Anthropomorphic Biology
THE SCIENCE & PHILOSOPHY of FANTASY
Anthropomorphic Biology
INTRODUCTION
How can anthropomorphic creatures be? Some of it just doesn't make sense to me, like how can their be both anthropomorphic animals, yet still feral ones? Also how would their biology work in reality if they did actually exist? How can insects not collapse if they were macro scaled? Well here I'm going to answer these questions with my knowledge of zoology.
Evolution & Natural Selection
Life evolved from one bacteria cell, and over many years later, we now have intelligent primates who could record their own history. How? Well evolution is a chance in a mutation that would hopefully benefit the survival of a species, rather than extinct it. These changes are caused by environmental changes, as well quantum ones too, through quantum tunneling that's. Over time, species will adapt to their environment, better suiting it for its survival. Now the cruelest part of biology, natural selection. As if one species is risk in being endangered, their offspring may gain a mutation that will aid their survival in new rapid changing environment. Those who do not have that mutation will die off, and those who have it, will carry it on to their children.
Now how can furries actually evolve from ferals? Well in creation arguments, you will hear that if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? First of all, that's stupid, second of all, we evolved from neither from a monkey nor ape, but a common ancestor that splitted into two different species, which is why we have ape, and primate. So, if we go back to every animal alive today's common ancestor, and somehow all of them coincidentally split into anthro & feral, and somehow come up with the same genetic makeup, while evolving in different environments, having the same exact changes during those periods, BUT... The only thing that changes is their body structure to a more primate stance, and nervous system to gain higher awarity & intellect... I have a hard time believing in that happened naturally, so I'm going to add some force, that shifted & splitted every common ancestor into anthro and feral, but the actual primates weren't affected, because their cells did mutate into entirely different separate species.
Vocal Communication
If anthros can talk, why can't my dog? Well why can we speak in complex languages? Our vocal cords gives us the ability to vibrate air into many sounds & shapes, but our tongues, lips, and noses, does the talking. Yes, noses, because if you ever closed your nostrils, you will hear your voice a bit blocked. By using our muscles to make many forms in our tunnel mouths, at which sound travels through to escape and vibrate the air. That's why animals can't form complex languages like us, but what if they could? Well they would have flatter faces, and larger lips, but I don't like that, it looks unattractive, in my opinion of course. So instead, let's give them more flexible mouths, tongues, and able to control the pitch and strength at which air exits their lungs. That should do it. Also, you know how snakes or other reptiles with forked tongues have that lisssssp every time they pronounce an s sound. That's not of their forked tongues, snakes and other animals hiss, because they have no vocal cords to makes different noises. The tongue is used to taste the chemicals in the air, to find prey, and avoid predators. Snakes & lizards use something in the roof of their mouths called a jacobson's organ, it's how they can taste scent. Even if that lisp was true, then how could they pronounce "Th" without hissing? What about voice? With different size heads, and muzzles, would that mean that the pitch of sound would come out at different speeds, vibrating the air at different frequencies. So an anthro would have deeper voice than a human one, because it's a larger & longer cavity?
Experiment with the human throat with the pink trombone
Scalp Hair
Sometimes when I see an anthropomorphic creature with hair on their scalp, it looks like they just slapped on a wig, plus how can reptiles & birds have hair? so how can anthros actually have hair? If you shave an anthro's scalp, what would you expect to be underneath? Their original fur? Nope, a plain bald scalp, as their hair &, fur is rooted into their skin. How would reptiles, birds, and amphibians have scalp hair? They don't have hair, but their skin evolved to look, and feel like hair. Reptiles are finger nail skinned, made of keratin. Birds have their plumage as their hair, flight for pointy and outstanding, and down for fluffy & curly. Amphibians have like this jelly fluid hair, really jiggly and slimy, and quite transparent, might be the same for a fish. Though one particular species is at risk with having hair, and that would be cetaceans, Or whales, but why? Whales can only breathe through their blowholes, because their nostrils are on top of their head, if you have hair blocking that, then they'll suffocate. That's why I have fantasized the Cetacean Root Ring, or CRR. basically it's a ring of hair rooted on the edge of the blowhole, so no whales can suffocate on their own hair, but what about nose hairs? Sure, they can have those too, but I rather not.
