Fire Breath For Humanoids... Biologically Possible In Scifi?

[Spacescifi]

Based on a bit of research it seems it is.

Here is how: Many lifeforms produce methane as a byproduct of waste they excrete, so what if they used those same gases for fire breath?

 

Ignition: To set methane on fire you need to light it up or spark it. This can be done with special metallic nubs located on the roof and jowls inside the mouth. These would generate electric bolts between them as the methane is rapidly blown out the mouth.

 

Caveauts: Any intelligent biological race with these abilities must already be highly resistant to burning, especially inside their mouth as well as their skin, hair, and eyes. Otherwise they would hurt themselves more. They also need to be resistant to electric shock as well.

 

Range: Would be low if just using breath blowing. But what if the neck had side air pockets that swelled with compressed methane before it was blown out? That would provide more range. It won't be like a military flame thrower for range, since those can reach 70 feet.

I think at most you may get ten feet range at best.

Conclusion: You do not need a humanoid form to have this ability... but it does not scale down well, and the bigger you scale any creature the more powerful their firebreath and it's range could be... due to a larger capacity for fuel and compressed gas release. Dinos with this ability would be like a subpar form of Godzilla.

 

Also with methane you get blue flames,so blue fire breath. Cool .

Edited January 9, 2023 by Spacescifi

[farmerben]

have you ever seen anybody light a fart?  Fart gas is high enough in methane to combust

[DDE]

Methane seems suboptimal. If bombardier beetles are capable of catalytic or hypergolic ignition of a two-component mixture, then a fire-breathing humanoid may as well employ napalm.

[cubinator]

They can drink ethanol and instead of breaking it down store it in a reservoir organ. 

[kerbiloid]

Like this, but reversed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle

Spoiler

 

[Spacescifi]

11 hours ago, DDE said:

Methane seems suboptimal. If bombardier beetles are capable of catalytic or hypergolic ignition of a two-component mixture, then a fire-breathing humanoid may as well employ napalm.

 

Hahaha!

 

In reality a humanoid with fire breath woukd probably need an exoskeleton to avoid burning themselves... much like the beetle.

And like the beetle they would do well to have the napalm issue out a special organ they can aim with... maybe a tail?

 

On a funny note I would laugh hard if there was anofher earth world to colonize.... only problem is... most native animals either spew napalm or launch spikes at you.

 

And you thought Pandora from avatar was hard. Ha!

 

I can make Pandora look like a tourist destination if I wanted compared to the uber dangerous fauna I could dream up for a scifi world.

 

 

[kerbiloid]

One of the sapient species advantages, is the ability to make purposed things out of external things to avoid the body modyification.

Say, to make a flamethrower out of local lythosphere.

[Spacescifi]

51 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

One of the sapient species advantages, is the ability to make purposed things out of external things to avoid the body modyification.

Say, to make a flamethrower out of local lythosphere.

Why not have both?

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Why not have both?

Then how to smoke?

A cigarette burning at both ends?

[KSK]

39 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Then how to smoke?

A cigarette burning at both ends?

Perhaps these sapient beings executed the first of their own who tried to encourage the widespread inhalation of addictive carcinogens for their personal profit? And the second. And the third.

After the 10th execution, enthusiasm for smoking died out.

Edited January 10, 2023 by KSK

[Spacescifi]

5 hours ago, KSK said:

Perhaps these sapient beings executed the first of their own who tried to encourage the widespread inhalation of addictive carcinogens for their personal profit? And the second. And the third.

After the 10th execution, enthusiasm for smoking died out.

 

No cigarettes? How is that not a bad outcome?

[KSK]

If you’re addicted to nicotine it’s probably a bad outcome.

Otherwise: plantations and slavery, wasting productive agricultural land on narcotics, profiteering from human misery in the form of physical addiction to a substance which causes numerous lung diseases and lung cancer, practically writing the Big Corp playbook on spreading disinformation and discrediting any sources of information that could hurt said profiteering. Oh - and the cost to global healthcare systems of cleaning up after the profiteering.

Need I go on? The tobacco industry has been and continues to be, a blight on humanity and a disgusting testament to the power of greed above all other considerations.

Edited January 10, 2023 by KSK

[kerbiloid]

29 minutes ago, KSK said:

The tobacco industry has been and continues to be, a blight on humanity and a disgusting testament to the power of greed above all other considerations.

Still not prohibited in covid times, when the lungs were a resource...

