#chimpanzee kin

[citizenoftmrrwlnd]

PRIDE care kit for : a chimpanzee with ace pride themes a fixed request for @avocadofire (apologies for the first time!!!)

x | x | x x | - | x x | x | x

[furretsden]

Chimpanzee fashion kit with fem clothing for pantroglodytes96

Sweater | Shirt | Jeans | Shoes | Necklace 1 | Necklace 2 | Earrings | Keychain | Bracelet

[trikeyote]

No other words to be added. 😂

[monkey-mischief-moved]

Some more 'this is me' memes for my ape friends since i saw some interest :3

Might do prosimians next

[kidasthings]

Echoes of Eden by Kida

Noa x Mae - #omgisthisastorywithplot?

Chapter 2: Echoes of Eden by Kida – @kidasthings on Tumblr

Prologue

Three centuries after a catastrophic virus decimated human intelligence, turning the survivors into primal shadows of their former selves, the world has irrevocably changed. The ALZ virus, originally intended to combat Alzheimer's disease, not only ravaged humanity but inadvertently gave rise to a new dominant species: intelligent apes.

Near the ruins of what was once Los Angeles, Noa, a valiant chimpanzee of the Eagle clan, has just thwarted a power-hungry bonobo, Proximus Caesar, from enslaving his people. Guided by the teachings of a certain orangutan, Raka, who revered the nearly forgotten, peace-loving chimp Caesar, Noa believes in a world where apes and humans can coexist peacefully. However, during his quest, he encounters Mae, a human who defies his expectations. Mae, immune to the virus and possessing the ability to speak, challenges Noa's perceptions of humans as mere animals.

Together, Noa and Mae manage to prevent Proximus Caesar from seizing a cache of potent human technology by flooding an old bunker. In the process, Mae secures a crucial computer drive that enables her underground human community to reconnect with distant survivors, bridging isolated pockets of humanity; she also manages to betray Noa and his clan by leaving them to fend for themselves.

As Mae's group in Los Angeles prepares to merge with new allies from Fort Wayne, Indiana, tensions escalate. Unaware of Mae's bond with Noa, a small but well-armed scouting party from Fort Wayne comes across the Eagle Clan’s village on their way to Los Angeles to meet up with Mae’s people.

Far more adept on their own home turf, the scouting party is caught by the apes, rounded up, and held hostage. Their weapons are confiscated. Mae is called in when the scouting party never reports to the underground bunker where the rest of the intelligent humans in her group seek refuge. Caught between her origins and her convictions, Mae faces the ultimate choice during the tense encounter: stand with her human kin or protect Noa, the ape she has come to admire.

This story explores the fragile hope for reconciliation in a world torn apart by fear and prejudice. Can Noa and Mae forge a path toward peace, or will the shadows of old wars darken the future dreamed of by the legendary Caesar?

---------------------------------------------------

Chapter 1

In the dense shadows cast by the towering trees that skirt the Eagle clan's village, the air was thick with tension and the faint scent of smoke from distant fires. The setting sun bled red over the horizon, casting long shadows across the rough-hewn faces of the Eagle clan and their new captives. Five ALZ-immune humans from Fort Wayne sat bound and rigid, their eyes darting nervously as they listened to the low, ominous murmurs of the assembled apes.

Noa moved deliberately among the captives, his demeanor stern yet marked by an inherent fairness. Each human he approached met his gaze with a mix of defiance and fear, but none spoke. They clung to their silence like a shield, even under the weight of Noa's penetrating stare.

"No purpose here can be good if it starts with secrets," Noa stated, his voice resonating with a calm authority as he paused before a younger man whose jaw was stubbornly set.

The chants from the simian crowd grew louder, a discordant mix of anger and fear, with proposals of banishment or worse. They remembered what happened with Proximus Caesar, the obsession with human technology and worldly knowledge, and want none of it. Noa raised a hand, called for silence, but the restlessness was palpable, a living thing that fed on uncertainty and fear.

At the perimeter of the village, a human woman keeps a low profile in the brush. She had followed a single flare that burst bright in the sky to this location. It was a habitual thing, to bypass this region when doing her rounds in the forest. Immunity to the Simian Flu had bequeathed her the role of tracker, hunter, and scout after her initial mission was completed. Brown hair, blue eyes like the sky, Mae can only watch the scene unfold with a pounding heart. Worry lines were etched deeply into her brow, and her hand reached up to clutch at something around her neck - Raka's pendant - the symbol of peace promoted by an ape named Caesar long ago.

Noa gave her that pendant. For an inopportune moment, Mae was lost in reverie.

Without warning, a strong hand gripped her shoulder, yanked her from the shadows. Mae stumbled forward, dragged into the open. Her breath caught as she was thrown unceremoniously to the ground before Noa and his human captives. Dust and small stones bit into her palms as she caught herself, and a small grunt escaped her lips.

The sudden appearance of the human - a known and not particularly fondly remembered human - amongst them drew shocked gasps and murmurs.

Noa’s eyes widened in recognition, then narrowed in a complex tumult of emotion. The last time they parted, it was with a promise of peace, and yet here she was, thrown at his feet, disrupting the fragile balance he had fought to maintain.

Mae’s chest heaved as she pushed herself up slightly, her voice raspy but resolute as she met Noa's gaze. A single word hangs between them, charged with layers of meaning, a plea, a greeting, a reminder of shared dreams and bitter realities.

