this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
32 points (97.1% liked)

Daystrom Institute

3468 readers
10 users here now

Welcome to Daystrom Institute!

Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.

Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.

Rules

1. Explain your reasoning

All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.

2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.

This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.

3. Be diplomatic.

Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.

4. Assume good faith.

Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”

5. Tag spoilers.

Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.

6. Stay on-topic.

Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.

Episode Guides

The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
williams_482@startrek.website
Equals@startrek.website
LibraryLass@startrek.website
khaosworks@startrek.website
32
The Dreaded Moopsy: Star Trek Bestiary (youtu.be)
submitted 1 year ago by StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website to c/daystrominstitute@startrek.website
1 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This one is well done, and seems worthy of capturing as documentation in the Daystrom Institute.

Those charming two forward-facing eyes were instant indicators that Moopsy is a predator…but how dangerous?

It’s a tubby jumping spider without all those extra eyes and legs.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I saw a post on Reddit shortly after the episode aired that had some nice speculation about the Moopsy's biology. It speculated that the Moopsy has a hydrofluoric-acid-based biology, with tissues based on fluorocarbon polymers, ie, squeaky plastic akin to teflon. Hydrofluoric acid is intensely toxic and dangerous to Terrestrial biology in a lot of ways, but if you spill hydrofluoric acid on yourself one of the things it does is seep straight through into your bones and start dissolving them. It really likes calcium, apparently.

According to this safety manual:

HF readily penetrates human skin, allowing it to destroy soft tissues underneath and to decalcify bone (hypocalcemea).

And down in the treatment section on this page:

Calcium gluconate (a calcium sugar) containing gels, solutions, and medications are used to treat hydrogen fluoride poisoning.