#wolf chatter

[bigbadvv0lf]

it has occured to me that if i want to use my tumblr as a portfoli/reference for comms/place to post art i need to. actually post art. anyway!! bg3 comm for someone on discord uwu

[swedishgoaliemafia]

Heyy, sorry to ask (you mußte be sick of awnsering the same questions all over again, and im sorry for asking in advance) but how do your plant look for the 'James Neal: Werwolf Detective'? Just realy curious and i cant find anything under the tags.

Hey! I’m assuming you’re asking about plans for the third fic. I did a little bit of an essay about it here. TLDR is that I’d like to finish it but it is at the back of my to-do list right now and even if I was working on it I wouldn’t tell anybody because I’m not getting anyone’s hopes up about if/when that third fic is happening.

[image-holder-aaaaa]

[whimsical-sonic]

whispar

[mammoth-clangen]

So, first off, as a paleontologist… thank you for that rant. It’s been driving me up the wall that people are going “oh look we revived the dire wolf using gray wolves!!” Even if you ignore the whole issue of de-extinction wolves aren’t even the closest living relative! Jackals and African wild dogs are more closely related to it, and they aren’t anywhere close to being in the same genus.

And of course, de-extinction is a whole other issue. Why are they so focused on the mammoth? At least the thylacine went extinct about a hundred years ago so the niche could still be there. But still, why focus on them? If you want to de-extinct something, why not focus on, oh I don’t know, the northern white rhino which still has two living members for sequencing and who have a living subspecies.

And further more, it’s genuinely cruel to bring most of these back. You think a wooly mammoth that lived in the last glacial maximum would be happy in todays climate that is consistently getting hotter? You think the dodo would appreciate the fact that it’s one habitat has been mostly destroyed? You think the thylacine would enjoy trying to outcompete the dingos that have moved into its niche? No. They wouldn’t.

For the mammoths, it’s especially cruel since they are herd animals and you’d need to clone a lot of them at one time for them to be happy.

And I mean, look. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see these creatures alive. As unlikely as it is, I keep a sliver of hope that the thylacine might still be out there. But that doesn’t mean de-extinction is good. Like it or not, they went extinct for a reason. Yes, that reason may be because of humans, but it is still a reason. You bring them back and they’ll go extinct again unless they are given extreme protection.

They need to focus on living creatures or, if they are desperate to bring something that’s completely extinct back, focus on creatures that have gone extinct within the last two decades.

Ugh, sorry for the mini rant but as someone who understands extinction (including the current Anthropocene mass extinction), bringing things back is not the way to go. I can point to multiple genuses that went extinct for a good reason.

Hello fellow palaeontologist! 🤝 My area of study was actually Dromornithid ichnotaxonomy but carnivorans are holding me hostage nowadays, it seems...

Unfortunately, you have fallen prey to another (thankfully, less insidious) piece of misinformation! Dire wolves aren't wolves, but they are no more closely related to Jackals or African Wild Dogs!

Aenocyon is an outgroup to all wolf-like canids, jackals included!

I've seen the Aenocyon/Lupulella/Lycaon relatedness touted often, and am guilty of repeating it myself before I re-read the paper.

A possible reason for this confusion that African jackals are considered the most basal of the extant, wolf-like canids; as seen on the cladogram above.

Therefore, the ~5.7million year old common ancestor of Aenocyon and the wolf/jackal/dhole lineage would likely have looked more like a jackal. Then Aenocyon convergently evolved a very wolfish skeleton because of their similar lifestyles!

This is also why I chose to reconstructed my Aenocyon with a shoulder patch, seeing many canids seem to have some sort of cape marking.

The 2021 paper that concluded the dire wolf isn't a wolf at all, is unfortunately paywalled :/ Without full access to the paper it's hard to be sure exactly where Aenocyon fits within the larger Canidae family tree (if they discussed it at all), but the abstract describes them as having "an early New World origin".

It seems they were a true outgroup to modern wolf-like canids, being the earliest branching member of Canina! They're not too different from sabercats, in that way.