"Noa."

In that moment, the world narrowed to the space between them. Noa stood motionless, the voices around him faded into a distant hum. His heart fought a fierce battle within, torn between his duty to his clan and the undeniable pull he felt towards this woman who embodied both the past they shared and the future they might still forge. He can see Caesar’s pendant, an encircled diamond, as it swung from Mae’s neck wildly.

She still had it.

It is a symbol of ideals that suddenly seem so distant in the face of palpable tension and looming conflict.

The standoff stretched out, every breath, every silent plea, every hope and fear suspended in the dusty air of the dying day.

“Noa,” Mae tried again, defeated. She pulled herself up to stand on shaky, coltish legs. The Eagle Clan scout that initially seized her did not reach for her again as Noa lifted one hand to stay him.

Noa closed his eyes, as if in contemplation.

“What are you doing here?” he finally asked, as he reopened his eyes and shuttered his gaze.

Mae’s lips thinned out into a seamless line, and she cut a gaze over to the trussed-up humans attached to poles in the center of the village.

Noa nodded, once. He did not need much more than that as he added, “They approached our borders. We do not yet know their intention.”

The five Fort Wayne humans, still tied tight, share deliberate looks of fear between themselves. There is clear intelligence writ into their faces. They are not gagged, much to the chagrin of some of the villagers, as Noa would not have it. Still, they are oddly quiet. A few cast curious looks at Mae, no recognition in their eyes. The only woman in the group chewed her lower lip in frustration. Her blonde hair is cut short in a severe bob.

“Let them go, Noa.” Mae stated boldly, taking a step forward. Two other apes, positioned parallel to her, moved to intercept her advance towards the hero of the Eagle Clan. Once again, Noa lifted his calloused palm and gritted his sharp canines.

“Follow,” he told her, indicating something or someplace to the left with a sharp jerk of his head.

There is a short murmur of indignation from the gathered villagers, save for a small group which consisted of Soona, Anaya, and Noa’s mother. They appeared stuck in a shallower tumult of emotion. Noa’s mother took a step forward, unsure, but Soona placed her palm on the female ape’s furry shawl-covered shoulder and stopped her.

Mae’s eyes followed Noa, capturing his unique profile in a blink, and then dipped her head and hesitated. It is always that hesitation, caught between following an ape and leaving her kind behind, but with a reluctant glance at the captives she turned to follow.

He led her to a towering edifice of wood and natural materials that might be described as a tree house. Far above them, hawks circled in the sky, their soaring shadows blotting out the last rays of the sun. They landed at the top of the tower, a dizzying height, and screeched down at her.

Noa ascended a small ramp and stepped past a woven flap of material.

Mae did the same after taking a moment to peer backwards over her shoulder to ascertain the serious faces of a few apes herding her to the entrance.

Once inside, the darkness enveloped her, and the woman became hyper-aware of a dual pair of reflective eyes that watched her in the darkness of the interior.

“You came back,” he said, voice rough with something like emotion.

“Not by choice,” she quipped, and then stepped sideways away from the shaft of light thrown down by the door.

“Why?” It’s a simple question for a complex answer, and she wasn’t ready to answer it.

“I saw a distress signal in the sky,” she replied easily, eyes skating over the shadows and shapes in the interior of the newly rebuilt tower. “I had to see for myself. It looked like a human flare.”

“A flare?” he questioned; voice flat.

“It’s a human thing,” she sighed.

She heard him padding closer to her, his eerie eyes backlit by whatever reflective photo-sensitive cells nocturnal animals possessed. More of his face came into detail. After he stood about a few feet away, he stopped.

Mae froze.

“You have  ... it,” he informed her quietly.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

A hand reached out, seemingly disembodied in black space, and she felt the immediate lift of the small weight at her neck.

“Do you ... still believe .. in what it stands for?”

Her answer is the same as before, the same empty mantra. “I-I don’t know, Noa.”

A huff, a sigh. The weight on the back of the cord returned and he stepped back.

“Let them go,” Mae demanded, again.

He did not reply, not right away, but he did give her a long look. It was hard for her to discern in the dim dark, but it might be a soft rebuke. “I have to know … why they are … here.”

Mae’s mind shut down, because she wasn’t ready, or can’t tell him that. Her group of survivors had been expecting the Fort Wayne scouting party for months now. The underground bunker housing her people was the last of its kind for hundreds of miles. They had not come across any other intelligent humans in that time, so this must be the group they awaited. Mae was not an idiot; she had seen the sentry apes rifling through a small stockpile of guns on the ground when she was roughly manhandled to the ground.

She trusted Noa situationally, sure, but did she trust him with this?

There might have been a flash of hurt on his face but the dim interior concealed it well. “They belong with me,” is all she can muster.

“Tell the truth,” he parried back. There was a frustrated edge to his voice, nearly a growl.

“I am telling the truth,” she quipped stubbornly.

“Mae,” he refuted quietly, moving so fast that he is suddenly in her space again, too much and too soon. She gasped, caught off guard. His fingers found Raka’s necklace again, still around her neck. He was staring hard at it.

“Tell … me.”

Her tongue is nothing but a slug in her mouth, unable to form words. Noa had never been this close before, taking up her space, her attention, her very being. Caught between one moment and the next, she shook her head in utter disbelief. She could see his features more clearly, the craggy brow, the dark-light eyes, the slight downturn of his mouth beneath an inhuman nose. For a second, he gripped the pendant around her neck tightly, as if he wanted to hold it for some length of time, and then released it yet again to step past her.

