Musings: How small are caribou cows?

It is commonplace knowledge that caribou cows are physically weaker and also quite a bit smaller than their male counterparts. But how much smaller are they, exactly? There are quite a few conflicting informations in canon, so effectively, one can isolate at least three different versions of this that all have NCN's approval, and they all contradict each other. I want to make a case for one of these versions, but first I want to present them one by one, from smallest to largest.

Now of course, at first it should be pointed out that sizes among cows probably vary a great deal, just like they do in case of humans, and probably also in case of ponies. This essay is supposed to determine the average size of caribou cows in relation to their males.

The first version is the one given in Schorl Tourmaline's Story of Estra. While this story isn't canon any more, it was still approved by NCN back in the day when she was still working for him.

In Story of Estra, we get the following line:

»Mrs. Cake looked at Ginna and Gunne, using them as a reference of how Riddari and Estra might’ve looked compared to each other. Ginna was maybe half the size of her master.«

Given that we know from Bruised Apples that Gunne is supposed to be small for a caribou male, this would mean that caribou cows are awfully small, less than half the size of a male on average.

Now I'll say outright that this can't be true. It would cause all kinds of problems with what's supposed to be going on in Fall of Equestria. For example, with this size difference and given how the males' sexual organs are depicted in the images, it would be highly likely that any sexual activity between a stag and a cow would cause lasting damage to the latter, but that's not what we see in the stories. It would essentially make sex and particularly kink entirely impossible, not to mention the problems that come with pregnancy. For example, in Twipet's A Change of Events pt. 1, it is mentioned that a cow (Veizla) gave birth to male fawns twice and still got out of it alive and wholesome, and NCN has confirmed that male twins are also a thing. Even if we assume that giving birth to male twins usually kills the cow, it's still highly unlikely that the fawns themselves would survive the process if we assume this short an average size for cows. I don't think NCN would admit to something like that.

The second version can be found in Poprocks' Fall of Cadence: Culture Shock, where we find the following:

»The females wore a thick, red collar around their necks. They were only about two thirds the size of the males, heads coming up to just below their shoulders.«

Of course, all the points mentioned above can be made again here. Two thirds is still awfully small. Almost all problems described above regarding the first variant would effectively still be there. Essentially, all explicit size comparisons between stags and cows in the stories have this problem. There is only one other, more indirect description of the size of caribou cows in Twipet's fourth chapter of Sun's Setting, but we'll get to that in a minute.

For now, if we look to the images, there is one other variant that is to be considered, and for it, we have to turn to the images. Since I can't link images for obvious reasons, I'll use the Derpibooru image numbers to refer to the images I'm talking about. In /838541, we get a direct comparison between Gunne and Ginna, and we see that as far as the images are concerned, the size difference is by far not as great as the stories want us to believe. At first look, it might even seem like Gunne and Ginna are about the same size. That's not entirely true, as a matter of fact – if you check the sizes more closely, you'll see that Ginna is actually a good bit over three fourths the size of Gunne, arguably even coming closer to four fifth. Now as mentioned before, Gunne is supposed to be a bit smaller than your average caribou male, and a case could be made for Ginna being a bit larger than the average cow, but that would mean the average cow still stands at about three fourths the size of an average stag, maybe a bit more, but definitely more than two thirds or even one half. It's also the size that makes most sense with everything else we see in the stories (like the story of Veizla and Matask in A Change of Events, and even other aspects of Schorl's Story of Estra).

But there is another image that could be brought up as evidence. In /734085, we get a direct comparison between Ginna and Applejack in a depiction of a scene from Bruised Apples: Making Amends, and it shows them as being of almost exactly the same size. Now of course, there are some oddities about this image, for example the fact that unlike any other image or story, it portrays Ginna with antlers – but it is still a canon image, approved and uploaded by NCN himself.

There is a last piece of evidence, and it's from Twipet's story Sun's Setting. Since it gives us only an indirect description of the size of a caribou cow, namely by comparing it to Sunrise Splendor's own size, I will have to take one other image into account as well. Of course, when it comes to Sun's Setting, there is one big caveat that always needs to be mentioned: Sunny is obviously an unreliable narrator who is either deluded or constantly lying, or possibly both. This specific scene in particular has a few elements that don't add up with other stories, but it should still be brought up here. (I plan to release another essay on Sunrise Splendor soon - hopefully within the next two weeks, but no promises.)

In the scene I'm talking about, we get the following line:

»To be honest, Sunrise Splendor was rather surprised. While rather curvy, the female caribou’s body was… small. Smaller than her by a head, it looked like.«

So which theory does this little line support? The third? The second? Or the first? Well, as mentioned above, the size of the cow here isn't given directly, but rather described only in relation to Sunrise Splendor's own size. So we have to determine how big Sunrise Splendor is – and as it so happens, there is an image that directly compares Sunny and Vestri, namely the lovely cover image of Sun's Setting itself. Check out /702808 for the nude version.

At first Sunny looks rather small, but that is due to the positioning of the characters. If you actually compare the sizes more closely, you will find out that she is not that much smaller than Vestri (not counting his antlers). Not quite, but almost - it's about exactly four fifths, measured from crotch to top, as a matter of fact. If this caribou cow is smaller than Sunny by only a head, it would still place her at somewhere between two thirds and three fourths the size of Vestri, possibly closer to the latter. While this doesn't necessarily allow us to make a decision between the second and third theory, possibly pointing a little bit towards the latter, it definitely contradicts the first theory. I think that's enough to support the idea that it has to be either the second or third theory.

Now it should be noted that even three fourths is still fairly small. For example, if the average stag was two meters (or 6,56 ft) in size, the average cow would be about 1,50 meters (or 4.92 ft) in size. Now there are human adults of both these sizes, but they are at the bigger and smaller ends of the scale, respectively. That’s why I tend to say that cows on average are probably a bit bigger than three fourths of a stag's average size - maybe four fifths. Three fourths could work, but just barely. If you make cows any smaller than that, a lot of stuff stops working or making sense. Therefore, my own stories now assume an average size for caribou cows that is somewhere between three fourths and four fifths of the size of an average male caribou. (Incidentally, that means they're only slightly smaller than mares on average.)