#Jaguar tooth

[palaeosinensis]

Testing out some small block print square ideas. I’ve got some rubber scraps to either use up or make stamps with.

[yagurlhere]

Hey guys, do you have any controversial opinions about Objectified? Please tell me. (I have...mixed feelings about the comic, to say the least.)

(Obligatory picture cause I feel like people wouldn't notice this if I don't have any picture in it)

WARNING: LANGUAGE

I honestly want Dynamite to go bat sh*t insane and start killing people...like, I want them to tap back into his primal instincts, cause it's been like...EPISODE 27, since I think we last saw a storyline about his conflicts with his instincts, and I kind of rlly hate how they seem to have dumped it...it was rlly interesting but ever since Hide and Seek we barely see it ever more...Lean Meat didn't feel like a conclusion. I'm glad they're sort of bringing it back, but I just kind of want to see Dynamite snap and do something similar to Razor under the effects of Delirium.

[advanceddoodling]

Feliforms, mostly cats.

[sheltiechicago]

Saber-tooth tiger

Made Jaguar, Saber-Tooth Tiger And Lion Sculpture With Hammered Steel

Artist Selçuk Yılmaz

Jaguar

Lion

[snapdragonessart]

Part 2 of my dragon dentition series 😊 ancients coming next! Teef info under the cut

Obelisks take inspiration from Chinese guardian lion statues, with their voluminous manes, big paws and fierce face. As such, their teeth would be similar to a lion’s dentition, with massive canines and carnassials. Although lions mainly eat land-based animals, they are also opportunistic and will sometimes eat fish and even insects. This doesn’t make up for any large part of their diet, however, and in this way they differ from Obelisks which only eat seafood and bugs. Jaguars make a better match for Obelisks in regards to food, as they eat aquatic prey more often than lions do, with one remote population of jaguars in Brazil primarily feeding on aquatic reptiles and fish.

Pearlcatchers were pretty tricky to pin down. Their body and face look almost horse or deer-shaped. Their diet is insects and plants. The only creature that came to mind for Pearlcatchers were qilins; one-horned legendary beasts from Chinese mythology. They’re fully scaled, with dragon-like faces and a body shaped like a horse, deer or goat. This seems to fit Pearlcatcher’s the most, but figuring out their dentition is another matter. There’s not really a 1-to-1 comparative animal I can base their teeth on, so I think they’d be a mish-mash of different tooth structures. They’d have larger canines, maybe like a musk deer, but the rest of their teeth would follow a more herbivorous design. They’d have large, flat molars and premolars for grinding up plants, probably similar to a horse or goat. 

Ridgebacks are basically land-sharks, no question. Their diet and face says it all. Although their snouts look more like goblin sharks to me, I don’t think they’d have those creepy mouths. Their dentition would be more like a great white; they’d have a mouth full of serrated, razor sharp teeth. Like actual sharks, Ridgeback’s would have a reserve of extra teeth in their jaws. 

Skydancer dragons present another tricky situation. They’re bird dragons, and eat plants and insects like Pearlcatchers. Although some official art shows them with teeth, I don’t think they’d actually have them. The closest structure to teeth that's found in birds is the tomia, which is the cutting edge of the upper and lower beak. Tomia is not made of enamel, but of cartilage. Seed-eating birds use this to slice through seed hulls, and birds of prey like falcons have a single sharp projection to rip meat and insects apart. Geese have tomia on their tongues, which pushes the food back towards their throat as they eat. Skydancers probably have a gizzard as well, as the tomia is not enough on its own to grind food down completely. It was hard to figure out what the Skydancer’s beak would be most similar to; out of all the more hook beaked birds, it reminded me most of vultures or eagles, although in diet they do not match them at all. Skydancer beaks are a mish-mash of different bird characteristics that I thought would fit them the most, rather than based on a single bird in particular.

Snappers are tortoise dragons, and like tortoises they’d have ridges in their beaks to help chew food. The official lore states that their beaks are “lined with molars that begin halfway down the jaw and continue all the way to the back”. Real-life tortoises don’t have teeth, so I’d imagine these structures would be like the tomia of birds. Their diet would be a mix of what tortoises and turtles eat, as Snappers eat both plants and seafood.

