RE Fun Fact Friday #99
Anthros start their lives looking not too unlike their feral counterparts, only perhaps differing in head and limb size. Of course every species is different, and all have unique aspects of their feral counterparts. Some species like horses or gazelle have a very short first phase, and their babies are upright walking in a matter of months, while others are more slow going and have an intermediate phase. However generally there are three phases, the timespan of each depends on the species: the baby phase, the quadrupedal phase, and the upright phase.
Using canines, and specifically wolves as an example, the first baby phase is short. The first three months are not unlike the progression of a human baby, utterly useless, but the progression from barely being able to move to crawling is much quicker. Usually wolf babies start crawling at 2-3 months.
The quadrupedal stage comes soon after learning to crawl. Wolf “Wobblers” walk on all fours. Wobblers start by slowly wobbling around on their hands and feet, but after a few months get quite good at getting around. At the same time they get more vocal. Not with words though, through grunts and growls. This can be somewhat effective communication, parents and family may be able to distinguish what different grunts and growls mean.
Wobblers’ hands and arms might seem a bit oversized. This is mostly because they need the extra strength to wobble around on four legs, and fine motor controls on fingers and hands are not that important at this stage.
In Eckzahn society, kids in both the first baby phase and the wobbler phase do not wear clothes. It's common for them to wear nothing but diapers.
The “Wobbler” stage is what is most different between species. With some species behaving much more like a human, going straight from crawling to walking, skipping the quadrupedal stage.
Wolves grow quite fast in the first year. Faster than humans would. A one year old wolf would be roughly comparable to a 1.5 year old human. The yearling stage starts when Wobblers start walking on two legs more often than not. Wobblers don't just switch over one day, for a good period of time they do both. They are called yearlings in this stage because that's when most children switch over to walk on two legs most of the time, and start talking.
Yearlings start interspersing words along with the growls and grunts like in the wobbler phase. Yearlings are known to be big trouble makers. Knowing just enough to get around and cause damage, but not knowing enough to understand what is wrong or what you shouldn't do. They wander around messing with and biting everything they can get their paws on.
From here development is very similar to human children. They slowly gain finer motor functions and become more articulate. But what differs from humans is the age of maturity. This does somewhat depend on culture too, but many species reach that age sooner than humans, and some take a longer time. Wolves and other canines reach what is considered adulthood in 16 or 17 (Earth) years. Much of this accelerated growth is done in the early years, and as they get older the rate of growth resembles human growth patterns much more.
In many cultures where this faster growth occurs, there is often no concept of “teenager”, either you're a kid or you're an adult. For example in Eckzahn society 15 year olds are considered in the same category as 7 and 10 year olds, but 16 year olds are full adults. Because of this, many cultures including the Eckzahn have big “coming of age” ceremonies and celebrations.
Doing all species up like this would be a lot and pretty confusing to do all in one post. If you are wondering what a certain species would be like, ask me in the comments and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
As you can tell if this art, I got into a bit of a World War I kick, I blame Verdun and Tannenberg, fantastic games btw.
I got art of a early War British soldier, always adored the 1908 pattern
“What’s this?”
“Your next-generation space telescope, sir”
“No, no no, it’s not 2027 yet”
“It’s launching this summer now. We even did it under budget”