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+--- Thread: [Discussion] Weird question - Biology headcanons (/showthread.php?tid=20988)
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RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - C'kayah Polaali - 12-02-2017
(11-24-2017, 11:36 AM)Mermaid Wrote: The ones I can't stand, however, are the sensitive scales [...] headcanons. ...I'm pretty sure that's not how scales work. I think the closest thing we humans have is our fingernails. The nerves are under them not in them so how can they be sensitive? I imagine all they can really feel is temperatures intense enough to be felt through them and the pressure from them being touched.
Reptiles are surprisingly sensitive to touch. Scales can have nerves, just like skin, and those nerves can be very sensitive. Alligators, for instance, have these little nerve clusters on the surface of their scales that are sensitive to all sorts of things: touch, vibration, pressure, friction, even sound. Fingernails aren't particularly sensitive because they don't have these things, but I imagine Au Ra might.
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - Mermaid - 12-03-2017
(12-02-2017, 07:38 PM)Ckayah Polaali Wrote: Reptiles are surprisingly sensitive to touch. Scales can have nerves, just like skin, and those nerves can be very sensitive. Alligators, for instance, have these little nerve clusters on the surface of their scales that are sensitive to all sorts of things: touch, vibration, pressure, friction, even sound. Fingernails aren't particularly sensitive because they don't have these things, but I imagine Au Ra might.
Huh, didn't know that. I guess that's fair then. My line of thinking was that since their scales match their horns so well they must be made of the same stuff. Horns are usually keratin just like our fingernails. I would also assume that despite all the lizard jokes Au Ra would still be mammals. The only scaled mammal that comes to mind, the pangolin, has keratin scales.
I guess that's why this thread exists though. One person's reptile is another person's pangolin. We won't know how it really is until the lore writers give us more information.
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - Stormblade - 12-03-2017
From your first post, I also assumed your pet peeve wasn't so much the scales being sensitive at all, but more "they lightly brushed my scales and I'm now writhing on the ground because of the overwhelming sensations".
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - Nero - 12-03-2017
I had a headcanon about Au Ra horns posted in an older thread.
I imagine Au Ra horns to function similar to narwhal tusks: innervated sensory organs with nerve endings that connect stimuli to the brain. Following this, then other than hearing (which is the detection of vibrations made in the air) an Au Ra would be able to use these organs to sense changes in humidity and temperature, to a limited extent. Being more sensitive to sound in addition to sensing fluctuations in the air would be in line with the lore blurb that described Auri horns as giving them "enhanced spacial recognition"; the more you sense, the more you're aware of, if subconsciously.
As far as the surface, I think it'd be...well, matching their scales in texture. Tough, rough, and somewhat chitinous. These are large and prominent appendages, in sharp contrast to human ears which are small in relation to the head and typically flat. Au Ra horns by necessity would have to be hardened and reasonably durable, perhaps encased in a layer of hollow but tough bone or something similar.
That said, as far as evolution is concerned I'm pretty sure all Au Ra have roughly the same level of perception. Unless a group of Au Ra managed to be totally isolated in an extreme environment (for example, complete darkness) for an extended enough period of time for natural selection to kick in, I don't particularly think it's the case for different tribes of Au Ra to have different levels of sensory perception.
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - Mermaid - 12-03-2017
(12-03-2017, 10:06 AM)Stormblade Wrote: From your first post, I also assumed your pet peeve wasn't so much the scales being sensitive at all, but more "they lightly brushed my scales and I'm now writhing on the ground because of the overwhelming sensations".
Yeah, pretty much. There's a handful of headcanons I'll side eye but generally I let people do what they want and judge after I've seen it. If you handle a headcanon well I usually have no problem with it. The example in question is not something I would consider handled well.
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - hologramblue - 12-04-2017
Regarding Au Ra:
1) Since they're mammals, I would put money on their horns/scales being keratinous and therefore not very sensitive.
2) I've spent a lot of time staring at my Au Ra's butt watching my Au Ra closely during various animations, and not only does the tail appear to not be prehensile, it has a much more restricted range of motion than the Miqo'te tail.Â
It also doesn't seem to respond to emotion at all. Miqo'te tails act like cat tails - bristling, lashing, swaying, etc to communicate internal state. Au Ra tails, meanwhile, really only respond to motion in the rest of the body - the most dramatic motion they do is lifting during certain dance emotes and when reeling in a fish (ie when the Au Ra suddenly tenses up). Otherwise it just kind of hangs there and sways with the momentum of walking.
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - C'kayah Polaali - 12-05-2017
(12-03-2017, 07:51 AM)Mermaid Wrote:(12-02-2017, 07:38 PM)Ckayah Polaali Wrote: Reptiles are surprisingly sensitive to touch. Scales can have nerves, just like skin, and those nerves can be very sensitive. Alligators, for instance, have these little nerve clusters on the surface of their scales that are sensitive to all sorts of things: touch, vibration, pressure, friction, even sound. Fingernails aren't particularly sensitive because they don't have these things, but I imagine Au Ra might.