Spirals really remind me of ferrets, with their noodley bodies and energetic, chaotic nature. Like ferrets, they’d have sharp little canines, incisors and carnassials for shredding meat. Ferrets mainly eat meat, but will also eat bugs too, which matches up with the Spirals diet.

Tundra dragons are currently the only purely herbivorous dragon. The lore states that they have “impressive canine teeth used for combat. The majority of their jaw is set with flat, wide molars, perfect for grinding up scrub.” They’d be most similar to musk deers in dentition, with both male and female Tundras having the enlarged canines characteristic of male musk deer. The canines wouldn’t be as thin or long as a musk deer; they would be thick, robust, and fit more snugly inside the mouth. 

Last for the modern breeds, we have the Wildclaws. They’re raptor dragons, based on the Dromaeosaurids - raptor dinosaurs (velociraptors, utahraptors, etc). Like raptors, Wildclaws would have widely spaced and serrated teeth. They’d be fairly equal in shape, and would curve backwards.  Raptors were carnivorous, which fits with the Wildclaw’s meat diet.

[synapsid-taxonomy]

I've seen people say that saber-toothed cats couldn't roar because only Panthera felids can today. But if other large carnivorans like bears and pinnipeds could evolve the ability to roar independently, I don't see why saber-toothed cats would be any different. (Even if it would've sounded different from their modern cousins.)

"Roar" is so vaguely defined a term as to be almost nonscientific. What people mean when they say "saber-toothed cats couldn't roar" is referring to a specific vocalization in big cats - this deep, long-distance territorial call. It has a distinct pattern in each species, and between individuals:

These cats have two specializations that make them able to do this. First, they have an incompletely ossified hyoid - the epihyoid is replaced by a ligament. This allows for the larynx to retract deeper into the throat, making the vocalizations deeper and louder. Incidentally, this also means that they can't purr like small cats do. The second adaptation is that the vocal folds within the larynx are really thick, which lowers the pitch even further.

Left: the hyoids of a roaring tiger (A) and a non-roaring caracal (B); from Deutsch et al. 2023. Right: the larynxes of a roaring jaguar (A) and non-roaring snow leopard (B); from Hast 1989.

Snow leopards have an incompletely ossified hyoid (which means they can't purr), but they don't have the thickened vocal folds. They make the exact same long-distance territorial call as the other members of Panthera, but it instead sounds like this:

Clouded leopards have neither of these specializations, and they basically just meow like a small cat:

So what of saber-toothed cats? Hyoid elements are known from Smilodon. Their shape resembles those of small cats, implying that the larynx itself had a similar morphology (i.e., without the thick vocal folds of big cats). However, the hyoids are also significantly bigger than those of any living cats - including big cats. This implies that the larynx itself was proportionally bigger, and that would mean a deeper pitch to the vocalizations. No modern cat has a disproportionately increased larynx like that, but male Mongolian gazelles and hammer-headed bats have larynxes at least twice the size of the females', and consequently make deeper calls (unfortunately I couldn't find good recordings of either online). The fact that Smilodon is also just larger animal would mean its vocalizations would be deeper than those of small cats anyways. However, the lack of laryngeal specializations means that it may not have had the same deep formant frequencies as big cats; this means the sound would have been less resonant and maybe not able to travel as far.

So basically, Smilodon may have been able to "roar", but not the same roar as modern big cats. Rather, it'd be like the calls of small cats, but much deeper in pitch. A baritone meow, if you will.

[fallenclan]

Current anon list?

below the cut!

