Let’s keep things simple two rules.

  • No giving sentience, This is a no brainer issue.
  • Let’s keep it to beings under the Animilia kingdom. “mutated virus/bacteria” is a common trope.

To start:

Let’s modify ants to have lungs.

Most insects are constrained by the amount of oxygen they can acquire through their exoskeleton.

Imagine how big they can get if they didn’t have that constraint?

  • Jo Miran
    link
    fedilink
    316 months ago

    A breed of 100+ pound Chihuahua with the same temperament as the original.

  • slazer2au
    link
    fedilink
    English
    306 months ago

    Cows now have tetrodotoxin like Fugu fish. Incorrectly prepared cows now have the chance to kill you.

    • flicker
      link
      fedilink
      96 months ago

      Why did I read this like patch notes on a game?

  • @makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    17
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    Both male and female mosquitos now drink blood and they spit some of the last person’s blood in you when they drink, causing them to spread blood borne diseases

  • HobbitFoot
    link
    fedilink
    English
    136 months ago

    In a push to deal with micro plastics, bacteria are developed to be able to break down plastic. Eventually, it gets into the plastic installed for a purpose and starts breaking that down.

    • @Zahille7@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      66 months ago

      Damn I thought you were gonna say it gets into our bodies and eats us as we’re becoming part plastic nowadays.

      That’s a horror movie premise right there.

    • @AA5B@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      2
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      I thought I read about this for real a while back? In a bid to make plastic decay faster, make it out of cellulose with embedded bacteria that can break it down. It still happens too slowly for most plastic packaging

  • @Im_old@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    116 months ago

    Mhh, insects in general IIRC are also constrained by the fact they have exoskeletons: i.e. their internal organs are just in a bag. So they can’t grow too much or they just squish I think.

    Imagine them being able to become vertebrates. You can have insects the size of cats I think before the osmosis breathing tubes they currently have are not a thing. Lungs would be the next thing I guess.

    Disclaimer: I’m not a biologist and just make stuff up from what I remember from high school biology, and it was last millennium!

    • @sbv@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      96 months ago

      According to my sister-in-law’s then boyfriend (who was a biologist or an insect guy or something), spiders and insects can have lung-line organs called book lungs. So they have options. Creepy buggy insecty options.

      • @Im_old@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        36 months ago

        Oh right, I’ve read about that on coconut crabs I think. There you go, they are already half there.

  • techwooded
    link
    fedilink
    76 months ago

    Not very up on biology, so not sure if this would even be a thing, but I would say some kind of internal structure like plants allowing animals to overcome the square-cube law

  • Give human level intelligence to gorillas, this is worse then just human level chimpanzees in the fact gorilla’s are beefy and could rip the average human in to pieces. With human level intelligence they would be a force to me reckoned with

  • IHave69XiBucks
    link
    fedilink
    06 months ago

    Some common form of bacteria modified to break down plastics rapidly the way they do organic matter. Youd see buildings falling apart, packaging need to be redesigned for everything, electronics rotting, etc.

    • IHave69XiBucks
      link
      fedilink
      16 months ago

      And if u wanna end the world just make smallpox as contagious as the common cold and release it into the wild with a small change to make all current vaccines useless.