Disclaimer! While the information presented in this story is founded in hastily done research into the real world study of zoology, the author is not a zoologist and is also taking his own creative liberties as to make the story make sense in his own fictitious setting.
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Button Presses.

D: *Sigh.*

Footsteps. Knock Knock Knock.

D: “Come on in, Pooka!”

Handle turning.

Dr. Mot: “Not Pooka, me. Hi.”

D:“Oh, what’s up Doc?”

M: “Just wondering i-”

Button press.

Not Detecting Audio Input.

Button press.

D: “-tch up later, I think that’s him.”

M: “No worries then.” *Shouts* “Come in Pooka!”

Door opens.

Pooka: *Out of breath* “Oh, hi Dr. Mot.”

M: “Just grabbing something. Enjoy your lesson.”

P: *Out of breath* “You too. I mean, well… you get me.”

M: “Ohp!” *Laughing.*

High-heels. Closing door. Muffled footsteps.

D: *Laughing* “How are you today Pooka? What got you in so late?”

P: *Panting* “I tried biking here.”

D: “Pretty big journey, huh?”

P: *Panting* “Yeah. I had work too. I need to ask for less hours on a Wednesday next week.”

D: “Especially if you’re a new cyclist. How’s that going for you by the way.”

P: *Panting* “Getting easier.”

D: “Good. Though I’d maybe avoid cycling long distances until you’ve perfected it. As much as you look well paced.”

P: *Panting* “I look well-paced?”

D: “If I cycled here I’d be sweating my tail off.”

P: *Panting.* “Oh! Huh… I guess I, uh…” *Gasp* “don’t really sweat?”

D: “Well, catch your breath first and then we’ll talk about traits today.”

[pantpantpantpantpantzzzzzippantpantpantpencilontabletalkingpantpantpantbookontablepantpant]

D: “Alright, so”

Mouse click.

D: “Traits. This is basically a crash course in what traits are for and how they differ.”

Writing.

D: “I like to start with mouths. So, if we observe our own mouths first and foremost - and we’ll start with birds - bird mouths, as you can see, have these very very hard exteriors, right? We’ve got beaks. Um, beaks, all beaks, follow this basic structure of bone; uh, beaks are bones, by the way. And the material surrounding the beak, covering up that bony structure, is keratin, and keratin is all over the place. Have you heard of keratin before?”

P: “I think yes. I thought it was hair?”

D: “Hair is keratin, yes, but keratin is quite diverse in terms of what it looks like. So, and *chuckle* I appreciate that we’re already going on a bit of a tangent, but this is also why I start here in the first place. Keratin is a protein based material and a lot of exteriors to animals are made of keratinous structures; including but not limited to, as you said, hair, but also feathers, claws, horns, beaks, scales and parts of the structure of skin. It’s all keratin.”

P: “It’s all the same thing?”

D: “Well, not exactly. They come together in different ways, like hair is keratinous and so is the epidermis, the skins outer layer, so maybe you’d come to a logical conclusion there that they’re from the same place or that hair is just an extension of skin, but hair is formed far beneath that keratinous layer of skin, it’s formed in the subcutaneous layer, which is what is anchoring your skin to the rest of your body. And that’s why whenever you shave, if you feel the need to at all, it just kind of grows back; you’re not actually getting rid of hair ever, you’re just trimming it to a level where the tip is back beneath the epidermis and then it’s able to keep pushing out and growing further. What stops it growing is if you destroy the hair bulb located in the subcutis.”

P: “So what is hair for?”

D: “So, many functions; thermoregulation is the big one; it keeps the animal warm especially in colder temperatures. This is why animals who originate from the further north or further south of the planet are more likely to have thicker coats, and as temperatures rise the hair is shed at a faster rate as to allow the animal to be cooler in the summer months. Some animals have special hairs, you have these in the sides of your nose, your whiskers; those are a big part of why you can sense things in your environment, but also, say, help you know when to flinch away. The quills of the porcupine are technically hairs; those provide, well, they’re almost like a shield because they’re remarkably sharp.”

P: “But also…”

Clothes ruffling.

D: “Huh?”

P: “You know…”

D: “Oh, yeah, hackles. Those are hairs that trail down the spine. The, uh, movements there, the raising of the hackles is a muscular thing, but you’re not wrong to point out that the hairs at this part are used to communicate further one's emotional state.”

