Hi what are raptor hands? I see people talk about this in #actuallyautistic, and I'm not 100% what kind of hands it refers to. (I love your detailed and thorough answers to everything, btw.)

Hi, I’m glad you appreciate how many words I need to answer even the most basic questions! (half joke)

Interestingly enough, my icon here is a drawing of myself with raptor hands. 

Raptor hands (also called raptor arms, meerkat hands, and many other things of this format) are a way of holding one’s hands/arms at rest. It’s when a person has their arms in a resting position where their elbows are bent. 

A common way that this can look is that the hands are right at chest level, and loosely hanging down. The hands don’t need to be as high though for me to still consider it raptor hands. Elbows at a right angle such that the hands are hanging down from around the waist still strike me as being a bit raptorish in this sense.

The reason this is talked about in the actuallyautistic tag is because autistic people tend to be the ones who do this naturally. I’m not sure what causes it, but a lot of us find it much more comfortable than having our arms hang down to our sides. I have a friend who tries to hold her arms down to her sides, but because having them bent is so much more natural feeling, her elbows are still a bit bent, and so when she walks you can see her arms bending away from her a bit. It’s actually how I first thought to ask if she’s autistic too (she is). 

Here’s the original drawing I did that I turned into my icon, since I think it’s a good example. (Copic markers and a pigma micron for the line art)