This animal is called Zngti or Jngti on the southern Shess peninsula, and Anglophone humans sometimes refer to them as "centaur dogs" or "hawkdogs." They are an omnivorous predator that occupied a niche similar to a fox prior to domestication, and now fill a variety of roles in centaur settlements. They descended from a viviparous sister clade of centaurs where the hind limbs developed into a balancing organ similar to the tail of an Earth vertebrate, but did not specialize into claspers and a pouch such as in Tep (the silk dairy livestock).

Zngti do not have a strong pack coordination instinct and are not commonly used for hunting large game or herding livestock. In some ways they're comparable to domestic cats, often left unsupervised around food storage or crops to hunt vermin, but their territoriality also makes them useful for livestock defense or sentry roles.

Although there are no commonly held breed standards, different regions may have one or two specialized varieties for different functions. For game hunting, varieties tend to have a build similar to the wildtype but with flashy coat patterns. Tunnel hunting and vermin control varieties tend to have stout bodies and a bearded face to protect them from clawing prey and dirt entering their eyes and nostrils. Bulky guardian breeds are variously used to defend livestock, property, and children from threatening wildlife or strangers. Sentry alert breeds will raise a continuous "siren" howl through their excurrent nostrils in response to intruders. Most Zngti are work animals first and companions second, but in some urbanized regions toy breeds can be found. Derived from squat vermin hunting varieties, they are usually brightly colored with concave skulls that make them resemble a trunk-smiling centaur.

Although to centaurs Zngti are relatively small animals, they are often heavier and taller than humans. Some guardian breeds can be as large as a cow.

PATREON | Runaway to the Stars

How come semi trucks in Europe look like “toot toot :)” and in North America they look like “HONK HOOOOOOOONK >:|”

“Henlo I am big twuck pwease give me wots of woom tank u :)”

“I WILL FUCKING PANCAKE YOUR CUCK ASS”

@trainwreckgenerator why did you hide these in the tags

This suggests that Maximum Overdrive was Jurassic Park for motor vehicles.

I’m sorry, but that is misleading as hell. American and European trucks are bred for different purposes.

American trucks are bred for long hauls on largely straight roads. They can go for hours without a break. A European truck needs more breaks and a lighter load, and they would indeed take great internal damage if they tried to keep up with the Longsnout.

The European Shortsnout is not bred for looks, but for agility! They navigate the windy roads of Europe in a way that would be way too risky for the powerful, but more clumsy American truck. It is true that the European overheats faster at high speeds, that is the very reason that breaks every 4,5 hours are mandatory for both the truck and the handler and a day of driving can never be longer then 9 hours.

So, all in all, appreciate all of our trucks and our shared history, and be the responsible owner that gets the right breed for the right job.

To be fair, the US does have shortnose trucks as well, they’re just a breed kept mainly for very local work where, like the above says, they are working in places with lots of turns, shorter drives, and plenty of stops. I see them used for garbage pickup a lot, where a longnosed Mack wouldn’t be able to fit much less maneuver, and the short nose prevents them from getting rubs (raw skin or even open sores) on their snouts.

I would also like to point out that the tags have got it backwards. The wild trucks (which I’m pretty sure are extinct in the wild now) that all modern breeds stemmed from were shortnose trucks. We had known about automobiles and domesticated several species, but the truck species was not discovered until close to the start of the 1900’s, in Germany, which I BELIEVE was the first country to breed them in captivity, although England was the first country to really start using them for work. I managed to find a photo of taxidermied specimen

As you can see, it resembles both long and short nosed breeds, as well as the far more common house truck used by individuals instead of for commercial work.

As to the aggression, while the mack longnose LOOKS aggressive, they’re generally gentle giants (although please do give them space on the road! not seeing you in their blind spot is NOT the same as aggression!), it is actually the smaller house truck that is often trained by their handler to be aggressive: the keyword being TRAINED, they are also not naturally aggressive. The only time I have seen a mack be commonly aggressive is when they are pulling 2 gravel trailers, and I would be cranky if I was being overworked, too. If you see them hauling that kind of load, just give them space, and you’ll be fine.

I feel like somebody should add something about the Australian variants.

From my understanding of Australian wildlife:

Does anyone know if/how American School Busses are related to trucks? 

Pics for reference:

The classic long-nose schoolbus

But short-nose varieties exist, I remember when they first started appearing in my district!

@dreorzen While school buses ARE in the automobile order, they are actually part of the Van family, not the Truck family, due to their passenger capacity. As you can see in the photos, they have no cargo bed or hookup, and are not really built for object transport. But they DO excel at carrying passengers, particularly children (although certainly not limited to just children)

They’re known to be exceptionally protective of any passengers, and if you look closely on that second image you can actually see a specialized appendage that is (I think) unique to school buses- a small, red, octagonal fan, which they extend when there are small creatures around them that they are acquiring or releasing. Much like an angler fish’s bioluminescent bulb appendage, this fan (along with several bioluminescent patches on top of their faces and on their hindquarters) works to mesmerize any other vehicles in close proximity, to where those vehicles will cease movement until the bus lowers the fan. It’s super fascinating behavior, and little wonder why we trust our children to these gentle, protective giants.

