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?

  • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

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

  • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
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    3 days 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

  • Im_old@lemmy.world
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    3 days 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!

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    3 days ago

    Amaranth that can grow on sand and be watered with seawater

    Edit: ops, only animals? Make bees able to break down any kind of sugar into honey

  • thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    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@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 days 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.