Griffon Anatomy · 7:32pm Jul 27th, 2021
TL;DR: griffons have a bird-like respiratory system that makes them effing scary as aerial predators, and their feathers cover more of their body than I had realized. 'Griffons are OP, pls nerf' pegasi say.
Trigger warning: feedback causes writer with too much time on his hands ponders about the anatomy of mythological animals, and that paradoxically caused him to delay a chapter (again) because his job laughs at the notion of a stable schedule.
I like both ponies and griffons alike. And hippogriffs in between. But griffons somehow seemed... Neglected. I suppose that is why I gave them their very own 'princess'. And that got me a story that DocFlareon was reading when they brought to my attention that my griffons are too cat and not bird enough. That got me interested because, as per the show's definition...
They're supposed to be half eagle, half lion.
I had screwed up somewhere.
They cited the description of The Harpy from Aya Harpyia, Fólkvangr...
It was a female griffon. Large, tall. A powerful frame with an elegant shape covered in snow-white fur until her neck where her fur met her blackening plumage, like a dark sheen of silver until it became black, framing her head of the same pure white, and with a crown of dark feathers that pulled up to make her crest like a natural crown. She had an elegant jet-black beak with cold and harsh icy-blue eyes locked on the young griffon girl that felt smaller than she already was before the elegant and terrifying creature.
And then they said:
Fur should give way to feather on the abdomen, just above where the navel would be if griffons give live birth. But here, I'm reading that the transition takes place at the upper chest.
And I lost my sleep over that.
Check this out...
I feel like an imbecile! It never occurred to me that rather than fur in their forelegs, above the exposed skin, the griffons in the show would have feathers, specifically, contour and semiplume feathers, even when the colors are the same of their fur!
The style from the cartoon confused me. Yeah. I'm blaming the cartoon.
So, I'm gonna change that from now on, and when I have time I'll hunt all the references in the stories and fixthem, because either way, griffons are supposed to have feathers in their forelimbs and on a portion of their torso.
I could get away with saying that griffons are upper chest birds and the rest lion, especially if you look at Gilda and her neck to find where their feathers stop. And there is Gallus, that looks like a blue cat with a bird head. So, are griffons avians or mammalians? The answer is both and neither. They are a magical chimera, true chimera. When pegasi are technically chimeras too, in the end, they're just horses with wings while griffons are part avian, and part mammalian. And in an alternate universe where the duality between magic and biology is so important, that is a big thing, especially with hippogriffs in the middle and The Harpy complaining that griffons don't griffon right anymore.
But there is also another thing: the northerners keep using terms like 'cub', 'queen', 'tom'... And that is when they don't use bird terms as pejorative, such as calling another 'birdbrain' and 'hen'. Well, that ain't changing, but I'll add more bird to these griffons.
So, griffon anatomy, because ignoring that is just lazy, and Aya Harpyia is going to peck my eyes off if I don't fix this. I have officially admitted that I have become a slave to my fanfiction.
First, the sternum.
Flight birds have this structure...
Notice that the muscles which move their wings all attach (or insert, if you want to be pedantic) on their sternum, which must be bulkier than the sternum of a cat to support their muscle.
Now, this is a cat...
Wings are basically the forelimbs and the keel is the sternum, but bulky enough to anchor the muscles involved in flight.
You can see the analogous bones. Now, griffons, since they're fictional don't have a right or wrong...
By TheJasIllustrator on Deviantart
Other images show the keel going even further back and the 'wing articulation' more similar to an arm articulation.
By horse14t, also on Deviantart
You can see the different joints for the wings with the shoulders. In the show their wings seem to have a higher insertion, but either way, a griffon's shoulder and forelimbs would be a taxonomist's nightmare and it is pointless to discuss this. They fly, and their muscles power their flight (more than the pegasi, and the first one is better, as far as wing insertion is concerned, because it looks closer to bird anatomy, since griffons aren't lions with wings, but half bird, half cat.
