I sed:
>But, that is not to say that we can't or shouldn't talk about
>weird bio-chemistry and other stuff. Indeed sometimes us poor
>non-bio types can get a lot of neato ideas from hearing about a
>particularly weird animal... I remember a discussion off line a
>while back on some kind of weird frog that carried it's young
>tadpoles around *Under* the skin of the female. When they were
>'born' hundreds of these lil suckers ripped their way out through
>the skin of the female. BLEAH! ICK! :-P
PEEPER toads! That was the name...
Mark sez:
}That's just the tip of the iceberg where Rana (African Treefrog family)
}is concerned. Read "Jurassic Park" (Crichton) or "Legacy of Herot"
}(Niven) for some real chillers about frog-like critters, or similar
}effects. If you want weird animals, you don't even have to leave Earth
}to find creatures that can lift 30 times their own weight, spit live
}steam, excrete caustic chemicals, or survive being frozen in a block
}of ice for over three months. That's plenty weird enough without
}inventing space monsters with heretofore unheard of biologies.
These are exactly the sort of things *I'd* like to hear about. It
helps if one knows what kind of weird things are here on *earth* before
we all start figuring out what weird things might be going down in space.
Heck! Did you know there is SULPHUR based life on *EARTH*? Weird little
worm critters that metabolize the sulphur compounds at the continental
plates in the oceans.
2G Scott