Artistic License Biology: Difference between revisions

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* Most commercials for hair care products use words like "nourishment" or "healthy hair." One commercial years ago even went so far as to call hair "a living, breathing part of your body." Too bad that the part of the hair being "treated" is biochemically dead. The only part that's actually alive is underneath the skin, in the follicle.

* There's one vitamin commercial that claims that it helps repair your cell ''walls'', a feature not found in mammalian cells. Even if they're just trying to put cell membrane in simpler terms, they still [[Did Not Do the Research]], unless they were referring to the cell walls of the native gut flora...

== Anime and Manga ==

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** A turtle which ''flies'' by flapping its ''fins''. Of course that's pure [[Rule of Cool]] in effect.

* ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'''s most prominent female character Hungary used to think she was a boy. And she thought that penises grow as you age, which would "explain" her...lack of one. ''And'' she laughed at Prussia for "not knowing."

* [[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]] features, to make a long [[Mind Screw]] short, a [[My Own Grampa]] situation<ref>original, clone, reincarnation of clone who is father to original and has same DNA as last incarnation</ref> where all involved have the same DNA, despite the presence of a non-blood-relation mother.

* ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' features, to make a long [[Mind Screw]] short, a [[My Own Grampa]] situation<ref>original, clone, reincarnation of clone who is father to original and has same DNA as last incarnation</ref> where all involved have the same DNA, despite the presence of a non-blood-relation mother.

* The masters in [[Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple]] didn't fail biology. Biology failed them.

* The masters in ''[[Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple]]'' didn't fail biology. Biology failed them.

* [[Handwaved]] in ''[[Digimon]]'', anything impossible that a Digimon (or the Digital World) does is explained away by saying "they're just data".

* [[Hentai]]. For starters, normally men don't ~~use~~ penises of the dimensions of a forearm to ~~fuck~~ ~~women with~~ breasts as big as watermelons, ~~resulting~~ in ~~shoting~~ gallons of ~~cum umpteen times in a~~ ~~row~~.

* [[Hentai]]. For starters, normally men don't have penises of the dimensions of a forearm, women don't have breasts as big as watermelons, and ejaculations measured in gallons aren't humanly possible.

== Comic Books ==

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* Even [[Warren Ellis]] is not safe from failing biology. After he explained the difference between normal and artificial mutants (or were they mutants from alternate reality? Probably both) in his first ''Astonishing X-Men'' story, people at Scans Daily pointed out that genetics don't work that way. Ellis admitted his mistake.

* When Ellis wrote ''Iron Man: Extremis'', he explained the eponymous magic bullet (a single injection which would turn ordinary mortals into supermen) as a "Data package contained in a few million carbon nanotubes, injected directly into the brain". The information package would then rewrite the repair center in the brain—that is, the part of the brain which keeps a complete 'map' of our organs and functions. "The brain is telling the body is wrong"... and it compliantly changes according to the Extremis instructions. Perhaps needless to say, there is no "repair center" (although the "sensory homunculus" seems a little bit like what is described). Later writers [[retcon]]ned Extremis into a viral package, which is at least borderline believable.

* ''[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1593 How to tell the birds from the flowers]. A manual of [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|flornithology]] for beginners'' by R.W.Wood parodied ~~semiliterate~~ "botanics" books:

* ''[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1593 How to tell the birds from the flowers]. A manual of [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|flornithology]] for beginners'' by R.W.Wood parodied semi-literate "botanics" books:

{{quote|Some are unable, as you know,

To tell the Crocus from the Crow;

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They are not versed in Nature's laws. }}

⚫

== Fan Works ==

⚫

== Fan ~~Fic~~ ==

* Dakari-King Mykan gives us this gem in ''The [[Sailor Moon]] Legend of Zelda'':

{{quote|''Melvin was most outraged by that. "How can you girls say that?!?" he spat. "Biology is all around us, the singular sciences of how our glorious Planet-Earth is formed and runs.''}}

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* Somehow, ''[[My Immortal]]'' confused ''magic'' with "advanced biology" when the protagonist was narrating about what is ostensibly transmogrification.

* Animal comparisons are a very common method of establishing a character as having a [[Biggus Dickus]]. Truly clueless writers compare the hero to a [http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Largest-Penis-in-the-World-43756.shtml gorilla]. And the women are ''impressed'' by this. As ''[[You Don't Know Jack]]'' put it, "[[King Kong]] ''my ass!''"

* In ''[[Light and Dark - ~~The Adventures of Dark Yagami|Light and Dark~~ The Adventures of Dark Yagami]]'', Dark shoots and kills Watari on his way out of the "Whammy" house. Watari returns six chapters later, having been revived by CPR - even if he hadn't been killed, CPR could not have saved his life.

* In ''[[Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami]]'', Dark shoots and kills Watari on his way out of the "Whammy" house. Watari returns six chapters later, having been revived by CPR - even if he hadn't been killed, CPR could not have saved his life.

* Subverted in the ''[[Danny Phantom]]/[[Gargoyles]]'' crossover, [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3444790/1/A_Wish_Your_Heart_Makes "A Wish Your Heart Makes."] Titania gives Vlad a vision of what his life might have been like if he had stayed friends with Jack and Maddie instead of turning evil. This leads to Vlad becoming Danny's biological father to prevent him from being born with hemophilia (Jack and Maddie had just discovered that Maddie and Jazz were carriers for it). Once Vlad wakes up from the vision, he reminds Titania what almost anyone who knows anything about hemophilia would have already noticed: because it's carried on the X chromosome, any child of Maddie's would have had the same chance of inheriting it no matter who the father was. Titania admits that she included that error on purpose so Vlad would know for sure that it really was [[All Just a Dream]].

** Let's not forget that Danny wouldn't be Danny, if Vlad was his father. It's simple genetics, people.

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* The Fan Fic "[[Full Metal]] Dragon" doesn't even have to start before this happens:

** Summary: Jake's mom had an affair while she was still pregnant with him. resulting in two infants. Jake stayed with them while the other child went with his father, Hoenheim of Light.

* The infamous ''[[My Little Pony: ~~Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony~~ Friendship Is Magic]]'' fanfic Cupcakes presents Pinkie Pie as a cannibalistic serial killer. Apart from being horribly and blatantly out of character, Pinkie Pie is a pony, meaning a small horse. Horses are herbivores, and though the show does play fast and loose with equine biology, it doesn't play that loose.

* The infamous ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]]'' fanfic "[[Cupcakes]]" presents Pinkie Pie as a cannibalistic serial killer. Apart from being horribly and blatantly out of character, Pinkie Pie is a pony, meaning a small horse. Horses are herbivores, and though the show does play fast and loose with equine biology, it doesn't play that loose.

* In [[The Darker Knight]] Batman's batarang hits "Too-Face" in non-vital organ...like his liver and intestines.

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** Another scene has him holding a baby dinosaur in his hands. "What species is it?" he hisses to a nearby geneticist. "It's a ''Velociraptor''," responds the geneticist. Neither of these trained scientists who really ought to know these things picked up on the fact that ''Velociraptor'' is the genus name. The species is probably ''Velociraptor mongoliensis''.

** An early scene has the paleontologists digging up a ''Velociraptor mongoliensis'' in the Montana badlands. As the name implies, they lived in Mongolia, and not Montana. The raptors are also way too big. Although if you pretend they're saying ''Deinonychus'' every time they say ''Velociraptor'', it makes a lot more sense, because Deinonychus ''did'' live in Montana, and was somewhat larger (although the raptors might be closer in size to the even bigger ''Utahraptor''). The cheetah speed and chimpanzee intelligence can at least be filed under [[Rule of Cool|artistic license]].

*** The misidentification of ''Velociraptor'' was actually due to [[Science Marches On]]—the original book based its research on a (now debunked) ~~palaeontologist~~ who argued that ''Deinonychus antirrhopus'' was in fact a species of ''Velociraptor'', which means what they were digging for in the novel (which the film failed to correct) was a north-American ''Velociraptor antirrhopus''. Every instance where the book and the film uses ''Velociraptor'' is therefore in actuality a reference to ''Deinonychus antirrhopus''. This fails to take into account the lack of feathers and an egregious misunderstanding of ''Deinonychus'' anatomy, but this could be explained away (at least in the book) by the knowledge that these ''aren't'' "real" dinosaurs but a facsimile created by geneticists working with patchwork DNA and a flawed understanding of the beings they're trying to re-create.

