#mammal bias

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Living Species, by the Numbers

Species of Mammals: ~5,500

Species of Birds: Between 10,000 and 20,000 (lots of disagreement)

Species of nonavian Reptiles: Between 10,000 and 20,000 (see above)

Species of Amphibians: more than 7,000

Species of "Fish": more than 33,000

Species of Echinoderms (star fish, sea urchins, etc.): ~7,500

Species of Arthropods: over 2,000,000 and growing (only 1,257,000 described but all researchers know that is a gross underestimate)

Species of Molluscs: > 100,000

Other Bilaterans (wormy things): ~85,000

Corals & Jellyfish: ~16,000

Sponges: ~11,000

Fungi: > 6,000,000

Plants: > 400,000 (plants species are weird)

"Protists": unknown, but more than 100,000 and is severely underestimated

"Bacteria": who the fuck knows. there are too many. Our bodies are half bacteria. possibly in the trillions.

This is what we mean by mammal bias: mammals are the smallest group on here, and yet, because we are mammals, they get the most research money, the most screen time, the most conservation funding, the most love, the most interest. That's ridiculous. That's patently nonsense. Mammals are not "more evolved" than anything on this list - we're all modern life and thus, equally evolved. The other groups of life deserve at least more attention, more care, more interest, even if we can never get it to be proportional. In fact, you can even see mammal bias in this list - because mammals are so well studied, that's the only species count that is NOT vague.

We rely on ALL of these creatures because we are part of a complex biosphere where all of these organisms work together to allow the flow of nutrients and energy through the system. We are all descendants of each biosphere that came before. Mammal bias - focusing only on things that we share the closest genetic ties to - is not only ignorant, its self defeating.

Kill the mammal bias in your head. Kill it now. Because its gross, its inaccurate, and mammals do not in fact rule the world. Bacteria do, and if we *must* give it to an animal, that animal would be Arthropods.

This has been a PSA. Please reblog to spread, because I'm tired of dealing with mammal bias in my own house.

[palaeowhy]

Documentary: look at all these cool mammals

>Goes outside

>sees a dozen types birds

>sees some fish

>sees about a bajillion different bugs

>only mammals i see are other humans and their dogs

Easiest way to realize mammal bias might be a thing is literally just to go outside

[synblr]

Got the idea of making polls from @a-dinosaur-a-day, I might do a few of them before/between writing blog entries!

I'm wondering where everyone stands between avoiding mammal bias on one side, and highlighting the connections between synapsids and mammals on the other!

[downthegenderriver]

abolish the gender binary but the binary is dog person vs cat person

[bluegekk0]

updated grimm's design. he is more fluffy now and has a little tail

[mothmvn]

skull studies... I may have a type

[pantestudines]

for a guy whose stated interest in paleontology is reptiles, specifically turtles, I sure do have a LOT of experience with large mammals. Like, all of my major experience is with sites that consist mostly of mammoths and/or rhinos.

[captain-lovelace]

oh you're viviparous and endothermic? should we throw a party? should we invite the 19th and early 20th century biologists who thought mammals were more evolved than other clades?

[rxttenfish]

im going to commit a hate crime for that beelzebub design

[lilgnomefella]

cat killing birds is genuinely so upsetting to me i hate how ppl just let their cats roam around outside and like i love cats so much which makes me feel more :/

cats kill so many birds and it makes me so angry... like entire species have gone extinct cos ppl dont give a shit about birds and other reptiles

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Hi,

Apparently the winner of the 2021 New Zealand Bird of the year competition is the long tailed bat.

You read that right a BAT won a BIRD competition against 75 bird species.

Is that mammal bias enough for ya?

oh. my. gd.

[tahwarts]

honestly this is like the perfect most satisfying metazooa game to me. every guess narrows it down. i didnt fuck up any clades. i didnt even have to look anything up

[unidentifiedfuckingthing]

i thought this one was one of those secret-greek-goddess infinite-chocolate tumblr homebrewed urban legends but it's real! huh.