🐈‍⬛ Black cat anon

🐈 Cat anon 

🧶 Yarn anon

🐉 Dragon anon 

🐆 Jaguar anon

🌹 Rose anon

🦊 Fox anon

🦦 Otter anon

🍭 Lollipop anon

🍊 Orange anon

🐡 Pufferfish anon

🪼 Jellyfish anon

🪶 Feather anon

🍂 Leaf anon

🍃 Gardener anon

🥕 Carrot anon

🪚 Saw anon

🦈 Shark anon

🔪 Knife anon

🐁 Mouse anon

🐞 Ladybug anon

🐾 Pawprint anon

🦎 Lizard anon

🦟 Mosquito anon

🕊️ Pigeon anon 

☎️ Phone anon

🐄 Moo anon

✖️ X anon

🦷 Tooth anon

🍯 Honey anon

🌀 Cyclone anon

🦇 Bat anon

🦠 Microbe anon

🦑 Squid anon

⚓ Anchor anon

🌫️ Fog anon

🍟 French fry anon

🫎 Moose anon

🦝 Racoon anon

🎲 Dice anon

🦂 Scorpion anon

🫁 Lung anon

🐍 Snake anon

🏐 Volleyball anon

🦗 Grasshopper anon

🌧 Rain anon

(n/a) Twilight anon

💌 Love Letter anon

🛹 Skateboard anon

🐑 Sheep anon

🏀 Basketball anon

🍁 Maple leaf anon

🦭 Seal anon

🤍 White heart anon

🐤 Chick anon

🌾 Grass anon

🥩 T-bone steak anon

🪱 Worm anon

🪷 Lotus anon

🦤 Dodo anon

✨ Sparkle anon

💿 CD anon

🥚 Egg anon

⚡️ Lightning anon

🤷 Shrug anon

🐝 Bee anon

🐊 Crocodile anon

🥀 Wilted Flower anon

‼️ Exclamation anon

🦢☕ Swan Coffee anon

🪸 Coral anon

🍍 Pineapple anon

🌵 Cactus anon

🪿 Goose anon

🍓 Strawberry anon

🧙‍♂️ Wizard anon

👑 Crown anon

🐅 Tiger anon

🪗 Accordion anon

[alphynix]

Neolicaphrium recens here might look like some sort of early horse, but this little mammal was actually something else entirely.

Known from southern South America during the late Pleistocene to early Holocene, between about 1 million and 11,000 years ago, Neolicaphrium was the last known member of the proterotheriids, a group of South American native ungulates that were only very distantly related to horses, tapirs, and rhinos. Instead these animals evolved their remarkably horse-like body plan completely independently, adapting for high-speed running with a single weight-bearing hoof on each foot.

Neolicaphrium was a mid-sized proterotheriid, standing around 45cm tall at the shoulder (~1'6"), and unlike some of its more specialized relatives it still had two small vestigial toes on each foot along with its main hoof. Tooth microwear studies suggest it had a browsing diet, mainly feeding on soft leaves, stems, and buds in its savannah woodland habitat.

It was one of the few South American native ungulates to survive through the Great American Biotic Interchange, when the formation of the Isthmus of Panama allowed North and South American animals to disperse into each other's native ranges. While many of its relatives had already gone extinct in the wake of the massive ecological changes this caused, Neolicaphrium seems to have been enough of a generalist to hold on, living alongside a fairly modern-looking selection of northern immigrant mammals such as deer, peccaries, tapirs, foxes, jaguars… and also actual horses.

Some of the earliest human inhabitants of South America would have seen Neolicaphirum alive before its extinction. We don't know whether they had any direct impact on its disappearance – but since the horses it lived alongside were hunted by humans and also went extinct, it's possible that a combination of shifting climate and hunting pressure pushed the last of the little not-horses over the edge, too.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

[alldthoughtsinmyhead]

Chapter Two

A Great Horned Owl hooted in a nearby tree and Nia cracked an eye open. Her whole body ached from the pummeling Aaron had given her all through the night into the crack of dawn. He had fucked every crevice in her body till they were both spent with nothing else to give. She looked over at him, his boyish features were relaxed in his sleep. His lashes were so long that they created shadows on his cheeks, and his full double toned lips were ever so slightly parted. Her heart tugged and she stifled a sob. She was hopelessly in love with him against all good sense. She had been warned repeatedly by everyone including Aaron himself, to protect her heart and not lose it to him. But he was such a beautiful man, both inwardly and outwardly. Everyone loved him, so how could she not? When he knew all her deepest secrets and touched her deepest parts.