*** The misidentification of ''Velociraptor'' was actually due to [[Science Marches On]]—the original book based its research on a (now debunked) paleontologist who argued that ''Deinonychus antirrhopus'' was in fact a species of ''Velociraptor'', which means what they were digging for in the novel (which the film failed to correct) was a north-American ''Velociraptor antirrhopus''. Every instance where the book and the film uses ''Velociraptor'' is therefore in actuality a reference to ''Deinonychus antirrhopus''. This fails to take into account the lack of feathers and an egregious misunderstanding of ''Deinonychus'' anatomy, but this could be explained away (at least in the book) by the knowledge that these ''aren't'' "real" dinosaurs but a facsimile created by geneticists working with patchwork DNA and a flawed understanding of the beings they're trying to re-create.

** The entire premise of the movie (and the book) fails. If the amber-preserved blood was any more than 1 million years old, the DNA would have been irrecoverably decomposed, no matter what it was preserved in. Cloning extinct species from before 1 million years ago is impossible.

*** And even if the DNA were available, we have absolutely no idea how to turn that DNA into a viable dinosaur egg. You'd need complete information about how the oviducts of that particular species operated even to get started, and we don't even have any fossils of dinosaur oviducts, let alone a clue as to their gestational duration, average internal temperature, etc.

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* The African exhibit in ''[[Night at the Museum]]'' includes an ostrich. Ostriches are African, so no problem, right? Except that the exhibit is specifically and prominently titled "The Hall of African '''Mammals'''."

* ''[[Push]]'' has the lead character {{spoiler|inject soy sauce directly in to his blood stream with no side effect at all.}}

* ''[[Snakes on a Plane]]'' is a horrendous violator of biology, and even ignores rules which they mention within the film. The film is not meant to be serious, it is simply silly fun, and the day is actually saved because one character [[I Know Mortal Kombat|knows Mortal Kombat]], but the biology does not even deserve an "F;" it gets an "Incomplete" because it did not even show up to enough classes to qualify as a full-time student:

* ''[[Snakes on a Plane]]'' is a horrendous violator of biology, and even ignores rules which they mention within the film. The film is not meant to be serious, it is simply a silly fun, and the day is actually saved because one character [[I Know Mortal Kombat|knows Mortal Kombat]], but the biology does not even deserve an "F;" it gets an "Incomplete" because it did not even show up to enough classes to qualify as a full-time student:

** The snakes are shown as shockingly aggressive, actively pursuing prey, whereas most snakes (including those shown in the film) are relatively sedentary; the snakes in the film bite repeatedly for no apparent reason, simply killing without eating the people or defending themselves, and then move to attack and kill other people who are neither a threat nor viable prey. The snakes are described as being so aggressive and violent because they are being stimulated by sexual pheromones, except that snakes are not praying mantids or black widows and do not kill their mates while they have sex. If snakes ''were'' to be brought into a violent frenzy when in the presence of sexual pheromones they would require separate pheromones for each individual species, and would be just as likely to attack each other as humans, as any other species would be as much of a threat/competition as the people would.

** The Burmese python practically growls and flashes fang like an aggressive dog. Then it manages to kill the [[Jerkass]] in moments, when in reality it would take much longer even if the guy had a heart attack almost immediately. Finally, the python has no problem getting human shoulders down its throat. A real python would need a few moments to unhinge and stretch out its jaw, and then would probably need some time to properly position a meal that wide. Assuming a snake that size could get its head over an adult male's shoulders in the first place; even most potentially man-eating snakes will have trouble consuming a large person. Yes, there were time constraints, but still. At least the python seems to still have been working on its meal when the poor thing got sucked out the window.

* Going past all of the usual dragon examples that would apply to the beast from ''[[Beowulf (film)|Beowulf]]'' (like wingspan), how does a heart that can fit in a man's fist pump blood through the body of a [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|seventy foot long]] [[If It Swims, It Flies|flying and swimming]] reptile? Never mind that a heart in the neck protected by tracing paper is a bad idea anyway. Blocking the trachea and being easily rip-outtable are not desirable traits in a heart. Although being the product of a gold thing and a human you can hardly expect it to have evolved properly...

* In ''[[Ice Age]] 2: The Meltdown'', a young anteater is seen blowing bubbles in a pool of ~~meltwater~~, by breathing out through its elongated snout and in through the mouth at its base. Real anteaters have tiny mouths, and they're located at the tips of their snouts, not underneath them. Keeping the end of its snout continuously submerged should've drowned it. Also, Scrat the proto-squirrel has huge saber-like canine teeth. Being rodents, ~~squirrels—even~~ prehistoric ~~ones—don~~'t have canines at all.

* In ''[[Ice Age]] 2: The Meltdown'', a young anteater is seen blowing bubbles in a pool of melt-water, by breathing out through its elongated snout and in through the mouth at its base. Real anteaters have tiny mouths, and they're located at the tips of their snouts, not underneath them. Keeping the end of its snout continuously submerged should've drowned it. Also, Scrat the proto-squirrel has huge saber-like canine teeth. Being rodents, squirrels — even prehistoric ones — don't have canines at all.

** The authors have said in an interview that it was [[Played for Laughs]]. Later crosses into [[Accidentally Accurate]] since [http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/11/03/141997834/scientists-unveil-fossil-of-saber-toothed-squirrel-that-lived-among-dinos a recently discovered prehistoric mammal was indeed squirrel-like], [[Science Marches On|and did indeed have fangs]]. It was not a rodent though, and lived in the ''Mesozoic'', not in the Cenozoic, much less the last ice age.

* Any Christmas movie which shows female reindeer without antlers, or male reindeer retaining their antlers into December, Fails Biology Forever. Females of the species need antlers to guard their young from predators, whereas males shed theirs after the rutting season, with one exception: males retain antlers in winter if they have a "special operation".

* The writers of ''[[Mission to Mars]]'' clearly had a lacking understanding of genetics. To start with, one of the characters constructs a model of a DNA molecule from supplied spacial coordinates, then [[Gary Sinise]] is able to ''look'' at a (very small) string of computer-generated DNA, and see that it "looks human". This is impossible, because a) you can't tell what species a sequence came from by looking at such a small sample and b) spacial coordinates that form a double helix say precisely jack shit about what bases (and, by extension, what genes) are contained in the DNA sequence. Then someone mentions it's missing "the last pair of chromosomes," when the simulation makes it readily apparent it's missing the last pair of ''bases''. To top it all off, the coloring of the bases appear to suggest that a base pair is made up of two identical bases, which is just wrong.

* A scene in the bad Canadian vampire B-movie ''Thralls'' features the lead villain vampire ''punch another man through his stomach, tear part of his spine out and show it to him as the now-spineless man merely '''stands there'''''. And then, rather than break in half where his spine used to be... he just collapses.

* A scene in the bad Canadian vampire B-movie ''[[Thralls]]'' features the lead villain vampire ''punch another man through his stomach, tear part of his spine out and show it to him as the now-spineless man merely '''stands there'''''. And then, rather than break in half where his spine used to be... he just collapses.

* In the [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] film ''[[Goldfinger]]'', a Bond girl is asphyxiated by covering her entire body with gold paint. Bond explains that people need at least a small patch of bare skin at the base of the spine to "breathe." This isn't true. It was Dave Barry who remarked on the "remarkable recent discovery that people actually breathe with their ''lungs'', and not with their skin after all." This actually has a grain of truth, but the idea of ''asphyxiation'' due to painted skin is still 100% bilge. Death would be from heat exhaustion if the paint interfered with perspiration, or exposure to toxins if the paint were unsafe. And it would take a very very very long time.

* In the [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] film ''[[Goldfinger]]'', a Bond girl is asphyxiated by covering her entire body with gold paint. Bond explains that people need at least a small patch of bare skin at the base of the spine to "breathe." This isn't true. It was Dave Barry who remarked on the "remarkable recent discovery that people actually breathe with their ''lungs'', and not with their skin after all." This actually has a grain of truth, but the idea of ''asphyxiation'' due to painted skin is still 100% bilge. Death would be from heat exhaustion if the paint interfered with perspiration, or exposure to toxins if the paint were unsafe. And it would take a very very ''very'' long time.