[wyverewings]

…unpopular opinion probably but I kinda don’t like the term furry because of the mammal bias inherent to that term

tbh there’s a lot of mammal bias in the furry community already, like characters who aren’t mammals are a breath of fresh air to see, and invertebrate characters? that’s a goddamn miracle to find.

maybe this is because I would expect a community centered around anthro animals to have a lot more interest in zoology, but apparently more furries are tech people.

I should note: I do consider myself a furry in the sense that I enjoy sapient animal characters, though I’d say I’m more otherkin than anything. I also don’t want to involve myself much with the nsfw side of the community, no shade or anything, I’m just sex repulsed.

[amerricanartwork]

RW Headcanon: Know the Difference! | An Overview of Quetzalli's Slugcats

Here’s a headcanon I’ve wanted to elaborate on for a while, and today I finally felt compelled to make it real! Also, just a disclaimer I am not a huge biology nerd nor have I studied it that heavily, so I apologize if something here doesn’t make sense or if I get something wrong. I just like fantasy worldbuilding from time to time, and I always like trying to make sense of things I’m interested in!

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Basically, I’m in the crowd that interprets slugcats as mustelids rather than literal slugs. When I say this, however I don’t mean that slugcats would necessarily be classified in the actual mustelidae family, seeing as Rain World’s world is most-likely not Earth and therefore our taxonomic classifications and phylogenetic relations can’t necessarily apply. Thus, when I call them “mustelids”, I really just mean that I imagine them as some kind of weasel with all the necessary physical traits to earn that general label. 

The first half of the name “slugcat”, in my headcanon, is thus not referring to any literal connection to slugs or other mollusks, but is instead derived simply from their appearance. Due to their long ears and thick tail, and because their fur and fat often squishes together in such a way that it makes their features blend together and their bodies appear more smooth (it’s the same physics as that whole “cats are liquid” idea), the general silhouette of a slugcat can easily be likened to that of a literal slug. The second half of their name is also not literal, and instead refers to their jumping and acrobatic abilities and their skill in hunting and pouncing on small prey, which is very similar to that of small cats.

Species Overview

Now to give a little more detail on slugcats themselves as a species! I headcanon them as small to medium-sized mammals most similar to Earth weasels in both their biology and their ecological niche, who originally served as cute low-maintenance pets for the Ancients and as hunters of small pests in facilities on the ground. They’re clever by nature and good at fitting through tight spaces, and later on they evolved greater jumping abilities to pounce on prey. They’re also very social creatures, who’ve taken to forming medium to large colonies primarily in and around the massive trees that thrive between the cracks in iterators’ rainstorm areas (like the one Gourmand, Survivor, and Monk’s colony lives in). Due to this social nature they also generally travel in groups of at least two, both for company and protection against tougher animals. Travel partners are usually siblings or good friends, and sometimes even whole families will journey out together to find food and other resources for the rest of the colony.

Despite being a small prey animal, slugcats have managed to get by not only due to their intelligence — the evolution of which would be seen as a rather unexpected twist of events if you asked their creators, for the Ancients found them cute but rather simple — but because of their impressive adaptability. It’s similar to that of real life red foxes and pigeons, and it allows them to survive decently well even in less ideal environments; a trait especially necessary for a world as industrialized as this one, even if its people are gone and most of the machinery is inactive. As such not all colonies live in trees; some find homes in the abandoned facilities, large underground hollows, and a few bold colonies have even claimed territories high up in iterator cities alongside scavengers. Slugcats are opportunists and masters at making the best of their surroundings, yet even beyond that they carry a certain other, “special” ability of their own that makes them as diverse as they are clever. But that’s a headcanon for another day…

