blue stars are insanely hot and would boil away most things if they got too close. BUT I'm curious if with just the right adaptations and fiddling, could there, ...
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Elliptical orbit verses extreme axis [closed]
What could be the differences between adaptations to a planet with extreme axial tilt and one with a highly elliptical orbit? The only difference I think is the tilt world's winters could be avoided ...
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Survival on a dark hycean world
As a follow up to my previous question: Surviving a dark hycean world I ask this: how could life adapt to a tidally locked ocean world with thick atmosphere and perpetual storms? That's the definition ...
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I need help with aquatic arthropods
How would an arthropod (invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton)replace and or evolve into a fish-like animal (using terrestrial fish as an example)the question is how would they recrate a ocean ...
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How will seeded Earth life adjust to a tidally locked, Earth-sized moon?
Starting in 2017, a worldbuilder by the name of Dylan Bajda conceived a new twig in the speculative evolution branch of the science fiction tree: The seedworld. The twig was called Serina: A ...
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How Would Freshwater Reefbuilders Differ from Saltwater Reefbuilders?
Here's the context:
Even back home, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was not a good time to be a marine organism. Equatorial seas spiked up to 36 degrees Centigrade, or 97 Fahrenheit! And the ...
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How would intelligent life adapt on a black hole planet?
The world I'm building, Qi'raad, orbits a stellar-mass black hole. How would life best adapt to survive? Also, the black hole, named Halku, emits a relatively thin radio jet, which has carved a large ...
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Could you theoretically make a Human-like/Human-descended species breathe chlorine instead of oxygen?
What would be the major problems/issues from switching a Human lifeform from O2-based respiration to a Chlorine one?
Would said lifeform require not only adaptations to the respiratory system, but ...
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Would Venusian Sunlight Be Too Much for Earth Plants?
This is Chris Wayans's map of a terraformed Venus:
While there have been questions in this Stack Exchange on how to make Venus more livable for us humans, one question stands glaringly absent, and ...
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How would a culture develop when there are 20 foot tall trolls that attack them? [closed]
In a world I'm building, there is a society of dwarves that live in a large, forested, snow-covered valley surrounded by mountains. The forests and mountains have large trolls that hunt the dwarves. ...
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Could Prehistoric Species of Animals Eat Modern Species of Plants and/or Animals?
One of the most recurring elements of paleofantasy is anachronism.
For instance, this still is from the 1966 film One Million Years BC, and yes, that is a Triceratops fighting off a Ceratosaurus, a ...
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The Serina Series: Episode II: Crocodilians
In the first episode of this series, Cats, I asked if it's possible for all 600 million house cats to evolve different niches if they were the only amniotes in a terraformed world. Needless to say, ...
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Linking genetic sex to a set of climate adaptations
My world is fairly chaotic, with the same 2/3 of it being completely broken up and remade in chunks such that the whole 2/3 is always completely different than it was ten years ago.
So once species ...
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Would a 200-Pound Dwarf Still Need to Wear Clothes?
The average Neandertal male stood 64 inches tall, weighed 143 pounds and had a brain volume of 1600 milliliters. The average female stood 62 inches tall, weighed 110 pounds and had a brain volume of ...
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How do hardy flowering plants that thrive in low 'g' and thin atmosphere disseminate their seeds?
Imagine a type of flowering plant capable of growing on terrestrial planet with surface gravity a tenth of Earth and it has a thin atmosphere with composition similar to Earth's but as thick as ...
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Could Sharks Survive a Longer PETM?
First things first, a little backstory:
Sometime between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, there was a mysterious, sudden, dramatic rise in global temperature. This moment in time was known as the "...
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The Serina Series: Episode I: Cats
"Serina" is a popular speculative evolution project in which, apart from a long list of fish, invertebrates and plants, the only terrestrial chordate to colonize this terraformed moon is the canary. ...
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What Adaptation would Humans in a Volcanic Underworld Develop?
The TBD are a fantasy humanity offshoot that is fully adapted to life a few kilometers beneath the surface, settling in cracked earth near vents and hot spots.
Air quality ranges from stale to toxic, ...
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In an Ice Age Extinction, Which Latitude Would Be Hit Harder--Tropical or Temperate?
Back home, five million years ago, the warm, wet climate of the Miocene sloped downwards into the cooler, drier Pliocene before descending even further into the more so Pleistocene. The slope was so ...
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Could Cats Add Lots of Plants to Their Diet?
Because nature is never straightforward, there are different levels of carnivores. On the lowest rung of the ladder are the hypocarnivores, in which meat can't take any more than 30% of their caloric ...
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Bryophitic Plants in an Underwater Forest
By "bryophitic", I mean "non-vascular land plants", being the liverworts and the mosses. (Hornworts are comparative latecomers, so we won't be talking about them.) Without vascular tissues, these ...
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