D: “But to bring this back now to mouths. Keratin is a very hard material naturally and it forms around the mouths of a bird in particular. We can discuss beaks further later because beak is also a term for other animals’ mouths of different structures, but in birds the shape and size of a beak has all kinds of implications. So starting with these,- aaah”

Tap tap.

D: *Agape* “You can see… *proper speech* I don’t know why I always do this, I have it on the screen right there.”

P: *Snickering.*

Writing.

D: “Uh…” *Giggling* “It’s hooked- stop laughing, it's not that funny. *chuckle* It’s hooked, it curves… augh- you thee hluaugt? Curghes daughn. Poiughnty. *Clack* very pointy. Birds don’t have teeth, so when birds like myself exist and we need something else to tear up flesh, we use our beaks. Um, you can see this image is an eagle; they have this as well. This is called a raptorial beak.”

Tap tap.

D: “This is a Black Palm Cockatoo - very hard beak, very strong jaw, the staple of their diet are hard shelled nuts and other hard-shelled fruits, and so they develop this strong beak to help them break these shells. This, a woodpecker, has a chisel for a beak, which functions as a noisemaker, at least in the wild, for attracting a mate or claiming territory as their own, uh-”

P: “Wait, really?”

D: “Yep. It’s not for food or anything like that, it’s an attention signal.”

P: “No, the territory thing.”

D: “What’s wrong with it?”

P: “Well, what if a woodpecker wasn’t around to hear them claim it?”

D: “They get a stern telling off, I suppose. Um, to make a light mention of territory marking in wild birds, it’s not done via olfactory or scent-based function like land mammals - wild dogs for instance will urinate which I’m sure you’re aware of, and they can track that scent very well and just kind of know that they might face competition if they find a spot that’s claimed. Birds claim territory by winning it in some way or another, either by dancing or making a lot of noise or communicating it with a type of song for instance.”

P: “How does all of that translate to anthros?”

D: *Sigh* “Well… it’s a tricky one at the moment. Some species may have lost or altered their territorial instincts somewhere in the anthropomorphising process. I’m sure when you enter a toilet for instance, you can smell the urine quite potently, but your response to that information will not match that of a wild dog and anthropomorphic dogs don’t urinate for the purpose of marking their territories anymore. And as for birds, while I think this is part of the reason birds are such a big part of the music and voice acting industries as a kind of natural advantage in the production of sounds, that noisemaking triggers no such instinct, at least not in a way that is different from any other anthropomorphic beings. Like songbirds may also sing to attract a mate, but if a female bird and a, say, human, both listened to the same romantic song and both enjoyed it, their response wouldn’t be too different; there’s no heightened state of arousal from the bird even if their wild ancestors would have sung that song to attract such a female.”

P: “I see…”

Writing.

D: “That’s getting ahead of ourselves though. Beaks are very diverse is the point I am getting to; there are lots of shapes and sizes, lots of different functions. Internally, we again, have no teeth, if we have things to break up we just use our beaks. Tongues also vary though to fit different functions as well. Owl tongues are very fleshy, bit plump, but also the back of the tongue has a muscle called a glottis, which is a reflex that blocks food from slipping down the breathing pipe, but also allows us to sort through what’s in our mouths and spit out the things we’re not able to digest, like bones.”

Writing.

P: “So, do you just eat things whole then?”

D: “Yes.”

P: “Wow, okay…”

Writing.

D: “Other tongue qualities, and we’ll stop sticking to just birds here because a lot of tongue traits are a lot more general; a ‘rasping tongue’ is a tongue that has grooves or perhaps tiny hairs that will catch on to things that are attached to the food and help to scrape it off. Sometimes rasping tongues are used for grooming, like in cats where in addition to their use in this property to scrape food, they also use it to brush their fur. Compare this to a dog tongue which is somewhat smooth, very floppy, but very flexy too;”

Wet sounds.

D: “Exactly like that, so when dogs take in air it can cool down the tongue and that has an effect on the quality of the air in the lungs and can help to cool down. But also that flexibility allows dogs to curl their tongue backwards and make a cup at the back of their tongue, which can be filled with water and helps to drink.”

Wet sounds.

Pause.

P: “Ghwa?”