The Owl hooted again and Nia rolled her eyes in anger. Her clan didn't care that she was up all night in the king's bed, she had work to do and they wouldn't give her a break for any reason. She dragged her tired bones out of the large warm soft fluffy mattress and out of the comfort of Aaron's side. She stretched and walked towards the large window the Jaguar had come in from last night. As she walked, her skin began to fold and brown and white feathers extended to cover them. She stretched her arms and brown plumes extended into wings. Her face was the last thing to morph as her eyes enlarged into twin globes, transforming her into an enchanting large Barn Owl. She flew past her brother who rolled his eyes and took flight beside her-It was going to be a long day scouting with the King's mistress.

*************************************************************

Aaron reached out to his side and it was cold. He sighed at the loss. He was hoping to keep her in his bed for at least three days--it was the least she could do to make up for lost time. He frowned and sat up, her smell lingered in the air; the smell of wild berries and rainwater. Her taste lingered on his tongue from all the times he paused fucking her to dip his whole tongue in her sweet cunt. As much as he enjoyed the feeling of her warm wetness gripping his cock, he enjoyed eating her out more. She tasted sweet and salty at the same time which suited his human sweet tooth and his cat's love of salty things. He had taken many lovers in his life, but none ever sated him like Nia did. His council had started to press about his marriage, which he had absolutely no interest in, but it had to be done and he was suddenly impatient to get it over with. She would be his queen and figurehead, but Nia would always be his woman.

A short rap sounded at the huge double mahogany doors of his chambers and after he gave permission, a ruby teen boy brought in a pitcher of water and a silver bowl. Aaron grunted, after the intense session he had with his delectable lover a pitcher of water was definitely not sufficient to clean him. He was obsessively clean and took his personal hygiene very seriously. He waved the young servant away and stood fluidly from the mattress. He yawned and stretched his long limbs. He stepped into the sunlight shining in from the window and basked in it for a minute before leaping out the window. The black Jaguar's paws landed gracefully on the bed of leaves down the stories below and it stalked off to the stream for a proper bath.

***********************************************************

Milele hurriedly took her dress off before dipping herself in the fast-flowing stream. She had been running all morning trying to burn off some excitement before her marriage feast that evening. She had never seen the King but she had heard of him. He was called The Jaguar and she assumed it was because of his felinity as her mother described it: whatever that means. She stood up from the water and the cool air blew against her nipples. She watched as they hardened and stood some inches from her areolas. Her long nipples were her favorite thing about her body. They were hypersensitive and hardened at the slightest sensation. She touched them and giggled. She pinched and rolled them and her giggles caught in her throat and came out as a squeal-ly moan. A dampness was starting to form between her legs and she caught herself. The rest of her bath was taken care of quickly and she wadded out to the bank to find her dress.

They were dangling out of a person's fingers and she angrily tried to snatch them but it evaded her hands. She tried again with the same result and she impatiently shot a furious glare at the person with such effrontery. She cranked her neck up. . . and locked eyes with the most unearthly beauty she had ever seen.

Previous Part Next Part

[brookie-writes]

Poems and such

English poems:

Society: a poem about how negative society can be. Tw: bad self-esteem, cyberbullying, racism, murder and death. The girl from science class: a poem representing two girls, gossiping about a girl from their class that passed away. Tw: cancer, illness, bullying, death.

The sheep and the wolf: a fable of a sheep giving the wolf a chance, and it turning against him. The rat and the coyote: a fable about a rat who learns that you are innocent until proven guilty. The butterfly and the bee: a fable of a butterfly that breaks a promise to his friend the bee, and faces the consequences of his actions. The magpie and the kinglet: a fable about a sweet kinglet and a greedy magpie's encounter. The blue jay and the dog: a young dog that acts before thinking. The jaguar and the sloth: a fable about a sloth, envious of a jaguar. The owl, the crow and the woodpecker: a fable about a problematic woodpecker, a wise owl and a protective crow. The snake and the mouse: a fable about a mouse that trusts easily and a sly snake. The bear and his honey: a fable about a bear that has a big sweet tooth. The lion and his kingdom: a rich but lonely lion.

French poems:

Les trains: un poème evoquant le travail des mineurs, et les différentes conditions en fonction des classes sociales basé sur la peinture de pawel Kuczynski. Tw: travail forcé des mineurs.

