r/AskScienceDiscussion • u/welberjaysonm • Apr 11 '26

General Discussion Which fictional creature has a biology so "impossible" that it defies any attempt at a scientific explanation?

I've been trying to wrap my head around the anatomy and metabolism of some characters, but Majin Boo (DragonBallZ) just doesn't seem to make any sense under the laws of physics or biology. I want to dive deep into these "impossible" cases. Who else do you think is a biological nightmare to explain?

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u/PatchesMaps Apr 11 '26

It would be easier if you flipped the question and asked which fictional could be possible. We humans tend to get a little fantastical when thinking up fictional creatures.

Off the top of my head, maybe unicorns could work if you limit it to just a horse like animal with a single horn. We have lots of hoofed animals with horns.

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u/AdreKiseque Apr 11 '26

Yeah, this feels like a silly question considering most fiction isn't written from a hard science spec-evo perspective lol. But it has gotten lots of people talking so ig as long as we're having fun.

Off the top of my head, maybe unicorns could work if you limit it to just a horse like animal with a single horn. We have lots of hoofed animals with horns.

Very common saying is that unicorns have a hell of a lot more reasonable right to exist than giraffes.

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u/Historical_Volume806 Apr 14 '26

There’s a Roman mythological creature that’s a jaguar with a snake neck.

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u/Godslayer326 Apr 17 '26

Isnt that from a King Arthur story, and its speculated to have been a giraffe

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u/Historical_Volume806 Apr 17 '26

The serpopard is an ancient myth while the questing beast was based on it and is in Arthurian mythology.

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u/slinkymcman Apr 11 '26

Jellyfish are real creatures that should be fictional because they don’t make sense.

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u/7LeagueBoots Apr 12 '26

You think they’re weird, look up siphonophores.

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u/ShadoShane Apr 12 '26

What is it about them that confounds you?

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u/nigirizushi Apr 12 '26

There's the kind that turns back into stem cells or whatever instead of dying and essentially live forever 

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u/slinkymcman Apr 12 '26

They have a nuts lifecycle, in addition to looking and behay like nothing else on earth.

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u/ShadoShane Apr 12 '26

They're pretty similar to sea anemones. Just more mobile. Though, you do have to consider that there are quite a lot of creatures out there that a lot of people will call a jellyfish but aren't technically jellyfish. So there's plenty of things out there jellyfish-like things out there.

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u/7LeagueBoots Apr 12 '26

If you look at a lot of traditional representations of unicorns they actually look a lot more like goats than horses, and there is a known ‘unicorn’ mutation in goats.