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lichpassing · 29 days

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Let's talk about spring hounds!

Spring hounds are the analog for dogs on Aurum, occupying a similar niche to wolves. They became domesticated a lot later than ours did, having become genetically distinct from their ancestors about 20,000 years ago. Because of this, along with other factors, they aren’t as physically diverse as our dogs are, but they fill many different niches and do have distinct breeds.

Remains of their ancestor species were found in singer burial grounds as far back as around 48,000 years ago! That’s around 20,000 years before Aurum’s last mass extinction event! The working theory for why it took them so long to become their own species is that bands of C singers would kidnap pups and raise them as their own on occasion. Since that was uncommon at the time, domestication just didn’t have the chance to come about until later.

Later on, because of an asteroid impact, populations of most species dropped drastically or completely disappeared. Spring hounds ancestors had a hard time coping with the post-impact world, and taking more scraps from the species who can hunt large game seemed very alluring. Over the next few thousand years, as the two singer species started to get more and more intertwined, spring hounds changed a lot. Close proximity to C singers made them much more sociable, trainable, and visually appealing (yay neoteny).

The reason why working with this species specifically was so appealing to Cs was the difference in their hunting methods. Cs are ambush predators, they can reach extremely high speeds, but not for very long. Spring hounds are endurance predators, they can pursue prey for much longer. When whatever is being hunted tries to escape, spring hounds are there to cut them off or herd them back to the hunting party. It's a system that benefits both, and that forged a deep bond between the two species.

Spring hounds still exist in the modern day, they're a very common working animal and even more common companions. It's common practice for Cs who give birth to only one child to get their child a spring hound pup to play and socialize with.

E singers also keep them as pets, but their relationship with them is similar to our relationship with cats. Spring Hounds are slightly intimidated by Es size, and Es have a harder time forming bonds with them because of this. However, they are still pretty popular pets, and the two can form close bonds with each other like Cs can. Es just need to approach them with more patience and understanding.

Biology

With strong legs, stocky bodies, and mouths full of sharp teeth, spring hounds make formidable predators. Their body plan is similar to that of a kangaroo because of their shared need for endurance. They can hop at a stable speed for miles, pursuing prey until the exhaustion overcomes them.

Their tail has the same 3 segments most members of their class do, and it's used as a leg when they aren’t moving. The only exception to this is the awkward shuffle they do to move very short distances.

Their feet have one large claw to hook onto prey while they hold them down. Since they hunt in packs, they use their collective weight to hold down whatever they catch.

Large ears give them great hearing, allowing them to be alerted to things moving a considerable distance away from them. The long, thin feathers on their head are connected to recessive ears, which evolved to be used for communication and courtship.

Spring pups are much fluffier, lacking the tusks and open ears of an adult hound. Their young are more altricial than Cs, and are unable to walk or hear for a few weeks after they are born. The two parents of the pups will take turns watching over the litter while the other one hunts. They can start eating meat after a couple of days but cannot crack through shells and bones until they're older.

On average an adult spring hound is about 2-3 feet tall, but some breeds get closer to 1 or 4 feet.

Their mouths are a bit overcomplicated, again like most animals in their class. One thing that sets them and the species closely related to them apart is the fact they are both carnivorous and have external tusks. The external tusks are not really for hunting, but for manipulating and holding onto carrion, and for building nests. Unlike their internal tusks, the external ones can move slightly up and down. They'll hold objects between their external tusks and tongue, and while they don't have the strongest grip, it makes up for their lack of forelegs or arms. The internal ones are used for hunting, so they’re are more firmly set in the jaw and are much sharper. Their beak is the real star of the show, however, it's the strongest part of their mouth and can bite through a lot of the harder parts of the animals they eat. In households, they have a bad habit of biting chair legs in half that are too thin if they don't get trained to use a designated chew toy. The “tongue” inside is a radula, and it's covered in thousands of teeth.

Their eye color ranges from yellow to red, but their sclera is usually the same shade of very dark blue. Similarly to c singers, their eyes are not round, and are instead eye stalks similar to a mantis shrimps underneath skin, fat, and muscle. Their eyes rotation is limited, and they often will rotate their heads or bodies to get a good look at something. The “pull apart” style pupil is common amongst more nocturnal or crepuscular predators, with spring hounds falling into the latter category.

