I make things sound all professional and stuff, sometimes. I figured I'd make this thread as a place to discuss the various pony races and other creatures that inhabit the different generations of MLP, how they relate to each other, and what their status is in the various shows. So far I've already come up with some of my own head canons which I'll list here to start off.

Flutterponies, Breezies, and Changelings, Oh My.

I have a feeling that these three races are probably part of the same evolutionary line. If one goes in order by generation, it would be easy to see how the flutterponies could have become smaller in size and gained antennae to become the breezies, and further "insectification" could have occurred afterward, either naturally or through some corrupting influence, to turn the antennae into pseudo-unicorn horns and cover them in a carapace (which presumably hides their cutie marks).

Call on the Seaponies.

It seems like they might still be around, but simply don't interact with their non-aquatic cousins. Even in the original show the ponies weren't really that familiar with the seaponies, so it's no small stretch to assume that they generally keep to their own waters. Perhaps they were even driven away by some event that occurred on land.

Tale of the Missing Races.

My Little Pony Tales is a bit of an oddball in that it only has earth ponies (sort of). Even G3, though it was based in the strictly earth pony village, Ponyville, had the ponies meet pegasi and unicorns eventually. This could be interpreted as Tales occurring first and then G3 includes the first meetings of the three tribes, but it seems that Tales' level of technology is the most advanced out of all the shows'. This could mean that Tales is in the future of the other shows and that something happened to the other pony races, either some kind of genocidal event or something that caused them to go into hiding. Patch's experience in the balloon where she saw a bunch of pegasi/earth-ponies-with-wing-spell and an alicorn/unicorn-with-wing-spell suggests that, if she wasn't just hallucinating, some members of the other races may be around (possibly in space?). Otherwise, Tales could be in the past and either there was a cataclysm that brought their tech down to primitive levels, possibly when the races first met (crazy intertribal war, perhaps?).

Gizmos for Monkeys.

Some people look at FiM's technology and wonder if its design, which often makes more sense for creatures with hands than with hooves, means that ponies just took over a bunch of human settlements after they went extinct and just copied the tech afterward. I feel like it's possible that the gizmonks from the original show, which are basically monkeys that could build things like robots and video cameras, ended up in some kind of agreement with the ponies or perhaps were even enslaved at some point to build their stuff. Perhaps that's actually why Tales had so much technology and the gizmonks escape is why future generation didn't have as high a level of technology.

The Heart of a Mountain.

There was an original show episode which involved a mountain that had a heart made of crystal which allowed it to feel compassion, part of which ended up in a dog made out of rocks. I have a hunch that the Crystal Empire's crystal heart may be related to it. Granted, the original crystal heart was red, but this could easily be the heart of some other mountain in the region, or perhaps its constant use as a love emitter simply decolored it. Perhaps there are yet more mountains with hearts around (and magical forests, for that matter…).

Well, that's all I have for the moment. Please feel free to comment on the ideas presented and to add your own to the thread.

2230738 What happened to the Crabbies ?

And the Bushwoolies along with their cousins the Furbobs?

2231717

Well, for the bushwoolies and furbobs, I don't see why they couldn't still be around somewhere, possibly roaming the Everfree or some such. Of note, I do find the parasprites to be very similar to the bushwoolies. Aside from being basically balls of fur, they also both appear to have very insect like hive minds, though the bushwoolies perhaps less so. Both remind me of Tribbles, too, which might reinforce this connection. I could see them being on the same evolutionary line, however. The only things that seems similar to furbobs are the Diamond Dogs, though only due to both being somewhat doglike. I suppose one could argue that the Diamond Dogs changed a lot following some sort of symbiotic relationship with the Stonebacks, which may be where they picked up their love for gems.

I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with crabbies.

2231990 I can see that with the Furbobs, if they managed to interbreed with Grundles, but I can see the Stonebacks evolving into Diamond dogs.

The Crabbies were literally giant sentient crabs. Their features are more like red sand crabs, and 3-4 times taller Megan as a teenager, with the proportional body to a regular crab.
They described themselves as policemen and even carried badges.
The Crabbies appeared in the same episode as the Flories.

The Flories were parasitic talking flowers. Criminals, shysters, conmen.

2236313

The Fugitive Flowers! Of course. Well, I know they had giant crabs in both the comic and in that book with the sea ponies and mermares, though they didn't seem very sentient. I could still see them sticking closer to the sea. Really, crabs of that size would probably break something on land. Then again, their leader is apparently G1 Optimus Prime, so who knows? The flories were interesting, though. I could see them living in the Everfree, actually. Imagine if they came riding in on some timber wolves. They'd fit in well together, though I see them as being much more distantly related, in the same way people and dogs are only related as far back as the common ancestor of placental mammals. There could also be some common force which animates plant life.

2238074 Glad to help... you know some people think that the Changelings were actually Flutter ponies mutated by Discord, after the new season where the "seeds" of Discord's evil survived his imprisonment and reformation. It's more believable.

So now we can blame Discord for evolution.

2243089

I put that changeling origin in one of my fics, actually. Definitely seems like a nifty origin. That and the twinkle-eye ponies being the forerunners of the crystal ponies.

Interesting ideas, i could see flutter pony evolution going in that direction. I actually circumvented this by having all of the Flutter ponies, sea ponies, twinkle eyes, bushwoolies, and breezies as lab experiments that escaped and multiplied after the fall of equestria. the other races like humans and elves came in from outside after Equestria fell.

2252868

I remember that one. Lab experiments is always an option when explaining the emergence of new and weird creatures. There've even been fics that explain ponies in general with that kind of thing, which makes sense since the way ponies in Equestria work (even earth ponies) is… pretty weird.

I always wondered about the origin of the Sun Stone the Flutter ponies owned. Could it have any connection to Princess Celestia?