One of these days I’ll figure out how to do a straightforward link to specific replies in order to make a table of contents. Lemmy makes it confusing where things ultimately live. My account is on a different instance from this community, and any given user may be viewing it from yet another instance.

Rather than me clogging this community with my nonsense, I’m making a single unified thread for the Lonely Galaxy. Most of this will be reposted from the corresponding megathread on the CBB forum[1].

It’s possible I’ll have to quit Lemmy the same way I had to quit Reddit two years ago. Silly monkey brain like big number, and the voting system is addictive for me. Gotta have those imaginary internet points lol. If I do end up quitting, I have a Neocities page[2], and if you’re interested in the Commonthroat language, there’s a comprehensive grammar on Frathwiki[3].

  1. Megathread on the CBB ↩︎

  2. The Lonely Galaxy on Neocities ↩︎

  3. The Commonthroat language on FRathwiki ↩︎

  • early_riserOPEnglish
    1·
    9 hours ago

    Paw Morphology

    Paw Morphology

    The arrangement of palmar pads on the forepaws is sexually dimorphic.[1] Males have three large pads, with one pad at the base of each thumb, and another directly under the knuckles. Females have the same two lower pads, but the single upper pad is replaced by several smaller pads in order to make room for a lactation patch. The lactation patch appears as an undifferentiated patch of grayish-black skin, the same as the rest of the furless portion of the paw. When exposed to saliva, the patch begins oozing bluish-white milk.

    Vulpithecine ink and milk evolved out of similar excretory structures, which is why they are both located on the forepaws, and why the milk is bluish. The milk has potent antimicrobial properties to account for the fact it’s being excreted from a surface in constant contact with the ground. Lactation is not linked to the reproductive cycle, and may occur at any time after reaching maturity. The on demand nature of lactation evolved in order to make climbing easier. If lactation happened automatically it would make for slippery paws at inopportune times.

    1. (Doylist explanation: If dogs sweat through their paws, and monotremes sweat milk, then monotreme dogs should sweat milk through their paws. At least I think that’s why I did this. I honestly can’t remember lol.) ↩︎