When #Daca can barely recognize her pawpaw, but loves him all the same! ❤❤❤ #OriCosplay is officially #kitty approved! #Mink #Erwin #ErwinSmith #DRAMAticalMurder #AttackOnTitan #ShingekiNoKyojin #DMMD #AOT #SNK #cosplay #cat #catsofinstagram
Here’s another similar ask on the subject that came in:
“
You recently got into a discussion on dog body types and obesity and ended up comparing the body of a healthy azawakh and an overweight one, but in the picture you used for the healthy dog you could see its ribs. So I was wondering what about the breed or any type of dog could lead to that being a healthy appearance. Is is something with what the dogs were originally breed for or maybe the environment? (it was also mentioned that azawakhs are capable of withstanding extremely high temperatures)
“
These are the dogs involved in the question, for those just tuning in:
Correct weight azawakh above, obese below.
I asked @desertwindhounds to answer this for me because she’s got a huge background in sighthounds, both from her own breeding and extensive research. Here’s her take:
“
Azawakh have what is known as very ‘dry’ musculature and skin. The muscles are very flat and the skin is very thin and tight, and their coat is typically very thin with very short hair. Combined with the lack of body fat, what you get when you are looking at many Azawakh is the same effect as a human body builder (without the deliberate dehydration.) This is an endurance runner, not a sprinter with big bunchy fast twitch muscles like a racing greyhound. The look is simply the way the dog is constructed.
The purpose of fat and muscle is not to ‘cushion the bones’ on any dog, muscles move the dog and fat provides insulation or energy storage. You do NOT want a layer of fat on a working sighthound, it insulates the body. Running produces a lot of heat and some of that is dumped through the skin, a fat layer prevents that and the dog will overheat. Most sighthounds appreciate a bed to lie on, but something I have never seen in a country of origin dog, which don’t typically have cushions or blankets, they sleep on the ground, in a basic shelter, or in a den, is pressure sores. COO Azawakh have a large variety of appearance, and many do not have the extremely dry look that is appreciated by Western breeders. It’s a matter of personal preference in Western breeding.
Note that the coat has a good deal of influence on how thin and dry the dog looks. A smooth Saluki in hard condition with no body fat and a very short coat can have a similar dry appearance. A feathered Saluki in the same condition would not, because the coat is long enough to smooth out the appearance, it hides the extreme contours. With coated sighthounds like Borzoi or Afghans you’d never see that degree of dryness, the hair hides it. Sighthounds also have much thinner skin than other dog types, and a good sighthound will have very tight, elastic ligaments, including the layer under the skin (if you pull the skin up on a sighthound, it should pull back strongly), so the skin will actually ‘cling’ more tightly to the dog, emphasizing the musculature.
It is really difficult to explain this to someone who is freaked out by the appearance. It helps to get your hands on such a dog. They do NOT feel frail or sickly, they feel solid and muscular, dense, and they should have plenty of muscle over the loin and along the withers. It feels, frankly, like running your hands over a human marathon runner with little body fat. Same thing, actually, except that humans are constructed in such a way that they don’t have a lot of pokey boney bits that are visible.
“
This is something you can also see in the Akhal-Teke horses. My friend and I often discussed the fact that one of my character designs was unrealistic because ‘any animal that looks “shrinkwrapped” with visible pokey boney bits is unhealthy.’
This is not so. You see conformation like that of the Azawakh and the Akhal-Teke in basically any larger animal that’s bred to run long distances for long periods of time, over harsh terrain, in warm weather, and live on sparser rations.
Akhal-Tekes are NOTORIOUS in the equestrian community for their strange shape and are often called the ‘sighthounds/greyhounds of horses’. Like the Azawakh, the Teke is supposed to have thin, tight skin and tight, elastic ligaments, and that’s why almost all Akhal Tekes have the muscles on their ribs appear far more pronounced than other similarly-built horse breeds like the Thoroughbred and even the Marwari, who’s closer in conformation to the Teke than any other horse breed. The weirdly long back and very narrow loin and croup are a product of breeding for speed and stamina in sparse conditions not unlike the ones Azawkh and other sighthounds come from (namely, southern Turkmenistan). The chestnut horse in the bottom picture above is probably not a pure Teke specifically because the back isn’t as long and the legs and chest are layered with thicker muscles rather than thin wiry muscles like the topmost picture and the ones below.