** Overlapping with [[Science Marches On]]: At the time the novel was written, "skin asphyxiation" was taken seriously, at least by the public. The studio had a team of doctors on hand while shooting the death scene, and left actress Shirley Eaton's stomach unpainted to make sure she could breathe.

* In ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien Resurrection]]'', the plot hinges on [[Cloning Blues|creating a clone]] from blood samples to harvest the completely separate lifeform hiding out in the original Ripley's chest.

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** Actually, every single movie is filled with ''[[You Fail Biology Forever]]'' moments. And a bit of ''[[You Fail Physics Forever]]''. C'mon, who gets crushed to death by a rocketed tank gas and a fence? Even if the fence is quite sharp, it should have be broken before reducing someone to confetti.

* A minor case in ''[[Mystery Team]]'', but it is somewhat unusual that Jason can bike several miles with one flat tire without showing any signs of fatigue.

* A ridiculous number of movies, including the ''majority'' of vampire-hunt flicks, depict the human heart as being located near or slightly above the left nipple. The heart is located at the bottom ''center'' of the human ~~ribcage~~, which means an awful lot of would-be Van Helsings actually missed their targets. Also a [[Real Life]] misconception, given how people lay their hands over <s>their hearts</s> their left breast to salute the flag, pledge allegiance, etc. (mostly justified for women, though, as placing the hand directly over the heart usually means cupping their own breast).

* A ridiculous number of movies, including the ''majority'' of vampire-hunt flicks, depict the human heart as being located near or slightly above the left nipple. The heart is located at the bottom ''center'' of the human rib cage, which means an awful lot of would-be Van Helsings actually missed their targets. Also a [[Real Life]] misconception, given how people lay their hands over <s>their hearts</s> their left breast to salute the flag, pledge allegiance, etc. (mostly justified for women, though, as placing the hand directly over the heart usually means cupping their own breast).

** This specific manifestation is subverted in the [[Gary Oldman]] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099242/ film] ''Chattahoochee''. Oldman's character tries to commit [[Suicide by Cop]] via a shooting spree, which doesn't work. He then takes his gun and shoots himself just above his left nipple. When he wakes up in the hospital, the doctor gives him a short anatomy lesson.

* ''[[The Reaping]]'': Members of the [[Religion of Evil|Satanic cult]] sacrifice all their children to Satan, except for the firstborn, who are inducted into the cult, [[You Fail Biology Forever|to ensure the cult itself can survive]]. In reality, you would need (on average) two offspring to survive (and reproduce) per couple just for the population to remain stable. Even if the cultists recruit outsiders to marry the kids they don't sacrifice, attrition would still wipe them out, as some of each generation are likely to die, fail to reproduce at all, or leave the cult.

* [[James Cameron]]'s ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'' has some [[Taxonomic Term Confusion]].

* ''[[Piranha 3D]]'' contains an idea so [[egregious]]ly stupid that it may very well have been put in just to make the dumbest people in the audience feel smart when they realized that it was impossible. The Piranha survived two million years in an enclosed ~~covern~~ through CANNIBALISM!!!! It's like they took ''[[The Matrix]]'''s bio-battery lunacy and [[Up to Eleven|turned it up to]] [[Memetic Mutation|OVER 9000!!!!!!]]. For those of you who were absent the day they taught about food chains in Middle School, the general rule of thumb is that every predator gets about 10% of the energy his prey took in. So, every generation of piranha should have lost 10/11 of their population. Even assuming they magically preserved 90% of the energy, they wouldn't have made it that long without producers in their food chain! And just to add insult to injury at the end of the movie we find out {{spoiler|they've been fighting the babies, which are apparently as big as their full-grown prehistoric ancestors. So, apparently, this process made them BIGGER.}}

* ''[[Piranha 3D]]'' contains an idea so [[egregious]]ly stupid that it may very well have been put in just to make the dumbest people in the audience feel smart when they realized that it was impossible. The Piranha survived two million years in an enclosed cavern through CANNIBALISM!!!! It's like they took ''[[The Matrix]]'''s bio-battery lunacy and [[Up to Eleven|turned it up to]] [[Memetic Mutation|OVER 9000!!!!!!]]. For those of you who were absent the day they taught about food chains in Middle School, the general rule of thumb is that every predator gets about 10% of the energy his prey took in. So, every generation of piranha should have lost 10/11 of their population. Even assuming they magically preserved 90% of the energy, they wouldn't have made it that long without producers in their food chain! And just to add insult to injury at the end of the movie we find out {{spoiler|they've been fighting the babies, which are apparently as big as their full-grown prehistoric ancestors. So, apparently, this process made them BIGGER.}}

* While most of the less-than-realistic aspects of the [[Godzilla]] films can be attributed to [[Rule of Cool]] and/or [[Rule of Funny]], there's a scene in the 1993 version of ''Godzilla VS Mechagodzilla'' in which one of the human characters feeds Baby Godzilla a leaf. This would be fine and dandy, if Godzilla's species wasn't already established to be carnivorous (Godzillasaurus pretty much looks like a jumbo-sized T. rex) and that Baby Godzilla clearly has teeth better suited for tearing apart flesh rather than munching on veggies.

** The 1998 American Remake ''constantly'' showed Zilla running at a rather high speed. People, there's a '''very''' good reason why very large animals (IE: Elephants, Apatasaurus, Tyrannosaurus, etc.) don't move fast (or don't run very often). To put it nicely, if Zilla were to trip while running that fast, he'd pretty much ''splatter'' all over the pavement when he fell.

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** That film did a darn good job establishing Reznick as an [[Unreliable Narrator]], so it seems likely he caught cat naps without realizing it.

* This could be applied to the majority of vampire movies which try to sound "scientific." While it would be possible to rely on a blood-only diet similar to the vampire bat, the vampire in question would have to take half their weight in blood and become enormously bloated since blood contains about 90 percent water and only 10 percent in protein without any fats or carbohydrates. [[A Wizard Did It|Magic]] vampires, of course, can handwave all of this.

** In addition, vampire bats after a feeding are usually too heavy to fly and must ~~accomodate~~ this by digesting the blood quickly and releasing most of it through their urine.

** In addition, vampire bats after a feeding are usually too heavy to fly and must accommodate this by digesting the blood quickly and releasing most of it through their urine.

*** Because of this, their necessarily high metabolisms and the sparse nutrients in blood, a vampire bat will die if it goes without feeding for two nights in a row. Even missing one night of feeding could make it too weak to go out the next night for blood unless it begs some blood off another bat in the roost. A human-sized vampire would have to completely drain several humans a night to keep up their health, not to mention do all the things vampires can supposedly do (such as turn into bats, which have higher metabolism than humans, meaning they'd need to consume even ''more'' blood just to stop them running out of energy in minutes).

* ''[[Sherlock Holmes]] and the Curse of the Spider Woman'' Holmes meets Spiderologist #1 who recommends that Holmes visits Spiderologist #2. Meanwhile, criminal has murdered Spiderologist #2 and is impersonating him. Holmes spots the fraud because the criminal uses wrong terminology. Meanwhile Holmes, Spiderologist #1, Spiderologist #2 and Criminal '''all''' call spiders "insects".

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* ''[[Predator]]''. After being killed the scorpion cools down, even though it's cold blooded and should have already been at the same temperature as the surrounding air.

* ''[[The Waterboy]]'': [[Adam Sandler|Bobby Boucher]] tackles his biology professor over the fact that alligators get ornery because of their enlarged medulla oblongata, leading to more aggressive emotions, instead of [[My Beloved Smother|Mama Boucher]]'s explanation that "they got all them teeth and no toothbrush". They're both wrong, because the medulla oblongata has absolutely nothing to do with emotions, being responsible for breathing and heart rate. The amygdala is responsible for emotions.

== Literature ==

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* In ''[[Prince Caspian]]'', Reepicheep the talking mouse has lost his tail in battle, and he argues with Aslan over whether it needs to be regrown. Both of them seem to think a mouse's tail has no practical value, and is of use only as a badge of honor or vanity, but the tails of mice and rats are actually important thermoregulatory structures, without which he'd be quite vulnerable to heat stroke.

** A mouse the size of a domestic cat would have problems with that anyway. It's moot for purposes of the story.

* Medb, Queen of Connacht, from ''[[Táin Bó Cúailnge~~|Tain Bo Cuailnge~~]]'', is defeated because her period saps the strength of her army. In itself, that's pretty bad, but more for its [[Unfortunate Implications]]. The biology fail comes about because her period makes her ''piss'' blood. [[Squick|Enough to flood three parade grounds in fact.]]