Their shoulders brushed, and Mae forgot to breathe.

His voice carried over from somewhere behind her, close to the entrance. “If you will … not speak …  they will.” A rustle of fabric against fur, and he is gone.

Within the crude tower, Mae lets out the breath she held in a slow whoosh.

Noa.

[billcipherisntreal]

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ME!

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Bill Cipher is not liable for any nightmares, nightmares squared, mental anguish, physical turmoil, emotional distress, pain, suffering, agony, Deja vu, unwanted summoned entities, bad memories, future bad memories, Deja vu, eviscerations, mastications, castrations, felony charges, murders, weight loss, weight gain, weight displacement, clavicle deletion, thyroid sickness, bone duplications, alien abductions, unwanted thoughts, wanted thoughts, unknown thoughts, intrusive thoughts, politely overstaying their welcome thoughts, mucus detonations, facial reconstruction, Deja vu, locating the Beyond of Bed Bath And, being late for dinner, being early for dinner, removing dinner from existence, removing you from existence, copulating with your mom, causing your parent’s divorce, causing your Batman origin story, influencing your friends to only speak backwards, malfunctioning mirrors, Deja vu, breaking My Chemical Romance up again, theft, crime, hooliganism, roughhousing, squid parties, inverting mountains, causing your immune system to become aware of your eyeballs, spinal dysfunction, ending the great emu war, starting the second great emu war, putting cement where it shouldn’t be, spontaneous sinkholes, scheduled earthquakes, permanent removal of a random protein sequence in your DNA, gifting you the gift of too many chromosomes, killing Santa Claus, preventing baby Hitler from being murked by time travelers, giving Donald Trump plot armor, framing you for time crimes, giving the muppet joker a new kin, Deja vu, rigging the World Series, eternal bad luck, stealing all your Tupperware lids, replacing your spaghetti with snakeskin, toggling gravity off, turning off the sun, evaporating all water on earth, spinning the solar system backwards, reversing the irreversible, adding 13 to all clocks, giving giraffes sentience, making chimpanzees invincible, making mosquitoes invisible, overconsumption of battery acid, brain bleeding, soul molding, mind breaking, and cancer. Bill Cipher and his associates hold no responsibility for any and all disasters listed here. By submitting an ask you forfeit your mind body and soul to be used in the future as Bill chooses.

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[sundragon]

@kitten-of-bast It is! There are many examples, but I don't think most people conceptualize it in that way. Once you really take an interest in animal behavior it becomes pretty obvious though.

It's accurate for me to say I'm a human-cultured lion. I was adopted by one group and always felt at odds with it, and I became aware of our differences over time enough to not fully identify with humans *or* feral lions. (I'm totally drawing parallels to being multiracial and not fitting in on that axis.) Simba was a logical leap for my mind to take, as a humanized lion. I'm a werelion as comfortable on two paws as four, smiling and speaking words and such, in the way humans around me do because that's how I was socialized.

To speak to your post earlier about seeing other lions and feeling negatively, this is relevant. I think the cultural divide between you or me and a wild lion would be jarring. We're still kin (in the classical sense of that word), but separated to the point we're almost entirely alienated from them.

Chimpanzees who get attached to humans and then can't socialize with wild chimps come to mind. Their "language" is too different, they offend each other, and things can get violent. But other chimps who became attached to humans are fine, they can mingle with each other. That's the category I see us (therians) in a way; our feral cousins would send us to the shadow realm but we can get along with each other. \o/

[tanadrin]

Hey... sorry if this is too much, but im a baby trans and ive been struggling to grasp the concept what gender is, everytime i try to look for a definition i only find the vague basics like "its what you identify as!" Or i find bigoted shit from trasphobes. If you have any recommendations of essays about gender from trans people who dive deeper unto the concept it would really help. Sorry if im bothering you i just dont really know who else to ask 😅

i don't know how helpful i can be. i have a very instrumental view of transition--i.e., if you think it might make you happier than you are now, you should give it a try and see. i think a lot of pointless verbiage is spilled on trying to nail down difficult-to-elucidate questions about purely internal experiences, about the distinction between gender and sex, and about what all this gender stuff means anyway. i think that stuff can be interesting to discuss, if you like that sort of thing (and i do!) but that loading yourself up with a lot of gender theory isn't actually useful for figuring out what you should do vis a vis your gender presentation and how you identify.

for those latter questions, i think the answer is simple: what makes you happier? when you imagine a given gender presentation, or your body being different in certain ways, or people calling you by a certain name, does that sound appealing? doesn't matter why. if so, go for it! and frankly this advice is quite agnostic of whether or not you're cis or trans. people should adopt the identities that feel most conducive to their happiness. you do not need elaborate theoretical justifications for any of it. anyone who demands an elaborate theoretical justification for how you dress or what name you choose to use or anything like that is an asshole whose opinion you can safely ignore. i guarantee you they are selective in this demand, and are only using it to try to find an excuse to be a dick.

that said, you want a definition of gender, and i guess i can try.