D: “Would you say you’re at all close with Chow Chows?”

P: “Nguhh…” *Tongue click. Pause.* “Why?”

D: “Your tongue is quite the hue.”

P: “Oh… uuhhhh”

D: “We talked before about-”

P: “Uh yeah, it’s uh… aha… just… you know… built different… from… the dogs… uh- other, dogs…”

Long pause.

D: “Uh… I, uh… don’t…”

Pause.

D: “Hm. Okay. Uh…”

Short Pause.

D: *Gulp* ”To go over next, quite briefly and this might not do them justice… *ahem*, but tails are also quite diverse… um…”

P: “Well, what about other types of mouth?”

D: “Huh? Oh, right… hum, well… uh… teeth! Right.”

P: *Chuckle*

D: “Mouths with teeth. Uhmm… Types of teeth; common teeth are incisors, canines, premolars and molars, in that order, tend to go from front to back. Incisors are your nibblers, and prickle in to help you tear smaller foods and plants. Canines can dig into flesh and help tear that apart. Once your food is broken down enough, you bring it back to your premolars and molars to grind your food and then grind down harder respectively. As a carnivore, some of your molars are also meat processors; your carnassial teeth. What you don’t have, however, are tusks nor herbivore teeth; herbivore teeth have a lot of varieties in their own right, but some have extra incisors to really hone in on those plants, for example. Um, and a tusk is not used for eating, but other uses, including attacking or digging or social functions in, again, wild species. Lots of traits of animals have a social implication in wild variants that are lost for the anthros.”

P: “Is that the same for horns?”

D: “Precisely. And thank you for bringing us back to mouths because we’d have missed this segue if we’d continued. Uh, Antlers as well, but the horns too as you mentioned. The biggest difference is horns are permanent and antlers shed and regrow, and both are, of course, not teeth at all, but extensions at the top of the head. But similar to tusks they have their social functions in wild animals, but also uses in scraping, self-defense, they may be used similar to primate and anthropomorphic arms where they can move things out of the way with a stiff nudge.”

P: “But not for, like, grabbing things.”

D: “Well, let’s go to the tails then, because we can get to that tangent off of the tails. Ignoring the social functions of tails, once again, a core function of tails can include, say, an animal with a rather exposed rear can cover it up with their tails, to protect their anuses, or can be used to swat things away, which is especially prominent in reptilians which can be quite capable of forcefully whipping attackers and prey.”

Pooka taking notes.

P: *Muttering.* “Didn’t even cross my mind…”

D: “Well…. As now… Um, as you mentioned with arms, some animals have tails that can grasp. The trait of grasping is described as ‘prehensile’; something is prehensile if it is capable of, basically, grabbing; fingers are prehensile, and in certain primates but also many birds, feet can be prehensile. The tongue of a giraffe is prehensile and grasps around tree branches, which is also a function of an elephant's prehensile nose. Tentacles are the arms of many cephalopods and also happen to be prehensile, but outside of all of those, of course, the tail may be prehensile on, mostly, mammals. The outlier there is the seahorse, which is the only fish that does this.”

P: “Where do they get it from?”

D: “I’d have to go back and double check, but I believe it’s pipefish; they split off from the pipefish to develop a lot of traits they don’t have.”

P: “Seahorses also have the males carry offspring, right?”

D: “Yes, actually, though pipefish and other related creatures still have that.”

P: “Where’s that come from?”

D: “With wild fish in general, they tend towards males being a primary caregiver to offspring at some point in their lives, but when the syngnathidae - the family is called syngnathidae, by the way - were taking care of the eggs, it became a part of the egg laying process to pass them onto the males and somewhere along those lines, the males began developing a pouch for which they kept that in.”

P: “Right, I see.”

D: “On the subject of self defence, we’ve covered some of the ways animals might attack or defend themselves, but unique features of some animals are poison and venom. This brings us back to mouths, for one, but also brings us to stingers. Both venoms and poisons are toxins, but the difference is down to the delivery. If you are poisoned by something, it’s because you took it into your body somehow; upon death or being attacked the animal might release the toxin, and so if they are being eaten that toxin then gets into the attackers body and poisons them. Venom, though, is released by the animal during a penetrative attack, by which they access the bloodstream.”

P: “If an animal ingests poison, and then is attacked, does that poison release to the animal that attacked them?”

