Are biological guns possible? Could an animal evolve one as a specialised organ or collection of organs? Could sufficiently skilled geneticists and synthetic biologists create one in a lab, if not today in the future? What would the capabilities of a biogun be? I'd imagine some organ that shoots venomous spines or sharp pellets of bone or something like that at a hundred meters a second or so via muscle contractions or biological propellants like bombadier beetles have is something that could work.
It depends on the atmosphere you're living in. Let's just say that for you, busting a nut is going to have to work.
>>16942806Not quite like you're imagining, but "ballistichory seed dispersal" is a relevant search term. Some plants spread their seeds quite violently.Picrel produces fruit that explode to launch seeds as far as 45m away.
>>16942819>Let's just say that for you, busting a nut is going to have to workI don't know, even the inefficiencies of evolution managed to produce bombadier beetles, exploding ants, and exploding seeds. So maybe a sufficiently advanced biochemist can make some kind of naturally producable biological accelerant, or else some kind of super muscle contraction like the ones salamanders have in their tongues, on a much larger scale.
>>16942819What kind of stuff could be produced in an atmosphere that's more conducive, then?>>16942833>>16942830>exploding seedsLooking it up, some seeds can be launched at 70 meters per second and can reach distances of over a hundred meters. That's definitely some proof of concept.
>>16942806something like a shrimp's tail could easily fling tungsten pellets at supersonic speeds.
>>16942833>>16942841Biological explosives always injure the organism performing them. Mixing acids and bases inside your ass to make fire fucks the bombardier beetles and explosive ants up bad, a pistol strip needs aquatic pressure to make a burst even happen and it fucks itself up every time, and explosive seeds aren't even creatures, they're just little stink bomb mines that some plants use as fruit. Explosions usually only happen in death for organisms.
>>16942884A bow or sling is better
To clarify, I'm not asking for some kind of supersonic projectile or anything of the sort, even just a venomous spine or bone shard flung at like 80 meters a second suffices. Just a biological organ or organ system that fires projectiles of some kind that are capable of killing at least an adult male human. >>16943054>Biological explosives always injure the organism performing themMaybe for a naturally evolved organism, but I don't feel it's out of the cards for one optimised by (far future) genetic engineering to be able to endure it. Maybe there is little soft tissue involved, and the actual gun is mostly some kind of super hard material like bone or wood-like substances stronger than what natural evolution could easily produce, maybe even some composite of the previous plus the iron-oxide mineral nanofibers limpets use to make their teeth stronger than some metals. The big issue would be growing and delivering the propellant and projectiles, but that could be done elsewhere in the body, then transported by some organ system into the superhard gun. Maybe when it is fired the delivery pathways and other soft tissue passeges and connections to wherever the reaction takes place are sealed off to prevent damage to soft tissue. I don't know If I explained that very well but I feel you get the idea.But even if biological propellant isn't the pathway of choice I don't think it's the only one. There's still the possibility of massively scaled up salamander-tongue like systems. Google tells me they can hit 18,000 watts of power per kilo in Bolitoglossa species. A muscle contraction like that could get some velocityI feel like there's also the possibility of "self-propelled" munitions via some kind of small flying organism the gun grows, which itself contains explosive compounds. So the organ fires these creatues maybe a few dozen meters or less, which then orient themselves and fly the rest of the way to the target and detonate.
Your guided projectile launcher could be something like a Suriname toad. Their eggs gestate embedded in their skin. Now imagine if the toad was giant and the pockets progressively built pressure until eventually launching a viable "tadpole."The "tadpoles" could have modified fins like a flying fish to glide their way towards a target and then burrow their way in to consume them as they develop into juveniles.
>>16943069That seems a viable idea. I think I'd still want the mother toad to be able to control when she does and does not allow the pressure to pop and fling out her young for it to count as a projectile weapon rather than a thing that kinda just happens, like exploding seeds
>>16943078Maybe a little nerve in the underbelly triggers the release upon stimulation. That way a crew could use this as effectively a biological missile battery.
>>16943067You want a hollowed out tube of calloused cartilaginous flesh you that can shoot little mortars out of, coming out of your back like a sickly flesh Blastoise?
>>16943085Sounds kino. I like it.>>16943087You mean to tell me you don't?!
>>16943093Sounds very itchy
>>16942841>some seeds can be launched at 70 meters per secondwild. "High-speed video analysis of its exploding fruit revealed that sandbox seeds fly with backspin", gives it loft, going for distance. soon, they will evolve targeting and begin their march on the capitals
Thinking ammunition...>venomous spikes and spines, either coated in venom or even better one of those serrated stingers that rip the flesh apart if you try to pull them out but slowly inject venom if you don't>tough shards of bone, seeds or some other durable material - maybe even stuff made from the iron nanofibres limpets use as teeth. >pods of some kind that carry and deliver some sort of explosive compound. Probably wouldn't be a very powerful one, but something just enough to kill a human if it detonates against the head would do the trick. Maybe it could even have a sharp point out front that is designed to pierce and partially imbed itself into it's target and then the explosive back detonates, driving the shard deeper. Maybe it could even be some kind of flammable fuild that lights itself and it's target on fire.>sacks and pods of venom, digestive fluids, and/or harmful microrganisms and parasites. Just some kind of chemical concontion that will make the day of anything coming into contact with it a real bad one.>the aforementioned "self-propelled" symbiotic organisms. Tadpoles that ride on the wind and eat you from the inside, flying insects filled with chemical concoctions that make bombadier beetles look normal, parasitic worms that eat your brain, you could come up with all sorts of ideas for this one.