Musica, mi vida: un poème parlant de l'importance de la musique dans la vie de tous les jours.

Les avions: un poème qui nous fait voyager en enfance (le jeu de mot n'est pas le meilleur mais bon )

[yagurlhere]

Um, @pcheavenn, hi, LOVE this edit, 💖 but I don't have TikTok so I wanted to ask you here what song is this? Thank you!

[river-bottom-nightmare]

The kid really wasn’t supposed to be an issue. Dick assured himself it wasn’t going to be an issue. He crossed his heart and hoped to die, dragged a knife over his throat, offering Tiger a solemn promise before flipping the knife between his fingers, dancing too close to his jugular, and winking. (One of these days, he’d put a flash of panic in Tiger’s eyes, he just knew it.) Agent 37, especially now with Tiger, was damn near unshakable.

But here’s the thing: this little brat with a suit more expensive than half of Bruce’s wine cellar and a pout sweeter than a baby’s and pudginess still clinging to his cheeks hadn’t stopped talking about jaguars in the past ten minutes.

“Eyes on target. Two minutes to break through security’s last defense,” says Tiger’s voice in his ear, quiet even through their tinny comms. Dick can picture the concentrated furrow on his forehead, the set of his shoulders and flex of his traps to settle himself before a mission’s last stretch. He can picture it better than he can his siblings, somedays.

“That’s great, buddy!” Dick tells Tiger and the kid damn-near clinging to his leg. His hair is blonde, ruffled, clinging to any vestige of its gelled style with a sort of hopeless desperation, like trying to ground a ghost. And this wouldn’t be an issue, it really truly wouldn’t, if Damian Wayne hadn’t also spent their last gala running his tiny, calloused hands through his sticky hair, doing his best impression of not clinging to Dick’s leg, and continuously talking about tigers.

How long has it been since someone’s last touched him with such simple trust? Dick feels the boy’s faith angularly, like a spear of glass through his ribs, through the ribbons of his tendons.

It’s frigid. The two of them are on the ballroom’s balcony, letting the wind use her cold fingers to trace the underside of Dick’s scalp, letting a night of dancing and quiet drugs and secrets spill out behind them. (Letting Dick protect this child’s innocence a day longer.) He isn’t true royalty but he may as well be, the way Bruce always was, because underneath the balcony overlook is a very illegal jaguar enclosure. Inside, the jaguar seems to be stretching, waking herself up for the day, taking note of the iron fence surrounding her as Dick supposes she does every morning. Dick can sympathize. There’s a different sort of freedom they’re both experiencing for the first time, and Dick thinks they both rather prefer before.

“—and they have the strongest bite of any big cat! Compared to its size, I mean.” The boy clearly thinks this fact is splendid—it actually kind of is—and he looks up at Dick, pleading with his eyes for acknowledgement. His aunt and uncle, the child’s new guardians, are attempting to use him to release a bioweapon four nights from now that would potentially kill millions. He’s resisted them for weeks, and here he is, begging for a morsel of praise.

Dick lets his eyes go wide. “Whoa, really? That’s actually pretty cool.” The boy beams, his little wildflower head bobbing and his smile unburdened, beauty like something peeking up out of the earth for the first time. God, Damian used to hate these parties. Used to scowl at any mention of fumbling himself into a child’s suit and making nice with shark-toothed civilians for hours. Used to look up at Dick with that same unfiltered joy when they sat in the hall, asking Alfred to sneak them some tarts, Damian leaning into Dick’s arm and telling him about a cool new tiger fact he learned. That arm still prickles. Emptiness does the opposite of pain, and somehow that is always worse.

“Everything’s disabled,” Tiger’s voice nudges him out of his reverie. “Except the last password. Needs to be handwritten. You got that kid to open up yet?” Dick can hear the challenge in his voice, ever so subtly weaved into his even tone, and he can’t keep his lips from turning up at the edges.

The jaguar in the enclosure below folds up from her stretches, smooth like a burn, and leaps atop a large rock in her enclosure. The boy is stunned into silence for a brief moment. He seems to be gazing at the jaguar with a dangerous sort of longing in his eyes. Like he wants to be cracked open, like a stone-fruit ripped in two and devoured, like trust seems to be at once a holy and sordid thing to him. (He seems to be exactly the son of parents who, rather than entrusting any of their relatives or partners, made their child create the password for access to a mass bioweapon, then had the brilliant sense to be assassinated before they could tell him about it.)

