If quadruped mammals evolve to become bipedal will their breast or nipple change position?
As the title says, you know stuff like minotaur, lycanth or werewolf, cat or dog folk, etc especially for the female specimens.
I want to know what happen if quadrupedal mammals which usually have their teats around their stomach evolve normally to become bipedal, will their teats change place to around their chest or still develop around their stomach?
And I heard carrying baby is the reason primate breast developed around chest (correct me if I'm wrong) so just consider in both situation if this quadruped mammals carrying their baby (or whatever real reason that make primate developed their teats there) and if they don't, what the musculature especially their breast or anatomy would look like in both situation, considering most of them have multiple breast or nipple.
Reason why I ask this? It can help me see how their muscle look especially for female and help me to imagine what attire and armor can be look like for them.
Also just in case I consider human chimera type like centaur, harpy and other mythological or fantasy creature that basically human body (especially that have human breast already) strap with animal part is not part of this question. It mostly for pure mammalian animal maybe exception if they only have human face and the rest still animal, like sphinx for example, with other matching criteria I describe, if there such a creature.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/146438. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
2 answers
Sure, it's called convergent evolution.
analogous traits arise when different species live in similar ways and/or a similar environment, and so face the same environmental factors
Natural selection expressed through (first) survival, and then reproductive success, ensures the continuation in the species of those traits which enable the organism to reproduce. If it became an advantageous survival trait, then yes, the breasts could migrate (so, for example they could run without udders being ruptured by collision with their knees. - But that's an oversimplification - in practice the upright walking and the breast migration would occur in a not-independent way, over considerable time.
That being said, there's an alternative: Atavism, a phylogenic trait - ie. one which has occurred in the past-history of the organism's ancestry, but the environment has resulted in the gene being switched-off - is of necessity switched-on again. You need to ask yourself "what is deep in this organism's past that can be switched-on again? That could result in the breast's being developed here (ie. wherever your story demands).
This all being said - it's all up-to-you as the writer to make a decision as to how much to give explanations. Sometimes the idea that the reader comes up with their own explanation is useful. See: Death of the Author. (That is also an oversimplification).
0 comment threads
I think SealBoi hit the right note, in that the question you should be asking is "how do my critters nurse their young?". If they always lay down to let their babies suckle, there is no reason for "migration" or other changes to occur. If they need to suckle while standing on two legs, that is a good reason to transition to a more human-like anatomy.
The reason I'm posting an answer instead of a comment is to address one of your other questions; what would these critters' attire look like? While answering your question as stated is relevant, something else to keep in mind is that most non-lactating mammals are flat-chested. Human mammaries, which are always prominent, are the exception rather than the rule¹. (One of my favorite examples is from "Uhurah's Song", wherein one of the felinod aliens asks a human female what happened to her young, having mistakenly assumed said human to be lactating.) As such, unless you adopt this trait also², your female attire is likely to be divided into "normal", and one or more varieties to accommodate gravidity and/or lactation.
(¹ ...and before you mention cows, make sure to find a picture of a non-dairy cow. Dairy cows are always lactating, not to mention the effects of selective breeding for milk production.)
(² ...which would be strictly for fanservice. Literally. To wit, I remember reading a claim somewhere that the only reason human females always have pronounced mammaries is because of their "effect" on human males, specifically, as an incentive for "dad" to stick around. By corollary, if your critters' females are typically single moms, there would be no reason for this trait to develop.)
0 comment threads
0 comment threads