Breasts
Every female anthropomorphic creature I see has breasts, or boobs. It makes some sense with mammals, but how could birds? Reptiles, and other classes can have these jiggly boogalas? Well here's the thing, they don't, they're just squishy lumps that mimic breasts, without containing the mammary glands to feed their young, just some loose tissue to attract mates, birds could have breasts because some have a milk crop, that secretes milk they nurture their young witj. Which does make a lick of sense since we do draw them like that, but we're human, so are the anthros, as they're anthropomorphization of us & animals. Since these bubbly pairs attract mates, and can reproduce more, then that means that species can carry on those sexy over the shoulder boulder holders to the next generation.
Reproduction
Lets say you're a young pup, and you hear about the news that you're going to have a baby brother, being "created" by your mother fox, and your father snow jaguar. Then your parents return from the hospital, and you see that your baby brother is an egg, and you know from first grade that dogs don't lay eggs... Wtf? Welcome to interspecies breeding, I'm still trying to figure out how this could work. Why can't this work? Well the DNA in Meiosis, the beginning of cell division for a fertilized egg, is like a zipper as I've been told. If it can't fit in the correct proteins, than it simply won't divide into new life, and instead die off, as well with the sperm. I made a chart a while back explaining this but it still wouldn't make sense. How can one species, trying to birth another species, have the same development cycle? Why do different species even have different development cycles? Well reproduction isn't easy, and requires a lot of energy, but it's crucial to future generations. First, Fish had to lay, and fertilize their eggs separately. Then, amphibians could fertilize internally, also known as insemination, but their eggs are too fragile, and could only survive in water. Later, reptiles & birds could keep their eggs in a liquid environment on land, while also contained in a rock hard shield, difficult for predators to penetrate through. Finally, mammals were the ones to develop their young internally inside the female, which increases chances of survival by keeping the fetus sterile from any outside harmful bacteria, and if the mother, or baby is sick, they can transfer nutrients to heal each other. Now what if we replaced every anthro species with a mammal reproduction cycle, well that means we have to replace their reproductive organs as well, which just doesn't work, and makes it less attractive. What if we just separate it, and say that only this anthropomorphic class, and can give birth to that one, nope, there are still anthro parents who give birth to other classes. Okay, I guess I'm going to have to use the chart then.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12da1wrvh7etXePS5dKLz3YtnwPgTNBbWvdd4tS7sj9g/edit?usp=sharing
That there's chances for a baby to be born from that species. And that every anthropomorphic species has omini reproductive organs, either to lay jelly eggs, hard shell eggs, or give birth live, but if two separate species were developing inside the womb, then it could increase the chance of infant mortality.
Bird Wings
What do you imagine an anthro bird wing to be like? On back of the shoulders like an angel? Maybe their wings are just arms, or how about they have claws emerging from their elbows? I think it's the third one, because it's more biologically accurate, as prehistoric, and some birds to this day, had claws & spurs on their wings, which should give them the ability to grab, and manipulate tools. Also, their muscles connecting from their shoulders to arms are much more stretched, and able to flap much more quickly, stretching & contracting up & down. It also requires a lot of energy to flap those suckers, so eat up!
