this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2024
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Asklemmy

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Let's keep things simple two rules.

  • No giving sentience, This is a no brainer issue.
  • Let's keep it to beings under the Animilia kingdom. "mutated virus/bacteria" is a common trope.

To start:

Let's modify ants to have lungs.

Most insects are constrained by the amount of oxygen they can acquire through their exoskeleton.

Imagine how big they can get if they didn't have that constraint?

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Octopodes no longer die when they give birth, meaning they can teach their young and form societies.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

WAIT THEY DIE ON BIRTH!??

WTF this actually needs to be fixed.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 3 weeks ago

Submit a bug report or fork the repo and do it yourself. It's only maintained by volunteers after all.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

But they are not social creatures, so if they were, even when they died someone in the social group could still teach the youngs

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Children of Ruin is a great book.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Cows now have tetrodotoxin like Fugu fish. Incorrectly prepared cows now have the chance to kill you.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Why did I read this like patch notes on a game?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

As it should be!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Opposite monkey paw situation, as cows are no longer farmed due to the poison risk, global emissions are massively reduced. And the huge amounts of land dedicated to feeding cows is returned to forestry, further reducing emissions.

The poisonous cows solve climate change long before the vegans can.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

You're giving the vegans ideas now. Lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

How much does the cattle rearing industry contribute to global emissions?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

According to the USDA, the US cattle industry contributes about 3.7% of US greenhouse gas emissions, and livestock as a whole is around 14.5% globally on a cursory search

[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

A breed of 100+ pound Chihuahua with the same temperament as the original.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

We already have wild pigs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Like I need a hole in my head.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 3 weeks ago

Ok, take this with a grain of salt because I read about it ages ago in a dubious pop-sci book and my memory is shaky. One time, they tried to gene edit yeast to be able to survive much higher alcohol concentrations. There's lots of good reasons to want to do this... Beer/wine is just about the strongest beverage you can make without distillation of some kind because the yeast dies. Making way higher ethanol yields just from fermentation makes biofuel way more viable. Stuff like that.

EXCEPT... It nearly escaped, and was able to survive on it's own. Yeast is very ubiquitous in nature, so a wild yeast that can tolerate massive ethanol concentrations could conceivably have altered life on earth as we know it.

A cursory internet search isn't turning up anything about this, but I'm pretty sure I read it in the book Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody, if anyone wants to look harder than I did.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Both male and female mosquitos now drink blood and they spit some of the last person's blood in you when they drink, causing them to spread blood borne diseases

[–] MelastSB 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Don't they already spread blood borne diseases?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago

A new species of bear develops the temperament and train-ability of a domesticated dog.

People love the domesticated bears. They're so big and cuddly. The bears quickly become the most desired pets in the world.

Bear breeding farms sprout up all around the world where the bears are subjected to awful conditions. There's a general outcry against this but people keep buying the bears and the cruelty doesn't stop.

Many of the bears are abandoned by their owners when they become adults and the owner realizes how expensive feeding a fully-grown bear is. And that's before we get into the issue of the piles of poop the animals leave behind!

Although feral bears are smaller in size than their wild cousins, their sheer numbers makes their dominance in the wilderness inevitable. Habitats are destroyed and wild bears all become further endangered as the feral bears encroach on their territory and compete for food.

Animal control in every part of the world needs its budget doubled or tripled to deal with the problem, but many governments are slow to act on the issue.

Feral bears without fear of humans become common sights in small towns and the outskirts of cities, where they reap unmitigated havoc and destruction.

The governments of the world finally respond as the feral bear populations make their way into wealthier areas, but their responses tend to punish responsible bear owners as much or more than they actually address the bear-related problems.

In America, the Supreme Court rules that the right to "bear arms" includes the right to own a bear, so the few places that manage to have sensible restrictions on ownership are forced to drop them.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Mhh, insects in general IIRC are also constrained by the fact they have exoskeletons: i.e. their internal organs are just in a bag. So they can't grow too much or they just squish I think.

Imagine them being able to become vertebrates. You can have insects the size of cats I think before the osmosis breathing tubes they currently have are not a thing. Lungs would be the next thing I guess.

Disclaimer: I'm not a biologist and just make stuff up from what I remember from high school biology, and it was last millennium!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago

Disclaimer: I'm not a biologist and just make stuff up from what I remember from high school biology, and it was last millennium!

If only the rest of the world was so honest!

[–] sbv 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

According to my sister-in-law's then boyfriend (who was a biologist or an insect guy or something), spiders and insects can have lung-line organs called book lungs. So they have options. Creepy buggy insecty options.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Oh right, I've read about that on coconut crabs I think. There you go, they are already half there.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

In a push to deal with micro plastics, bacteria are developed to be able to break down plastic. Eventually, it gets into the plastic installed for a purpose and starts breaking that down.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

Damn I thought you were gonna say it gets into our bodies and eats us as we're becoming part plastic nowadays.

That's a horror movie premise right there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I think that's the basic plot to Andromeda.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

It took the world a million years before it figured out how to digest cellulose. It used to be like plastic. Just piled up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I thought I read about this for real a while back? In a bid to make plastic decay faster, make it out of cellulose with embedded bacteria that can break it down. It still happens too slowly for most plastic osckahing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

bacteria are not animals.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

House flies start producing potent methamphetamine in their wings, which means the whole world has uncontrollable access to it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I actually started to maniacally laugh from this

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

Not very up on biology, so not sure if this would even be a thing, but I would say some kind of internal structure like plants allowing animals to overcome the square-cube law

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

All life with gills learn to breathe air without water, and suddenly all marine life is competing with us for land space

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Amaranth that can grow on sand and be watered with seawater

Edit: ops, only animals? Make bees able to break down any kind of sugar into honey

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

A malicious gene drive. Basically, use molecular tools to ensure that a gene is always passed down from a parent to its progeny, regardless of the other parent’s genetic makeup.

Many choices available: propagate resistance to a pesticide for mosquitos, guarantee Huntington’s disease in a family, or crash a population of beneficial species by reducing fertility, to name a few.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Ant phagogenesis

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Give human level intelligence to gorillas, this is worse then just human level chimpanzees in the fact gorilla's are beefy and could rip the average human in to pieces. With human level intelligence they would be a force to me reckoned with

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I heard there is a movie similar to that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Rewatching the newer Apes movies makes me scared shitless whenever I see a gorilla on screen. They're big, loud, strong as hell, and smart as a person. Especially the scene in Dawn when the guy goes back to the settlement to try to negotiate and you just see that gorilla come out of nowhere and just scream at the guy.

And then I laugh whenever I see one riding a horse and think "that poor horse."

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

99% sterility. Virus transmitted. Long incubation. People would freak out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

viruses are not animals

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Depending on what causes the sterility it could be managed through diffecountries. It's like huge spark to class warfare instantly. especially for less well off counrries.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I loved the movie children of Men. It was very interesting. You might like it too. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/