Setting is a planet with lower gravity and a higher atmospheric density than that of Earth's...

No. The planet is only inhabited by guys who can jump really high. Deal with it.

Giant
floating
plant
islands

The dense atmosphere clause shakes thing up quite a bit there user.
I imagine giant gas filled lilly like plants that float on the densest layer of atmosphere.
With large tendril like roots that would sway beneath them.
I imagine a highly symbiotic eco system between the inhabitants that live on the plants.
Meteorology on this planet would be greatly effected and winds that plants depend on to reproduce and carry rain might be tasks that would depend on the plants inhabitants.

Not OP, but for the sake of discussion, the planet has nearly the same average temperature as Earth and propoprtionally the same amout of water, as well as a similar atmosphere composition

How would you have lower gravity but denser atmosphere?

...

High concentration of gases in the local accretion disk when the planet was formed. It's harder for a smaller planet/planet with lower gravity to keep hold of those gases, but it's possible if there was a large amount of it.

P = V / R x T, user, remember?

Pressure, in this case, is proportional to the force exerted by gravity, so all else being equal, lower gravity means lower density. BUT, there are a lot of other variables hidden in there - chemical composition, moisture levels, and average temperature, to name a few.

Thank you, anons!

soo... Monster Hunter?

PV = nRT, friend. Pressure is not proportional to volume, it's inversely proportional

Nothing tall at all. Being tall in low gravity means its really hard to propell yourself along the ground. You have less friction than earth, a bigger lever to act against and you fall slower so you lean slower so going from standing to running is slower.

So now I'm thinking the ideal body plan for an animal in this environment would be a sort of lizard/frog hybrid. An animal that hugs close to the ground and pulls itself along at high speed, and also has the ability to jump if need be.

Lower gravity mean bigger animals and plant, but their body will be more fragile and porous.
Higher density atmosphere depend on the composition, if there's lot of nitrogen (most of the earth atmosphere is nitrogen) then there will be a lot of nitrogen fixing plant creating a weird tangling forest with occasionally giant tree. The animal will adapt with this environment, rich oxygen mean you don't need sophisticated heart like mammals, higher density also mean the planet environment will be humid and hot (assuming there's enough sunlight) something mammals doesn't appreciated, so its mostly big stubby insect with trachea breathing system and wide array of reptile that consume them.

tldr: just like triassic period, but everything bigger and more fragile.

Literally the book "Expedition" by Wayne Barlowe. There's also a documentary you can see here

youtube.com/watch?v=zHzPEpHYtXQ

You're absolutely right.

I've been out of highschool a lot of decades.

So it's further from the sun than Earth is.

From some reason I assume 'higher atmospheric density == Venus', and that's not a place you'd want to live in.

Still, assuming this planet isn't a superheated superpressure hell, I'd see gelatinous and extremely lightweight creatures in every environment.

Yeah, shit doesn't have to end up like Venus if the place has some luck with the cosmic dice.

giant fish-like beings

That's not how air works, retard.

Flying is just swimming in very thin fluid.

They never said air. A dense atmosphere with low gravity wouldn't be too far off from an ocean. Aerodynamics is part of fluid dynamics for a reason.

Yes it is.

the Fairy Fly is so small it's wings are actually rudders and it flies through the air by swimming.

The weather patterns could be pretty fucking weird. The propensity of storms to pull shit up into the sky for extended period might result in plants using this as a way to spread seeds cross-continentally instead of just fungi like on Earth.

>Higher density atmosphere depend on the composition
Composition and how much of it there is. More atmosphere (by mass), higher density (and pressure) at sea level, higher Kármán line, harder to build a rocket to escape the planet due to atmospheric drag.

Air is just a kind of compressible fluid.

>If there's anything similar to humanity, they would probably have really slender anatomies; picture the smurf cats from Avatar, but even taller.
Since the atmosphere is dense, I expect most land dwellers would be rather squat like crabs and lobsters. Rather than humans, picture flying octopuses and dolphins.

Was just thinking about Alien Planet when I read OP. Not disappointed to see someone else thought the same.

Venus isn't dense because it is hot. Air is actually less dense when it is heated (excited molecules become farther apart). It's just that Venus' atmosphere is made of different materials than Earth's. If the earth was bigger, our atmosphere would be denser. If it was smaller it would be thinner.

Since our hypotethical planet has both a denser atmosphere AND lower gravity, it is safe to assume the atmosphere's composition is rather different from ours and that the planet is smaller or that heavier elements are scarcer just so that the planet has less mass. It HAS to be a pretty alien environment, it can't simply be Earth-like with both denser atmosphere and lower gravity because those two things tend to run against each other when all other things are equal.

If the atmosphere is dense enough and gravity is low enough, couldn't we just have free floating cell colonies up in the air exchanging the stuff they need through their membranes? Or couldn't cells themselves grow larger before starting to stack up to make multicelular life? Couldn't there be a mantle of cells covering the lower parts of the atmosphere, absorbing sunlight?

Holy shit lmao

You are a riot, user.