Quietly, murmuring into the comm on his wrist, Dick says, “Try panthera onca.”

There’s a pause, then, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“He’s a kid, Tiger.” It wasn’t really that long ago that Dick was making up stupid passwords for Bruce to guess. The password to the pillow fort Dick made for Bruce’s birthday was the binary nomenclature for a bat. The password Damian uses—used, fuck, used—for his phone was the king cobra. 

Silence from the other end of the comm. Silence from the kid, too. Dick glances over, and sees he’s still hypnotized by the jaguar. He follows the child’s line of sight, and finds the jaguar staring straight at them. I am hungry, her eyes tell him. I have not felt another living being in so long that I will devour the next one I touch. I am so fucking starving and I want you like an organ taken out of your guts, I want to swallow you into a lanky-shaped hollow near my stomach, and maybe, Dick thinks, maybe she’ll name it “Agent 37��� or “Nightwing” or possibly even “Robin.” But what I want most of all, she says with a flick of her tail and a twitch of her ears, is to rip out your bones and hold them, craft them, use them to wrench open the bars of this cursed cage so that I may run, and never return. I will take your bones with me, the jaguar promises, so you will be free as well.

The jaguar growls quietly, and Dick can somehow hear it from the balcony. Then, she flits away. Dick untenses in time with the boy next to him. He thinks of iron bars and bloody torsos and a time when he could wear his own face. He thinks of a boy, only a little taller than the one standing next to him, who would have kept him from ever giving in to Bruce’s demands to renounce his face to begin with.

(He thinks of Damian’s bloody torso, specifically, and thinks that he would let the jaguar carve open his gut and tear out his bloated bag of organs, if only she would give them to Damian. They would be more useful than his unknowable face.)

Tiger’s voice filters through the comm. “Package secure. Heading towards safehouse delta.”

The kid next to him sighs happily, again. “Pretty cool, isn’t she?”

Dick smiles down at him. “Very. What’s her name?”

The boy frowns, confusion on his face. “She doesn’t have a name. It’s better not to have one, I think.”

“Oh really?”

A nod from the child, more serious than Dick imagined “She did bad things. She killed people. That’s why they let me have her. And I think she’d like it better if I didn’t use her old name, the one that she had when she did the bad things. But I don’t want to give her a new name and have it be wrong! So she doesn’t have a name.”

“Do you think she likes that?” Dick asks. “Names are—names are important.”

“I don’t know,” the boy says, suddenly looking very unsure of himself. “But I think it’s better to not have a name than to have one that hurts you. Or to have one that doesn’t fit.”

Dick hums. Considers. Offers the boy another smile and straightens up in the way people do when they’re getting ready to leave. “I suppose you have a point, kid.”

The child nods. There are bruises in the tender skin under his red-rimmed eyes and his lips have scabs from his own teeth all over them. They’re so chapped, they’re nearly bleeding. Dick knows how much sleep children get after their parents are murdered in front of them. “Thank you for the jaguar facts,” Dick tells him, sincerely. “They made the night much more fun.”

The boy nods. Opens his mouth, closes it, then seems to make up his mind and opens it again. “Before you go,” he says, with all the hesitation he’s kept close and quiet this entire night, “can I—can I just have a hug? Please?”

And Dick, without hesitation, folds to his knees and opens his arms.

---

@dickgraysonweek dick grayson week day 2: first responder au | “can i just have a hug? please?” | spies & secret agents

---

taglist who will probably shoot on sight thinking i've risen from the dead: @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy @red-hood-redemption @capricorn-stark @batshit-birds @buticaaba @comics-observer @newsical @queenofbooknerds @scattered-winter @amillionandonefandoms

[kvalenagle]

Hi there! Thanks so much for following my blog!

I finished your first book, Eyrie. I'll admit I lost track of things and got confused with what was important or not, but overall, I still had a great time with the book, and I've already ordered the next three entries in the series. I'll get the rest once I can afford them.