"gender" has no definition. that's not meant to be a smart aleck answer. what i mean is: "gender" is a conceptual category. conceptual categories do not exist outside of our discourse about them. there is nowhere in the world you can go to lay your hands on A Gender. there is no Gender Particle. and while in most philosophical traditions we think of categories as having necessary and sufficient conditions for membership ("a human is an animal descended from the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees" might be such a taxonomic definition), conceptual categories aren't actually constructed that way. because that's not how the human brain actually works: when you're a kid learning what words mean, you don't learn "a chair is a thing with four legs you sit on." that wouldn't be accurate anyway (a horse is not a chair). you see lots of chairs and pictures of chairs and you form an image in your mind of what a chair is and when you see a thing your brain compares it to other things like it you've seen before, and if it looks like your mental model of a chair, you think, "chair."

(this is in fact how almost all definitions work in practice. even for formal scientific categories for which it seems like a traditional definition might be workable, because our terms are so specific, there are problems and corner-cases. is a HeLa cell a human? it's certainly an autonomous organism. it's certainly descended from the last common ancestor of a chimpanzee and a human being. but it's a single-celled organism that exists only in laboratory cultures, and lacks everything else we expect a human to have.)

so, uh, gender. "gender" is from the latin word "genus" meaning "kind." it is a doublet (that is, shares an etymological origin) with the words "genre" and (more distantly) "kin." obviously, a word's etymology is not its meaning. confusing the two is called the etymological fallacy. but originally when we talked about "gender" we were pretty explicitly talking about categories in general, and i think that's useful to keep in mind. incidentally, "sex" (also from Latin) has a similar etymology--it's related to "section," i.e., the creation of a category by dividing a group. though "sex" acquired something like its current meaning much earlier.

most human cultures group humans into two broad conceptual categories. this is based on a variety of traits, of which physical traits like genitals are seen as frequently foundational. some cultures explicitly create additional ancillary categories, or provide a means to move (often only partially) from one category to another. contemporarily, there has been an effort to distinguish "biological sex" (seen as what chromosomes you have, reflected by what genitals and other physical characteristics you have) from "gender" (seen as a question of social presentation).

i think this is a mistake. you might be able to spot why--biological sex is a conceptual category! most humans are xx or xy, but there is in fact a wide variety of sex-chromosomal arrangements that are possible. xx and xy are only the most common. biology is messy, and it's hard to tell how messy, because we don't routinely karyotype people. the existence of rare-but-noteworthy conditions like complete androgen insensitivity (frequently reuslting in a chromosomal "male" that is "mis"identified as and lives their whole life as a female) highlight that even within the purely biological realm, sex emerges only as two broad clusters, not as two clearly divided bins. moreover, a trans person who has been taking cross-sex hormones for many years is in a sort of willingly-imposed intersex state. so saying a trans woman is a "biological male" or a trans man is a "biological female" (especially if they have had an orchiectomy or hysterectomy and can no longer produce gametes of their respective assigned sex at birth) is sort of funny--we're privileging an (assumed) chromosomal arrangement over the biological facts on the ground. and while DNA does control a lot about how our bodies grow and develop, it can in fact be overridden! otherwise, cosmetic surgery, or hair dye, or LASIK surgery would all be exercises in futility.

"gender" is sometimes also talked about as a set of internal experiences. you "feel like" or "identify as" a particular gender. and while it's certainly plainly true for some people (both cis and trans), it seems not to be true of everybody (cis or trans), and for other people it's hard to say. not everybody has perfect access to their own feelings all the time. people get told they're lying about what they feel when that's socially inconvenient for other people. and internal states are impossible to measure or verify. they're also often pretty hard to put into words, and we mostly can access them only indirectly, by sidling up to them, or by trying to find other people whose experiences/thoughts/feelings seem to resonate with our own.

so i don't have a definition of gender for you, or an etiology, or even a very robust account. sorry! but i also think that anybody trying to tell you they do is operating from an understanding so narrow that they don't even begin to understand its limits.

[tribbetherium]

The Middle Temperocene: 150 million years + 1000 years post-establishment

Almost People: The Calliducynomorpha and Convergent Species

The Calliducyonidae are the third sophonts to arise on HP-02017, after the harmsters and the splintsters. Their rise to prominence, however, has been an incremental, gradual one, bit by bit as with all evolutionary processes, and as evolution is never a straight line, devoid of any definite goal except whatever survives for now, other branches of the overall taxonomic family--the Calliducynomorpha--emerged, diverged, and continue to persist.

These close taxonomic cousins of the true calliducyons, the Eucalliducyonidae comprised of the two species of southhounds and three species of northhounds and the multiple subspecies of each, range in various levels of intellectual prowess, representative of various rungs of the progression toward full sapience. Some are simpler near-sophonts, comparable to, in human terms, early hominids, others being highly-sophisticated but not quite sophonts, akin to great apes like chimpanzees, and others are simply instinctive animals just marginally more intelligent than the Earthly carnivorous mammals they share their niches with, the canids such as dogs and wolves. Thus a spectrum is formed, of various animals blurring the clear line between person and beast: and the true calliducyons, in their lore and culture, have percieved such beings in very different ways.

The closest living relative of the calliducyons is the saddled baskerville (Protocalliducyon primalis): a primitive species that diverged six million years ago from the common ancestor of the northern baskerville and southern baskerville that gave rise to the northhounds and southhounds, respectively. While still more closely related to the northhounds, the southhounds bear closer resemblance to this basal species, sharing their stocky builds, pack-hunting of large prey and highly-intelligent and empathetic behavior toward its fellows.

