FA+
Shop
Some more musings, and an interesting tidbit.
10 years ago
I learned something today that surprised and made me wonder what mother nature was on when evolution designed a particular animal that I ran across.
But, before I tell you my revelation, allow me to enlighten you as to the process by which I happened upon it. I was doing a little pondering for an upcoming story, the one mentioned in this journal, with the taur, and I was doing some thinking about the species of the characters in question. I'm fairly certain I know what species I want the taur to be based off of, but the second character is kind of a blank slate as far as that's concerned. Usually, when I pick out species from the endless panoply that nature has granted us, I take into account the environment in which the story is set, and the animals that people would be most used to seeing around.
This led me to muse briefly on the demographics of furdom in general. Setting aside the odd hybrid characters and creatures that have no real analogue to anything that belongs in the natural world, one would have to be utterly, completely blind to fail to see the massive, massive favoritism toward four or five species over all the others, the hundreds and thousands that the buffet of life has give us to interact with. Canines, felines (specifically the big cats), equines, (I'll lump bovines into this category because I can, but I don't include the smaller even toed ungulates like sheep and deer of various kinds), and the ever-illustrious dragons. There's a sort of hierarchy that spreads out from this majority into the less commonly seen but still far from rare species, such as the deer and goats and various reptilians and countless others that I don't care to try to list. (Rodents, Insects, Mustelids, even Plants!)
Now, by pointing this out, it is absolutely not my intention to try to detract from the validity of anyone's animal of choice just because tiger #4284 has an extra stripe on his left leg when compared to tiger #7825. Hell, if anything I think it makes a character even better. I feel an idea, even a person or a slice of someone's persona, becomes even stronger if made to stand under the merits of its own soul, what gives it depth, rather than a flashy or initially interesting appearance. This being mentioned, I also don't mean to imply that German Shepard #8453 is any less creative or worthy of thought for the sole reason that it has purple fur because purple resonates with its creator. I'm just saying that appearances aren't everything, and each aspect of something should be considered before passing even the slightest form of judgment.
Ahem... I may have gotten a little off-topic there. What I was trying to say was that I understand why it seems like every other furry is a wolf, or a cat, or a draft horse with big poofy fetlocks. These animals have aspects that can easily be admired, be they loyalty, or strength, or dependability, and this is easy to see for some animals more than others because humanity has spent thousands of years domesticating and training these very same creatures. When you spend a decent amount of ones life around domesticated animals, it gets easier and easier to relate to them, be they pets or livestock, or even the more savage cousins of those animals. (Wolves, Big Cats, and the like.) It becomes a simple task to ascribe to them traits that many people reserve for humans, to anthropomorphize them, if I might drop that word.
This being said, I also try to keep things within the realm of sense. I've got reasons that everyone in most of my stories seems to adhere to the prime majorities listed above. (Foxes! I forgot to mention foxes! There's a shit load of foxes, too. My bad, all you vulpine enthusiasts!) For this point, I bring up location again. Southcliff is nestled smack-dab in the middle of the heartland of Arvandor, on the cliffs that separate the upper plains from the lower plains. The land is mostly flat and relatively featureless, broken by the occasional stretch of woodland. Environments like this lend themselves to: Small herbivores (rodents and such.), the carnivores that feed on them (Cats, mustelids), large herbivores (Deer, Horses, and cattle), and the pursuit predators that feed on them (mostly canines like dogs and their wilder family members). Even with this in mind, I try to keep the diversity up at least a little. There are a lot of horses in and around Southcliff, but there are only a few in my cast. There are even more dogs and wolves, and there are fewer of those in the cast than horses (though that might change). Hell even one of the dogs, Ivy, is a husky. Huskies were not built for temperate plains hunting. Their bodies, especially their distinctly thick, hot fur, are for tundra and taiga biomes, like many of the wolves from which they stemmed. Ivy is a husky because her family hails from north of the Ordis mountains, from the colder regions that would likely be more hospitable for her. Just a little bit of the thought that usually goes into the consideration of a species before i decide on one over another. There needs to be a reason in my head, otherwise I can't deal with it.
