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Ice Breath
Topic Started: Apr 8 2011, 04:07 PM (3,774 Views)
Kamidio
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Exactly my point. If predator and prey didn't need to do that, then we wouldn't be the most powerful thing on the planet.

Besides, the adaptations could come hundreds of millions of years from now.
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

But predator and prey do need to do that. Nothing can change that. Prey will always try to avoid being eaten so they can survive to pass their genes onto the next generation; predators will always try to eat their prey so that they won't go hungry, so they can survive to pass their genes onto the next generation.

They could in theory, but there's no real point to any creature evolving a superpower to kill their prey.
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Kamidio
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Ahem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle explosives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider silk production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whale pressure resistance, deepest diving http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_basilisk runs on water
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach hyperbreeding, has existed since the Paleozoic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peregrine_Falcon fastest animal on Earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human second strongest musculature on Earth, creative thought, hyperbreeding, thumbs, social behavior, domestication, superior brain, super endurance, revenge

Nature refutes your points. Nature has assloads of superpowers.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreCthulhu

Read the section labeled "Real Life".

We are Terminator.
Edited by Kamidio, Apr 23 2011, 12:37 PM.
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Fakey, you know what I mean.

I'm talking about the ridiculous superpowers. Able to control fire, able to control ice, able to shoot lasers out of their eyes. All that ultra-implausible stuff.
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trex841
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ok, time out. first off, fire breath is very likely. it's like when a someone lights a fart, only, you know, from the other end. and for ice breath, the way i see it, all you need is a mouth full of water and strong wings. as for lazers, well, you already have a topic on that.

lastly, i was thinking an alien organism for this, but, eather way is good.
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Holben
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Humans have second strongest musculature? Then how come an animal our size, the gorilla, can be eight times stronger? (SIlverbacks can be 200kg, but females are about half that)

Liquid nitrogen has to be produced first, which is unlikely.

I agree with Canis- this is unlikely. So is the breathing of actual fire, rather than hot chemicals or the like.

But if it did arise, how would it work and what would be its limitations?
It is, according to the media, a projected cloud of cold, condensed material coming from the mouth. Animals which are otherwise small can be very well protected from cold- like the Arctic fox, or only expose non-living parts to the breath.
But after it comes out, it's going to diffuse everywhere and the ability to make it really cold requires either massive exertion more typical of a whale than anything else. If based on chemicals, apart from ammonium nitrate and a few others, the chemicals are just not around.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Kamidio
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Ahem.

Humans have some of the strongest and most dense musculature on Earth. We are only surpassed in this by chimps (see The Bodily Strength of Chimpanzees Glen Finch Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1943), pp. 224-228 JSTOR) and they are only 9-11% stronger by weight. Humans: made of fresh squeezed 100% betterthanyou. Unfortunately, we can only use all of this musculature when it's a fight or flight situation.
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trex841
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i'm sorry, but are my posts even being seen here?
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At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Fakey- Hysterical strength is not really appropriate here.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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trex841
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...we do only use 1/3 of our mussle mass at any normal time, because it causes massive damage when all of it is used.
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At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
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FallingWhale
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trex841
Apr 23 2011, 02:21 PM
...we do only use 1/3 of our mussle mass at any normal time, because it causes massive damage when all of it is used.
We only use a third of our muscle mass maximum because muscles work in opposite directions. Not that there are many cases to do that.

Given the range and expense it wouldn't happen, and the inbetween stages are useless.
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trex841
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again, sorry, but can we get back to ice breath?
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs
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At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

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Scrublord
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How's this for an idea: We know that some mammals, such as bats, can lower their body temperatures while they hibernate. Let's say there's a mammal that has evolved the ability to control and modulate these temperature fluctuations, and can drop the temperature of certain parts of its body to near the freezing point of water. It has also evolved an "organic fuel cell," which oxygenates hydrogen gas produced by intestinal bacteria to create a jet of water. When the water is cooled, it is shot out as ice instead. It's a tall order, I know, but it's the only way I could think of for it to work.
Edited by Scrublord, Apr 23 2011, 04:18 PM.
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SIngemeister
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Ice breath, fire-breath, laser-eyes. I could probably find ways to work around all of these to a relatively plausible degree, but they'd have to be genetic engineering.
Unless they're in my fantasy world, which has magic that works kind of like Terry Pratchett's, and every vertebrate starts with six limbs
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trex841
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Echidnas...i think, i know i read it once.
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs
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At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
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