Saddled baskervilles are complex creatures: they care for their own kin, use tools to a more limited degree, are behaviorally flexible and adaptable, and even have a complex means of vocal communication. However, they are, compared to true calliducyons, simple and child-like, as their communications, loosely "stories", are merely descriptive events of actual experiences. They do not imagine, create folklore, philosophize about the nature of their world or grasp complex abstract concepts, and their language in comparison is far simpler. And unlike the true calliducyons, they are significantly more instinctive, and lack higher understanding of morality: engaging in such animalistic practices as killing the pups of rival packs, copulating with members of their close relation, or consuming their own feces-- all behaviors that their closer neighbors, the southhounds, find abhorrent.

Their more feral behaviors and amoral unpredictability has led to a deep rift between them and the southhounds, who typically do not welcome them in their territories, and see them as savages. Indeed, some packs of saddled baskervilles are known to become hostile to the southhounds, to which the southhounds are left to retaliate thusly. However, certain groups of southhounds, such as the darkears, admire them for their "purity and freedom", and their simpler ways. Some packs have even learned their simple words and call a truce with them--though these are limited interactions and not true conversations, and the two do not mingle due to their behavioral, biological, and mental differences.

Further down the line are the Paracalliducyonidae, a group of baskervilles which diverged even further back at about eight million years ago, and formed two distinct branches: the plainlupes and the falsehounds. These are even simpler beings than the near-sophont saddled baskerville, yet are still incredibly intelligent in animal standards: having flexible learned behaviors they pick up from social groups and experiences.

Plainlupes (Paracalliducyon spp.) are a wide genus of baskervilles with at least four species, ranging widely across most of South Ecatoria and are such encountered by both northhounds and southhounds alike. Smaller than either species of calliducyon, plainlupes are typically opportunistic and somewhat omnivorous, though not to the extent of the northhounds. This opportunism sometimes leads to conflict with their sophont relatives, particularly the highbrows, who know them as "voiceless-ones" who prey on their livestock, and their cultural impact is also evident in many northhound cultures, who fear them in belief that their primal attitudes and lack of self-awareness is somehow contagious, with superstition making them hostile against the plainlupes to avoid them being "taken of their minds" and become feral beasts like they are.

This opportunism has taken to a strange new degree with the falsehounds (Pseudocalliducyon spp.), which actively mimic the coloration and appearances of the brown northhounds: even possessing thicker fur on top of their heads to make their heads appear bigger. This evolved as a defense mechanism: as rival predators such as tigerillas and other lycanines quickly grew to recognize the danger posed by antagonizing the northhounds, capable of tool use, cooperation, intellect and planned retaliation against threats, they began to recognize their distinct appearance and steer clear of groups of them. This has been exploited by the falsehounds, who imitate their appearances and even behaviors, gripping sticks in their mouths even despite not actually knowing how to make and use weapons. But the bluff is enough to make even the largest tigerillas back away at least most of the time, not wanting to take the risk of being taken on by an enemy that will be determined to take them down if they harm any of them.

This mimicry, however, has led to some daring individuals actually attempting to sneak into northhound territories, with the intention of stealing food. They roll about near northhound latrines to take on their scent, then passively imitate their behaviors while discreetly sneaking to their food stores and raiding their stashes. Often, the impostor is caught and evicted, but not before they grab a few mouthfuls off of their meals, leading to many northhound tribes attempting to check their identities by specific vocal "passwords". As they do not understand complex language this is where most falsehounds are caught and chased away. Most northhounds are merciful to the falsehounds, seeing them merely as an annoyance and a trickster, content with simply driving them off until the falsehounds realize their cover is blown and they give up. But to the drysanders, ever so hostile to foreigners, they are seen as demons in false guises walking amongst people: and will not hesitate to kill the intruders upon exposing them: which in rare cases, has led to accidental lynchings of other fellow northhounds unfamiliar with their dialects and thus mistaken for falsehounds.

But not all relationships of the calliducyons with their feral brethren are hostile and aggressive. Some smaller calliducynomorphs, ones who pose little threat and are not competition, are even tolerated and adored by their sophont kin. One such example is the desert wildchild (Paedovulpecyon minimus), a fennec-like hunter in deserts, savannahs and grasslands, and is primarily an insectivore, hunting stinging insects as well as small duskmice and rattiles as well. They are different enough from the northhounds to not arise wariness, and their small, pup-like appearances has caused them to even appear endearing to them. The nomadic mixens, in particular, allow them to tag along in their packs, as they hunt small stinging insects that bother them and thus serve as vermin control, as well as amusement and companionship. To many other northhounds, however, this relationship is uncanny at best and uncomfortable at worst: though most distantly related to the true calliducyons among the Calliducynomorpha, the resemblance is still very much there--and to them, it is the equivalent of someone keeping tiny childlike people as pets.

But it is not only species that are of close kin to the calliducyons that incite such responses: many other, entirely unrelated non-sapient animals, through convergent evolution and coincidence, come to resemble the calliducyons themselves, be it in physical appearance and/or coloration. These species, different as they may seem, manage to evoke an uncanny sense of sameness to the calliducyons: and thus find a place in their folklore and culture, and form unconventional relationships, because of this resemblance.