* Medb, Queen of Connacht, from ''[[Táin Bó Cúailnge]]'', is defeated because her period saps the strength of her army. In itself, that's pretty bad, but more for its [[Unfortunate Implications]]. The biology fail comes about because her period makes her ''piss'' blood. [[Squick|Enough to flood three parade grounds in fact.]]

* In [[Madeleine L'Engle]]'s ''[[A Swiftly Tilting Planet]]'', all of the good and significant descendants of Madoc, the good Welsh prince who sailed to America, went native, and married a Native American woman of a tribe called the Wind People, have deep blue ~~eyes—regardless~~ of their racial background. It doesn't matter if they are 99% Native American, they have deep blue eyes. The evil significant descendants of Madoc's power-hungry brother (who intermarried with the warlike People Across The ~~Lake—enemies~~ of the Wind ~~People—and~~ whose descendants intermarried with the native population of Vespugia) have either metal-gray eyes or ice-blue eyes. Because genetics color-codes eyes according to a person's morality. Uh-huh. And the genes for blue eyes of all sorts are totally dominant, too.

* In [[Madeleine L'Engle]]'s ''[[A Swiftly Tilting Planet]]'', all of the good and significant descendants of Madoc (the good Welsh prince who sailed to America, went native, and married a Native American woman of a tribe called the Wind People) have deep blue eyes — regardless of their racial background. It doesn't matter if they are 99% Native American, they have deep blue eyes. The evil significant descendants of Madoc's power-hungry brother (who intermarried with the warlike People Across The Lake — enemies of the Wind People — and whose descendants intermarried with the native population of Vespugia) have either metal-gray eyes or ice-blue eyes. Because genetics color-codes eyes according to a person's morality. Uh-huh. And the genes for blue eyes of all sorts are totally dominant, too.

* [[Stephenie Meyer]]'s ''[[Twilight (novel)|Breaking Dawn]]''. Vampires don't have any blood in their tissues, so Edward shouldn't be able to get an erection in the first place. Also, Meyer has said that Vampires' cells don't divide, but sperm is created by a type of mitosis called meiosis, which means that Vampire men shouldn't be able to get women pregnant repeatedly a la Nahuel's father.

** Not to mention, Vampire venom at one point was stated to replace all fluids in the body which is why it turns into a sparkly rock like substance. If you follow that logic, his sperm should have been replaced. So basically, the first time they had sex and he orgasmed... she should have become a vampire instead of becoming pregnant.

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* In ''[[The Millenium Trilogy|The Girl Who Played with Fire]]'', Ronald Niedermann is a 6'6" musclebound blonde giant, who has a disease which renders him unable to feel pain. The book even mentions that most people who have this disease die at a young age, but then hand waves it away by saying he's just too tough to die. This is, of course, not how it works. Normal life is dangerous enough for people with this affliction, but this character was an amateur boxer and gets in several fistfights over the course of the book. One untreated injury could conceivably kill him, most notably when he takes a full-strength punch to the kidneys from a pro boxer. But even before that, the kind of muscular frame he has cannot be maintained without weight training, which would be catastrophic without pain sensors to determine one's limits.

* In the original novel version of [[Frankenstein]], Victor worries that if his monster had a female monster to mate with, they would produce monster babies. That would be all fine and dandy if the monsters weren't made from reanimated human flesh, almost guaranteeing them both to be infertile. Even if by some miracle, they were able to conceive, any child of the two of them would in fact be human, biologically descended from whoever the monsters' reproductive organs came from.

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** Like the Sherlock Holmes example above, this is also actually a case of [[Science Marches On]]. The original novel was published twenty years before Schwann and Schielden founded cell theory, and almost fifty years before Pasteur definitively disproved abiogenesis. In fact, the most exciting discovery of the time was the effect of electrostimulation in disembodied muscle tissue, so the story of a creature made from dead human material reanimated by lightning was as grounded in modern science (in 1818) as literature about sentient computers is today.

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*** Although there is no reference to Victor's using lightning. There is a single reference to the "apparatus of life".

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Like the Sherlock Holmes example above, this is also actually a case of [[Science Marches On]]. The original novel was published twenty years before Schwann and Schielden founded cell theory, and almost fifty years before Pasteur definitively disproved abiogenesis. In fact, the most exciting discovery of the time was the effect of electrostimulation in disembodied muscle tissue, so the story of a creature made from dead human material reanimated by lightning was as grounded in modern science (in 1818) as literature about sentient computers is today.

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** Although there is no reference to Victor's using ~~lightening~~. There is a single reference to the "apparatus of life".

* According to his backstory from ''[[James and the Giant Peach]]'', James Henry Trotter's parents were eaten alive by an [[Rhino Rampage|escaped zoo rhinoceros]]. In real life, rhinos are supposed to be ''herbivores''. Fortunately, the film adaptation averted this by changing said rhino from an actual rhinoceros to a large [[Nightmare Fuel|rhinoceros-shaped demon made entirely out of thunderclouds.]]

** I always thought the implication was that they were crushed by the stampeding animal...

* At what point did ''Lesbian Land 2250'' get an aspect of human biology correct? "Ginger Winters" thinks that vaginas are indestructible, all-encompassing, and incapable of infection, that breast milk can sustain a grown human. Under any normal biological conditions, entire chapters would culminate in much of the cast dehydrating and succumbing to desiccation. Also, the [[Voodoo Shark]] that comes up in the course of handwaving [[No Periods, Period]], and the overall capacity it has to drive geneticists to alcoholism, and...

* At what point did ''[[Lesbian Land 2250]]'' get an aspect of human biology correct? "Ginger Winters" thinks that vaginas are indestructible, all-encompassing, and incapable of infection, that breast milk can sustain a grown human. Under any normal biological conditions, entire chapters would culminate in much of the cast dehydrating and succumbing to desiccation. Also, the [[Voodoo Shark]] that comes up in the course of handwaving [[No Periods, Period]], and the overall capacity it has to drive geneticists to alcoholism, and...

* Early in ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'', Holly Short has a [[Character Filibuster]] denouncing sewage treatment as a [[Gaia's Lament|horrible violation of Mother Earth]], inspiring [[Fridge Horror]] in readers familiar with modern Germ Theory. When [[Can't Argue with Elves|the elves are]] ''[[Can't Argue with Elves|this obviously wrong]]'', someone should definitely be [[Screw You, Elves|arguing with them.]]

* ''[[Earth's Children]]'': In the second book when Jondalar is giving a young woman her First Rites (popping her cherry), Auel utterly fails at biology by describing what is clearly meant to be the hymen as "a blockage deep inside".

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* Too many ''[[Star Trek]]'' episodes to name (some are covered on the subtrope pages).

** Another ''Enterprise'' offender: an Ensign has a slug-pet that is not faring well on board ship, so they drop it off on a planet. Not its native planet, mind you—just ''a'' planet. Admittedly it won't have any breeding stock, but ''still''...

** ''[[Star Trek: ~~Voyager|~~Voyager]]''

** ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]''

*** In the episode "Macrocosm" we have viruses(!) which can grow in size - up to a meter, fly, and hover in the air - something tells me the word "virus" was completely misunderstood...

*** 'Virus' was only what everyone was calling them. They had features of many different forms of life, viruses included.

*** The Occampans (Kes' race) In ''Voyager'', can only reproduce ''once'', and have ''one child''. What kind of species would evolve such a trait and thrive? You'd need ~~EVERY~~ member of your race to reproduce to have 0 population growth. If any member of the race dies, then the race as a whole has taken a blow it cannot recover from! Heck, ''how'' did the Occampan race come about? Since they can have only one child, and thus cannot grow in numbers, how are there so many of them?

*** The Occampans (Kes' race) In ''Voyager'', can only reproduce ''once'', and have ''one child''. What kind of species would evolve such a trait and thrive? You'd need ''every'' member of your race to reproduce to have zero population growth. If any member of the race dies, then the race as a whole has taken a blow it cannot recover from! Heck, ''how'' did the Occampan race come about? Since they can have only one child, and thus cannot grow in numbers, how are there so many of them?

*** It was actually explained in a novella that twin and triplet births were extremely common among Ocampans, so it depends how you look at it.

