#monster hunter biology

[iamthekaijuking]

What do you think is Nu Udra? How could it relate to Nakarkos or Yama?

Is it a vert-

So going off the 8 arms and generally floppy body this is likely an octopus. Specifically within Octopodoidea and likely closely related to Enteroctopodidae (yellow and giant octopus), Octopodidae (common, blue ringed, and mimic octopodes), and Megaleledonidae.

Granted, Nu is very unique anatomically, likely due to being a terrestrial cephalopod.

The big one is that it’s in contact with fresh water. Fresh water is a massive hurdle for cephalopods because of osmotic stress, basically they have no mechanism to keep fresh water from sucking the salt out of their cells. I’d imagine though that Nu gets around this by having thicker skin (it seems to have a texture like that of a toad) and mucus membranes.

Its gills might have transitioned into lungs.

The beak is further forward on the body and not in the middle of all the arms, likely to make it easier to eat things since without the support of water it’s probably harder to position itself over top of food.

It seems to have gotten rid of almost all suckers, maybe for friction reasons??? But I don’t know any logical reason for the loss aside from the devs probably didn’t want to program and animate them all. What few suckers remain have been turned into massive hooks, which isn’t unusual for a cephalopod. Squids have some nasty talons.

Apparently Nu Udra has bad eyesight and it doesn’t even have pupils, and has sensory organs on the tips of its arms. This gives the tips of the arms a sort of cupped shape like a hectocotylus, which would make it pretty hard to tell which individuals are males. Granted Capcom has a pretty firm no-no rule on giving the monsters private parts, the most they’ve done is arse-holes and rajang’s glowing pubes.

Its relation to Nakarkos is pretty much like that of any other octopus and cuttlefish. And Nark is explicitly a cuttlefish. It doesn’t drop elder dragon blood when killed and gives you cuttlebones. In a recent wilds dev interview they said they wanted to go squid-ier with nark like Nu Udra but couldn’t due to technical limitations.

Yama…

Is a British man.

[krmoaten-blog]

Eater of Elders

well, UHC's giving me a bit of a break for Art atm, not to say I'm on art break again, but it would be nice to see people's ideas come to fruition, if you have such ideas, you can commission me on ko-fi

[kaijuthespacemaniraptorian]

Dyuragaua skull made with parave anatomy

i may not have the model of dyuragaua yet but atleast i got some nice game images to get a good idea to draw his head!

I absolutely love Dyuragaua hes one of my favorite frontier monsters his design is silly yet awesome looking and i enjoy his fight! Hes better than Mi-Ru (even tho i said before i like him out of irony)

hopefully you will like this skull! :>

[troythecatfish]

[ctrl-alt-deleting-yr-face]

i’m gonna lose my mind i’m so in love with him . i can’t fucking do this. Erik

[eternal-gromnommer]

Playing around with the designs of Gaismagorm and Diablos and trying to make them look more "streamlined" to suit their lifestyles as burrowers given that their builds kinda look poorly suited for moving through loose ground.

Gaismagorm is more mole-like, its former wings being large scoop-like excavating implements while both its front and hind legs have been reduced to paddles meant mostly just for shoving loose soil aside. Its claw-like tail is used to anchor itself when moving backwards, its body is more compact, and its eyes have completely atrophied, using its "horns" which are now more like starnose mole tendrils to feel and sense its way around.

Diablos meanwhile is more penguin-inspired, able to slide through loose sand with ease. Its tusks and horns are all angled forward to pierce through the sand with minimal effort, its frill contours with the rest of its body, and its legs and wings are short, broad and flat to push through the ground, with the wings still retaining highly-vascularized webbed membranes to act as heat sinks to help cool down in the hot desert.

[theantiazdarcho]

The Wyvern with a stone Face: Gravios

[drakomachina]

a bit of lynian biology headcanons! drawing them is weird so im figuring out their anatomy

[dala-siaka]

Semi realistic Rathalos and Rathian.