Arthropods
Imagine giant walking talking insects, and if you looked through an electron microscope, they're terrifying, so now macro scale them, and give them some adorable faces, and intelligence, and you have an anthropomorphized arthropod. However, physics says that they will collapse from their own body weight, as their yellow blood will spill out of the exoskeleton, killing it all together, why? Well insects are just hollow cavities filled with blood & organs, but they're so miniscule that the weight is non existent to the insect. Larger classes of animals, mostly with vertebrae, have closed circulatory systems, meaning that their supply of blood circulates through their bodies in tubes, delivering the nutrients, and retrieving the pollutants in tiny branching rings of capillaries, to each organ. Now in insects, and tinier invertebrate, their circulatory systems are open, as their yellow blood doesn't always travel in tubes, known as hemolymph, as ours is hemoglobin. Instead, the organs just float inside the cavity, while the heart pumps the blood in, as a long tube, and the lung is the belly, or abdomen, exchanging the air for oxygen, and expelling carbon dioxide. Size also determines on how fast a heart will beat, as it takes more energy to pump more fluid around the body, and if the heart is pumping too quickly, then it'll exhaust itself, or if it's pumping too slowly, then the organs won't have enough time to receive and exchange. Tiny animals with smaller hearts, have super quick heart beats, because it takes less energy to pump mini hearts. So if you somehow use a macro ray, to grow an insect to the size of you, [Somehow giving it more mass to evenly distribute its weight], and its exoskeleton can hold all that sloshing liquid, it still would die from it having an open circulatory system, that blood can't evenly flow, and still have enough time get oxygen to the brain, it just wouldn't work, and a brain that size is too fragile. Anthropomorphic macro arthropods both need an endoskeleton, and exoskeleton, as well as a closed circulatory system.
Insects have many eyes, called compound eyes, as they see the world in a mosaic structure, not a duplicate one, as in every eye is the same picture. Light passes through the lens, hitting their retinas, which brings the information to their mind that they're seeing. Now in reality compound eyes look horrendous, but the colors are magnificent, but I want to give the illusion of pupils. So I thought, how about that the lens can be maneuvered by iris muscles around the many compound eyes, as each tilt of the colorful lens, reveals even more colors, and on direct focus would reveal the whole color, polarization. When a sleep, the lenses can turn completely sideways, blocking all light, giving the illusion of a shut off television screen. The tilting of the lenses can also give the illusion for eyelids, anger, sorrow, joy, insanity, fear, and so on. Also they need to have immunity to common everyday items, like actual insecticides.
Size & Metabolism
Hermaphrodites
A hermaphrodite, or a herm, is a fictional gender [Like Tumblr {Well some fish can swap their gender, and some lizards are just plain female. Humans can rarely be born with both male & female reproductive organs, but they don't both have a separate functioning penis & a vagina}], that both contain male & female reproductive organs. It should make sense that it should exist from an evolutionary argument, that two combined sexes are better than one, that sexual selection doesn't have to exist, just reproduce with yourself, to make more and pass on your genes to the next generation. Before I explain why this can't work, let me explain the difference between sexual reproduction, and asexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction occurs when two opposite genders with XX & XY sex cells, fertilize, and exchange genetic information to reproduce more life, as this requires reproductive organs. In Asexual reproduction, the organism has no sexual reproductive organs, as they reproduce by budding, and can even control when to bud, like if food becomes scarce, it will retract the bud, and when food is plentiful, it continues the budding. Now why this can't work. First, the hormone mixing of estrogen, & testosterone. Transgenders who go through hormone treatment go through many psychological issues, like depression, and mood swings, that could lead to suicide. Maybe it's natural for a herm? No, the main reason a hermaphrodite, with both a penis & vagina, is because of accidental inbreeding with self. Inbreeding can lead to many genetic problems for future offspring, as having too many, or too little chromosomes, and fatal diseases such as weakened organs, deformed bodies, and intellectual disabilities. That would mean that the future generation has a low chance of survival, herms can only be created artificially, not naturally. I would expect more healthy realism from a hermaphrodite purebred pug, rather than a herm wolf.