One such case is the common folkmouse (Callidumimomys minimus), a small furbil species that is an otherwise unremarkable agouti-like herbivore that feeds on grasses, stems and seeds. But what makes it very distinctive is that its coloration, by chance, happened to resemble that of the brown northhounds: with the telltale dark mane, eye spots, pale ruffs, spotted colors and tufted ears that, together, create an appearance that very closely echoes the coloration of the northhounds. Small basal rodents such as furbils and duskmice form much of the northhounds' omnivorous diet: but the folkmouse is an exception. Many northhound beliefs see the folkmouse in different lights: some see them as "spirit kin", others see them as reincarnations of their ancestors, and still others see them as former northhounds that were cursed into turning into mindless diminutive creatures. Whatever their reason, the northhounds as a whole generally refrain from hunting and eating this particular species: and through accidental circumstance and the superstition of a sapient predator, the folkmouse has in essence evolved the most unusual of defensive colorations that have come to protect it from a very unorthodox hunter with rules of its own unlike those of nature.

A similar case applies to the ring-necked wolfface (Phocilycaenops cynocephalus), a member of the group of semi-marine bayvers called gnawruses: specialized to eating hard-shelled prey like shrish and notiluses, they developed blocky heads and squared-off snouts to help in pulverizing tough exoskeletons. Gregarious on the beach, they recognize one another through facial markings, most prominently pale spots above their eyes, and a ring of light and dark fur around their necks. This has given them a very uncanny and coincidental resemblance to the southhounds, which normally would hunt the pinniped-like creatures as they were vulnerable on the beach, in particular the baywulves who were coastal ranging and thus subsisted heavily on marine prey.

Naturally pattern-seekers, the baywulves quickly came to recognize the very similar faces and markings of the sea-beasts, especially when coupled with their defensive grunts and growls that sound much like their own vocalizations yet devoid of words or meaning. They, too, like the folkmouse, are spared the predation of the intelligent creature they so by chance happened to resemble, as baywulf culture has come to see them as guardians of the sea, and consider it a bad omen to harm or kill them. As such, while they do hunt other species of coastal bayvers, this species is off their list, with this cultural belief even providing some selective pressure toward those whose vocalizations sound more like southhound voices--to even further this uncanny resemblance and reduce their risk of being hunted by them.

Most noteworthy are the flyers, that bear resemblances to their faces and markings, as flight is seen as almost magical by the northhounds, and thus easily enter their folklore depicted as supernatural forces or physical manifestations of the spirits that govern the world. One such species, the wandergander known as the maned stormspirit (Ornithocyon tempestas), is widely revered as a holy creature by the northhounds, especially due to its propensity to fly ahead of storms to prey on marine life disturbed to the surface, and gathering after storms on the beach to feed on washed-up or trapped small prey. This, through confirmation bias, has led a number of northhound cultures to see them as either harbringers of storms, or actually causing the storms themselves, and as rain brings water and life they are viewed thus as incarnations of some of the spirits that guide the cycles of nature: with the mythical figure Storm-Chief, associated with the photosynthetic shroomor complex "Stormchief's Eyes", being depicted and described in lore as an immense maned stormspirit who challenged the gods themselves and was struck down for his hubris.

But resemblances to flying creatures take a darker turn in the deserts, where the falcyons, large predatory ratbats, scour the skies in search of prey. Their canine-like heads and similar markings have caused the drysanders to view and portray them as flying monsters with the heads of people: and none are as dreaded as the skewering harpshrike (Phobocynonyctus crucifigere), the species most closely resembling their own facial appearances: and also the species most likely to prey upon the drysanders' vulnerable pups. It is most dreaded by the northhounds in general due to its grim habits: storing the carcasses of its prey up in trees, it skewers them onto thorns and sharp branches to keep them out of reach of thieves, and to more easily take them apart into bite-size pieces for consumption. As such, the deserts are a common sight for the macabre spectacle of small, dessicated, skeletal and half-eaten carcasses decorating the branches of thorny trees: on occasion ones that may had been some unlucky pup out in the open at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

The existence of a diverse array of wildlife resembling themselves, some their own distant kin while others just being convergent animals that bear a coincidental resemblance to their own looks, has had a humbling effect on both northhounds and southhounds alike. Blurring the lines between being and brute, they view themselves not as a separate category of life, or a higher rung in the advancement of creatures. Rather, they both have come to see themselves as just another creature, just another piece in the puzzle of the world, as just another kind of animal as part of the world as anything else: made special solely by their capacity to tell stories, and make choices informed by them.

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[informationatlas]

There is evidence to suggest that chimpanzees, like humans, can experience a phase similar to menopause. Menopause is a biological phenomenon in which females cease to be fertile and undergo hormonal and reproductive changes. In the case of chimpanzees, studies have observed that female chimpanzees also go through a reproductive senescence, a period of time when they cease to reproduce.

Research conducted on wild chimpanzee populations, particularly in East Africa, has shown that female chimpanzees experience a decline in fertility and reproductive success as they age. The age at which chimpanzee females experience reproductive senescence is estimated to be around the mid-30s to early 40s, which is similar to the age range at which human females typically go through menopause.

By the way, the reasons behind reproductive senescence in chimpanzees are not fully understood, but it's believed to be related to physiological changes and possibly ecological factors.

Besides humans and chimpanzees, there are a few other species of animals where females experience menopause or a similar reproductive phenomenon. Here are some examples:

Orcas (Killer Whales): Female killer whales are known to go through menopause. The reasons behind this are not entirely clear, but it is suggested that older females, post-reproductive, play a crucial role in supporting and guiding their offspring and the larger pod, contributing to the survival and reproductive success of their kin.