Huh, didn't know that. I guess that's fair then. My line of thinking was that since their scales match their horns so well they must be made of the same stuff. Horns are usually keratin just like our fingernails. I would also assume that despite all the lizard jokes Au Ra would still be mammals. The only scaled mammal that comes to mind, the pangolin, has keratin scales.
I guess that's why this thread exists though. One person's reptile is another person's pangolin. We won't know how it really is until the lore writers give us more information.
It's not so much the material that reptile scales are made of that makes them sensitive, though. It's the amount of sensory nerves in them. In alligators, there are these little sensory nodules on the surface of their scales that are served by nerves passing through the scales. I could see keratin-based Au Ra scales having similar things. Human skin, after all, contains a bunch of keratins in the outer layers.
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - hologramblue - 12-06-2017
There's a pretty big difference between tissue that incorporates keratin (a common structural protein) and a big ol' solid chunk of keratin. If Au Ra scales are keratinous, a better comparison than human skin would be finger/toe nails, the horns of various mammals, and cases of cutaneous horns in humans. In all cases, the keratin growth itself isn't where the sensitivity comes from - it's the nerves in the surrounding flesh reacting to whatever pressure/temperature/injury is felt through the keratin covering. Injury to fingernails hurts because of the damage to the nail bed, cutaneous horns tend to have inflammation around the base due to some underlying cause like a cancer, and rhinoceros's horns can actually be cut off without causing pain or injury because they're a solid block of keratin instead of having a live bone core like most mammal horns. (You see rangers doing this to wild rhinos to deter poachers - no point killing a rhino if it doesn't have a horn to sell, and it doesn't require a surgical procedure so it can be done relatively easily in the field.)
There's a couple of options for sensitive scales. One is that the scales are soft, keratin-heavy but also containing blood vessels and nerves and whatnot. I think lore specifically says they're hard, though, iirc. Another option is that they have a thin membrane growing over them, like turtles do on their shells, that contains nerve endings. This would be pretty anatomically neat - Xaela lore mentions scales shedding, and that membrane on turtle shells dries up and flakes off after the turtle is dead, so you'd get the neat detail of Au Ra scales peeling and shedding off in layers as they grow up, sensitive to touch mostly when they're new. Option three is that each one has a live core, like a tooth or a feather's quill, which again would dry up when the scale sheds.
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - Valence - 12-07-2017
Lore mentions scale shedding? I forgot about that, is it in the lorebook (being at work and so unable to check myself..) ?
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - hologramblue - 12-07-2017
(12-07-2017, 04:52 AM)Valence Wrote: Lore mentions scale shedding? I forgot about that, is it in the lorebook (being at work and so unable to check myself..) ?
Not the lorebook that I can recall off the top of my head, but there's a river-dwelling Xaela tribe that uses their shed scales in shipbuilding. It's on the naming conventions thread.
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - Mermaid - 12-07-2017
(12-07-2017, 09:19 AM)hologramblue Wrote:(12-07-2017, 04:52 AM)Valence Wrote: Lore mentions scale shedding? I forgot about that, is it in the lorebook (being at work and so unable to check myself..) ?
Not the lorebook that I can recall off the top of my head, but there's a river-dwelling Xaela tribe that uses their shed scales in shipbuilding. It's on the naming conventions thread.
For the sake of ease, here's the information in question:
Orben - A tribe that rides up and down the great inner river on boats woven from reeds and reinforced with scales from their own skin.
It doesn't directly say they shed their scales but it'd probably be pretty gruesome if they didn't. Then again the Xaela can be pretty brutal.
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - hologramblue - 12-07-2017
Huh. I misremembered!
I hope they shed. Removing enough scales to cover a boat can't be...pleasant. Or healthy. Even over a long period of time. 8(
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - Yssen - 12-07-2017
(11-24-2017, 06:11 AM)Valence Wrote: ________________________________
Now then, on the speculation side that's not stricly covered in the lore...:
I'm also expecting a case to be made for Duskwights to have enhance vision in the dark due to many generations spent in Gelmorra, but I don't remember any mention of that in the lore, though it sounds very logical.
We also know that enhanced hearing isn't technically true for most races except lalafells.Â
To clarify specifically on this note for Duskwights. They don't have better vision. What they do have is enhanced hearing/echo location.Â
From the Lorebook, p. 83 -
"For the selfsame reason, they possess an evolved sense of hearing - their ability to ascertain the source of a sound with unerring accuracy, unaffected by echoes or reverberations, is often likened to that of the shadow-dwelling bat."
It should be noted that further up the page Wildwoods are noted to have better hearing that most of the races, due to the size and shape of their ears, just not the weird crazy bat sight of their cave dwelling cousins.
*insert quotes about people's companions breathing so loud they could have been shot in the dark here.*
RE: Weird question - Biology headcanons - Valence - 12-08-2017
So your case would be that like bats they didn't rely on vision but on sheer hearing (without the echo location part)? That's what makes the most sense I think yes. They wouldn't especially need vision with such ear training.
On the Orben, tribe, now that's interesting. The logical conclusion could be indeed that they shed, but they could also just use them from their dead, or the corpses of their enemies. Could fit some xaela tribes well too, and make those scaled covered boats quite priceless if so.