View source for Handy Feet

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The rear paws are just as prehensile as the front paws. There's no sexual dimorphism present here. Both the males and females have several smaller palmar pads on the rear paws, and females have no lactation patches here.

The claws may contain iron, like the teeth of a rodent. In any case, they're very hard and very sharp, designed to dig into the hard wood of the steadtree.

A single paw (front or back) can support the entire body.

As with the front paws, the skin is strongly pigmented to compensate for the lack of fur.

Yinrih use their rear paws almost as much as their front paws for grasping and manipulation. In fact, their rear paws are more sensitive to account for the fact that they can't see what their manipulating. There's even a tactile alphabet for Commonthroat designed specifically to be read with the rear paws. One can rummage through a desk drawer and read labels on whatever oddments are inside without looking. I've chosen to represent this alphabet with braille, but I think it would be closer to Moon Type: using lines and other simple shapes rather than a matrix of dots.

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So I just spent two hours drawing a single paw of a critter that only exists in my head, and wrote a bunch of lore about it, just to post it on a tiny message board... eh I suppose there are worse ways to spend my time.

I've taken some liberties in terms of biomechanics here. Looking at videos of chimps and gorillas, I see the tops of their hands are strongly callused due to knuckle walking. A dog's paw pads are also not very sensitive, although the tops of their toes and the area between the toes and pads is very sensitive. That's why they don't like having their feet touched. Also, claws and prehensile hands don't seem to mix. Arboreal animals seem to have one or the other. Flat nails seem to help the pads of the fingers with gripping, and claws can puncture the palms. But these are my critters, dang it!

I'm pretty much resigned to the fact I'll never get the proportions the way I want. My spatial reasoning skills are terrible. Just ask everyone I've ever lived with about how I use plastic food containers. I just pick the biggest one that will still fit in the fridge because the only way I'll know if the food will fit is by pouring it in the container. I can't &quot;eyeball it&quot;.


[[Category:Biology]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]