[mebis-art-dump]

The Gunslinger spider

Name pending

Species: Temnoceran

My first ever monster hunter monster oc! inspired by boleadora spiders, this large monster keeps a herd of common prey monsters (such as aptonoth) within its territory in order to attract the flying wyverns it preys upon (and as livestock in case of emergency); extremely territorial about its herd, will not just attack its preferred prey but also anything that threatens them.

The boulders it stacks in its back and webbed bag act both as natural armor and camouflage as well as its ammo, as it attaches the rocks to threads of silk in order to hurl them at its prey both to knock it down and to entangle and pull at it.

Around its mouth there are pores that produce threads of silk which help detect vibrations in the air, and also can be combined with the sticky substance produced by its fangs (gets more viscuous when in contact with air) to quickly weave threads in the middle of a fight. There are accounts of older and more experienced individuals using smaller, ignitable stones with its front limbs to directly engage opponents in close combat, causing burns and concussions from the blasts (an action very reminiscent of one of Qurupeco's abilities, perhaps these older individuals have engaged in fights with them? to predate them or to take advantage of their call?)

[iamthekaijuking]

A better look at Xu Wu

So Xu Wu is one of the new cephalopod monsters but after closer examination it might not be a cephalopod and instead something else, but what exactly I don’t know.

Baby Xu and Nu and their eggs for comparison. Xu’s have little butt mouths but are otherwise just nubs with more nubs while Nu actually look like baby/flapjack octopus.

Cross section of Xu’s arm in comparison to a Nu arm and actual octopus arm and starfish arm.

And a look at the mantle, mouth (note that there isn’t a beak), and some kind of indent at the top of the head which could be an oriface? Something else to note is that the underside of the arms can “close” like a starfish and the tentacle tips can basically 3d print blades of hard dry mucus. So yeah Xu Wu looks like an octopus on the outside but under the hood it’s something else.

Meanwhile the only extremely weird thing about Nu anatomy wise is that the mantle is a little small and the siphon points backwards, but we can probably handwave that last one as not the end of the digestive tract being backwards but rather the siphon just kinda loops back 180 degrees. Also you never see under Nu’s mantle in the fight anyways so it’s probably not too terribly important a detail and just something the model designers did to make the job a little easier for the animation department (the cephalopod rig already pushes what the RE engine can do).

Possible explanation for Xu’s oddities hidden below because story spoilers

There could be the possibility that the ancestors of Xu Wu got into some gene editing materials when moving to the ruins of Wyveria to eat their genetically amalgamated homunculi, thus supremely fucking them up.

[krmoaten-blog]

Arboreal Monkeys

[kaijuthespacemaniraptorian]

Shantien skull using Actinistian skulls for reference

this is possibly the toughest skull i've done so far but this is also my first time drawing an elder dragon skull so its no surprise it would be this difficult and especially Shantien's terribly modeled cranium! (it fucking has no nostrils)

i also used @iamthekaijuking's many elder dragon skulls as reference since i like his Actinistian elder theory its pretty neat!

overall im quite happy with it i also quite like shantien's design i think he looks neat and i even designed a character after him!

[troythecatfish]

[bionic-vapour-boy]

isekai where an evolutionary biologist gets transported to the Monster Hunter world

[tree-of-monstrous-life]

Step 1; Organisation

First things first is to roughly organise all of the species into broad groups and subgroups. Things aren't looking wildly different yet, but I've broken down the largest classifications into some more refined categories and moved a few species around based on their body types, locomotion, and behaviours.

It isn't entirely organised, there's a lot of room for changes, and there are a few species missing here and there (I'm aware of Quiro and the Elgado Seagulls, and most 'item' bugs), but it's a start.

It'll be a while before my first attempts at making an actual evolutionary tree (also I need to find a good program to do it in. Pureref was good for the sheet but it won't do for the rest, thinking probably some flowchart creator? if anyone's got recommendations shoot em my way (ideally free ones)).