Don’t forget about the bus trucks.

While these vehicles can sometimes be bred by accident (after all, who hasn’t accidentally left the gate open when your school bus is in season), they are usually bred for specific purposes.

These hybrids are bred for both their cargo capacity and their gentle temperments. Especially in a farm setting, there’s a need for many different kinds of vehicles, some of which sometimes don’t get along. Having a vehicle with both the strength and capacity of a large work truck with the amiable nature of a school bus can be a real benefit.

It’s a little unfortunate that these hybrids tend to be sterile, though, since it would be easier if they’d breed true. Also, something to keep in mind… bus trucks are bred from a bus.

Truck buses are bred from a truck and… tend to not be quite as useful as bus trucks, although some people do like keeping truck buses for companionship and as show vehicles.

Finding out more about different working breeds is always interesting, but to be honest, I’m probably always just gonna be a cat person.

Like on Earth, on planet Opi there are some truly enormous flyers. Their size is possible through their flight mechanism: soaring. It has been evolved many times independently among many clades.

One such clade are the Deroptera, whose two main families are the Colubroderidae and the Euderopteridae. The first family is mainly composed of scavengers and small game predators, that use their enlarged cervical wings both as a display and to increase surface area.

The second one are almost fully herbivorous grazers that developed a third pair of wings from their cervical ribs in order to compensate for their low calorie diet with more efficient soaring, and that developed a row of keratinous teeth like structures in their tentacles for better chewing.

Soaring has often evolved in flying creatures hunting at sea, like the Phocidracoidea superfamily, that fish by stiffening their oral tentacles and using them or grab prey under the surface while airborne,

or the Crocopteropsidae, that dive underwater for prey before flying away with their meal, and since their oral tentacles would only serve as drag while diving they’re now almost vestigial, going in the opposite direction of the Phocidracoids, evolving hydrodynamic jaws, similar to Earth’s crocodiles and spinosaurids, or Opi’s isonychians.

The only Trichopteran lineage to develop soaring are the Rosalidae, freshwater filter feeders that routinely travel from lake to lake to find new sources of plankton-rich waters. Like flamingos they get their pink coloration from their carotenoid rich diets.

(Btw to answer @doodlepede comment on my last post, cause idk why but for some reason I can’t comment, the penises are unsheathed because they’re keratinised and can grow back)

Something I’ve been stewing on for a handful of months now has been wanting to make birgs’ reproductive cycles weirder. My friend @primalmuckygoop suggested the fantastic idea of giving them “external wombs” or “eggs with legs”, and the result was…. These.

Essentially an overgrown tick that contains within itself the actual embryonic birg. Like a tick, it latches on to the host (typically the mother or a relative, but they can be attached to ‘midwife’ animals as well) and feeds on blood until the infant birg is ready to emerge.

This is by no means the only reproductive strategy seen in birgworld fauna; for some animals the process is mostly or entirely internalized, for others the “larva” exists as an independent creature as distinct from its parent as feathervanes from their walking seeds.

The fun begins when you consider the cultural implications of such a life cycle, from folklore about witches and vampires to ingrained concepts of “cuteness”, but I’ll save that for future posts…..

Which ape do you think bigfoot would be most closely related to? How far back would you need to go to find a common ancestor between humans and bigfoots?

Bigfeet?

Bigfoot, singular, like moose and fish?

You know what I mean.

No Man’s Land - Exploring a Post-Human World with the Animals Left Behind

Hey there everyone! Just wanted to share a project I’ve been doing a while now. It’s a post apocalyptic setting that I’ve been building a for a while now, called No Man’s Land.

Inspired primarily by works such as Aftermath: Population Zero, and Life After People, it’s a post apocalyptic setting where humans went “poof”, and in their place are the animals we left behind.

Zoo animals, former pets, and invasive plant and animal species now deal with a world that once was made for our benefit, now surviving on their own. Scenarios include:

- Gorillas and invasive bamboo in the Pacific Northwest

- The Flood Tunnels of Tokyo being taken in by kelp, clams, crustaceans and a very lost Giant Squid

- Redwood forests with bonobos and elephants

- Ruins of buildings, such as the London Tower, providing home for birds and a London filled with lions and bison

- Various conflicts big and small, including a Pleistocene throwback of a Brown Bear trying to scare off lions off a buffalo.

- Breeds of dogs finding their own niche based on what we bred them for, like ratting and terrier dogs hunting squirrels and rats.