#yes i just grabbed that cathala nude study from the other day and blacked her out. i couldn't be bothered lol

[deathbydarkelves]

🐦 gimme those delicious nature headcanons

🐦‍⬛ - Something about plants and/or animals

I'm gonna be honest, I've sort of always disliked the moonkin 💀 Their design is probably one of the most awkward out of the chimeric creatures in this game. But I LOVE owlbears, and Warcraft doesn't have any "regular" owlbears (outside the DF Emerald Dream), so I just combined them <3

They're known by many names in many languages due to their wide range and ancient presence. They're dor'anre to the kaldorei ("wildkin") and Eulebären (singular Eulebär) to humans ("owlbear"). Tauren and trolls have their own names as well, naturally.

((Again, I used the fanmade Darnassian dictionary for that, and I use German to represent the human language/s))

There's a couple different species of these guys, maybe five or so, as they had a fairly broad distribution across the ancient Kalimdor supercontinent. They actually share a common ancestor with hippogryphs and gryphons, and still possess tiny vestigial wings and a bird-like respiratory system.

Like hippogryphs, their antlers are more accurately described as branched horns -- they grow continuously and aren't shed. And, also like hippogryphs, they're less for intraspecific competition and more for social display. Larger antlers communicate age and good health, and each individual can be identified by them. I didn't show it here, but if an antler is broken, that can affect its growth dramatically. It's the same concept as bonsai. An owlbear with huge, asymmetrical, and oddly-shaped antlers is an old one indeed.

And this is important, because to an even higher degree than their relatives, they have complex social structures within groups (often referred to as "packs"). I'd put them at about the same level as real-world gorillas when it comes to intelligence, maybe slightly below. They're not really in their stone age yet, and they certainly can't speak, nor do they have the little villages they do in-game. But talk to any druid and they've definitely got a little more going on upstairs than many other animals. They use tools and can learn basic methods of interspecies communication.

The largest packs consist of multiple separate families, but most only have five to ten individuals from one or two families. By living in these groups, they can lay claim to much larger tracts of land and share precious resources. They're mostly scavengers, but when they must catch their own food they stick to fish and small mammals. Large animals like deer are only rarely taken, and only the most desperate owlbears go after humanoids.

It seems certain that within the next couple thousand years, owlbears will enter a stone age; as I said they're already using basic tools. They'll use sticks to dig up rabbit burrows, and topple trees into streams to force fish into a bottleneck.

They can do this because of their fun owl feet <3 At rest, on their forelimbs, they have three toes pointing forward and one pointing backwards (a little to the side actually, but effectively backwards). This is an anisodactyl configuration, and what most birds you're familiar with have. But, like owls (and osprey), they can rotate their fourth toe around to have two in front and two in back, a zygodactyl configuration, and much better for grasping -- grasping prey and tools.

This is shown surprisingly well in this shot from the Guardians of Ga'Hoole movie. I exclaimed in joy the first time I noticed. It's so refreshing to see animators actually do their research on birds.

I'm also gonna link this 2.5 minute video where a guy shows this on a real (dead) owl for those interested.

Anyway... it also goes without saying that there's all kinds of folklore around these guys, including the widely-held belief among kaldorei that they're aware of, worship, and carry out the wishes of Elune. There's a story told by certain tauren tribes that says the first trees grew from the antlers of an owlbear who had gotten drunk and accidentally killed the god of winter's prized pet stag. He then killed the owlbear in grief. So, the reason trees change and lose their leaves in autumn is in apology for the accident, and to try and appease the god of winter with brilliant colors he could never otherwise imagine.

((Ask game here))