this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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Ray cat (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted 4 months ago by Plum to c/wikipedia
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[–] chemical_cutthroat 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Lmao, the "artist's rendition".

[–] NavySqueal 5 points 4 months ago

"95% Chance to hit"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The thing about genes is that if there aren't natural selection pressures to keep certain traits, they tend to drift, and traits can change or become entirely non-functional over a surprisingly short time. I would expect, unless there was a concerted effort to maintain the radiation detection trait over those 10,000 years through careful breeding, the cats would lose their radiation triggered appearance change behavior before it actually had a chance to be useful to people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Maybe genetic engineering could advance enough that they could make it so changes to the gene would lead to sterility or something like that. Like make it part of some essential reproductive genes.

Admittedly I'm thinking about this more in terms of sci-fi worldbuilding than realism.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

We're all gonna have to move. TO THIS CATCHY TUNE

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

What a weird (and awesome) thing to exist.

[–] owenfromcanada 4 points 4 months ago

Wait, I've seen this one before...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Can we petition https://www.thethoughtemporium.com/

To engineer one and secretly release it in a viral agent as to infect all cats globally.

[–] hahattpro 2 points 4 months ago

The idea was proposed in 1984

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

In 2004, a Danish company created mine-detecting plants that changed color when their roots were exposed to landmine leakage. So yeah, this actually makes sense that we'd imagine this kind of solution.