** The ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|TNG]]'' episode "Genesis" was on a par with "Threshold"—demonstrating that Brannon Braga may have a PhD in this trope. Switching on Barclay's T-cells causes the Enterprise crew ~~to—sigh—devolve~~ to a variety of different species... most of which have common ancestors diverging ~~HUNDREDS~~ OF ~~MILLIONS~~ OF ~~YEARS~~ ~~AGO—and~~ Spot the cat becomes an iguana. Apparently in Star Trek, everyone walks around with copies of not only the future evolutionary patterns of their own species but ~~ALSO~~ whole swathes of species that are completely unrelated to them from their home planet. The worst offender being Barclay's devolution (and presumably re-evolution) into a ''spider'', which would only be possible if he devolved into a pre-Cambrian lifeform first.

** The ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|TNG]]'' episode "Genesis" was on a par with "Threshold"—demonstrating that Brannon Braga may have a PhD in this trope. Switching on Barclay's T-cells causes the Enterprise crew to — sigh — devolve to a variety of different species... most of which have common ancestors diverging ''hundreds of millions of years ago'' — and Spot the cat becomes an iguana. Apparently in ''Star Trek'', everyone walks around with copies of not only the future evolutionary patterns of their own species but ''also'' whole swathes of species that are completely unrelated to them from their home planet. The worst offender being Barclay's devolution (and presumably re-evolution) into a ''spider'', which would only be possible if he devolved into a pre-Cambrian lifeform first. Data devolving into a pocket calculator would have made more sense.

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*** a) ''Threshold'' didn't say that evolution was fixed, it just posited that it (change) could be severely (and randomly) accelerated in certain circumstances. Paris' random allergic reactions and physiological changes had nothing to do with evolution, which takes place over time and hundreds of generations. This is sci-fi, so concepts such as genes being forced into flux are par for the course. b) ''All'' life is related. DNA is the blueprint, the programming language. The episode was dealing with a 'what if' - namely, what if that language could be distorted and partially rewritten?

*** Data devolving into a pocket calculator would have made more sense.

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*** And even this was already plumbed with ''TNG'''s "The Chase", which attempts to cure at least three problems at once... by making all of the Alpha Quadrant's DNA part of a message by a progenitor race, also humanoid, that "seeded" planets with their genetic code in the hope of more sentient humanoids like themselves popping up. Cue Picard facepalm.

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*** a) ''Threshold'' didn't say that evolution was fixed, it just posited that it (change) could be severely (and randomly) accelerated in certain circumstances. Paris' random allergic reactions and physiological changes had nothing to do with evolution, which takes place over time and hundreds of generations. This is sci-fi, so concepts such as genes being forced into flux are par for the course. b) ~~ALL~~ life is related. DNA is the blueprint, the programming ~~lanaguage~~. The episode was dealing with a 'what if' - namely, what if that language could be distorted and partially rewritten?

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*** And even this was already plumbed with ''TNG'''s "The Chase", which attempts to cure at least three problems at once...by making all of the Alpha Quadrant's DNA part of a message by a progenitor race, also humanoid, that "seeded" planets with their genetic code in the hope of more sentient humanoids like themselves popping up. Cue Picard facepalm.

*** An original idea that inspired a lot of 'ancient ancestor' settings. To clarify, the original humanoids found that their home galaxy (not just one quadrant) contained no life that was like them. Their own extinction fears drove them to seed the Milky Way and as a result encourage humanoid life to develop. The code was like a signature for them - they wanted the Milky Way races to find out their origin to encourage cooperation.

* Brannon Braga, of ''[[Star Trek]]'' fame, went on to create a short-lived sci-fi series also called ''[[Threshold]]''. The premise? [[Assimilation Plot|Alien space signals]] cause people's DNA to begin re-writing itself! At least this time, the characters acknowledged that this should be totally impossible and had trouble dealing with the idea that it was actually happening.

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** In "Hitler's Last Secret", John explains, straight faced, that "Genes are those body cells known as the DNA molecule." Which is about as biologically accurate as saying "Fribble fribble rhubarb, fribble fribble ploo," and only slightly better grammatically.

*** A closer analogy would be someone saying: "Addresses are those towns known as the brick/two-by-four/cinder block".

* In ''[[Terminator]]: [[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]''s' first season, Derek needed a blood transfusion. Apparently, he needed his own blood type despite being AB ("Universal recipient", able to take blood from any other type)... Sarah said she was type O ("Universal donor", able to give blood to anyone), but her biological son John was AB?! Even if John's father Kyle was also AB, John must have an O from his mother, so he's either A or B, yet his not-AB-blood worked just fine... *headdesk*

* In ''[[Terminator]]: [[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]''{{'}}s first season, Derek needed a blood transfusion. Apparently, he needed his own blood type despite being AB ("Universal recipient", able to take blood from any other type)... Sarah said she was type O ("Universal donor", able to give blood to anyone), but her biological son John was AB?! Even if John's father Kyle was also AB, John must have an O from his mother, so he's either A or B, yet his not-AB-blood worked just fine... *headdesk*

* ''[[Animal Planet]]'' really, really should know better...

** An episode of ''[[Animal Planet]]'s: The Most Extreme'' was about modern day animals and their ancient ancestors. Fair enough...until they start talking about the Komodo Dragon and state that its ancestor was the ''[[Tyrannosaurus Rex]]''. If the producers of the show had done even [[Did Not Do the Research|five minutes]] [[Critical Research Failure|of research]] on the internet (or even just read a current book on dinosaurs), they would've realized that Komodo dragons and the Tyrannosaurus rex aren't even closely related to one another. A more true ancestor for the Komodo dragon would be the ancient Mosasaurs (sea-dwelling reptiles that lived around the same time as the dinosaurs). [[Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying]] smacking his/her head against the wall in disbelief. Your common farm chicken is more closely related to the T-rex (birds are essentially modern-day theropods) than the Komodo dragon is.

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* Sheldon in ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]''. Yes, ''[[Insufferable Genius|Sheldon]]''. When [[Drives Like Crazy|he is unable to learn to drive on a driving simulation without]] crashing into a pet store or [[Refuge in Audacity|ending up on the second floor of a building]], he claims that because he is the [[Evolutionary Levels|next stage in evolution of humanity]], citing his [[We Will Not Have Appendixes in the Future|small incisors]] and his massive <s>ego</s> brain, he does not need to learn how to drive, because the task is beneath him. Evolution does not work that way! Sheldon Cooper is also egotistical and occasionally delusionally convinced of his own superiority. He has been known to occasionally ignore various scientific principles in order to win arguments, particularly when it comes to superhero physics.

** Given that humanity is still evolving, every generation is a new stage. Sheldon's only mistake is that he overexaggerates his own significance in the process.

** He is missing the point of natural selection. Because of his psychological quirks and self-centerness, his fitness level currently appears to be very low (moreover he has a very low interest in finding a mate in the first place, much less conceiving and raising a child). Unless his ~~attitute~~ changes completely, he is going to be naturally selected against, and not pass on his genes. Evolution favors those who have multiple children, of course.

** He is missing the point of natural selection. Because of his psychological quirks and self-centerness, his fitness level currently appears to be very low (moreover he has a very low interest in finding a mate in the first place, much less conceiving and raising a child). Unless his attitude changes completely, he is going to be naturally selected against, and not pass on his genes. Evolution favors those who have multiple children, of course.

* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|Battlestar Galactica]]''

* The ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|Battlestar Galactica]]'' remake:

** In season 2, episode 13, the supposed genius Dr. Baltar heals president Roslin's cancer by injecting her with some cylon/human hybrid blood that is more resistant to diseases because it has no antigens (which means it has bloodtype O) and therefore it has no blood type. Therefore it is somehow capable of destroying a cancer in a very late stage. Furthermore, cancer cells (or any other animal cell type) aren't cultivated in a petri dish and on agar, as it is shown on the pictures Dr. Baltar has, but are instead cultivated in cultivation flasks in a fluid.

* On Discovery Channel's ''I Shouldn't Be Alive'', the narrator explain the effects of hypothermia on human cells, using the term "cell walls", in one episode (and is sure they have used it other times). Animals do not have cell walls (in fact, Animalia is the only kingdom where they are totally absent). Yes, they probably just don't want to explain what a cell membrane is/[[Viewers are Morons|assume the audience won't understand the explanation]], so they use a term the audience will know. Considering Discovery's association with fact and science, it seems like they would be willing to spend an extra ten seconds quickly explaining what it is.

