(In the mind of melos, is something I do on occasion where I rant, talk or simply inform on stuff)

I have noticed these group of shark elitists that go with this "realistic" shark design and will put down the normally seen muzzled design(often with fin ears) they also often say this commonly seen design is a disgrace to sharks and a plain old insult. I have seen this elitist behavior enough times that I have felt the need to speak up about it for some time. Starting from a realism standpoint, in an anthro the more commonly seen shark with muzzle and fin ears actually is more logical at an evolutionary standpoint, reason being is if sharks somehow some way did evolve into a land animal it would develop the need for better auditory senses as well as a neck and the need for communication. Sound travels at a slower rate through air then it does in water, hence why the concept of ears forming from fins would be needed on a land shark and not a real shark, it would need the ability to detect sound as that is often in cases a more important sense than smell for land based animals. The reason for the muzzle like shape forming is for the ability to add a neck, more jaw movement, and more expressive capability even possibly the ability to produce sound. All these are not needed in water but sorely needed on land, if you look most vertebrates have these traits of a jaw separate from the bulk of the body solely connected to head allowing room for a neck.

So standing from an evolutionary standpoint a land shark or anthro shark would have to develop these non shark traits to survive.

On another perspective of freedom of expression, you see people breaking the rules of mother nature all the time with their sonas, for example most of my reptilian characters are digigrade and padded, you see people with raptor characters yet no famous raptor claw, or snakes with limbs, wolves of unnatural colors etc. Hole point is a freedom of expression found within all of us to tweak the norm making something we all like for ourselves. Seriously think about it, if we all only did realistic sonas we would have thousands of characters looking exactly alike with no artistic challenge to them no reason to admire them or feel proud of them. This unusual unnatural series of traits we do allow us to show off what we can do creatively and allow for growth beyond a box the same box many of us became furries to escape.

on another note imagen how many character theft claims there would be if we all had similar looking realistic characters, huh? So many the fandom would collapse in on itself.

Point being species realists and elitists are counter productive for an artistic and creative movement.