Whenever you CAN’T see an AKhal-Teke’s ribs (you can see them here if you look close, however this horse appears to be young and therefore not quite as muscular, and the dapples on its coat help to hide the faint shape of its ribs) and its barrel doesn’t have that extreme upward slope around the stifle (the ‘tuck’ discussed in the dogs) it’s generally an indication that the horse isn’t in great shape, because their physical appearance is a direct product of breeding, AND their environment–and this lean and trim physique isn’t at all uncommon in animals bred for endurance roles in harsh environments.
But to anyone who isn’t well-versed in the breed, like my teacher who owns Thoroughbred racehorses and has never seen an Akhal-Teke in her life, these horses look bizarre, emaciated and deformed. Just like most people would probably consider any animal with visible ribs unhealthy, but that’s because I feel a lot of times people go by human standards of ‘healthy physical appearance’. Generally, if you can see that many bones on a human, they’re underweight, even if they’re really just in trim, good shape. But you can’t use those same standards on an animal, and of course, again, there’s no substitute for actually being in front of the animal and being able to feel it. Akhal-Tekes are REALLY sturdy horses. Most horses don’t want to budge when they’re in the cross-ties and you need them to scoot over, but if you push your weight against their side enough eventually they will move to avoid losing their balance. Tekes just kind of….stay where they are. Like a rock. Which goes to show that there’s a LOT of raw strength in these ‘sickly-looking’ animals.
Sorry for hijacking your post about dogs. The discussion about sighthounds just really reminded me of this.
No need to apologize – this is great information! I knew of Akhal-Tekes from the photos of the famous “golden horse” but I didn’t realize they had such interesting conformation.
what the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now
Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that *only they can see.* Predators that can somehow sense you in a completely undectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.
YES, EXACTLY–vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it’s “"dark”“ and we can’t see anything. And also we’re impaired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ”“too bright”“ and we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ”“line of sight”“)–and yes, of course, can’t forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.
And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck–don’t forget about completely arbitrary “”””atmospheric disturbances””” (fog, smoke–the new “ionic interference”) ALSO plottasatically rendering our abilities moot.
Plus, some people have more powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that “change the angles of refraction” of the “light” so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced–but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.
Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.
Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!
IM!!! SCREAMING!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God–you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they’ve lost their glasses.
Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls.
Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits.
Person 1: I dunno, dude. This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me. I mean, how do we know it’s even real?
Person 2: Seriously, how can something be a wave and a particle? That doesn’t even make sense.
Mysterious Human: Even if you cannot perceive the light, you can feel its warmth–
Person 1: Oh my god, please shut it with the mystical hoo-hah. You’re insufferable.
Mysterious, somewhat exasperated Human: the ‘light’ enters the sensitive paired apertures in our faces, passing through biological lenses and chambers to stimulate specific nerves we call ‘rods’ and ‘cones’. one set of nerves tells us the volume of light we’re perceiving, while the other estimates the wavelength frequency. the total input creates in our mind a continuous sonarscape of immense complexity, where we can perceive ‘textures’ that are impossible to understand with mere sound or touch. this is why my people’s communication devices are small, flat, silent boards: we ‘read’ the patterns of light they emit as language and ‘watch’ the patterns of light they emit as sonarscapes.
Captain: okay…. sounds fake, but okay…
And they just keep on making up new bullshit rules for how light works, like
Navigator: Warp drive engaged. We are approaching 90% of the Lorentz limit.
Human: What now?
