#i don't think anything i said here was groundbreaking but...ye these are my several cents about sylvari anatomy :D

[kerra-and-company]

☕ + Sylvari Anatomy. Do they eat and what.

Oooh, interesting interesting!!! Sylvari anatomy is something that I've seen ~5 million headcanons on as well as have my own thoughts on, and I love pretty much every single idea about it that I've seen so far :D But as far as my personal thoughts on it are concerned:

The general appearance/phenotype of all the sylvari that we've seen is humanoid, even though they're very much plant-based beings. According to canon (the limited info we get in-game, as well as some things a dev said a while back that can be found on the wiki), they do in fact eat and are omnivorous, which I think makes sense! They wouldn't have enough leaves to survive solely via photosynthesis (unless their skin/bark could also do it), and a decent amount of them don't even have leaves. And there are plenty of carnivorous plants as well, which are able to entrap and kill their prey (in that case, generally insects) via acid--that's likely the basis for sylvari digestive systems, which would be a bit different than humans' but appear similar from outside the body.

As for what they eat--canonically, they're omnivorous, which makes sense both from a plant and a they're-human-based-in-some-ways perspective. They have nectar in the Grove (which is...more of a drink, probably, but still), as well as a few different plant-based foods iirc. But based on in-game dialogue (thinking of the boat ride to Aurene's cave in EoD), plenty of people Assume that sylvari eat sunlight. I think they probably can gain nutrients from sunlight/photosynthesis, but they couldn't subsist entirely on it and need to consume food as well.

Other things on anatomy that I saw on the wiki and wanted to comment on here:

Sylvari have sap instead of blood: makes complete sense to me, though the composition might not be an exact match for typical tree sap.

Sylvari don't have hearts (as in anatomically): this one I don't really treat as canon. I feel like that if sylvari anatomy necessitates having a bloodstream (even though it uses a substance that's closer to sap), and they're actively moving around as much as they do, they'd probably need something to move the blood/sap around fast enough to reach all the extremities of the body. The anatomy could very well manage to work in the canon scenario too somehow, though; I just don't like this bit as much because it doesn't make as much sense to me xD