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Decartes thought the Pinial gland acted as the link between the mind and the immortal soul. This is not quite as random as it sounds - it is enclosed in a membrane and doesn't seem to be taking infor …

People have put electrodes into brains and stimulated individual cells. They have made small sets of living cells do simple computations. At the lowest level, the answer is 'yes'. The brain is plastic …

Compare your creatures that live under UV light to creatures that live in deserts... Your star gives off more UV than the sun does. For some short wavelengths, it gives off a lot more. The short wavel …

A very much smaller example is the Pando or clonal colony of the quaking aspen. This is a single living thing weighing 6 million Kg. This coexists with the creatures that live with it. However, suppos …

The Festo Air Jelly is a drone with a jellyfish-like action. Many parts such as the paddles could be transparent. Other parts could be made thinner, or painted black. This would still be visible in go …

We smell in stereo. In an experiment, people were asked to follow a short trail of chocolate scent across grass. Those who could do it developed a technique of moving their head from side to side to u …

What sort evolutionary path did they take on there hellhole of a world to come to this!? Not a hellhole. They were the apex predator. It is a vast simplification, but we recognise two common evoluti …

Apologies for the second answer, but this takes a completely different tack, and is not compatible with my first answer. It also risks being judged off-topic as you original question was about evoluti …

Just on aesthetic grounds, I would argue for inverting the retina. You could have the light sensing cells on the top, and the blood vessels and nerves on the underneath. You would not get a detached r …

The nearest I can find is a giant clam. These are filter-feeders, which ain't 'feeding of the energy at the core of the planet' but it is a slow absorption of energy in a dilute form, so it may serve …

There is a bacterium that lives exclusively off radioactivity There are some organic chemical reactions that prefer deuterium to hydrogen. The aldol condensation preferentially substitutes deuterium f …

It seems small, faster-growing plants are a better bet than most trees. You might want to follow what this bloke does. Reply to comments: Yes, it would be nice to have families live in a. single giant …

Here is a picture of the wing of a Giant Space Bat as it approaches the Earth. Actually, no, it is the Planetary Society's LightSail 2 deployment. A space bird could glide using the solar winds and l …

Slime moulds have something, even if we would not recognise it as a nervous system. If they are going to make a blob that moves like a slug, then need some sort of internal communication so they don't …

Unlikely. There is not a lot of chlorine in the earth's crust. There is a lot more oxygen and hydrogen. This is probably also true for the output planets. Many of the moons may have water beneath. I d …