#logistics of infancy and childhood development in magical creatures

[panukkie]

dont go out for a walk alone and late at night when you have been drawing and researching horses/centaurs all day, you WILL end up thinking about the logistics of centaur birth and early infancy development!!!

anyway im going to info dump the stuff i was thinking about :)

since horses can walk and run only a few hours after birth and human babies are practically useless for several years, this would mean that the horse development would need to be drastically slowed down and the human development drastically sped up, but humans require a very long time (after birth) for our brains to develop because most of what we learn is learned socially by interacting with other humans, horses are not like this and most of their knowledge is instinctual.

centaurs have human shaped skulls so its reasonable to assume that they have human-like brains too. this means they require a prolonged childhood in order to grow as social creatures and therefore cannot have an accelerated development as babies/toddlers.

when humans are born they are floppy and things like skulls are soft and in separated pieces, this is because humans are upright standing creatures and the position of the pelvis does not facilitate a comfortable, smooth birth. however, centaurs would give birth out of the horse part so they dont have the same problems as humans when it comes to birth, therefore infant centaurs can be born with hard skulls and stronger bones and muscles. this is good news bc it means that the human half wont be floppy like a human child would.

centaurs are likely to live in groups because that is a shared trait for both horses and humans, so with lots of other beings around, it is less necessary for infants to be very independent. this means that while their lower halves may be able to stand and walk, their upper bodies dont need to be able to be super mobile, because they can rely on others to take care of them. it might be the case that their torsos and arms are much shorter (relatively) than they would be in adulthood, because they dont have much use for their upper body yet. as their brains grow larger and more capable, then their arms start growing and their fingers become more dexterous. as infants centaurs human ribcages may be fused with their horse ribcages, and as they get older the ribcage splits and there becomes a more distinct difference between horse and human halves. throughout childhood, their spines elongate, and their upper body separates from their horse shoulders

im not an expert on human or horse development, this is just based on the little that i actually know so it might not be completely accurate. but yeah thats what i think. also i just made some stuff up that probably doesnt make any biological sense but theyre fantasy creatures so i think im excused a little in terms of realism

i have normal thoughts too i swear 0_0