D: “Well, if the toxin didn’t kill them before, perhaps, but if they got poisoned, they likely can’t survive that.”

P: “But I’m sure some are tolerant? Would an animal tolerant to toxins be able to utilise it?”

D: “Well…” *Sigh, pause, muttering* “really good at finding our way there…”

P: *Chuckle breath.*

D: *Talking* “Uh… so, that’s not a thing.”

P: “Are you sure?”

D: “Well, no, but I mean naturally. It seems more like a skill.”

P: “So, not a natural thing?”

D: “No…”

Pause.

D: “Maybe. It could be. I think this is another one of those sensitive subjects.”

Pause.

P: “Is that a satisfying answer?”

D: “Let’s continue.”

P: “Gotcha.”

D:“Um… ugh… coming off of toxins, let's discuss warning signs. Some animals are poisonous or venomous and wear that label proudly; the ring-tailed octopus shows off its toxicity with bright blue circular patterns covering their bodies. You’d think animals developing venom would maybe hide this fact, but sometimes wearing that colour proud and true is actually more threatening, first and foremost, but also, some animals may contain toxins, but that doesn’t mean they have the strengths to survive and see those toxins in action, and so that flashy colouration may instead be an indicator of ‘please, don’t eat me, you’ll die’ and they can still warn and ward off predators despite their lack of physically strong attributes, which is still an advantage"

P: “What if the animal doesn’t have venom?”

D: “That’s mimicry. Mimicry is developed by a lot of species. That mimicry can sometimes double back on itself and the venomous animals may then start mimicking the non-venomous animal that was already mimicking them, which can create a strange inadvertent relationship between the two where they help each other not be killed like in coral and milk snakes.”

P: “Are they of the same family?”

D: “Nope. Different snakes. Milk snakes are colubridae and coral snakes are elapidae.”

P: “And that’s how we know it’s mimicry”

D: “Exactly. In a simpler sense though, a hoverfly, which is a yellow and black flying insect, mimics the wasp, also a yellow and black flying insect. The wasp is able to harm a bird, but the hoverfly is not, but because the birds know not to eat wasps, they therefore also do not eat hoverflies which are totally fine for such birds to go after.”

P: “Do these intolerances still exist in anthropomorphics?”

D: “Uhh, to an extent. The bodies of anthros are much stronger though, so these intolerances may cause illness and should still be avoided, and some wild animals’ venom is potent enough to still take down anthros. As for if anthros are still capable of putting toxins into other beings, yes, but it’s all poison in these cases as anthros don’t use their toxins, else they’d be killing each other, and a lot of them now, as a matter of culture, will have surgeries to make sure that can’t happen, because anthros are so homogenous in terms of how we all interact with each other that venom would be quite an interruption to the way we mix.”

P: “I didn’t know that.”

D: “A lot of anthros never have to deal with it is why, and it’s a private matter in a lot of cases, a bit like asking a crab if their claw is original or regenerated.”

P: “It’s rude.”

D: “Yeah. Just not necessary. That type of mimicry we covered just then was a form of defensive mimicry, but there is also aggressive mimicry, where a predator mimics something to get closer to prey and trick them into allowing them to come close so that they can attack. The Orchid Mantis closely resembles an orchid, which attracts other insects so that they can attack. There is also reproductive mimicry, cuckoos are the infamous example; they will lay their eggs into the nests of other birds and then the host bird will raise the cuckoo offspring as its own. That cuckoo chick may then be very destructive towards the other offspring in the nest, some even throwing their nestmates out of the nest to hog the attention of its non-cuckoo mother.”

P: *Muttered* “and I thought our history was aggressive…”

D: “What was that?”

P: “Nothing, just… nevermind…”

D: “Okay. Something that’s named after the very concept of mimicry itself is the mimic octopus, which kind of uses every form of mimicry under the sun. To compare it to the famous speech mimicking birds, rather than replicating the sounds they hear, mimic octopodes use a process called chromatosis to change the colouration of their bodies and assist their altered appearance forms. They do mimicry on the spot, so if they see something, they can stop in their tracks and recreate the appearance just for fun-”

P: “This sounds an awful lot like shapeshifting.”

D: “Well, it’s not shapeshifting because shapeshifting is a total transformation.”