Short-finned Pilot Whales: Similar to killer whales, short-finned pilot whales also exhibit post-reproductive lifespans, where older females cease reproduction and contribute to the social structure and survival of the group.

Narwhals: Female narwhals have been observed to go through menopause as well. As with other species, post-reproductive females may contribute to the group's overall fitness by assisting with the care of younger members.

Beluga Whales: There is some evidence suggesting that beluga whales also experience a form of menopause. Older females may stop reproducing and play roles in supporting their social groups.

[sexuslexus]

Orcas are very affectionate creatures and display the similar personalities and levels of affection as humans or chimpanzees! (This was found through a research published the Journal of Comparative Psychology.) Some speculate the personality traits of playful, stubbornness, sensitivity, and protectiveness may come from the fact that orca pods are very close, and these are needed to form complex social interactions. Orca pods have also been known to cuddle in what is formally known as a cuddle puddle! It is also speculated that orcas can feel complex emotions that isn’t observed in most animals such as grief for their lost ones.

Overall orcas are very sociable affectionate creatures when it comes to their pod. This could be because the pod is their family, as younger orcas stay with their mothers for life even after having children of their own. Even elder female orcas, or grandma orcas, stay with their pod to train and watch over young ones. Orcas are also one of the animals to live decades past menopause, (the other animals being humans and short-finned pilot whales) this is an evolutionary benefit that comes so orcas can make sure their next of kin stay alive and have all the hunting skills they need to keep their own pod alive one day.

Orcas have a sweet and beautiful love for their pod, doing anything and everything to keep them alive! While I don’t usually insert my own opinions I think it’s adorable, and I think we should use the term cuddle puddle more often! :3

[citizenoftmrrwlnd]

PRIDE icons for : a chimpkin with a bisexual theme mistakenly made for @avocadofire after i misread their ask OTL

[markhors-menagerie]

🦍Markhor’s menagerie masterpost🦌

🦧Primates🐒

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Primate kin

Colugos. Not quite primates, but I love them anyway.

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Basal primates

Basal animals are those which are closer to the base of a particular section of the tree of life. A more traditional word for this concept is primitive. So for example, amphibians are basal land vertebrates. Here I have classified basal primates as any which are not monkeys and/or apes, including Strepsirrhini and Tarsiiformes.

Lemurs

A group of basal primates found exclusively on the island of Madagascar.

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New world monkeys

Monkeys which are native to the “new world”, or the Americas. They are the only non-human primates found here. It is thought they arrived to the Americas tens of millions of years ago, when a group of African monkeys were blown out to sea by a storm. They survived the journey across the Atlantic on a natural raft of floating vegetation, and founded a new group of primates: Platyrrhini.

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Old world monkeys

These are monkeys native to the “old world”: Africa and Eurasia. Also known as Cercopithecidae.

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Apes

A group of large old world monkeys most recognisable by their lack of a tail. More formally known as Hominoidea.

Lesser apes

Consists of all the gibbon species, found in the treetops all across Southeast Asia.

Great apes

Includes orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans. All living species of great ape have been documented using tools.

🐫Ungulates🐃

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Odd-toed ungulates

Odd-toed ungulates, of course, have an odd number of hooves. They include horses, tapirs, rhinos, and their extinct relatives. They might actually be less closely related to even-toed ungulates than you’d think!

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All ungulates from here on out are Even-toed ungulates:

These have an even number of hooves, and include most living hoofed mammals. Whales are technically included in this group, but they’re best left for another time.

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Camelidae

Consists of camels, llamas, and their extinct relatives. They are often adapted for harsh climates such as deserts and mountains.

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Pigs, hippos, & kin

This isn’t a “real” group, but I’ve put them together to make classifying extinct species simpler. This includes peccaries, pigs, hippos, and a bunch of related extinct animals. Whales are also in here, but again, are best left for another time.

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All ungulates from here on out are Ruminants:

Ruminants are a group of even-toed ungulates with a robust digestive system to get as much nutrition as possible out of their food. They will regurgitate their food in order to chew it again, in a process called chewing the cud.

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Chevrotains

Also known as mouse deer, these are the smallest of all ungulates.

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Protoceratids

A strange group of extinct ungulates, once found in North America.

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Giraffes & kin

Pronghorn antelope, okapi, giraffes, and their extinct relatives.

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Deer & kin

Mostly deer, but I’ve included musk deer as well for simplicity’s sake. No, musk deer are not deer, apparently.

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Bovidae

Bovidae is a group of incredibly diverse ruminants. They’re also quite complicated phylogenetically, including everything from bison and antelope to gazelles and goats.

Bovini

Cattle, bison, buffalo, and some more of their relatives.

Caprinae

A group of mountain-dwelling bovids, including sheep, goats… and markhors!

Antelope

This isn’t a “real” group as much as it is a bunch of bovids that kind of look alike. For simplicity’s sake I’ve included any bovid that isn’t in the two above groups.

[sciencespies]

Homo naledi may have used fire to cook and navigate 230,000 years ago

https://sciencespies.com/humans/homo-naledi-may-have-used-fire-to-cook-and-navigate-230000-years-ago/

Homo naledi may have used fire to cook and navigate 230,000 years ago

By Alison George

A reconstruction of the skull of a Homo naledi child

Brett Eloff Photography

Archaeological evidence suggests that Homo naledi, a primitive human species with a chimpanzee-like skull, used fires to cook food and navigate in the darkness of underground caves, despite having a brain one third of the size of ours.