Also if anyone is following the ongoing edit war on the Dire Wolf Wikipedia page, I beg you to ignore the "taxonomy based on morphology" section. It is only useful as a historical reference for how we used to view Aenocyon dirus as Canis dirus for a long time. Current science supports these morphological similarities being convergent, contrary to what Colossal Lies are being told...

---

I already partially addressed Mammoths (and the issues with their herds inbreeding) in this other ask, but I do agree completely with your points.

Having the GMO wolves raised without another older wolf or dog parental figures is frankly, just cruel. Any vet will tell you hand-reared and imprinted animals are significantly more prone to behavioural issues down the line. Mammoths would be worse again, because unlike Romulus and Remus, there is no chance of even having a twin to keep them company.

And yes; What could possibly go wrong with bringing back a polar-adapted, woolly proboscidean, into a world where even winters are getting progressively warmer?

I too, would love to see extinct animals in the wild. I'd be lying if I said I don't secretly hope for many of them to pull a coelacanth on us. But sadly, I don't think that's likely, and nor do I think we should be trying to make it happen.

---

Hank Green brought up something poignant about this dire wolf debacle, which is that extinction is not as simplistic as we imagine it to be. It's not just the death of a species.

"It's the destruction of a space in the natural environment for a species."

And that is really it, you can't just "bring back" an extinct species, because you aren't bringing their niche back with them.

Successful reintroductions of species that were locally extirpated or made entirely extinct in the wild have only worked because effort was put into securing a niche and ecosystem that had been lost.

And even well-planned, well-funded reintroductions struggle, but at least they understood the assignment.

Colossal, on the other hand, seems to think that adding back their very-roughly-wolf-shaped 'jenga block' to the ecosystem 'tower' will completely stop the collapse. But the real 'collapse' is caused by habitat destruction, and no amount of GMO wolves, mammoths or thylacines can stop that.

Bringing the species in to save the ecosystem is climbing ass-first up a tree. We need to save the ecosystem for the species. And all this is still ignoring the sad truth for a lot of extinct animals:

For many of them, there is no 'tower' to save.

[can1s-lupus-lupus]

dont think this post is worded great, im pretty tired but i wanted to get my thoughts out here anyway

okay here i go:

i think in a lot of cases where folk think therians and alterhumans are faking or not being 100% genuine about their experiences or linking things that are unrelated together, they generalise quite a lot and don't take things like instincts and even just psychological therians/alterhumans into consideration

lets take the example of (were)wolves and 'edgy' aesthetics, those things may not be directly correlated, but if a big reason for you being kin of a were(wolf) is that you used it as a survival/coping mechanism, you may also relate to 'edgy' aesthetics, or more specifically, feel like it fits your were(wolf) instincts because of a strong drive to bite, attack and defend etc

so many times i see folk saying "but that's unrelated" and like, yes, sort of, but its not up to you whether folk enjoy those themes and relate them to their kintypes

i really wish folk in this community (especially younger therians/alterhumans) would realise and keep in mind the effect imprinting, neurodivergence, and other psychological causes has on the community

not everyone has a past life, or memories, and sometimes folk will use arbitrary things to relate to their kintypes

that doesn't make their experience less real, it doesn't make them less of a therian or alterhuman, it just is.

[bigbadvv0lf]

Ty for the tag! This is the brother of one of my dnd player's characters! I designed him in bg3 so we could have a visual reference.

He's a lawful good paladin who's like "done all the main quests of his life and has just started fucking around" so I'm feeling pretty safe lmao

Tagging: @ashesfromfrost, @oolathurman, @certified-anakinfucker, @voidendron

you're stuck in a room with the last character in your gallery how safe are you?

(Tagged by @shieldofiron )

I honestly don't ... know ...

Tagging @lazybakerart @mikajupiterjonesingtimcurryfeet @callieb @disdaidal @introvertia

[barrenclan]

This is a short poem I wrote last summer, about Prowl’s view on his relationship with Deepdark. I always meant to illustrate it but turns out you don’t have a lot of time for recreational art when you’re a college student with two comics! (Who knew!) I’d rather have it up in incomplete form than never, so maybe I’ll get around to adding art someday.

