#I FUCKED UP MY MATH BTW. I'M GONNA BE DOING THIS FUCKING THING CLOSER TO THREE YEARS NOT LESS ThAN TWO LIKE I THOUGHT

[plutonious]

day two. whys it look like that

[rabbithaver]

@wonderinc-sonic i haven't ever really talked about it much so this is a good question! Chirp technically has two forms, their 'feral' form (when they're a quadruped like real life snow leopards) and their anthropomorphic bipedal form. personally i prefer their feral form more, which is why i commission art of it more often!

the thing is that snow leopards are actually much smaller than you'd expect; the heaviest snow leopard ever recorded was a male who weighed 53.8 kilograms (or 118 lbs.) he was appropriately nicknamed "The Dude" by the researchers. here he is being collared by the Snow Leopard Trust while tranquilized.

however The Dude is definitely an outlier in terms of size, and this picture shows him on his side in the foreground. here's a better picture of a more 'average' snow leopard:

when it comes to numbers, your typical snow leopard is roughly 60 centimeters at the shoulder, or just under two feet. not including their tails, their body length averages about 101 centimeters (40 inches long, or about 3.3 feet.) however when you include their tails, things get so much better. snow leopards have ridiculous fluffy tails that are nearly as long as their bodies. their tails can be as long as 92 centimeters... that's three feet! they use their tails for balancing while sprinting at great speeds down mountains so steep they'd better be qualified as 'cliffs', for keeping warm in unimaginably cold weather, and for carrying around. google 'Snow leopard holding tail' and your day will immediately get 50x better.

behold!!! 10 year old art from high school Rabbithaver. i still think this is cute, tbh.

anyways, Chirp doesn't have exact measurements. i prefer giving artists freedom instead of relying on specific numbers. however, when they're depicted as feral, i would say Chirp is roughly 1.7x the size of real life wild snow leopards. which means i have to do some math now, so bear with me!

if i were to give Chirp official measurements based on the average snow leopard's size... here's how big they might be.

102 centimeters tall at the shoulder, or about 40.1 inches. rounding down, that's... i think 3 feet and four inches.

their body length (not including their tail) would be 171.7 centimeters. if we round that up to 178cm and then convert it to inches, that's 70 inches, or 5.8 feet. that's almost as long as my dad is tall.

almost six feet without the tail is wild, so... i'm kind of almost afraid of seeing what the future has in store if we include the tail. at 92cm x 1.7, Chirp's tail alone would be 156 centimeters, or 61 inches... that's five feet!

from the tip of their nose to the very end of their tail, Chirp is at least 11 feet long!!

i guess, when it comes to their size, if you look up "human next to female bengal tiger," that should give you kind of a rough idea for their size. however, keep in mind that snow leopards are built pretty differently from tigers. they have shorter, more powerful limbs, and they look much thicker than they actually are because of how much fur they have.

as for Chirp's weight, i'm not even gonna bother to speculate that, but i will say that they're at least 300lbs. they're closer to me in real life that way, and closer to their bipedal form, as well!

it's rare for me to commission art of Chirp as a biped, but when i do, i have started requesting that the artist give them the same body type i have irl. it's made me feel much more at home in my body and i think it captures the "soft, chubby, friendly beast" energy i want them to have (this is the best example of what i mean, disregard their protective expression lol)

this amazing piece is by @y2khaos btw their work is fucking stellar <3

anyways sorry about the Chirp Lore Dump. i actually have never done this math before (and might have done it wrong) so it was exciting for me!

May I just say I always love your fursona, such a nice rich ourple :)))

AWH THIS IS SO SWEET THANK YOUUUU 🥹