Navigator: Oh, uh, it’s really complex, but lemme try. So, matter can only move so fast through space, right? Like absolutely, nothing can ever ever possibly go faster than like about 3 hundred million meters per second–
Human: Ah yes. The speed of light.
Navigator: …oh for fuck’s sake.
Captain: My god! Time! Has… frozen!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
Captain: What?
Human: Remember how light is a wave and a particle?
Captain: Yes, we mention this every episode.
Human: Yeah, light’s frozen along with everything else. I can’t see shit.
Captain: My god! Our sonar doesn’t work either! The soundwaves— they can’t propagate through this frozen air! We’ll have to use just our whiskers!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
Also:
*the whole crew running away from a big angry thing*
Human: I’ll have to stop in five minutes tops!
Crew member: What? No! You can’t, we’ll get eaten!
Human: My torchlight’s battery is almost dead, I have to change it!
Crew member: Just wait until we’ve reached the base!
Human: I’m physically unable to keep running at that speed without a lamp, and fyi, it’s night-time now, and this planet has no moon.
Also:
*hunting heat-sensitive creatures*
Crew member: Could you please turn this huge beacon of warmth off?
Human: No. This is a lamp, you didn’t think to include room for it in the heat-concealing clothes we have, and it’s night right now.
Also:
The whole crew fell into a cave and lost most of their gear.
Human: *clumsily feeling their way around and slowing everybody down*
Quarter of an hour later:
Human: *scouting ahead, having to wait for them*
Crew member: what happened to you? Did you grow a sonar or something?
Human: No, my eyes just needed time to get used to the ambiant low light, since it was so bright outside.
Also vision is such a long-range thing. In plains or naked mountains, they can see kilometers away. And without any extra gear, as long as they’ve talked about it beforehand, they can exchange basic informations while super far away.
Also:
Human prisoners inventing a code language based on the colored pebbles lying around all over the jail (green means “ok” and “go!” and “now”; red means “stop” and “no” and “angry”; two red pebbles mean “danger”; violet mean “future” and “wait”; so like three small violet pebbles mean “in three minutes”; brown mean “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure” or “maybe”).
Also humans being able to pick someone out from a crowd super easily.
Also humans being able to see through some disguises way too fast.
Also:
Human: That thing’s poisonous, stay away!
Crew member: how can you know this without a detailed lab analysis?
Okay so I see a characterisation I totally disagree with incredibly often, and that’s the fact that Yuuri, being stereotypically Japanese, is uncomfortable with PDA. And whilst I agree that this headcanon is kind of cute and allows for some great extra!Viktor content, I think it’s fundamentally wrong.
Yes this is the official art that triggered this in my mind. Just look how comfortable Yuuri is here, whilst essentially being cuddled by Viktor out in the open.
Look at him literally launching himself into Viktor’s arms.
That one time Yuuri declared his love for Viktor on television
He literally initiated this on international television
And let us not forget this kiss which he had no problem with
Again, yanking Viktor in by the tie literally because he felt possessive
Literally smiling at Viktor as he does this
You can even see people react to the PDA in this scene
There is no way you could call Yuuri passive in this moment
Let us not forget Yuuri literally grinding on Viktor
And, sober, straddling Viktor in public
Honestly, there is no real canon evidence in my mind to suggest Yuuri is uncomfortable with displays of affection. He either lets Viktor do it whilst making no effort to stop him (even if he is shown to look slightly embarrassed), or is the one initiating PDA. I think it could even be argued that Yuuri does it more than Viktor.
If this is Yuuri now, just imagine what he could be like a year or two on. Even as far as actually kissing in public, I don’t think I could call OOC. I feel like it’s the act itself Yuuri might be shy about, rather than if people are watching or not. In fact, I believe possessiveness is entirely in his personality.
tl;dr Yuuri Katsuki is grossly affectionate in public and should probably learn some decency
they were wearing their rings for like two and a half episodes and there were over THIRTY ring flares like… season two is gonna be fucking absurd….. im predicting one THOUSAND ring flares