Prior to your books, I had no idea there were so many possibilities with gryphons. I've always associated them with the typical 'eagle-lion' design, although I've been looking into more owl-like concepts.

It got me thinking: Are there any gryphons in your books based on the white bellbird (the loudest bird in the world), or the shoebill stork?

Gryphons in mythology are a lot like dragons, where everyone has their own version =] Minoans loved peafowl for their bird halves, Egyptians prefer hawks and lions (with four cat paws, cat tails, and cat ears) while the Greeks had a mix of golden eagle+lion (with bird forelegs) up to owls with four bird legs. And that's before we get into the weirder gryphon cousins like keythongs!

I think there's something human about looking at mammals and birds and imagining a new creature with the best of both. And there are a few gryphon series out there who really lean into the "interesting gryphons" angle. (Kathryn Brown's A Gryphon's Trial series actually beat me to things like burrowing owl gryphons.)

You can kinda see Zeph's more-feline hawk and Cherine's more avian eagle looks as evocative of the big two Egyptian and Greek gryphons, though there's nods in characters like Younce ('ounce' in heraldry is often a leopard, sometimes a winged snow leopard) or Strix (strix were Greek monsters who sometimes were four-legged owl).

Though they're more fun references, since Belamuria is a world without humans that's very different from Earth =] Sometimes, the gryphon fangirl comes through a bit too much, I suppose.

The series doesn't have any published books with white bellbirds (I didn't recognize the name, but as soon as I saw that waddle in a photo, I remembered that bird) or shoebills. Shoebills do show up on social media as gryphon fodder on and off, and they're such a great, menacing bird.

For bird halves, just off the top of my head, I've had quetzals, Cooper's hawks, red-shouldered parrots, emerald peafowl, golden eagles, peregrine falcons, barking owls, snowy owls, grey owls, Japanese cranes, Peruvian diving petrels, Weng Hua diving petrels, sandpipers, sandy terns, shrikes, mockingbirds, golden-crowned kinglets, great blue herons, royal spoonbills, hooded pitohui, motmots, red-winged blackbirds, whistling kites, harpy eagles, kakapo, cardinals, eagle owls, European starlings, violet-backed starlings, cape glossy starlings, strawberry finches, cerulean kingfishers, osprey, mallards, white-tailed kites, sandgrouse, ruffled grouse, ptarmigans, hoopoe birds, roadrunners, burrowing owls, giant teratorn… and I'm probably missing a few.

For cat halves, it's tough since Belamuria's terrestrial mammals are mostly extinct, except for capybaras and invasive squirrel species. You don't often see them described =] But you've got a lot of North American cougars, fishing cats, flat-headed cats, van cats, Russian blues, tabby house cats of several varieties, saber-toothed tigers, leopards, jaguars, lions, cave lions, caracals, maine raccoon cats, tigers, sand cats, and… well, it starts to get spoilery if we go too far there.

The series still has a few entries left, though, so while I can't promise it'll have shoebills or white bellbirds… it might!

And definitely feel free to write your own gryphon books =] I think sometimes readers worry that gryphon authors are competitive, but we're all a very friendly, happy bunch. I love seeing someone else's series write a cool bird+cat combination I haven't thought of. Heck, I'd love if someone started an entire series solely based around burrowing owl gryphons. That'd be neat.

There are also gryphons you see a lot either as stone gargoyles decorating castles or in artwork but never in novels, and I'm not sure why. I feel like I should be able to walk into a bookstore and browse a dozen series with crow+wolf lupogryphs on the cover, maybe some vulpegryphs (fox gryphons). For the moment, though, no such luck =]

If you're ever curious about what a character looks like, the CockatielForger fan account (still active in various places online, though not here) drew fan art of every character. It's a little spoilery before, say, you're done with book seven. But if you don't mind spoilers, look under fan art, and there's a page devoted to just her artwork. Oh! But if you're listening to the audiobooks, let me know and I can send you the interior art pieces. There's usually 3-4 per book. The goal with them was to help highlight the more interesting gryphons. (Brenda Lyons was working on a cover for another writing project, and we were talking about how much we loved the gryphon interior art from old series like The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon. Eyrie was written and advance reader copies had been sent out, but the final version hadn't gone to print yet, and there was just enough time to add in artwork. I'm glad we had that chat, since her artwork is one of my favorite parts of the series.) 

