Centaurism is when over many generations, a pair of front limbs goes from being used for support and locomotion to being permanently held off the ground for grasping, object manipulation, or other purposes. Basically turning a pair of front feet into a pair of hands.
Having four legs is often considered to be the ideal number for large animals, being very stable and resource efficient.
Therefore, it stands to reason that intelligent aliens with six limbs (4 legs, 2 hands) or more would be very common, and tool use on planets where the equivalent to Earth's vertebrates have 6 legs would be much more common among species than it is on Earth.
Aliens would be astounded by our ability to balance on merely two feet and our incredible flexibility. They would also be fascinated that some species of birds of all things figured out how to use tools.
"How did your raven use the key card?! Its front limbs are wings! Its back limbs are legs! It doesn't have hands!"
why does it always gotta be "oh im a communist but not like those marxists leninists-" we had this debate. in the 1800s. in fact marx AND lenin wrote about it: you are either for some nebulous idea of communal living that gets you nowhere OR you realize that you have to start from the current material conditions, and organize, and the organization has to be centralized for it to work and you have to study a lot and also act in group because going to protests on your own is just perpetuating an individualist ideology. they were saying marx was outdated in 1915!! guess what happened two years later. like you can incorporate all you want from feminism and queer theory and even anarchy but at the end of it all. only one line of action can bring about revolution, has revolution as its objective and has in fact done so before. it's marxism leninism. you have just been conditioned to think it's outdated so you wouldn't use the only weapon that actually works! people cant afford to eat and the west's quest to maintain economic hegemony is pushing us into ww3 and you will not use the concepts of plusvalue, imperialism, and political party, why? because the ruling class told you identity politics are more modern?
little kris redesign both for an au thing I have in my mind and also because I just have beef with her original design. she’s professor elm’s research assistant (though he mostly just lets her run around and do her own research instead of assisting him with anything) and she specializes in studying shiny pokemon!
The eye of Uroplatus garamaso, the new gecko species my colleagues and I described yesterday. Check out that weird pupil! Four little diamonds in a chain.