Now, that aside, I was trying to figure out what species to make the character that will accompany the taur, and my first instinct was wolf, because it would be an ironic contrast for an ungulate. I like predator/prey, uh... "relations", and I like to play off of that exchange, but there are plenty of wolves in the community as it is, and I've already got a different wolf planned, so I wanted to steer away from wolves. That led me to dogs, and I cycled through several breeds before discarding that idea. Dogs are also something that I already have in abundance. So I dropped further down the food chain, trying to keep it a predator, but just sliding down the ranks of superiority. I went to mustelids. I know I already have one of those as well, in Calian. But I feel like the differential between a giant river otter and, say, a black-footed ferret is enough distance to warrant consideration.
Which brings me to the real point of this entire journal. I dug through a few species of mustelids. I looked at minks and weasels and ferrets, and I eventually decided to take an even greater step and cemented his species as a wolverine, which is technically a mustelid, but looks more like a pint-sized bear than any ferret. Their bulky and stocky, strong for their size and known for taking down prey far in excess of their size. It was the perfect pair for a taur, who will be bigger than him by virtue of having the back end of a purely larger animal.
However, before I settled on the wolverine, I hovered my consideration over the stoat, or ermine, another large mustelid. The reason I disregarded it, and the purpose of this journal, is this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for stoats, under the section for reproduction and development, a reasonable research topic, I imagined, "Prior to the age of five to seven weeks, kits have poor thermoregulation, so they huddle for warmth when the mother is absent. Males become sexually mature at 10–11 months, while females are sexually mature at the age of 2–3 weeks whilst still blind, deaf and hairless, and are usually mated with adult males before being weaned."
Nope.
All kinds of nope.
Damn, stoats, you nasty. Just... Damn, nature, you got issues. At least let them open their eyes first...
Anywho... I'm exhausted, and far too tired to dig through this thing for errors right now. Have my unfiltered thoughts, many of which I likely could have worded better. I'm going to sleep, and I might give this a proofread later. Bon soir.
But, before I tell you my revelation, allow me to enlighten you as to the process by which I happened upon it. I was doing a little pondering for an upcoming story, the one mentioned in this journal, with the taur, and I was doing some thinking about the species of the characters in question. I'm fairly certain I know what species I want the taur to be based off of, but the second character is kind of a blank slate as far as that's concerned. Usually, when I pick out species from the endless panoply that nature has granted us, I take into account the environment in which the story is set, and the animals that people would be most used to seeing around.
This led me to muse briefly on the demographics of furdom in general. Setting aside the odd hybrid characters and creatures that have no real analogue to anything that belongs in the natural world, one would have to be utterly, completely blind to fail to see the massive, massive favoritism toward four or five species over all the others, the hundreds and thousands that the buffet of life has give us to interact with. Canines, felines (specifically the big cats), equines, (I'll lump bovines into this category because I can, but I don't include the smaller even toed ungulates like sheep and deer of various kinds), and the ever-illustrious dragons. There's a sort of hierarchy that spreads out from this majority into the less commonly seen but still far from rare species, such as the deer and goats and various reptilians and countless others that I don't care to try to list. (Rodents, Insects, Mustelids, even Plants!)
Now, by pointing this out, it is absolutely not my intention to try to detract from the validity of anyone's animal of choice just because tiger #4284 has an extra stripe on his left leg when compared to tiger #7825. Hell, if anything I think it makes a character even better. I feel an idea, even a person or a slice of someone's persona, becomes even stronger if made to stand under the merits of its own soul, what gives it depth, rather than a flashy or initially interesting appearance. This being mentioned, I also don't mean to imply that German Shepard #8453 is any less creative or worthy of thought for the sole reason that it has purple fur because purple resonates with its creator. I'm just saying that appearances aren't everything, and each aspect of something should be considered before passing even the slightest form of judgment.
