Whatever tech was being used would need to account for convection. Pizza paddle thingamajigs, anyone?
The food would also need to be in sufficient quantity, or have a sufficient calorie count to be worth the effort expended in processing. (And it would need to cook quickly too, but the smaller portions would help with that.)
I imagine if they had candles [probably more like primitive disaster-tuna-can candles than tapers], they could easily toast food-onna-stick.
>>A more serious limitation would be brain size. Sapient shrews might need to be communal rather than individual creatures for purposes of generating enough mindmass.<<
Total # of neurons affecting maximum computing power?
I know parrots are pretty smart, but maybe parrot/rat size is as small as it can go...
Communal living does have advantages; mostly various buffers against a harsh world, but also a greater pooling of resources.
Wouldn't it be hilarious if the most successful intelligences are the social weakling species-es, because the apes badasses never got past the Stone Age? :D
>>However, there are soft-bodied creatures,...<<
Or elephant's trunks. It's not impossible, but the switchover for an entire organ system would be complicated.
>>Freezing could work -- although it would probably work better at small frog than nano-frog sizes.<<
I was thinking tiny-but-still visible to human eyes. I couldn't think if how to do hydrokinetis / hielokinetics (?) with science...maybe different concentrations of antifreeze in the biofluids? Or a 'bone sack' organ that uses either antifreeze concentrations or pressure to form an individual bone as needed? (In that case, the skeletal system would be a series of bags, variously filled with fluid or filled with ice...)
And a rupture of a bone-sack could be very dangerous, if it mixed different chemical concentrations and made bones ossify in the wrong place...(sounds like a case for Sector General!)
Metabolism might be another challenge. Chemistry (at least standard biochemistry) is a lot less active at colder temps.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-02-10 02:29 pm (UTC)Whatever tech was being used would need to account for convection. Pizza paddle thingamajigs, anyone?
The food would also need to be in sufficient quantity, or have a sufficient calorie count to be worth the effort expended in processing. (And it would need to cook quickly too, but the smaller portions would help with that.)
I imagine if they had candles [probably more like primitive disaster-tuna-can candles than tapers], they could easily toast food-onna-stick.
>>A more serious limitation would be brain size. Sapient shrews might need to be communal rather than individual creatures for purposes of generating enough mindmass.<<
Total # of neurons affecting maximum computing power?
I know parrots are pretty smart, but maybe parrot/rat size is as small as it can go...
Communal living does have advantages; mostly various buffers against a harsh world, but also a greater pooling of resources.
Wouldn't it be hilarious if the most successful intelligences are the social weakling species-es, because the apes badasses never got past the Stone Age? :D
>>However, there are soft-bodied creatures,...<<
Or elephant's trunks. It's not impossible, but the switchover for an entire organ system would be complicated.
>>Freezing could work -- although it would probably work better at small frog than nano-frog sizes.<<
I was thinking tiny-but-still visible to human eyes. I couldn't think if how to do hydrokinetis / hielokinetics (?) with science...maybe different concentrations of antifreeze in the biofluids? Or a 'bone sack' organ that uses either antifreeze concentrations or pressure to form an individual bone as needed? (In that case, the skeletal system would be a series of bags, variously filled with fluid or filled with ice...)
And a rupture of a bone-sack could be very dangerous, if it mixed different chemical concentrations and made bones ossify in the wrong place...(sounds like a case for Sector General!)
Metabolism might be another challenge. Chemistry (at least standard biochemistry) is a lot less active at colder temps.