[ihopesocomic]

Apologies if you've answered something like this before, but I was thinking again about how lions in the IHS universe adorably call every cat-like thing some category of lion and now I'm just wondering about the other felid species, even ones they wouldn't logically ever meet. For example-- do you think they'd call snow leopards spotted lions too, or give them something slightly more distinct? Would cougars conveniently still be known as mountain lions? Jaguars just bulky spotted lions? For the sake of being silly, what might they have called saber-toothed felids?

My guess would be to a lion there's no real discernable difference between a jaguar and a leopard unless someone points it out to them. A really buff spotted lion would be it LOL (snow lions, little lions, you can really just make it up as you go cuz thats what I'm doing) lions in this world are a very proud species for that. Tho for the sake of simplicity they'd call cougars and sabers "mountain lions" and "saber-toothed lions" respectively. - Cat

[mwolf0epsilon]

Sponge, sitting on a folding chair in the middle of medbay while sipping on a juice box: ...

Kix, walking in and staring at them in confusion: Sponge...?

Sponge, looking over and raising their juice box in greeting: Kix.

Kix: What are you doing?

Sponge: Tup came in with a toothache.

Kix, confused: Yeah...?

Sponge: I had a look and it turns out he had an impacted wisdom tooth.

Kix: Uh-huh...

Sponge: So I had to do a quick tooth extraction.

Kix, still confused: What does that have to do with you sitting there with a juice box???

Sponge: Ah that. Fives came in for moral support and he stupidly got in between Tup and a needle full of drugs when it was time to prep the kid for surgery. I've been watching him while I wait for Tup to wake up. Most fun I've ever hard.

Fives, crawling out of a storage closet on all fours and making weird noises: I AM THE LIZARD KING, KING OF LIZARDS. I FEAST ON THE VENT SPIDERS.

Kix: ...

Sponge: He's currently going through the animal kingdom. Ten minutes ago he was a jaguar and he was convinced the CPR dummy was his prey.

[almostourgalaxy]

TEEFS.......🎤 release the Teethy Ramble !!!

So, fun fact wwve found out about Sabertooth cats:

They kept their baby canines longer than other animals, to brace their adult sabers against breakage until they wwvere better at using them.

I combined this wwvith howwv sharks havvwe rowwvs of teeth that push forwwvard until the front rowwv sheds.

Seadwwveller "canines" stay in the jawwv longer to brace the newwvly growwvn in replacement teeth.

These are built completely differently from the other teeth in the jawwv.

The "canines" are longer, recurvvwed, and serated like knifes for shredding and tearing, compared to the other teeth, wwvhich are conical, smooth, and semi-translucent, made for gripping and seizing. They stop the struggling prey from exerting enough force to break the false-Sabres.

These teeth are considered to be the transition point betwwveen Purple Blood Fangs and the Shark Teeth of Fuschias.

In SEAdwelling vvwiolet bloods, these teeth are expected to be used against prey they'vvwe snatched shark style, by slamming into it and biting off chunks, or smaller fish being ripped in half by sevvweral members of a Pod/Tine/Mouth(these groups go by many names).

In FRESHWWVATER Violet bloods, they hunt more like godawwvful alligator-bear-jaguar things, Ambushing land prey and grappling it to the ground before snapping the spine through brute force of their wwveight pressing dowwvn on their hands before eating it alivvwe.

Saturn's teeth are little fucked/discolored/wwveirdly sized up from his injuries ripping into his gums and bleeding into the roots of his in growwving teeth. This has ALSO lead to his teeth growwving newwv replacements faster than normal, because the scar tissue gets constantly agitated and stimulates tooth growwvth. His gums Do Not respond the same wwvay.

Frequent mouth bleeds abound. Also just... general jawwv pain and occasional refusal to eat as a result. This also leads to him gorging himself wwvhen he CAN bring himself to eat normally.

"I havvwe a tummy ache and I'm bein SO BRAVVWE abt it" -Saturn at a party he Did Not wwvant to go to.