Pure Breeds
If interspecies breeding wasn't confusing enough, then how can you explain pure breeds? The reason we have purebred dogs is that because we created them, as they're artificially selected, not naturally. In the wild, animals can compete, and mate with whoever they want of their own species. In captivity, or domestication, people decide which animal mates who, selecting specific breeds to combine them into one new breed. However, most purebreds are more vulnerable to fatal diseases, than mutts. Mutts are healthy dogs, where their genetics are distributed to make the code for a happy healthy puppy. Some pure breeds are forced to mate with their own parents & siblings, which is the definition of incest, pugs are more inbred than any other breed on the planet. For pure breeds to exist, you would think that once anthro dogs gained intelligence, they were able to choose their mates, however, those who looked deformed and unhealthy are not likely able to mate. So the only way I can imagine this, is that there was a canine oppression century, where they were forced to mate, or rape to whoever their captive tells them to. That's the only possible way I can find this remotely possible.
Consumption
Every species has a specific diet to chew. Herbivores eat vegetation, carnivores eat other animals, omnivores eat both vegetation, and animals. Why isn't every animal an omnivore? Well first of all, their teeth evolved to eat only specific materials, herbivores have smooth flat teeth to chew the tough cell walls of plant cells, carnivores teeth are sharp, and razor like, to tear through its thick meat, and cracking bones. Omnivores both have flat & sharp teeth, to consume both plants, and other animals. So every anthropomorphic animal should have omnivore teeth, or liquify it in a blender. Can they eat raw food? No, because humans can't eat raw food without becoming ill, so we began to cook our food in fire, to add more flavor, and kill harmful bacteria that would harm our immune systems.
Clothes
Why would anthros wear clothes if they have fur, or skin already adapted to their environment? Well humans began to wear clothes, because it was much more comfortable, and increased our chances of survival, which passed on to our future offspring. So we lost our fur, not all of it, but most. I think anthro's with fur would wear clothes because their hairs are much more shorter, compared to their animal ancestors. I also think that certain classes of animals should wear specific kind of clothes. Like amphibians with their slimy skin should wear like swimming clothes, to absorb the mucus, and poison.
Speciesism
I don't think that's a real word. In history, we have learned that the more diversity there's, the more people are going to hate on eachother. I prefer to call it Classism, as in mammals, reptiles, birds, etc. Classism is like racism, not hate, but poor judgement, and the idea that every class is a like. In racism, the only thing that's diverse is pigments in skin. Or the amount of melanin your skin cells contain, the more melanin, the darker the skin is. We have race because humans began to migrate to different climates around the world, which their skin adapted to decrease the chance of skin cancer from the sun's invisible UV rays. Race is only one factor, but animal class is many, which would definitely give rise to more political & ideological groups.
Poisonous & Venomous Rights
Should poisonous & venomous animals have rights? They're walking chemical weapons, with fangs ready to inject venom, or skins that secrete poisons? Are they allowed to be free to travel, to vote, to live? I think venomous animals are okay, because they have the choice to kill, and their venom glands can be removed surgically, but poisonous creatures, can't. Like an anthro dart frog, how can they interact with other people without accidentally killing them, should they be locked up until a universal antidote has been cured for all classes, or remove a gene that prevents future poisonous anthros?
Demographics, Economics, Innovation
Throughout the years of free enterprise, known as capitalism, have been taking lot of risks to invent the technologies we use today, certain companies target specific demographics to sell their products, demographics are pretty limited, but what if we expanded, and increased the use of products, meaning that it would require more progress and efficiency. Do you think that anthros will have developed more advanced technology, and be more advanced than our modern world. Or would the overproduction of products of inflation would fall it into communism? Well for capitalism, there's a equilibrium between supply & demand, Demand is the customer, the supply is the product. If supply increases, then customer's pay less, if the supply goes down, then they pay more. I'm no expert in economics, so I'll leave this open for the experts to answer.
