There are places in this universe that are very different from the planet you and I inhabit. Take, for example, the planet Pozzal in NGC 5194 (the Whirlpool Galaxy). The creatures on Pozzal are made of blocks that can be exchanged and rearranged. Blocks are only compatible within a species and exchanges can't be made between the sexes, so there are limits to the rearrangements that can be performed. But otherwise exchanging blocks is quite common. If two individuals can reach an agreement, they might exchange liver blocks or a lung blocks or left feet blocks. Thus natural selection acts on having an ideal configuration of blocks rather than on the genetics of the cells within those blocks. Despite this Ship-of-Theseus situation, Possalians have very strong senses of identity and go to great lengths to distinguish themselves from other Possalians.
These illustrations were drawn using Stable Diffusion 2.1.
