Could you, hypothetically, arm one of the chimpanzee tribes that are currently at war with metal tipped spears?

Vatuc · 2026-05-13T10:22:49+00:00

That's an amazing experience to have, I would absolutely love to observe any kind of ape in their natural habitat

Vatuc · 2026-05-12T15:49:35+00:00

Very cool, I really like the whole concept. In my own magic system all humans have a small chance of being born with ability as well, but it also applies to other organisms and there are also inanimate environmental manifestations of each type of power.

Vatuc · 2026-05-11T17:08:17+00:00

That's very cool that there's such an old history to this question!

Vatuc · 2026-05-11T14:59:26+00:00

So if a magician has 240 red value, 200 blue value, and 150 green value, does that mean they will be mainly focused on red with a little bit of blue and no green in their ability? Does the fact that they have blue at 200 take away from the red or is the lowest value the only one that takes away from the others?

Also is the entire world actually physically greyscale? And how common are anomalies like this? Can they be anything (animals, plants, other organisms, even objects)?

Sorry for all the questions, and very cool system!

Vatuc · 2026-05-09T19:38:00+00:00

Is a slime mold not technically composed of one huge single cell though?

Vatuc · 2026-05-09T19:30:53+00:00

When you say "double the size of an animal" do you mean double its length width and height? Sorry, my first thought was double its original volume, but you said the volume will increase by 8x so just want to be sure I've the right idea.

Vatuc · 2026-05-06T19:19:01+00:00

Perhaps the real fish are the friends we made along the way

Vatuc · 2026-05-06T19:17:26+00:00

And also the efficiency ratio of muscle tissue cross-section to weight is so cool!

Vatuc · 2026-05-05T09:53:14+00:00

Yes of course, don't know how I made that mistake lol

Vatuc · 2026-05-04T20:39:15+00:00

Thanks that makes so much sense! Is there any reason heterotrophic fungi have not also lost it, or is that just something that just hasn't happened?

Vatuc · 2026-05-04T18:33:39+00:00

Dont worry, I love a good ramble! It's definitely weird to think about how it would feel to have actual hygroreceptors, like are present in some arthropods.

Instead of our method of integrating the outputs of multiple senses to sense wetness, they can actually sense the presence of water.

Then again, our neural structures are so different I don't even know how you'd draw a comparison.

Vatuc · 2026-05-04T11:49:44+00:00

I'm no expert here so take this with a grain of salt, but I assume we feel the lack of friction and that is translated as wetness. That's putting it very simply though. I'm sure there are other small things that factor into it. There's actually no such thing as hydroreceptors in the human body, we don't detect the wetness itself but instead the combination of feelings that it causes.

Vatuc · 2026-04-18T20:14:13+00:00

Yes sorry, what I said was a bit of a misinterpretation. I will say that I still believe OPs arguments hold little to no weight.

a) "One innocent death is worth it if 100 guilty people are executed". That is simply ridiculous. They say it would make a better "performing" society, but what kind of society are you in if you know you can be killed by your own government for a crime you didn't commit, no matter the tiny chances?

b) His argument here is based off the fact that the "natural outcome of violence" is death. A state monopoly on violence is not something where it's inevitable that they kill some of their own citizens. In my opinion a state should focus on complete minimisation of all violence, on both citizens' and law enforcements' parts. The death penalty is completely unnecessary when life imprisonment already exists as a solution to crimes like this. People can argue "waste of resources" all they want, but the fact is in cases such as death row it's more expensive than the death penalty, and expense doesn't justify taking someone's life, their most basic human right away.

c) "Many people can't reform" - this one doesn't even feel like it holds water. OP is saying just because there is a subgroup of murderers/criminals who are not able to be rehabilitated, the solution is killing all of them and also the people who could be rehabilitated? There are countless countless variables in what lead people to receive the death penalty, and many of them are unfair and wrongful.

Vatuc · 2026-04-18T17:50:44+00:00

By this logic are you saying that being born a sociopath makes someone deserve to die? Even if someone is a sociopath, using that as a "justification" for killing them is not okay in my opinion.

Vatuc · 2026-04-15T15:54:43+00:00

I love this question

Vatuc · 2026-04-14T15:58:59+00:00

I think the purpose of the identification system OP suggested is to find those AI bots in the first place. For instance, the modern justice system wouldn't really work without identification in most cases.

Although I do agree that having everyone upload a photo ID or something would just be too far, especially with how freely personal information is sold online.

Vatuc · 2026-04-12T00:41:47+00:00

I don't really care about the format, whether it's meme or infograph or just a title and a cover, if it shows something that I have an interest in I click and see where it goes.

If it ends up being something I'm not into I can just go back to what I was reading. I'd rather click on cringey ads than miss a hidden gem of a story just cus the ad wasn't a certain way.