Coat genetics

There are 12 categories of spring hound base coat colors, with 4 major color categories. Brown and tan are the most common, with black being a bit more uncommon and red being the rarest. The dilute gene is self explanatory, it lightens the color and patterning of the coat to varying degrees, nothing too flashy. The blush dilute is somewhat similar, but it impacts the pheomelanin less than the eumelanin, therefore it leaves a bit more of a rosy tone. The gene for dilute and blush dilute are both recessive, but it might show up again if the same type of dilute gene exists in both parents.

There are some other colors that are the result of genetic mutations. All white coats don't exist in spring hounds standard coat colors, but leucistic spring hounds are not uncommon, so it was assumed they were part of the standard array. Albinism and melanism are both rather rare, but melanism doesn't come with health issues like albinism does, outside of being more vulnerable to heat stroke in some regions. Spring hounds with albinism tend to be visually impaired or blind, and it also weakens their tusks enough to require a diet with less hard bones and shells.

The most common coat pattern is the colorpoint pattern. On earth, colorpoint cats have pigment in the warmest parts of their bodies. Spring hounds get pigment on the parts of their body that get the most sun exposure. This coat pattern comes about with age, and the amount of sun exposure they get in their early years has an impact on how dark their fur gets, along with genetics. Pigment shows up on the feet and under the tail because body heat does have some influence over where pigment shows up. This patterning frequently shows up along with other coat patterns, and most spring hounds will at least have a faint version of it under their stripes or splotches.

The other common coat pattern for spring hounds is stripes, but some patterns are less common than others.

The most common stripe pattern, feral populations would often revert back to this pattern after a few generations.

The same as above but with more intense striping.

The equivalent of a blotched tabby, it’s less common but not rare.

The same as above but with more intense striping, this is a very popular stripe pattern.

A much more rare version of the common striped pattern, with less striping and larger light patches.

A similarly uncommon version of the “blotched” stripe pattern with larger light patches.

The primary multicolored gene has a lot of color variety within it, with the gene causing specific pigments in the fur to either be greatly reduced or absent entirely. This exists in all fur coat genetics, but shows up a bit differently in all of them. Pigment loss tends to be concentrated on the underside of the body. Above are some examples of how this gene can change a spring hounds coat.

A lack of eumelanin, causing the affected fur to have a red to orange hue.

A complete lack of melanin, causing the effected fur to have a white hue.

A partial lack of melanin, causing the affected area to be a diluted tone, it can have a “blush” tone if the spring hound carries the gene for it.

An example of how the first version of the multicolor gene would look on a brown fur tone, the genes do not add pigment, so they change in accordance to the melanin ratios in each fur tone.

There can also be white spotting that goes along with this gene, here are a few examples of what that looks like on different variations of the multicolor gene.

Finally, here are some examples of different coat lengths. While these exist on a wide spectrum, they usually fall between 1 and 2. 3 is only really seen in breeds from polar regions and occasionally in mutts with the genetics for it. Short fur is seen as the most aesthetically pleasing, as it is easier to maintain and keep neat.

There are many, many combinations of all of these genes, giving spring hounds a wide variety of coats.

As for other physical features, the genetics are less clearly understood for a few reasons. Namely the fact they have not put much effort into recording the lineages of breeds.

While there are no agreed upon breed standards, spring hounds have still changed in accordance to their jobs. Differences in appearance are either practical or purely incidental, breeding for specific traits for aesthetic reasons is more common in domestic fungi or plants. The image above is just a few examples of the variety of appearances.

Fun facts

They clack their beaks when they're content, it sounds a bit like this, but muffled.

A common play behavior is to nudge their companion with their tusks, which hurts BAD if they’re being rough or are running up to you before doing it. This is discouraged at a young age as to not cause any actual damage when they’re larger and stronger.

They’re mesocarnivores, with about 60% of their diet being meat.

Their favorite places to be pet are usually behind their ears, their cheeks, and the top of their back and tail.

#thank you my good friend cosmo for the name! and everybody who helped beta read this too!#spec bio #speculative biology #my art #worldbuilding #singers #ive been working on this for a bit over 5 months im finally done im free im alive and breathing fresh air #i feel like chell post portal 2

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