Griffons will have a bulky sternum, but not as much as a flying bird's. Somewhere in the middle, with an extra set of muscles for flight. Their chests are probably something that would make a greek god blush. No wonder Gallensa likes Grigory's chest.
But there is more... In the show, sometimes, they use their forelegs as birds, mimicking their gait, closing their fingers as they lift it off the ground. Other times they walk like cats, 'pawing' at the ground, and other times they just stomp... Not only that, but griffon paws are dexterous like human hands, and you will notice that most primates will walk on their knuckles. Well, griffons have a mostly feline body structure to which the avian conforms to. How do eagles and cats walk?
Just look at this majestic birb walking around like a boss...
Maybe not a perfect example because the ground is so irregular, but it works for this.
And this is how a large cat walks...
My conclusion: griffons are majestic as fuck. They walk with a combination of both gaits. They need a feline bone structure because they put a lot of weight on their forelimbs from the muscles, and they also need a lot of strength in them. They close their toes, moving their feet forward to walk, and will use their feet both to slash and to grasp.
But that is still not all. Internally, griffons should have an avian respiratory system, which even birds that don't fly have. Not only because their front half is eagle (or barn owl in Gracielle's case), but because it is reasonable with the requirements of being an aerial predator as heavy as they are. I'm talking about rigid lungs and air sacs.
I'll now glance at the difference between the chad avian respiratory system and the virgin mammalian respiratory system. I'll spare you the details, but when you draw air in, your muscles work in a way that lowers pressure inside the thoracic cavity and the pliable lungs follow and will fill with air, pushed by the atmosphere. When you exale, the opposite happens. Note that the air goes in and then the flux reverses. There comes a point in every cycle when the lungs have nothing but 'used air'.
When birds breath, it involves different groups of air sacs and again, I'll spare you the details...
But the fresh air goes into their rigid and small lungs and into the air sacs. When they exhale, the fresh air that was in the posterior air sacs will go into the lungs and their breathing cycle displaces air around this system in a way that the bird always have a mixture of fresh air in their lungs.
Now, why is this interesting? Because this system is 20% or so more efficient. Also because griffons aren't lions with wings. They're half bird. Additionally, the lore on griffons in the AU already has them as marathon flyers. So, they already have a bulkier skeleton than birds and their flight is more intensely powered by their muscles. It goes with the paradigm that ponies seek magical solutions to everything while griffons are more pragmatical. Could I wave away the whole thing and say 'magic goes brrrr'? Yeah, but that goes against the ethos of the AU and DocFlareon has a valid argument: griffons would need loads of oxygen to fly, but also because they are apex predators. That fly! And flying is kind of a big thing.
In the end I think that they should have a hybrid system, since so much of their body structure resembles that of a feline. But they should be covered in feathers... I'll explain in a while.
There is a thing that could be said about bats actually being mammals and more efficient flyers than birds, but griffons don't have bat wings. They have bird wings. And... Come on.
Eagles are next level badass.
Now we get to about where feathers and fur meet. DocFlareon thinks that griffons should be 75% bird and that the feathers should go closer to their navel because internal bird parts should have external bird parts. That makes sense because air sacs go way back in birds. I'm not touching digestive systems, but there would be all sorts of chemical stuff, such as hemoglobin kinds and much more that is just too much to discuss here.
But...
I don't know the avian nervous system, but it should follow a similar scheme.
The innervation for lungs comes from the thoracic medula. It refers to the way structures originate and then move around the body during development. The posterior air sacs would 'bring the bird into the lion' and nervous system actually influences the development of skin. So they really should have more feathers (cotour and semiplume).
But their hindlegs, and thus the musculature, are definitely feline. So I think that they should have an wedge of feathers that covers the center line of their backs and covers their thorax with the same feathers before giving way to the fur.
Thank you for wasting your tie with me discussing the anatomy of magical catbirds.
And thank you DocFlareon. The Harpy is most pleased.
I guess I hadn't noticed the difference there, good catch on Doc's part. and good info dump
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I have too much fun with this.