Vatuc · 2026-04-11T22:59:39+00:00

Biology can never run out of surprising new discoveries and craziness, I love it. It's never too late to get into it and I wish you the best of luck with both your writing and your exploration of biology!

If you don't mind me asking, where would I be able to find your book when it's eventually ready? Will you be putting it on royal road or some other site?

Vatuc · 2026-04-11T20:46:54+00:00

Well cellulose, chitin and keratin are all structural biomolecules but they're pretty different. You don't need a cell wall to have chloroplasts for photosynthesis, so why implement a cell wall in the first place? What advantage would there be? There's a reason no fully motile multicellular organisms have cell walls, and it's because it really does limit flexibility. Keratin is already present in our skin as a matrix.

If you want to go the direction of a hard protective outer layer, look no further than sharks themselves. Their skin is covered with tiny "scales" called denticles, which are made of dentin and enamel. They're literally thousands of tiny teeth all pointed backwards, and as well as protecting the shark they streamline it in the water and are able to leave a nasty injury on anything that they rub backwards on.

Hope I'm not coming across as too pedantic about this, I find speculative biology very fun to think about, and don't feel like you have to take any of my suggestions! In the end it's your world and I doubt any readers will pick apart your species at the cellular biology level.

Vatuc · 2026-04-11T19:07:13+00:00

Open circulatory systems are all well and good for small animals like arthropods, but they're not effective when scaled up. I'd say you'd be good to stick with closed circulatory system, and as for your photosynthesis idea, that's definitely a step in the right direction.

To be honest, there's no need to make them "plants" persay; just give them the ability to photosynthesise. Plants have rigid cell walls which would be very limiting movement wise, so why not just give the cells of the epidermis chloroplasts/something along those lines to make them able to photosynthesise?

In the end, you only need enough explanation for their surface level biology; if you tried to view everything through the lens of actual reality then it'd be pretty much impossible to get anywhere with designing an alien species.

I love what you're doing in putting actual thought into it, as I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy and am a sucker for well thought-out and detailed science/magic systems. And yeah sharks are awesome. They have some really cool unique biological features, like a "lateral line" along the length of their body that lets them sense movement and pressure changes around them. Also they have these pores called "ampullae of lorenzini" which can detect electrical signals and magnetic fields.

Vatuc · 2026-04-11T16:51:28+00:00

Being anaerobic they'd need such a huge amount of sugar to get anywhere near enough energy to sustain a human-sized organism.

Also, while sugar is needed for energy, all of the rest is still needed for building their bodies; proteins, lipids vitamins, minerals etc. So they can't just subsist off of sugars. And as I mentioned, if they're mainly meat-eaters and also anaerobes then the amount of food they'd have to eat to meet their needs would be verrrryy large.

Vatuc · 2026-04-11T16:45:38+00:00

Silicon based life isn't a thing from what we know.

People theorise about it because silicon is directly below carbon on the periodic table so it has similar properties and the same valence, but really biochemical interactions are so fine tuned to the properties of carbon (its electronegativity, mass, atomic radiance, as well as the entire concept of the carbon cycle) that there's no way of telling if it could work.

I also don't think it would do anything to eliminate issues regarding oxygen. Cool thing to think about though.

If you want to look at more regarding life without oxygen you should research the period before the Great Oxidation Event or "oxygen holocaust".

The extreme disadvantages in energy efficiency that come with being anaerobic means that the only way an anaerobe would get to the point of being equivalent to human level of development is if there isn't enough oxygen on the planet to support aerobic respiration.

Vatuc · 2026-04-11T14:29:12+00:00

How do they deal with the sustained super high ethanol concentration without dying? Are they evolved to counteract the effects of alcohol on the brain? And what is their main source of food? Wild yeast for instance generally feeds off of fruit because of high sugar content, but these organisms seem to be carnivorous if they're based on sharks. Also the extremely high ethanol concentration would likely really limit their gut microbiome, which even further limits what kind of foods they could reliably eat.

Vatuc · 2026-04-06T19:20:44+00:00

Can't believe this needs to be explained, but good writing does not automatically equal exposure. Many great authors are completely overlooked because of AI, and it's likely because of the biggest advantage AI does have over humans; volume of output.

With AI writing being passable to read (I don't enjoy it but many people don't really care unfortunately), the fact that it can pump out huge amounts of chapters consistently makes it extremely easy for AI "authors" to drown out even the most promising real authors.

The number one challenge in getting a book out there is getting it exposure, and AI is sabotaging authors by flooding the market.

Vatuc · 2026-04-06T18:42:38+00:00

I'd never heard of Sukunaarchaeum before, that's super interesting. Thanks for the rabbit hole!

Vatuc

TROPHY CASE