[sevenperforce]

Just an observation: concepts like "dragons in real life" often focus on a biological source of fuel (such as methane) but arguably the more direct biological path to a fire-breathing entity would go in the opposite direction, with the production of an extremely energetic oxidizer. Bombardier beetles can obviously produce and store hydrogen peroxide as part of an elaborate defense mechanism, although for the purposes of a large, humanoid fire-breather it would make more sense for it to be an offensive weapon like venom rather than a defensive weapon.

There are already snakes which evolved to spray venom out of their fangs rather than merely injecting it. However, spraying venom is ineffective (and thus metabolically costly) unless it hits the target's eyes or other sensitive areas. Imagine if a predator with venom-spraying capabilities evolved a venom which was significantly caustic (using an oxidization reaction) and thus was able to burn away the upper layer of skin in an exothermic chemical reaction and thus deliver the venom directly into the bloodstream from a distance, even without hitting the eyes. Such a creature would be an extremely efficient predator because it could attack without closing distance, protecting it from whatever natural defenses the prey animal might have. This survival advantage would prioritize the causticity of the venom and exothermicity of the reaction, which in turn would drive the predator to evolve protections against being burned by its own venom, like heat-resistant scales.

Ultimately such a creature could evolve a secondary chemical used to trigger catalytic decomposition of its venom, allowing it to self-pressurize (in the adapted fangs, which at this point have likely evolved to be used primarily for spraying and not for injecting) and fire its oxidizer-venom farther. With catalytic decomposition of a sufficiently aggressive oxidizer, it could reach the point that it was hypergolic with living tissue, igniting its target on contact.

[Spacescifi]

On 1/10/2023 at 6:50 AM, sevenperforce said:

Just an observation: concepts like "dragons in real life" often focus on a biological source of fuel (such as methane) but arguably the more direct biological path to a fire-breathing entity would go in the opposite direction, with the production of an extremely energetic oxidizer. Bombardier beetles can obviously produce and store hydrogen peroxide as part of an elaborate defense mechanism, although for the purposes of a large, humanoid fire-breather it would make more sense for it to be an offensive weapon like venom rather than a defensive weapon.

There are already snakes which evolved to spray venom out of their fangs rather than merely injecting it. However, spraying venom is ineffective (and thus metabolically costly) unless it hits the target's eyes or other sensitive areas. Imagine if a predator with venom-spraying capabilities evolved a venom which was significantly caustic (using an oxidization reaction) and thus was able to burn away the upper layer of skin in an exothermic chemical reaction and thus deliver the venom directly into the bloodstream from a distance, even without hitting the eyes. Such a creature would be an extremely efficient predator because it could attack without closing distance, protecting it from whatever natural defenses the prey animal might have. This survival advantage would prioritize the causticity of the venom and exothermicity of the reaction, which in turn would drive the predator to evolve protections against being burned by its own venom, like heat-resistant scales.

Ultimately such a creature could evolve a secondary chemical used to trigger catalytic decomposition of its venom, allowing it to self-pressurize (in the adapted fangs, which at this point have likely evolved to be used primarily for spraying and not for injecting) and fire its oxidizer-venom farther. With catalytic decomposition of a sufficiently aggressive oxidizer, it could reach the point that it was hypergolic with living tissue, igniting its target on contact.

I will say that your idea could be less destructive for the overall environment.

Imagine a sentient humanoid who could spew venom that only caught on fire when it was absorbed by animal fur?

Instead of burning down the forest everytime they spew venom, it would only occur if  they were actually under threat of attack and they actually hit an enemy with fur.

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

I will say that your idea could be less destructive for the overall environment.

Imagine a sentient humanoid who could spew venom that only caught on fire when it was absorbed by animal fur?

Instead of burning down the forest everytime they spew venom, it would only occur if  they were actually under threat of attack and they actually hit an enemy with fur.

You want to make sure you have a clear idea in your head of what "fire breathing" actually means. After all, I can breathe fire easily enough; I just put a spoonful of cornstarch in my mouth and blow it over an open flame: it makes a big gout of fire. But even if I had cornstarch-dust-producing organs, simply blowing fire out of my mouth isn't what you'd typically think of with fire breathing in the context of dragons.

In media like Game of Thrones, dragons do more than just breathe fire; they spray a fluid that ignites and covers its target, like a World War II era flamethrower.