Reasoning

Now for some out-of-universe explanation for this classification choice. I’ve always seen slugcats as some kind of small scurrying mammal (kind of a bias on my part, I just like mammals honestly, and they’re most familiar to me), mainly due to the way they look and move when on all fours, and their place in the game’s food chain. Originally though I saw them as rodents and compared them to mice and rats, which I still sometimes use for anatomy reference for these creatures. But one day a friend of mine saw me drawing slugcats and thought they were weird ferrets, and the more I thought about it and the more I developed personal speculative biology headcanons for slugcats, the more that label seemed the most fitting for them. It was also solidified when I did a bit more research and realized the main characteristic of rodents is their buck teeth, which just didn’t seem to fit with how I perceived slugcats. Not to mention rodents aren’t really predator animals, and slugcats’ implied natural diet and the gameplay itself does strongly imply if not confirm they have some instinctive hunting ability. 

Thus, it seemed “weasel” was the best classification for these creatures, and I quite like it so far! Once again it satisfies my mammal preference, but I also just think it’s a fun idea that neither part of the “slugcat” name is literal, similar to a lot of real-life creatures named after completely different animals, including fellow weasel, the polecat. Plus, I realized recently it’s kind of ironic with how I perceive the messenger slugcats, Hunter and Spearmaster, as being like hunting or guard dogs for their creators, when weasels are exactly the kind of animal humans with their dogs would normally hunt for! It’s cute, it’s familiar, it’s fun, yet I think it still has just as much potential for some interesting speculative biology ideas as the literal slug slugcat interpretations!

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I'm so glad to finally get this out! I like seeing specbio slugcat headcanons in the RW fandom, yet I haven't seen many more in-depth takes from artists who don't take the "slugcats are literal slugs/mollusks/primarily mollusk-based" angle. Not that that's a bad headcanon of course; do what you think feels right! But once again I personally prefer slugcats being mammals, and I always look for fan-content that's as close to my personal preferences as possible. And when I can't find enough of it, I make it myself!

So hopefully this serves as a bit more of that kind of representation for the mustelid slugcat interpretation. It at least helped me develop my own idea of the species a bit more; much of that stuff in the overview part was ideas I came up with while typing this whole headcanon out!

As always, I hope you enjoy this headcanon of mine! I've still got so many ideas to develop and share, and even more coming as I continue to ponder these characters and their stories, so as long as you guys still like these Rain World headcanons of mine, they'll keep coming!

[great-and-small]

I just have to say it’s really refreshing to read your thoughts on the walrus/fairy post, as I also have very strong feelings about it. Thank you for sharing your opinion

For someone such as myself who is very pro-whimsy, tumblr’s collective willingness to believe in fairies is actually quite charming. I would like to be the type of person to quickly and without question accept that fairies are real if one knocked on my door but honestly I’m a bit of a skeptic and that’s not how my brain works. I’m just more of a Scully than a Mulder I guess!

I think my bias here is that I studied wildlife forensics in vet school, and as a result I dare not underestimate the determination of wildlife smugglers. Yes, it would be hard to smuggle a walrus (even a juvenile) into a private residence. That said people have similarly smuggled Nile crocodiles, lions, spotted seals, cheetahs, chimpanzees, and so so many more species. There was even a case of a gentleman who was taken to court for planning to steal a walrus from an aquarium.

I also think some folks are underestimating the athleticism of a walrus. They aren’t lazy slugs that just lay on a beach all day, but rather extraordinarily powerful and intelligent animals. People saying a walrus would never make it up their stairs make me chuckle because walruses in the wild can and do climb 200 ft cliffs. A walrus’ tusks could also glance against a door in a way that resembled knocking. It is highly highly highly improbable for a walrus to be on your doorstep. But not impossible.

If I find a walrus at my door, I have a bizarre but intriguing puzzle that I can immediately start trying to solve. If I find something like the tooth fairy at my door (and am able to discern it is no hoax), I have to re-evaluate my entire understanding of reality. Of physics, and biology, and my perception of the universe around me. That would definitely shock me more than an unexpected mammal in a place it shouldn’t be!