P: “But shapeshifting… like…” *Muttered* “oof…” *Aloud* “say a shapeshifter… altered his-... its body as to recreate… one's appearance indistinguishable from the source…”

D: “....Go on…”

P: “It’s still the original being, no? That’s not a total transformation.”

D: “But I would argue that that’s not shapeshifting then if you’re not becoming the other species.”

P: “But it is though! There’s nothing to the concept of shapeshifting that implies you stop being the original thing.”

D: “According to who?”

Chair creaks.

P: “Well… the word. ‘Shapeshifting’. Shifting shapes.”

D: “I… ehh… I suppose?”

P: “When a mimic octopus changes its shape, that’s a shape-shift , no?”

D: “But… well… I think we can make the distinction a bit further back in that these octopodes aren’t indistinguishable from the source; if you’re not a predator to that octopus, you can spot the difference fine.”

P: “But you haven’-…” *gasp* “I mean… how do you know?”

D: “Well, look at the screen. You know which one is the seahorse and which is the tentacle there.”

P: “Well, fair, but we’re not in the setting that this is usually taking place in. What if... uh… what if… say… a shapeshifter… a supernatural shapeshifter… is… indistinguishable from its ‘source’ to you, but say… to another supernatural being… they can tell just fine.”

D: “Eurgh!”

Bang.

D: “Sorry. Um… well I don’t think they… well… ugh… I- we. We don’t know that, unfortunately.”

P: “But I’ve seen headlines… some very clearly get fooled by a shapeshifter and then attacked. So we know at least half of it is true.”

D: “BUT WE- *ahem* we can’t find that out. ‘It’s too risky’. ‘We can’t test that one, lad, it’s too dangerous.’ ‘The Underground is Off Limits!’” *Panting.*

Pause.

Slumping in seats.

D: *Sniffle.*

Bottle crunching. Bottle top unscrewing.

D: *Guzzling.*

Pause.

D: “Sorry… I’m not angry at you, I promise.”

P: “All good…”

Pause.

P: “You okay?”

D: *Sip* “It’s okay not to be sometimes.”

Pencil sounds. Mouse click.

D: “Moving away from mimicry…”

Papers shuffling.

D: Reproductive differences. Um… we can go past this if you’re not interested or if it’s perhaps against your values.”

P: “It’s very much not.”

D: “Heard. Um… to be clear here, we’ll be discussing sex here as a binary for much of this; sometimes species aren’t on a sexual binary typically, and within each species there are always anatomical outliers anyway - which is true of all of what we have said so far because that’s how evolution happens - traits mutate in and out of each other all of the time. But we’re talking today about what is most consistent with our understanding of today's pool of species.”

P: “Gotcha.”

D: “So, when we go back through the history of how reproductive organs form, the two are ultimately the same-”

Writing.

D: “components, rearranged into different parts. That is, a penis is made of the same materials as a vagina, but a change in chromosome at the DNA level will determine which of the two you will end up with. At the very base level, all genitalia resembles the anatomy of the female, until that chromosomal difference kicks in and either keeps the genitalia in that state and it starts going further into the appearance of the female anatomy, or causes it to reform into male anatomy.”

P: “And this is always true?”

D: “It’s generally true among animals.”

P: “Okay.”

D: “And also remember that this lesson is about wild animals. Anthropomorphism shakes things up in ways we’ll discuss next time.”

Writing.

P: “Right.”

D: “Some animals’ genitalia looks similar across the sexes on the outside. Most common example of this is the cloaca - a cloaca is any rear opening which contains reproductive and waste excretion functions. Note that it must have multiple; if the opening doesn’t share these functions, that’s not a cloaca.”

P: “So, like, birds-”

D: “You don’t need to point at me.”

Table knocks.

P: “Birds.”

D: “Wild birds.”

P: “Wild birds. They have those?”

D: “Yes.”


P: “And all reptiles?”

D: “Reptiles differ a bit more, but yes.”

P: “How do they differ?”

D: “In birds, males and female cloacas externally look no different. Male birds- well, with exception to 3% of birds, there is no such thing as a bird penis, basically. Ducks have penises. Male reptile anatomy, while their penis equivalents, the hemipenes, are generally internalised, they may become externalised during erection. Additionally, reptiles, as well as sharks and related species… Some of them have two. The complications around defining how genitalia happens is a fascinating study in its own right, because now I’ve brought sharks up and sharks sometimes do all of it on their own.”