“We have massive evidence. It’s everywhere,” says Lee Berger at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. “Huge lumps of charcoal, thousands of burned bones, giant hearths and baked clay.”

This find, which is still being analysed and remains controversial, could revolutionise our understanding of the emergence of complex behaviours that had been thought to be the sole domain of large-brained species, such as modern humans and Neanderthals.

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H. naledi was first discovered in 2013 in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa when two cavers managed to enter a hitherto unexplored chamber via an incredibly tight passage. The surface was littered with thousands of fossil bones. In 2015, these were declared to belong to a new species.

We now know that H. naledi was about 144 centimetres tall on average and weighed around 40 kilograms. It had a strange mix of primitive and modern features, with ape-like shoulders, a tiny brain only just bigger than that of a chimpanzee and teeth “more reminiscent of something millions of years old”, says Berger.

Yet dating of its fossil remains in 2017 showed that it lived relatively recently, between 230,000 to 330,00 years ago, meaning that it could have co-existed with Homo sapiens, which evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago.

A hearth possibly made by Homo naledi

Lee Berger

But questions remained about how H. naledi navigated through the labyrinth of underground passages at Rising Star, which are in complete darkness and require complex manoeuvres through gaps in the rock just 17.5 centimetres wide.

This inaccessibility means that, in the past decade, only 47 people – all small and slightly built – had managed to access the Dinaledi chamber where H. naledi fossils were first discovered. But in August this year, Berger, who is 188cm tall, decided to risk entering this labyrinth, losing 25 kilograms of weight in preparation.

“It’s not a space made for six-feet-two people like me. I’m by far the largest person who’s even been in,” he says. He knew there was a possibility he might not be able to squeeze out again. “I almost died on the way out,” he says.

The risk paid off. When Berger entered the Dinaledi chamber and looked up, he realised that there were blackened areas and soot particles on the rock. “The entire roof of the chamber is burnt and blackened,” he says.

By coincidence, at the same time that Berger was observing the soot, his colleague Keneiloe Molopyane, also at the University of the Witwatersrand, uncovered a tiny hearth with burnt antelope bones in another part of the cave system, then a large hearth next to it 15cm below the cave floor. Then, in another area called the Lesedi chamber, Berger found a stack of burnt rocks, with a base of ash and burnt bones.

This is a remarkable discovery, as many researchers thought it was impossible for such a small-brained hominin to make and use fire within a cave system. Although we have evidence that ancient humans living in what is now Kenya could control fire as far back as 1.5 million years ago, this capacity “is typically associated with larger-brained Homo erectus”, says Berger.

H. naledi also seem to have used the space in interesting ways, with “body disposal in one space and cooking of animals in adjacent spaces”, says Berger. “The capacity to make and use fire finally shows us how Homo naledi ventured so deep into dangerous spaces, and explains how they may have moved their dead kin into such spaces, something likely impossible without light. It also hints at a complex naledi culture becoming visible to us.”

Dating of the charred remains is still underway, so the decision to announce the fire discovery in a talk on 1 December, prior to the publication of the formal scientific analysis, has proved controversial.

“It’s impossible to evaluate Lee Berger’s claims properly without seeing the full evidence, but apparently that is forthcoming,” says Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London. “With all due respect to Lee and his teams for a series of great finds, this is not the way to conduct science or progress scientific debate about potentially very important discoveries.”

However, for Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux in France, the discovery that H. naledi may have been able to control fire could give insight into the way they treated their dead and their social organisation.

“If Homo naledi were shown to have mastered fire and used it to gain access to the most remote areas of the Rising Star karst system, this could have very important implications for the interpretation of mortuary practices conducted at the site,” he says. “The control of an artificial light source allows the organisation of actions in space and time and, in the case of mortuary practices, facilitates the participation of several members of the group in collaborative and shared actions.”

Charcoal possibly used by Homo naledi

Lee Berger

For Berger, the fire-use discovery has implications that are even more revolutionary. If these small-brained humans with many primitive features were capable of the complex cognition required to make and control fire, then “we’re beginning to see the emergence of a cultural pathway and behaviour that we thought, until this moment, was the domain of [Homo sapiens and Neanderthals],” he says.

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[majinalia]

I would like to recommend "Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees" by Roger Fouts to anyone curious about the nature of ape intelligence and communication. It's an exceptional work written by a scientist who worked with Chimpanzees with sign language for decades.

[ancorvo]

Some of my favorite quotes from the book “Next of Kin”💗💗💗 (Written by Roger and Deborah Fouts)

[ ] “Humans are simply odd-looking apes.”

[ ] “Evolutions is not a ladder of ‘improvement’ fulminating in the human species: it is an ongoing process of adaptation for millions of related species, each on its own evolutionary pathway.”

[ ] “He not only confirmed that language acquisition is based on learning skills we share with chimpanzees, but he shows that the transmission of language is a cultural phenomenon.”

[ ] “The animal we experiment on today will surely be inside our moral universe tomorrow. Why not work toward that inevitable day instead of delaying it?”

[ ] “Compassion does not and should not stop at the imagined barriers between species. Something is wrong with a system that exempts people from anti cruelty laws just because those people happen to be wearing white lab coats.”

[ ] “Science that dissociates itself from the pain of others soon becomes monstrous.”