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** The weird scorpion monster that Professor Lazarus transforms into is said to be an evolutionary possibility that humanity rejected long ago but has remained locked in the genes, or something along those lines.

** Another episode had the Doctor discovering an underground lair full of cloned humans infected with, in his words, ''"EVERY DISEASE IN THE UNIVERSE."'' They didn't die since all the diseases kept each other in equilibrium but if they touched ''you'', you died instantly and painfully. How did the Doctor cure these poor souls? Why, he doused himself in ten or so ''intravenous'' solutions designed to cure the diseases, then transmitted the cure by touch. One of these diseases, called "petrifold regression", [[Taken for Granite|turns you into stone]].

** In "The Hungry Earth" the Doctor is able to identify the monster as a {{spoiler|Silurian}} due to the fact that he can't see them with ~~infared~~ goggles. Cold blooded life forms aren't ''literally'' cold! Later, while explaining that the {{spoiler|Silurians}} aren't aliens, he calls them 'Homo Reptilians'. Doctor, you fail taxonomy forever.

** In "The Hungry Earth" the Doctor is able to identify the monster as a {{spoiler|Silurian}} due to the fact that he can't see them with infrared goggles. Cold blooded life forms aren't ''literally'' cold! Later, while explaining that the {{spoiler|Silurians}} aren't aliens, he calls them 'Homo Reptilians'. Doctor, you fail taxonomy forever.

** "Planet of the Ood" has Mr. Bartle constantly downing hair tonic which {{spoiler|turns out to be Ood-secretions that ~~TURN~~ ~~HIM~~ ~~INTO~~ AN ~~OOD~~. Complete with the external forebrain, which can apparently break through the hard palate to come out his mouth.}}

** "Planet of the Ood" has Mr. Bartle constantly downing hair tonic which {{spoiler|turns out to be Ood-secretions that ''turn him into an Ood''. Complete with the external forebrain, which can apparently break through the hard palate to come out his mouth.}}

** In "Daleks in Manhattan", the Daleks are using a giant lightning rod to power their genetic experiments. Okay. The Doctor mixes his own DNA into the results ''by hugging the lightning rod as it's struck by lighting''. Whu? DNA is conducted by electricity now?

** The classic episode "The Invisible Enemy" beggars description. The [[Big Bad]] is a prawn-shaped space virus which ''spawns''... let your imagination fill in the blanks.

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* In ''[[Babylon 5]]'' the [[Psi Corps]] covertly try to get Talia to take a treatment to "cure" her telepathy, when it would in fact turn her into a empath. It is then revealed that their plan involves breeding her with the other empath created using this process, in order to create empath babies. That's right, not only are they evil, they're also Lamarckians!

* ''[[Reign of Fire]]'': A whole species consisting of thousands of females and only one male? Talking about putting all your eggs in one basket...

** That's actually not impossible. Bees are sort of an example (there's generally more than one male of course, but hives are by far mostly female). A better example, however, is the ~~angelfish~~, believe it or not. ~~Angelfish~~ live in large schools of females led by a single male. When the male dies, one of the females actually switches gender and becomes the new male; ~~clownfish~~ also operate in a similar manner. So the scenario is completely possible.

** That's actually not impossible. Bees are sort of an example (there's generally more than one male of course, but hives are by far mostly female). A better example, however, is the Blue-Headed Wrass, believe it or not. Blue-Headed Wrasses live in large schools of females led by a single male. When the male dies, one of the females actually switches gender and becomes the new male. Clownfish also operate in a similar manner. So the scenario is completely possible.

*** This Troper hasn't heard of angelfishes having harems like that. He does know that Blue-Headed Wrasses have that reproductive pattern.

** Although it would be unlikely that killing the male would result in the extinction of the species, like depicted. It's more likely to be like the Anglerfish, one of the females changes into a new male to carry on. Which sort of means it ends on a [[Downer Ending]] if you think about it...

* The entire ''[[Stargate]]'' series is filled with terrible biology.

** In ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' and ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' there are many references to humans not being as evolved as other alien races. Let's not forget how you ascend, you have to evolve into it, or jump into an evolution machine, or have your brain operating at a certain "wavelength" or whatever happens to be the trope of the week.

** The Asgard have a serious problem, they are all clones and because they simply clone their last body their DNA is degrading! It seems that nobody had the bright idea to not copy the last clone, but just use the original copy every time.

*** Well, this is actually the point - they do not have any original from back in the time when they were still well enough. They found some ancient frozen asgard, but those were not yet ready to be used as "hosts". And of course, there is no saying what the requirements of the clone are - possibly, the mind transferring process isn't actually as simple as they make it to be - possibly, the body has have some compatibility with the "transplantee". By the time they realized they have a problem, it was already too late. Yes, they could have bought some time if they stored some current copies for later use, but at the end of the series, {{spoiler|they made it clear they do not want to protract their "death" as a species any longer, when there are no advancements in their condition}}.

** In ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' Dr. Becket concludes that the Wraith evolved from the Aratis bug by using every trope in the biology book. The DNA of the Aratis bug mixed with human DNA, and because parasites are normally identical to hosts they feed from, the Wraith were born.

* ''[[Glee]]'' has had several in-universe examples:

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** "...the neck bone's connected to the head bone..." [No such thing as "the" neck or head bone.]

** Depending on how you look at it, either ''very few'' bones are actually "connected" to other bones, or pretty much ''all'' of them are connected to ''all'' the others (the various skull bones are pretty clearly connected to each other, as are the fused bones at the other end of the spine; other than that, they mostly just hang out near each other and are connected only by soft tissue without actually touching).

== New Media ==

* [http://www.fstdt.net/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=25750 "As far as I know I wasn't an egg. I don't believe human beings lay eggs do they?"]

* Lampshaded [http://xninjared.deviantart.com/art/The-Mermaid-Problem-155487940 here] about Mermaids.

== Tabletop Games ==

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** In the Atlantis Sourcebook, a parasite called a Brain Feeder is said to "...excrete a chemical that anesthetizes the area of the brain it is eating..." This would be unnecessary, as there are no pain receptors in the brain, and therefore it can't feel pain.

** This one could well be a case of [[Science Marches On]]. There is an animal race in the books called an Ostrosaurus, which is not a dinosaur but "a large featherless bird." According to modern paleontology, that is exactly what dinosaurs were.

* ''[[FATAL]]'' allows for completely out-of-whack character biology. Would you like to have nipples the size of your head and an anus with negative circumference? Equally silly is being able to hit a very specific internal organ ~~AND~~ ~~NOTHING~~ ~~ELSE~~ on the enemy; to quote [http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml one of the more infamous reviews]:

* ''[[FATAL]]'' allows for completely out-of-whack character biology. Would you like to have nipples the size of your head and an anus with negative circumference? Equally silly is being able to hit a very specific internal organ ''and nothing else'' on the enemy; to quote [http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml one of the more infamous reviews]:

{{quote|"The two stared at each other, then struck simultaneously. Jack's sword cleaved through the cultist's chest, cleaving through the nipple, the xiphoid process - the lowest part of the sternum - and the shoulder blade. The cultist's blade only caused damage to Jack's appendix and his adrenal gland, somehow missing everything else in front of and in back of Jack's adrenal gland and appendix."}}

* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' at least justifies its moments of failing biology forever (admittedly, usually [[A Wizard Did It]]).

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** Some D&D examples of this trope don't even have [[A Wizard Did It]] as an excuse. One of the Mystara setting's supplements featured a former underground empire of gnomes, now abandoned and infested with kobolds, various dungeon vermin, and wild herds of fungus-grazing ''mules''. The mules were supposedly the feral descendents of the gnomes' mule beasts of burden. While female mules may not be [[Conviction by Counterfactual Clue|100% sterile]], fertile ''males'' are so rare that the only evidence of such creatures is anecdotal, making a wild population of mules virtually impossible even on the surface, never mind underground!

** Many factual details about some animals are intentionally left out for the sake of game balance and simplicity. No one would want a nearly blind hedgehog familiar or a lion animal companion sleeping over 15 hours a day.

