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Artistic License Biology: Difference between revisions
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* [[All Flyers Are Birds]]
* [[All Genes Are Codominant]]
* [[Anatomically
* [[Animal Gender Bender]]
* [[Artistic License Animal Care]]
* [[Belly Buttonless]]
* [[Cloning Blues]]
* [[CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable]]
* [[Diurnal Nocturnal Animal]]
* [[Electric Jellyfish]]
* [[Explosive Decompression]]
* [[Extra Y, Extra Violent]]
* [[Flatline Plotline]]
* [[Gender Equals Breed|Gender = Breed]]
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* [[Hollywood Evolution]]
** [[Devolution Device]]
** [[Evolution Power
** [[Evolutionary Levels]]
** [[Evolutionary Stasis]]
** [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke]]
** [[Goal
** [[Hollywood Genetics]]
** [[Lamarck Was Right]]
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* [[More Predators Than Prey]]
* [[No Biochemical Barriers]]
* [[
* [[Noisy Nature]]
* [[No Dead Body Poops]]
* [[Nonhumans Lack Attributes]]
* [[No Periods, Period]]
* [[Non-Mammal Mammaries]]
* [[Nuclear Nasty]] (Note, this only applies for the earlier un-ironic examples where they actually thought radiation worked that way instead of the [[Art Major Biology|later ones]] where it was done for sheer [[Rule of Cool]])
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** [[Somewhere an Ornithologist Is Crying]]
** [[Somewhere a Palaeontologist Is Crying]]
*** [[Ptero
*** [[Raptor Attack]]
* [[Spontaneous Generation]]
* [[Super
* [[Taxonomic Term Confusion]]
* [[Toothy Bird]]
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== Comic Books ==
* In the [[Wham! Episode]] of [[Alan Moore]]'s ''[[Swamp Thing]]'', it is revealed that {{spoiler|Swamp Thing is actually a plant, not a transformed human}}. Fair enough (stranger things have happened in the DC Universe). The thing is, we're told that his memories were transferred to {{spoiler|the plant}} in the same way that [[wikipedia:Planarium|planarian]] worms can learn how to run a maze by ''eating other planarians that solved the same maze''. While it is, admittedly, a fantastic idea for sci-fi writers to play with, it's too bad the planarian worm experiment from 1962 was faulty to begin with and has since been discredited. The new worms in the maze were actually following the slime trails left by the old ones, rather than relying on transferred memories. Placed in a fresh maze, they performed no better than the old ones. (Funnily enough, the scientist saying this in the story is, at his best, not quite right in the head. And later, Moore ''does'', in fact, reveal that [[A Wizard Did It]].)
* [[Jack Chick|Chick Tracts]].
** "That Crazy Guy" is intended to warn teenagers about the dangers of premarital sex. Among other errors, it includes the old saw about there being holes in latex big enough for HIV to pass through (and for some reason, the statement that doctors don't trust latex gloves to protect them from HIV). In reality what matters is if fluid (the medium for transmission)can pass through the latex, which is dependent on factors like hydrophobicity (surface tension) rather than just pore size. Plus the strong implication that HIV will immediately kill you within a few weeks, rather than taking possibly a decade or so before fatal symptoms set in. (In this light it's actually a good thing she also got gonorrhea, however that happened, because it lead to early treatment for HIV.)
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** 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 Fifty 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.
** 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.
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** 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.
*** Actually, given Godzilla's mass, the amount of force generated by falling at that speed would have been less "splatter" and more "[[Earthshattering Kaboom]]."
* In ''[[Showgirls]]'', does Kyle MacLachlan's penis [[The Nostalgia Chick (Web Video)|exist in the midst of his stomach]]? A double case of this and [[Anatomically
* In ''[[The Matrix]]'', Agent Smith gives a [[Hannibal Lecture]] on how humans are viruses, because they don't instinctively develop an equilibrium with their environment like other mammals and instead breed until they can't support themselves and have to move on. In reality, mammals do not instinctively do that, and equilibrium is something forced on them.
* When Major Cain tries to persuade Alice to cooperate with Umbrella in ''[[Resident Evil Apocalypse (Film)|Resident Evil Apocalypse]]'', she calls herself a freak. Cain's reply? "No. You're not mutation, you're evolution!". If Alice were to breed and pass on her mutation, then it would be evolution.
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** Anacondas don't grow that damn big.
** They don't move at the speed of a cheetah in chase.
** They don't predominantly prey on humans, especially after [[Super
** They don't eat multiple preys the size of a human being one after the other. After consuming a meal like that (which can take hours), the snake will find a secure location where it will remain immobile for months to digest its food.
** And they certainly don't regurgitate their prey just so they can hunt again out of sheer sadism. They sometimes do this for safety purposes, such as when they're threatened by a predator and they can't afford to be lethargic by having such a big meal in their stomach.
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* 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...
* Early in ''[[Artemis Fowl (Literature)|Artemis Fowl]]'', Holly Short has a [[Character Filibuster]] denouncing sewage treatment as a [[
* ''[[Earths 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".
* ''[[Hothouse Flower and The Nine Plants of Desire (Literature)|Hothouse Flower and The Nine Plants of Desire]]'':
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== Live-Action TV ==
* In one of the early episodes of ''[[Smallville]]'' (which, admittedly, is not well-known for scientific accuracy), an embittered [[Loners Are Freaks|loner entomologist]] decides to take out his [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|newfound mutant aggression]] on his mother. He blames this on his nifty bug genes, but rather than describing a real critter, he likens himself to the fictitious pharaoh spider. The fact that this creature exists in ''[[Sphinx and The Cursed Mummy]]'' is either a coincidence or a [[Shout
* ''[[I Carly]]'':
{{quote| '''Spencer:''' Do girls ''have'' bladders?}}
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** 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.
* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined
** 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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** Except for those apes that are ''omnivorous'' and HUNT, humans and Chimpanzees being two examples.
*** But ''all'' apes eat fruit, whereas very few primates eat meat. Bigfoot's diet is anybody's guess, so why not select a bait that's palatable to virtually every sort of primate, rather than something only a few would consider edible? The only reason to choose salmon rather than fruit is if you want photos of ''bears'' stealing your bait.
* ''[[
** 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]].
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* One episode of ''[[Supernatural (TV)|Supernatural]]'' involved changelings that replaced children, then fed on the unsuspecting mothers' synovial fluid. The creatures left big lamprey-like bite marks at the bases of the mothers' necks, which only makes anatomical sense if they feed on ''cerebrospinal'' fluid; to get synovial fluid, they ought to have bitten knees, hips, and other large diarthrotic joints. A loss of synovial fluid should not cause death, by the way: it causes severe arthritis, which none of the afflicted mothers exhibited.
** In another episode, a charred bone from a witch's bundle is identified by the boys as that of a newborn baby. Long bones of infants don't have fused epiphyses on their ends, while this one clearly has them.
* In ''[[
* ''[[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.
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== Web Original ==
* Biology failure is a regular charge faced by the [[PPC]], particularly in its [[Anatomically
* [[Cake Wrecks]] often features things that are supposed to be cake-and-frosting representations of people. Most of them are anatomically implausible at best, often involving boneless limbs, off-centre faces, and oddly contorted positions.
{{quote| "Last time I checked, turtles don't walk around facing the sky."}}
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[[Category:Tropes On Science and Unscience]]
[[Category:index]]
[[Category:Artistic License Biology]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
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