Some cool ideas there, I'd love to see a scorpion that could then drop a stinger part to craft a tier 3 spear with poison effect. This could also give mithridatism another use as the scorpion could have a poison attack.
Rather than giving raw science Mix.r s should cost raw science to start (this adding a risk factor to them as you could lose raw science) and should then give you rare resources as a reward for completing it. I have asked many people who agree with this including the streamer MaxFox_Gaming.