== Toys ==

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** Seaweed the Otter is depicted with seaweed in her paws, as if she were eating it. Sea otters eat largely eat marine invertebrates and fish.

* From ''[[Bionicle]]'': According the Greg Farshtey, the Makuta "evolved" into antidermis. However, if the Makuta were originally ''meant'' and specifically engineered by the Great Beings so that this would happen, this would make it simple metamorphosis.

== Video Games ==

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* ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'': A rare example of simple mistakes than mismanagement of biological knowledge. In some cases random glitches or hacks allow you to ride other animals that are often used for hunting challenges. However, they still gallop and neigh like horses (as well as floating inches off the ground)- including the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeJSfVmeKDU&feature=related elk], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W75tiaN0uCA&feature=related wolf], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycGiIxlzZGc grizzly bear], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS1qGWlOYns cougar], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSrmRHJKc3A deer], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_8P6W9dFf4 bobcat], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK_6Ns87_wU&feature=related dog], and even a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvY2W3HOJ4M jack-rabbit]. Others were more intentional. For example pumas don't sound like [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt8hwLlSyvo&feature=related jaguars]. In fact they don't roar at all, but growl, hiss and make [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKw4OFAu1WM snarly near-human screams].

* ''[[Wario Master of Disguise]]'' has a dolphin boss who breathes water instead of air, and the way to beat it involves trapping it above water so it gasps like a fish. [[Sarcasm Mode|Because dolphins are obviously fish.]]

== Web Comics ==

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* [[Rule of Funny|Played for laughs]] by ''[[Cracked.com]]'': "It's like every single AC/DC album cover came to life and punched your eyeballs right in the dick." Read more: [http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-images-too-badass-to-be-real-that-totally-are/ 7 Images Too Badass To Be Real (That Totally Are)]

* Keith Thompson's [http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/ghoul.html Ghoul] seems to depict [[wikipedia:Kuru (disease)|Kuru]] as the complete opposite of what it really is: rather than slowly turning destroying the physical and mental capabilities of its victims as it does in [[Real Life]], Keith Thompson's Kuru [[Our Zombies Are Different|zombifies]] them. However, he has [[Shown His Work]] in that both versions of the disease are transmitted by eating infected corpses.

== Western Animation ==

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* 1973/74 ''[[Superfriends]]'' episode "The Watermen''. When the title aliens extract silicon from sea water, it causes the sea water to immediately turn into [[wikipedia:Red tide|red tide]]. Just one problem: red tide is caused by microorganisms, not a lack of silicon. This is Lampshaded when Professor Matey notes that it should be impossible.

* Among the many errors regarding animal physiology and behavior, one the more minor in [[Hero: 108]] is the Deer King and his men, who neigh, grunt, and whinny like horses even though deer in real life make noises more like they have kazoos stuck in their throats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=[[Xa Ph Vc Ldz 4 M]]&feature=fvwrel or barking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EWzg4eiJnM&feature=related

== Real Life ==

* In Egypt, they started slaughtering pigs to stop the spread of swine flu (H1N1). Problem is, H1N1 [[Non-Indicative Name|isn't spread by pigs]] any more than your normal flu is. As you might expect, the ''actual'' reasoning was political; it was an attempt to appease the Islamists (who often take the Islamic aversion to pork to new extremes), who had been making trouble.

** Iraq used the same "reasoning" to sacrifice the only 3 wild boars that lived in the Baghdad Zoo, which is even less logical. At least farm pigs live alongside people...

* The province of Alberta in Canada is currently vaccinating citizens for the seasonal flu. However, the health minister has stated that once the H1N1 vaccine becomes available, the seasonal vaccine will no longer be used in favour of exclusively vaccinating for ~~[[H 1 N 1]]~~.

* The province of Alberta in Canada is currently{{when}} vaccinating citizens for the seasonal flu. However, the health minister has stated that once the H1N1 vaccine becomes available, the seasonal vaccine will no longer be used in favour of exclusively vaccinating for H1N1.

* The old idea that antibacterial hand gel, which touts a 99.9% effectiveness rate, makes bacteria stronger by leaving only the ones that are resistant to reproduce. While this is true for antibiotic medicines (when taken not according to the doctor's orders), the hand gels usually work by the inclusion of [[Kill'Em All|alcohol]], where the survivors are usually so only because of the [[Random Number God|laws of statistics]]. Note that only the gels that don't require water (they simply evaporate) usually use alcohol. Antibacterial "soap" usually uses triclosan or another active chemical, towards which resistance may conceivably build up. The discussion on this is fairly recent as well, corresponding with the recent popularity of such products, and they're used by people to prevent the Flu and common cold. Which, mind you, are caused by ''viruses'', not bacteria, and the reason why they say 99.9% and not 100% is because even ~~thought~~ the products do work 100% it can not be proven, and any scientist should know that you can never, ever be 100% certain of anything. You can be so close that any other possibility is ridiculously remote, but never 100% certain.

* The old idea that antibacterial hand gel, which touts a 99.9% effectiveness rate, makes bacteria stronger by leaving only the ones that are resistant to reproduce. While this is true for antibiotic medicines (when taken not according to the doctor's orders), the hand gels usually work by the inclusion of [[Kill'Em All|alcohol]], where the survivors are usually so only because of the [[Random Number God|laws of statistics]]. Note that only the gels that don't require water (they simply evaporate) usually use alcohol. Antibacterial "soap" usually uses triclosan or another active chemical, towards which resistance may conceivably build up. The discussion on this is fairly recent as well, corresponding with the recent popularity of such products, and they're used by people to prevent the Flu and common cold. Which, mind you, are caused by ''viruses'', not bacteria, and the reason why they say 99.9% and not 100% is because even though the products do work 100% it can not be proven, and any scientist should know that you can never, ever be 100% certain of anything. You can be so close that any other possibility is ridiculously remote, but never 100% certain.

* The data that is available suggests that antibacterial soap is not that much better at disinfecting than regular soap, but that's not a knock against triclosan; most of the scaremongers forgot that regular old soap is an excellent disinfectant. At least you can always complain about antibacterial agents (any of them) on the grounds that they give children weak immune systems as they are never exposed to pathogens, and allergies and autoimmune diseases as, in layman's terms, their immune cells get bored and start attacking random things to entertain themselves, up to and including other cells in the body.

** The data that is available suggests that antibacterial soap is not that much better at disinfecting than regular soap, but that's not a knock against triclosan; most of the scaremongers forgot that regular old soap is an excellent disinfectant. At least you can always complain about antibacterial agents (any of them) on the grounds that they give children weak immune systems as they are never exposed to pathogens, and allergies and autoimmune diseases as, in layman's terms, their immune cells get bored and start attacking random things to entertain themselves, up to and including other cells in the body.

* Generation Rescue and other fringe groups that believe mercury in vaccines causes autism, despite the fact that their claims aren't backed up by actual studies, and the original report suggesting the link was rejected by every major health organization and even retracted by all but one of its own authors (and the one lost his medical license) and the medical journal that published it. Even after mercury was removed from vaccines (and the type they were using wasn't harmful), the fringe groups still suggest a link between vaccines and autism. This belief resonates deeper than most people realize. Many of the "vaccines cause autism" crowd are convinced that the skeptics want to go back to the old days, when mothers were blamed for making their kids autistic by [[Evil Matriarch|being too cold]]. The skeptics don't even begin to recognize what's going on and assume the anti-vaccine crowd is just a bunch of irrational idiots, when in reality they're simply terrified beyond words that we'll go back to the "women are evil ice bitch monsters who destroy little boys" days.

** Similarly, the "refrigerator mother" theory was popular from about the 1950s through the 1970s, after which it fell out of favor, though there are still a few die-hard proponents. The scientific consensus for the last generation or so has leaned strongly towards autism being primarily genetic in origin.

* The common misconceptions about evolution—namely the joke that "If humans evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?". Meant as a joke mocking this POV, sadly people have taken that viewpoint and assume they know all about evolution when really, anyone who has read a paper about evolution or even a ~~jr.~~ high level section about Evolution can prove that wrong. Namely, people believing that evolutions happens at the ''species level''. If that was true; there would either be no Corgis or Dachshunds, which evolved from the same common ancestor. Just to give a very ''small'' example since humans, monkeys, and apes ''all'' evolved from various progenitors. Humans did not evolve from monkeys and apes, because monkeys and apes have evolved just as much from their own simian ancestors and are just as "advanced" as we are. The divergence point, or so-called "missing link", is perhaps the ''Nakalipithecus'' genus of Great Apes, who lived in modern-day Kenya some 8-10 million years ago and serve as the root from which humans and other modern apes evolved from.