>The harpoon attack of the species Conus catus has been found to be one of the fastest complete movements recorded in animals, with a maximum speed of 90 km/h (56 mph), an acceleration of 400,000 m/s2, and a deceleration of 700,000 m/s2. The speed of other animals such as the peacock mantis shrimp and the trap-jaw ant was measured at the free end of a fixed appendage, while the speed of the harpoon was measured from its base and traveling inside the proboscis.>The reason for this speed relies in hydrostatic pressure by the fluid inside the proboscis which propels the harpoon inside until it is almost completely out. A sphincter acts as a valve to keep fluid in the proximal half and in the distal half a constriction of ephitelial tissue together with a thicker harpoon base helps to build up hydrostatic pressure when the sphincter opens.Of course they never quite let go of the harpoon.
>>16944127>Of course they never quite let go of the harpoon.Hmm. To make that into a proper projectile you'd probably have to have some kind of needle or spike embedded and growing from the end of the muscle. When it fires out, it might stretch out to it's maximum length and kind of have the very end turn inside out and fling out the projectile, hopefully transferring enough momentum and energy to throw it a respectable distance.
>>16942806Most animals evolve defensive measures, but why would they evolve to be a weapon themselves? There is no reproductive or survival strategy to this. Biological firearms sounds something more closer to video game science like Halo, than real life science.
>>16945584>but why would they evolve to be a weapon themselvesThey obviously wouldn't evolve into one lmao. The question was would they develop one themselves, as a limb or something, or some kind of modified head.>Biological firearms sounds something more closer to video game science like Halo, than real life scienceSynthetic biology could make a lot of things that seem science fiction into actual realities. Not that bioguns would ever be competitive with inorganic ones - they'd at best be just something that is kinda cool, or something that was made as an experiment. Like swords, useless but people still make them and occasionally some material scientists will come together and try to see what kind of blade they can come up with using space age materials and technologies.
>Could an animal evolve one as a specialised organ or collection of organs lots of animals have this ability. there are spitting cobras, spitting fish, pistol shrimp with snaps that produce a tiny fireball underwater, skunks, octopodes, squid, mist lizards tongues etc all have organic projectile weaponry
>>16945599>The question was would they develop one themselves, as a limb or somethingWell then they already exists. Nothing like you're describing in this thread with the long range and effectiveness of it, but there are animals with ranged defensive measures. Some of these are porcupine, archerfish, electric eels, splitting cobras, and various kinds of bugs. Even in human history indigenous tribes would take the venom from some of these animals to use on their arrows or slings.
>>16942806I could see "sneezing out" a ball that breaks and is filled with chemicals that burn and are super sticky at the same time.What would be difficult to make is how to replenish its ammo from external...surgery is last option.
>>16945629>>16945622>>16945738If you read through the thread you’d see that pretty much all these suggested options have been brought up and dismissed. It needs to be something capable of killing an adult human male at a significant (let’s say 25 meters) distance to qualify. A sad squirt of ink or venom that goes three meters, or a muscular contraction that is already going to be inferior to a Bolitoglossa pound for pound (and therefore much less than what a gaggle of century+ distant bioengineers and biochemists will be capable of crafting up) aren’t close to qualifying.The current most reliable option thought of seems to be some sort of semi self-propelled symbiotic organisms launched by a biological artillery platform (that then explode with a sort of biological explosive like those of bombadier beetles and ballistichoric seeds). Otherwise some kind of biorifle made of the toughest of bones and reinforced with biologically grown iron nanofibres, that itself grows and has a deposit of biological propellant for acceleration. Could use all sorts of ammunition >>16944115>>16945708Is there any way to develop a powerful enough muscle contraction for that? Going off of the 18k watts per kilo in bolitoglossa, say with some precise engineering we could triple that to 54k (artificial muscles 80x as strong as a humans have already been made in labs so not so far fetched). Maybe the contraction takes 0.01 seconds, and we have two kilos of muscle, so presuming perfect energy transfer to our projectile, we’ve got an energy of 1080 joules (someone correct me here if I’m wrong).A 9mm bullet will only produce between 400 and 600 joules. Obviously we’re not getting perfect energy transfer, but with the right ammunition you don’t even need 400 joules to kill somebody. Even a .22 can kill with its pitiful 150 joules, so make the projectile some kind of poisonous needle or put explosive compound in it and we might have something.
>>16945757>It needs to be something capable of killing an adult human male at a significant (let’s say 25 meters) distance to qualify.so you have abandoned plausibility and went full retard. Great thread numb nuts
>>16945759Sounds like you’re just a bit sensitive that your ideas weren’t up to bar, and you were too lazy to read the thread to even realise that. I’d really like to hear the physics issues with something that throws explosive flying insects that then drift over to their targets. Especially when bombadier beetles and exploding ants already exist.But no, I suppose the thing that already exists in some capacity is as distant and impossible as FTL, according to the great namefag bodhi
>>16945757Most of it's a scaling and respiratory issue. You could in theory scale up a pistol shrimp to lobster size (the largest lobster on record was nearly 3 feet long uncooked) reinforce the shell and throw in some coconut crab DNA. Now imagine you could boost the oxygen efficiency and get it up to eurypterid size. (max 6 feet)
What about that beetle that sprays acid from its butt?
>>16945599It is possible, but first you need to:>figure out lab meat>create actual tissue engineering techniques to grow an object of your desired dimensions, mechanical strength, thermodynamic capabilities and whatever else>figure out a way to not get your biopunk creation infected>grow biopunk ammo and test le gun>and now rinse and repeat until it is comparable in efficiency and usability to inorganic guns
>>16942806My cock is a biogun.