Dropping pencil.

P: “What does that mean?”

D: “Well, I say it’s a shark thing. Some reptiles also do it. And it also is not usually the only method of reproduction in any given species; parthenogenesis is when unfertilised eggs can still create an offspring.”

P: “That happens!?!? Naturally!?!?”

D: “And I’m not sure they’re as shocked about it as you are.”

P: “But, like…”

D: “And it’s not just what I mentioned at all, I’m forgetting just how many species do it”

P: “It’s common?”

D: “That’s not what I said. It’s not common at all, but it exists.”

Table thumps.

P: “Okay…”

D: “To blow your mind further, starfish can cut off a limb and then that limb can become a new starfish.”

P: “I… don’t think I believe you.”

D: “They’re one of the species that are able to regenerate their own limbs, for one, but that’s not necessarily an indicator of what that fissured limb becomes because not all beings that can regenerate limbs can necessarily reproduce in this asexual fashion.”

P: “But they can all reproduce sexually too, right? Is anything bound to asexual reproduction”

D: “Yes. I will add briefly that the other kingdoms do that sort of thing all the time. But as far as animals are concerned, there are hybrid and inbred species that can only reproduce parthenogenetically, namely in salamanders as an example. And there is also gynogenesis where animals like the poecilla formosa mollys are exclusively female in their species and rely on sperm from a related species to reproduce”.

Pause.

P: “I think this may be too big a gap in my understanding for now.”

D: “Shall *clap* we talk *clap* about *clap* knots *clap*?”

P: “That… sounds a little closer to home, yes.”

D:“A knot is a bulbis glandis. Only caniforms have this, and among caniforms only canids and a few seals have this. The core function is ensuring the sperm and egg come in contact by inserting the knot during orgasm, at which point it swells up and locks the penis into the vagina. Another famous difference is in cats; cats have spiny penises. Again, not just cats, but they’re the famous example. This also brings us back to keratin; those spines are keratinous. Cats get the most use out of these, we believe the scraping of these spines against the vaginal wall may trigger or at the very least assist with ovulation. The spines can also function as a type of lock though.”

P: “Are locking mechanisms common?”

D: “That is… another complicated question.”

P: “Got it.”

D: “I will say, this is poor form from me as a teacher, I haven’t been teaching this portion well, but I’m also getting the impression this isn’t your field.”

P: “And that, I think, is accurate”

D: “Then we shall save this lesson for later then and move swiftly on to vestigial traits. I made mention of this last week, but the bones that make up my fingers; the phalanges, exist in wild bird wings, but they do not form a hand, nor appear to have a function. That’s what vestigial means. Another vestigial digit is one that I believe anthro canids still have, but at the back of your foot there should be a really floppy extra digit that you don’t use for anything. Wild canids have this too, but they are only vestigial for their hind legs and not their front legs, which is why they’re not present on your wrists; the non-vestigial dew claw present in wild dogs drifted upwards to become the thumb in the anthropomorphic canids.”

P: “And that’s why I have 4 toes per foot?”

D: “No, that vestigial dew claw is still a toe, you just don’t use it.”

P: “Did we used to?”

D: “Yes. All vestigial traits would have been used by ancestors, but as we become a new species under the umbrella, sometimes those traits become unnecessary, but we don’t evolve far enough that such traits disappear entirely.”

P: “So deep into the future, say we do continue evolving downwards.”

D: “Which we will.”

P: “Right. The vestigial dew claw will disappear?”

D:“It might do, yeah. Or, alternatively, you find a new purpose for it.”

P: “That’s what I’m gonna do with my life, I think.”

D: *Laughing.* “You’re going to intentionally make a new purpose for the hind dewclaw.”

P: “Exactly. That’s what all this zoology is gonna come to.”

D: “But to exercise that thought, can you move that vestigial toe with your muscles.”

A pause.

P: “I don’t have muscles, but yes…”

D: *Laughing* “Okay, Pooka, I think we’ve just about concluded this lesson.”

P: “You don’t believe me?”

D: *Laughing* “You’ve said enough today I think, stop the recording for me.”

P: *Giggling.*

Button Press.