* The common misconceptions about evolution—namely the joke that "If humans evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?". Meant as a joke mocking this POV, sadly people have taken that viewpoint and assume they know all about evolution when really, anyone who has read a paper about evolution or even a junior-high level section about Evolution can prove that wrong. Namely, people believing that evolutions happens at the ''species level''. If that was true; there would either be no Corgis or Dachshunds, which evolved from the same common ancestor. Just to give a very ''small'' example since humans, monkeys, and apes ''all'' evolved from various progenitors. Humans did not evolve from monkeys and apes, because monkeys and apes have evolved just as much from their own simian ancestors and are just as "advanced" as we are. The divergence point, or so-called "missing link", is perhaps the ''Nakalipithecus'' genus of Great Apes, who lived in modern-day Kenya some 8-10 million years ago and serve as the root from which humans and other modern apes evolved from.

** ''If Americans descended from Europeans then why are there still Europeans?!''

* [[Ray Comfort]] was filmed in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfv-Qn1M58I a clip] where he used the banana as evidence of intelligent design, going so far as to call it the "atheist's nightmare". The banana, Comfort pointed out, was perfectly shaped to fit the hand, came in handy packaging with a pull tab, and conveniently changed color to let you know when it was ripe. Unfortunately for Comfort, our banana is the domesticated version of a plant that forms [http://www.expatintaiwan.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/wild-banana.jpg a small, turd-shaped fruit filled with huge seeds and little in the way of edible pulp.]

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* In a cross-discipline example, another common misconception of creationists is that 'evolution' is another way of saying 'any science that disproves a literal reading of Genesis'. This will result in creationists calling things like the Big Bang, continental drift, and any other 'long term' scientific theory as being a part of evolution.

** You end up with quotes like "According to evolutionary theory, the universe was formed 14 billion years ago."

* It's been said (and even reported in supposedly reputable newspapers) that redheads and blonds will disappear in favor of ~~brunettes~~ at some point because both hair colors are recessive conditions. This is proven false by the Hardy-Weinberg principle, which basically states that alleles and genotypes (whether recessive or dominant) will remain constant in a population unless disturbed by an exterior influence. What this means is that unless blondes and redheads were selectively removed from the breeding population by outside circumstances (such as pro-brunette marriage laws, a mutation that make blondes and redheads sterile, or a hair color-specific nuclear bomb), the genes responsible for them aren't going to die out. Since there are sizable segments of the human population who are attracted to [[Everyone Loves Blondes|blondes]] and [[Heroes Want Redheads|redheads]] (which makes them more likely to mate and reproduce with them), the chances of them dying out becomes even lower. This rumor was a [[wikipedia:Red hair#Extinction hoax|hoax]], a falsified study from Procter & Gamble attempting to boost hair dye sales.

* It's been said (and even reported in supposedly reputable newspapers) that redheads and blonds will disappear in favor of brunets at some point because both hair colors are recessive conditions. This is proven false by the Hardy-Weinberg principle, which basically states that alleles and genotypes (whether recessive or dominant) will remain constant in a population unless disturbed by an exterior influence. What this means is that unless blondes and redheads were selectively removed from the breeding population by outside circumstances (such as pro-brunette marriage laws, a mutation that make blondes and redheads sterile, or a hair color-specific nuclear bomb), the genes responsible for them aren't going to die out. Since there are sizable segments of the human population who are attracted to [[Everyone Loves Blondes|blondes]] and [[Heroes Want Redheads|redheads]] (which makes them more likely to mate and reproduce with them), the chances of them dying out becomes even lower. This rumor was a [[wikipedia:Red hair#Extinction hoax|hoax]], a falsified study from Procter & Gamble attempting to boost hair dye sales.

* Most people think hollow bones like those of birds are fragile. In reality, thanks to a complex honeycomb structure, bird bones are no more fragile than those of mammals. In the case of the now extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs, both having pneumatic skeletons, fragility would mean death, and they obviously had quite strong yet light bones.

** Even more, Mammals also have hollow bones. In fact, a bird's bones are '''heavier''' than a same sized mammal's, since they have to hold all the muscles needed for flight.

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* Ont he subject of "convergent evolution" there are several cases of this.

** There's an annoying tendency to cite the koala as an example because it's a marsupial that looks a bit like a bear. But appearance is the ''only'' bear-like thing about a koala: it diet, habitat preferences, life cycle and behavior are totally different from bears'. Convergent evolution happens when two species show similar traits because they've been subject to similar selective pressures over time, and have independently hit upon the same solutions. If anything, a koala shows convergence with ''sloths'', not bears.

** There's also insect wings and bird wings. While both are structures used to allow organisms to fit a specific ecological niche (the air, opportunities afforded by flying rather than walking/swimming), the two structures are derived from two ~~COMPLETELY~~ different origins and developed in compeltely different pathways. Bird wings are modified forelimbs, whereas insect wings are thought to be modified ''gill structures'', believe it or not.

** There's also insect wings and bird wings. While both are structures used to allow organisms to fit a specific ecological niche (the air, opportunities afforded by flying rather than walking/swimming), the two structures are derived from two ''completely'' different origins and developed in compeltely different pathways. Bird wings are modified forelimbs, whereas insect wings are thought to be modified ''gill structures'', believe it or not.

** And then there's [http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/introducing/what_is_thylacine_1.htm thylacine], also known as the Tasmanian wolf and Tasmanian tiger. It's a marsupial, but the niche it filled was a nearly perfect mix of available prey, environmental issues, and so on. The niche was one similar to many canine predators, such as the wolf, so as the species evolved it looked more like canines, leading occasionally to somewhat understandable confusion over classifying it to this day amongst people who only see a skeleton or the like.

* According to legend, one night the students of [[wikipedia:Baron Cuvier|Baron Cuvier]] (one of the founders of modern paleontology and comparative anatomy) decided to play a trick on their instructor. They fashioned a medley of skins, skulls and other animal parts (including the head and legs of a deer) into a credibly monstrous costume. One brave fellow then donned the chimeric assemblage, crept into the Baron's bedroom when he was asleep and growled "Cuvier, wake up! I am going to eat you!" Cuvier woke up, took one look at the deer parts that formed part of the costume and sniffed "Impossible! You have horns and hooves (and are therefore not not a predator.)" The prank is more commonly reported as: "Cuvier, wake up! I am the Devil! I am going to eat you!" His response was "Divided hoof; graminivorous! It cannot be done." Apparently Satan is vegan.

* Minor but ~~pertinent—anyone~~ who tells you that the tear duct is the source of tears, or that tears are what happen when you cry is wrong and didn't pay attention in biology class. Tears are the fluid that keeps your eyes moist, which come from the tear ''gland'', which is situated above the eye; the tear duct drains them away to keep them under control, since they flow constantly instead of waiting for your eyeballs to dry out. There is research that suggests that psychic (crying) tears have a different composition than reflex (irritation) tears and may be involved in chemical signaling, though not much research has been done in this area.

* Minor but pertinent: anyone who tells you that the tear duct is the source of tears, or that tears are what happen when you cry is wrong and didn't pay attention in biology class. Tears are the fluid that keeps your eyes moist, which come from the tear ''gland'', which is situated above the eye; the tear duct drains them away to keep them under control, since they flow constantly instead of waiting for your eyeballs to dry out. There is research that suggests that psychic (crying) tears have a different composition than reflex (irritation) tears and may be involved in chemical signaling, though not much research has been done in this area.

* Due to the wording of a certain Florida bestiality law, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/11/floridas-bestiality-law_n_860836.html#s277667&title=Dave_Grossman sex may have been outlawed ~~all together~~.]

* Due to the wording of a certain Florida bestiality law, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/11/floridas-bestiality-law_n_860836.html#s277667&title=Dave_Grossman sex may have been outlawed altogether.]

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3eUVjnhs1c This video] shows Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in a public debate with some rather interpretive ideas about fetal development. Doubles as a case of failing sex ed forever.

** Triples as a [[Chewbacca Defense|Chewbacca Attack]] against Planned Parenthood, since it's completely out of context and tangential to their argument.