DEVOTION

"I am the hunter; you are the hunted.

All my life I was living in blinding snow, without knowing wholly its cold sting, until you threw sweeping sunlight into my world, bright and terrible and burning and I am intoxicated to the warmth.

All my life I chased things such as you, and my eyes saw not except another set of flurrying swift hooves and a weak bloody heart. And then -

Oh everything, and then you turn and leap and oh then, you’re not anything but another trembling soul until I see it truly see it - 

A wolf in deer’s skin.

Beautiful sharp fangs of white horn, wild white wolf eyes, and you tear from your flesh and I am the hunter and you are the hunter and I am the hunted and

ALL MY LIFE I WAS EMPTY FOR LACK OF YOU

ALL MY LIFE I WAS MISSING YOUR WHITE WOLF EYES

ALL MY LIFE IS WHAT YOU’VE TAKEN!

AND I DEVOTE MYSELF TO YOU

AND I DEVOTE MYSELF TO YOU

AND I DEVOTE MYSELF TO YOU

AND I DEVOTE MYSELF TO YOU"

[mongreldyke]

wolf butch x stag butch. is this anything

[bigbadvv0lf]

Experimenting with a more 'cinematic' style so have a broody tyshin

[image-holder-aaaaa]

[transannabeth]

rose and the doctor were peak annoying obnoxious couple and that’s only one of many reasons why they’re one of the ships of all time

[whimsical-sonic]

the sillies

[ID: A digital, colored piece of Whisper and Tangle. To the left, Tangle's eyes are closed with a big, open-mouthed grin. She is posing, doing jazz hands with one foot in front of the other. She is wearing a maroon-colored jacket and black sweats, her shoes reminiscent to her typical ones.

Whisper is facing away from the viewer at a 3/4 angle. Her head is tilted down, smiling. She's wearing a black hoodie, one hand in a pocket with the other holding her cane, obscured by her tail. She's wearing jeans and black sneakers with white laces.

End ID.]

[mammoth-clangen]

Honestly cloning has limited usefulness in conservation, let alone deextinctuon. If a population has bottlenecked or fallen below the carrying threshold then cloning what's left doesn't functionally help. Even cloning a recently deceased individual might not help, depending on a lot of factors. It's annoying that it's treated like this big help to conservation when frankly well managed breeding programs are a much bigger help than cloning will ever be.

Oh don't get me wrong

There's certainly room for thoughtful, ethical cloning use in conservation!

A really great example is in Black-footed ferrets just last year. They're critically endangered partially due to reduced fertility from inbreeding depression.

Two jills (female ferrets) were cloned from historic samples of a ferret called Willa, who was captured and never reproduced in her lifetime. Because of this, reintroducing her genes helped bolster the genetic diversity of the population!

This is one of the twin ferret sisters, Antonia.

Better yet, the above ferret then went on to give birth to healthy kits! They're super cute, and being 100% ferret made the old-fashioned way (not clones), shouldn't have any of the issues that clones sometimes do.

Behold them!

But what Colossal is doing is not cloning!

I can't stress that enough! It's genetic modification, but cloning means creating a complete replicate of another animal.

Even using genetic modification has many potential applications in conservation; coding endangered species with resistance to population-devastating diseases, or using it to recode lost genetic diversity, as a few examples. But the way Colossal is using it is not to preserve endangered species. They have created, depending on your opinion:

1) a GMO grey wolf (or wolfdog, given where the white-coat gene came from).

2) a completely new transgenic species.

They claim to be filling the niche left by an extinct species, but this is honestly BS. They haven't made an extinct species, nor an endangered one. It couldn't even fill the niche if that niche was still open.

"The T. rex in this Jurassic Park is just a frog..."

-paraphrased from sparrowlucero

[datvtranscripts]

does uh. anyone want to record the fade memories from a playthrough where you don't do the labs below memory first. for science.

[shepherdingthepie]

feelin quite wolfy today

who wants to howl?

I’ll start:

awoooooooooooooooooooooooo