Sex between the Races Lore?

[Iscah]

There are a lot of irl reptiles both extant and extinct that have horns???? And even so, no mammal has horns that work anything like Au Ra horns. Technically no irl animal uses horns for hearing that I know of, but the whole hearing via bone vibrations is a distinctly reptilian trait.

Again, I'm not saying Auri are actually reptiles; I'm just saying they seem more like being a transition point of sorts between reptiles and mammals. The scales are also implicitly described as resembling dragon scales on the character creation screen. Of course, that most likely is a result of convergent evolution from whatever species their ancestors were, but I doubt they're anything like what exists irl. This is the part I waggle my fingers and say "weeaboo fantasy bullshit". What the heck would we even call reptile kemonomimis? I just don't think full on mammal correctly identifies Au Ra. Sure, they hit almost everything on the mammal checklist, but so does every distinctly not mammalian Beast Tribe like Sahagin, Amal'jaa, and Gnath.

Re. horns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_(anatomy)

Without having done further research, most of the examples are about mammals; horned reptiles seem to be grouped under having "other hornlike growths" though I don't exactly understand the distinction.

In any case, the point is that having horns doesn't inherently suggest having reptilian traits.

Basically, given the choice between "they're human-like mammals that have non-human traits found in other mammals" and "they're human-like mammals that have retained reptilian traits from their distant evolutionary past", it seems far simpler to assume they are fully mammalian. They have scales (probably more accurately scutes) but the rest of their skin is human-like, so it makes sense that the scales would most likely be structured like a creature evolutionarily closer to humans.

(Yes, evolution may not be in effect here, but let's assume it is for the sake of the argument.)

Remember that there's a lot of evolutionary distance between reptiles and humans - there are a lot of stages to go through for one branch of humans to somehow carry those reptilian traits while nothing inbetween or alongside them also has it.

And we know for certain that they're the same overall species as the other human races, or close enough to interbreed, as we have a historical record of a half-Hyur half-Auri child born in Sui-no-Sato. So they can't be some other reptilian race that has ended up in humanlike form by pure coincidence of convergent evolution.

However they ended up with their unique features, they probably evolved them independently of anything else since no other creature has horns over the ears like they do.

[kujoestars]

-snip-

I had a response typed up for this, but it seems to have gotten eaten by the server along the way, so I’m going to attempt to remake it.

First off all, I never said horns themselves are a reptilian trait. I was referring to how Auri hear by vibrations through the jawbone, which is a reptilian trait albeit augmented further with horns. And the article didn’t say horns in general are mammalian, so the assertion before that horns are mainly a mammalian trait is incorrect. Regardless, my focus was on the hearing as opposed to the horns themselves so it’s a moot point.

(re:scutes - scutes are literally modified scales in the case of reptiles and while you would be correct to think part of Au Ra anatomy has it -definitely along the spine- they still canonically have scales that molt in a similar fashion to reptiles. Heck, an entire tribe of Xaela use their shed scales as reinforcement for their canoes, so I would assume when they shed, it’s like a tougher and more waterproof version of snakeskin)

Meta-wise, everyone looks like glorified hoomans to save the devs a lot of modeling headache.

In-universe, I personally think it’s a peculiar case of convergent evolution that most sapient races somehow look like different flavors of human. It’s also worth nothing that just because a species is the only one with a certain trait doesn’t mean it happened with that species. Irl examples of species who are unique in their taxa now but previously shared traits with many others include coelocanths and nautilii. For a period of time, their respective traits were commonplace, but now they’re the only ones with them within their taxonomic classifications. In a similar vein, I would argue there could have been an entire order of scalekin that had horns modified for hearing in prehistoric Hydaelyn that now only persist in the Auri people.

Also, I think the fact we have Miqo’te, who most definitely had a feline ancestor of some sort, and no other cat-like primate (or ape-like feline depending how you want to look at it) lends support to the idea that all Spoken evolved convergently and ended up genetically similar by pure weird fantasy shenanigans, Of course, if we want to go standard Occam’s Razor, for all we know there was some common ancestor that looked nothing like any of the races but branched into them regardless.

And no, I really don’t think Hroth count as cat-apes and if anything, they seem to lend even more support to the whole convergent evolution theory because they likely share a common ancestor with Miqos (possibly Roe too?).

Hybridization in fantasy also means very little because of Weird Magic BS(TM). For all we know, literally all Spoken races are capable of making viable offspring including between men and applicable beastmen, but I doubt anyone is going to bang an Amal’jaa or a Goblin or a Qiqirn to find out.