Zahyyy
(the one who spent 4 hours writing a single post)
61
I don’t think that this kind of speed would be achievable. We definitely can have a slower regen, such as in axolotls, but I think that it wouldn’t be possible in such a high speed.
Maybe using spores like some plants do? So I would imagine the animal (perhaps once fertilized) would carry spores and upon death, they would release them into the environment, where they live as sessile organisms until they would be mature enough to move on their own. By the way, that might be how creepers reproduce. They explode, release spores, grow more creepers.
On the microscopic level, some bacteria use slime jets to move around. The biggest obstacle to implementing that on a macroscopic scale would be the square-cube law - you’d need so much more (heavy) fuel to move something bigger.
The closest thing we have to jet animals would be molluscs such as the nautilus or the squid. While reactionless, they aren’t exactly the rapid blast-off that you were suggesting.
But igniting a bunch of your mucous and kicking off from that? The mechanical physics exist, there’s just no known biological function that does that safely.
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MechanicalPumpkin
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63
I wanted to revive this thread since I liked the idea behind it.
Contrary to fire breathing organisms, would animals that can exhale near freezing levels of air be possible?
zenzonegaming
(Steve Buscemi Fish Clown Detective Cult Leader)
64
there was a creature in subnautica below zero that could breath ice due to having a special sack that stores liquid nitrogen and shoots it.
maybe a real creature could evolve this in real life on an alien planet.
MechanicalPumpkin
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65
Such an attack wouldn’t be useful in extremely cold conditions but it would be useful in the plains to stop your prey from getting away. I also think it would be easier to exhale extremely cold gases than fire.
MechanicalPumpkin
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66
**Double post
Another cool idea is how animals would use water as a form of offense. I’m thinking like launching water at deadly speeds, similar to a water pressure cutter. There are some animals that do this, like that one fish that fires water at bugs, but it usually doesn’t kill them.
On frost-breathing creatures,
I always wondered the realistic reason why there’s such a strong correlation between ice-breathing Pokémon and their frigid habitats apart from aesthetics. Sure, they might produce a natural antifreeze or be numb to cold, but using fire instead would serve the same purpose of “keeping the body at a safe temperature and attacking enemies.”
Creatures with such attachments to extreme temperatures probably have a different equilibrium temperature, and that’s going to be tricky when water changes state in such a small range. If they wanted to extrude these temperatures, then they’d have to use an air-reactive chemical so their blood doesn’t freeze or boil.
Kinetics is much more malleable than thermodynamics, that’s for sure. The mantis shrimp can punch at supersonic speeds, so that kind of force is attainable biologically. They’d just need to evolve an organic gun barrel to keep all the water in one place and make the firing mechanism not hurt itself. The Pokémon Clawitzer (a crustacean with a water cannon coming out of one of its claws) doesn’t seem all that unrealistic now.
1 Like
MechanicalPumpkin
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68
An organic gun barrel would be more effective than shooting the water out of your mouth now that I think about it.