[JadeOfMaar]

On 1/9/2023 at 6:07 PM, Spacescifi said:

hypergolic ignition of a two-component mixture

That's how the dragons do it in the Clash of the titans (2010) movie. The fuels are stored in glands in the cheeks, and these glands have amazing squirt force to give the fire breath its range before it ignites. Now... in comes the problem of something piercing those glands simultaneously or causing a nervous input to cause accidental release, or the glands releasing their contents through decay after death -- all of these making one's mouth into a combustion chamber.

A humanoid doesn't need their mouth to be bomb proof. If it was then in comes the very serious question of what kind of encrusted madness this humanoid is supposed to be able to eat.

[Terwin]

Producing highly energetic fuel/oxidizer for a flame thrower requires a lot of energy, and every time you use it, you are prone to destroy the local plant life(you know, those things that collect energy from the sun, which is then consumed by animals for energy)

I think that the greater adaptation to natural fire breathing would be what is required to live in a scorched wasteland.  Lithovore perhaps?

Either that or you need something that would harm individual animals but would not harm plants.

Of course if you are talking about a 'flamethrower that does not hurt plants' then you are back to spitting venom. 

[DDE]

On 1/12/2023 at 5:39 PM, Terwin said:

Producing highly energetic fuel/oxidizer for a flame thrower requires a lot of energy, and every time you use it, you are prone to destroy the local plant life(you know, those things that collect energy from the sun, which is then consumed by animals for energy)

I think that the greater adaptation to natural fire breathing would be what is required to live in a scorched wasteland.  Lithovore perhaps?

Either that or you need something that would harm individual animals but would not harm plants.

Of course if you are talking about a 'flamethrower that does not hurt plants' then you are back to spitting venom. 

Reminds me of the Impids from the recently release Rimworld: Biotech.

They are supposed to have an inclination towards deserts...

[magnemoe]

On 1/9/2023 at 11:21 AM, DDE said:

Methane seems suboptimal. If bombardier beetles are capable of catalytic or hypergolic ignition of a two-component mixture, then a fire-breathing humanoid may as well employ napalm.

Agree, methane would be more of an bluff I say, yes its dangerous but not much more than fangs or claws in most settings. 
As other say as you become an tool user build in weapons become less important and it scales very fast. Humans was the only predator who hunted adult mammoths regularly, later we got bows and other stuff. 
I say having mouth designed like an flame thrower will limit your ability to speak who is our real superpower.

It works much better on the insect scale, using an spray can and a lighter works wonders against bugs. Against a bear, you just make it angry. 

[kerbiloid]

Mouth sprays would be prohibited.

[Spacescifi]

18 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Agree, methane would be more of an bluff I say, yes its dangerous but not much more than fangs or claws in most settings. 
As other say as you become an tool user build in weapons become less important and it scales very fast. Humans was the only predator who hunted adult mammoths regularly, later we got bows and other stuff. 
I say having mouth designed like an flame thrower will limit your ability to speak who is our real superpower.

It works much better on the insect scale, using an spray can and a lighter works wonders against bugs. Against a bear, you just make it angry. 

 

I think the argument of biological chemical flamethrowers versus biological electrically sparked gas flamethrowers is missing one thing.

 

Chemical flamethrowers may be more potent and have more range, but just like chemical rockets they take up a lot of volume for fuel and also exhaust such fuel in quick order.

A methane gas blower with electric sparking may have less range but you won't run out of gas nearly as fast if you have special organs dedicated to absorbing large amounts of methane to be used as a weapon.

I am also against using the mouth both for speaking and firebreath... that is why I suggested a fire spewing tail instead.

 

The methane absorbing organ would be somewhere around near the intestines... maybe their form of an appendix?

 

And in this case, provided they lacked any protection from fire, they would have to be sure the wind is not blowing against them lest their own fire blow back on them.

 

In the case of a bear, if it is running after a tailed fire spewing humanoid, if the humanoid fires backward everytime the bear gets near that could hurt it's eyes enough that it backs off to roll in the dirt to suffocate the fire.

 

Large dino creatures would be well suited for chemical flamethrowers since they have more volume for chemical fuel.

 

That said... hunting giant dinos with flamethrowers for mouths sounds rather... adventurous... as in the folks that do this are likely the same ones who sky dive.

Edited January 14, 2023 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

People have a fire breathing ability without body modifications, thanks to the brain, hands, and fermentation.

Spoiler