Ahem... I may have gotten a little off-topic there. What I was trying to say was that I understand why it seems like every other furry is a wolf, or a cat, or a draft horse with big poofy fetlocks. These animals have aspects that can easily be admired, be they loyalty, or strength, or dependability, and this is easy to see for some animals more than others because humanity has spent thousands of years domesticating and training these very same creatures. When you spend a decent amount of ones life around domesticated animals, it gets easier and easier to relate to them, be they pets or livestock, or even the more savage cousins of those animals. (Wolves, Big Cats, and the like.) It becomes a simple task to ascribe to them traits that many people reserve for humans, to anthropomorphize them, if I might drop that word.
This being said, I also try to keep things within the realm of sense. I've got reasons that everyone in most of my stories seems to adhere to the prime majorities listed above. (Foxes! I forgot to mention foxes! There's a shit load of foxes, too. My bad, all you vulpine enthusiasts!) For this point, I bring up location again. Southcliff is nestled smack-dab in the middle of the heartland of Arvandor, on the cliffs that separate the upper plains from the lower plains. The land is mostly flat and relatively featureless, broken by the occasional stretch of woodland. Environments like this lend themselves to: Small herbivores (rodents and such.), the carnivores that feed on them (Cats, mustelids), large herbivores (Deer, Horses, and cattle), and the pursuit predators that feed on them (mostly canines like dogs and their wilder family members). Even with this in mind, I try to keep the diversity up at least a little. There are a lot of horses in and around Southcliff, but there are only a few in my cast. There are even more dogs and wolves, and there are fewer of those in the cast than horses (though that might change). Hell even one of the dogs, Ivy, is a husky. Huskies were not built for temperate plains hunting. Their bodies, especially their distinctly thick, hot fur, are for tundra and taiga biomes, like many of the wolves from which they stemmed. Ivy is a husky because her family hails from north of the Ordis mountains, from the colder regions that would likely be more hospitable for her. Just a little bit of the thought that usually goes into the consideration of a species before i decide on one over another. There needs to be a reason in my head, otherwise I can't deal with it.
Now, that aside, I was trying to figure out what species to make the character that will accompany the taur, and my first instinct was wolf, because it would be an ironic contrast for an ungulate. I like predator/prey, uh... "relations", and I like to play off of that exchange, but there are plenty of wolves in the community as it is, and I've already got a different wolf planned, so I wanted to steer away from wolves. That led me to dogs, and I cycled through several breeds before discarding that idea. Dogs are also something that I already have in abundance. So I dropped further down the food chain, trying to keep it a predator, but just sliding down the ranks of superiority. I went to mustelids. I know I already have one of those as well, in Calian. But I feel like the differential between a giant river otter and, say, a black-footed ferret is enough distance to warrant consideration.
Which brings me to the real point of this entire journal. I dug through a few species of mustelids. I looked at minks and weasels and ferrets, and I eventually decided to take an even greater step and cemented his species as a wolverine, which is technically a mustelid, but looks more like a pint-sized bear than any ferret. Their bulky and stocky, strong for their size and known for taking down prey far in excess of their size. It was the perfect pair for a taur, who will be bigger than him by virtue of having the back end of a purely larger animal.
However, before I settled on the wolverine, I hovered my consideration over the stoat, or ermine, another large mustelid. The reason I disregarded it, and the purpose of this journal, is this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for stoats, under the section for reproduction and development, a reasonable research topic, I imagined, "Prior to the age of five to seven weeks, kits have poor thermoregulation, so they huddle for warmth when the mother is absent. Males become sexually mature at 10–11 months, while females are sexually mature at the age of 2–3 weeks whilst still blind, deaf and hairless, and are usually mated with adult males before being weaned."
Nope.
All kinds of nope.
Damn, stoats, you nasty. Just... Damn, nature, you got issues. At least let them open their eyes first...
Anywho... I'm exhausted, and far too tired to dig through this thing for errors right now. Have my unfiltered thoughts, many of which I likely could have worded better. I'm going to sleep, and I might give this a proofread later. Bon soir.