Hygiene & Cosmetics
Have you ever been to a zoo, well I have and it wreaks. I love animals, but only from a distance, that's why I'm a cat person [Actually I'm a opossum person,], because they don't stink. So would anthros smell like their feral counterparts? That depends, first, where does the smell come from, and second, who says it stinks. The person who finds the odors either natural, or disgusting, depends on their personality, and senses of scent & taste. So not all animal odors smell the same to that individual. So now where's the scent coming from? Microscopic bacteria that live inside, and outside the animal. Most of these bacteria can be harmful to us, so when we smell these odors, our bodies are telling us, if you consume this, you may die. However, today in developed countries, we have better access to clean water, and medicine, [though antibiotics will mutate viruses into superbugs possibly ending all modern medical practice]. So we don't have to worry of getting a virus. Would anthro's smell like ferals, if they don't bathe, and live in developing countries, than yeah. If anthros followed basic hygiene, sprayed deodorant, perfumes, and colognes, than you would receive yourself a sexy clean anthropomorphic skunk. Also having a nice warm bath with your furry partner won't be as romantic as you expect. It's more ugly really. What about combining, or grooming your fur, is there a barber shop that takes care of that?
Homologous Classifications
A comic scene drawn by me, with the marsupial explaining why a restaurant's no pets policy rule, is simply outrageous.
Homologous means relating to in body, and structure, and this is an important aspect in evolution, so in the evolution of humans, anthros, and ferals. When, and what's the line that separates these two that makes it entirely different species? Well what makes a species, a species if the species can breed with each other, and produce fertile offspring, then it belongs to the same species, if that species can't breed with that species, then it doesn't belong to the species, this is known as reproductive isolation. At first I wanted that anthros can breed both with humans & ferals, because that's attractive for some reason, and humans are obviously isolated from ferals. The only issue with that, is that hereditary says that their genes will be mixing into that pool, giving births that aren't natural to that species, like can you imagine a whale giving birth to an infant human? So they must be isolated. So there's a certain boundary that separates these three species, or classes. What if humans, or anthros are allergic to each other? Well I think they would spend more time with each other, not in harmony, but in contact, and more likely to evolve a immunity over pesky allergies.
Doctor or Vet?
For a larger demographic, and variety in species, that also means we need a variety in medical science too. So would an anthro go to a vet, or a physician? Their anatomy is human structure, but their organs are mostly entirely different from a human. Their psychology may be the same, but they do still have instincts that helped them survive in the past. There lifespan has also increased, due to evolution, and invention of medicine. Or do we need an entirely new job for anthros? One that both understands human anatomy, psychology, but also understanding zoology, and pet biology? What would we call this new job, well what were to origin words for vet, and doctor. Well what I can gather is that vet came from horse racing, and doctor is a teacher, or a professional in medical science, of restoring health to a patient. So I guess that this new job, and field of medicine will likely have an equine name to it, so an Equinesition? Also, what would going to the this anthro doctor be like? Well I think it goes like this.
Fill out the forum, that identifies your class, species, gender, and your basic biology, and since we have a huge variety of anthropomorphic species, like billions on the globe, I think you're going to be there for a long time, so get comfortable.
After you fill out what felt like an eternity of that ridiculous forum, you hand it to the secretary at the front.
You wait for your doctor to call you in, what shouldn't be too long, hopefully, at least you don't have universal healthcare, that waiting time would be months!
The Equinesition will call your name, and lead you into the room. Now what will he do? Will he/she perform a combination of veterinary and anatomical measurements , or will the Equinesition perform a entirely new form of medical practice?
I don't know?
Shopping
If our world were populated by anthropomorphic animals what would shopping be like? Would stores be the size of malls, and would malls be the size of amusement parks? That's ridiculous, but the size of pharmacies, is insanity. Or we just divide it into separate buildings. We're not going to add a building for every species, but for every six classes instead. One for fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and arthropods.
Limits of Biological Anthropomorphization
When does it stop, well not with inanimate objects, but with animals? I have to say Cnidarias, or jellyfish, anemones, they can possibly live under the ocean, giving life to an underwater kingdom, but their nervous systems, complex brains, and jelly bodies would be too fragile, and would dehydrate from being on dry land. So in my opinion, Cnidarias, is the limit of Biological Anthropomorphization.
Thanks for reading :3