Essays Index
Species series: Part 1 - Equines | Part 2 - Equine Chimeras

You have no idea how much of a nightmare it was to reconcile all the myriad, contradictory portrayals of seaponies, merponies, and kelpies across the franchise. I have a feeling that it'll all be in vain anyway once the movie rolls around.

Equine Chimeras:
Chimeras are hybrid creatures which were originally created from the combination of two or more genetically incompatible progenitor species. While hybrids such as mules do occur in nature, chimeras are distinct from these natural hybrids, as their genetic makeup would be impossible without artificial manipulation at the inception of their species. Such manipulation is usually the work of meddling spirits, particularly those inclined towards chaos, and requires genetic samples of the progenitor species to occur.

Depending on the intelligence of their progenitors, chimeras can be either animals, monsters, or people, but magical manipulation can easily affect the intelligence of a chimera at the creation stage to make them turn out differently than they otherwise would. Griffons, for example, are formed from two animal species, yet have the intelligence of people. Chimeras can also be either unique beings never intended to reproduce, or an entire species of their own.

All known chimeric species with an equine component are people, rather than monsters or animals, and despite their commonalities, they tend to be very distinct from one another.

Alicorn:
See Species Part 1 - Equines.

Alicorns, having been artificially created from a combination of the other three races of pony, are technically equine chimeras. However, while alicorns may not be natural hybrids, their progenitors are not genetically incompatible, and in fact, interbreeding between the three other races of pony is common in nature. Thus, alicorns are a borderline example of equine chimeras, and are not usually considered chimeras of any sort in Equestrian academia, though this point is frequently argued.

Thestral:
Thestrals, more colloquially known as batponies, are chimeras formed from a combination of a bat and a pegasus pony. They are notable for being the only known species of equine chimera that are capable of interbreeding with ordinary ponies, as they are still mostly equine with only a few bat features. Most of their differences are in behaviour, as thestrals are naturally nocturnal, and prefer to dwell in caves and sleep while hanging upside down by their tails.

The biggest physical difference between thestrals and ordinary ponies is that thestrals have leathery wings instead of feathered ones, but they operate no differently in how they generate a flight field. Thestrals also have fangs, as they are obligate omnivores, unlike ordinary ponies, who are only optional omnivores. Thestrals do not use echolocation like bats, but their voices can reach much higher pitches than normal ponies, and they do have enhanced nightvision, similar to that of an owl. Their colours are also typically much darker than those of ordinary ponies. In all other ways, they are physically no different from ponies.

Because thestrals can naturally interbreed with ordinary ponies, their offspring are not considered to be chimeras, but the thestral's bat traits can still carry over. Thestrals breeding with earth ponies or unicorns may produce offspring which are nominally earth ponies or unicorns themselves, but they may still have the darker colours, fangs, nightvision, or behavioural traits of thestrals. This is even more pronounced in the offspring of thestrals and pegasi, who take so closely after their thestral parent that they are essentially indistinguishable from a true thestral.

Thestrals notably suffer from high rates of genetic vampirism, making them more prone to violence and sociopathic behaviour. This is harder to detect in thestrals than in any other species, as the only physical indicators of genetic vampirism are the growth of fangs and the addition of nightvision, which are traits that thestrals already naturally possess.

Changeling:
The changelings are chimeras originally formed from a combination of ponies and an unknown species of insect, and also have an array of abilities unique to them alone.

When their species was first created, there were only two types of changeling: the monarch and the drone. Chrysalis is an example of the former, the only one of her kind in history until Thorax also became one. But the changeling form is highly malleable, and can easily be biologically altered to create unique variant changelings, or even produce a replacement monarch if need be. It was precisely this malleability which allowed Thorax to alter the base changeling form through his magic and create the changeling fairies. It was a similar, albeit unintentional alteration which caused the changelings to start growing leg-holes after a battle with Princess Celestia, due to the power behind her spells.

The main purpose of the monarch for the species is that they maintain and control the changeling hivemind. All changelings have low-level telepathic abilities, and are able to mentally communicate when in range of each other. Drones are intended to remain in telepathic contact with a monarch at all times, whose will is a stabilising influence that guides the hive, maintains the sanity of the drones, and mitigates pain and negative feelings. While drones are still individuals, they are very much influenced by the hivemind, and depend on it for many things.

Communication through the hivemind, however, is restrictive. While changelings in close physical proximity are able to share thoughts effectively enough to synchronise their actions, they are still dependent on a monarch to regulate telepathic communication. Without the monarch's direct influence, changeling agents working together often become confused by each other's thoughts, and are less effective in general as warriors and infiltrators. As well, the hivemind's main purpose is in sharing feelings and instincts rather than words, which makes it ineffective at communicating specific information, for which verbal dialogue is more efficient.

The monarch's power over the changeling hivemind also affords them the ability to infuse specific information into a drone's mind at will. Through this, specific drones can be made more effective at different tasks, even while acting autonomously, allowing drones to be trained as commanders, deep-cover infiltrators, or anything else the monarch may desire. The monarch could even infuse an imprint of their own personality onto a drone, allowing them to "possess" a drone at will and communicate through them when in range.

Both monarchs and drones can potentially be either male or female, so drones are hypothetically capable of reproducing without the assistance of a monarch. However, in the hive under Chrysalis, this did not typically happen, as all drones that were initially born female were biologically altered to become male instead. Chrysalis personally mothered every drone in her hive, except for those that were created along with her, who became the sires of later generations of drones.

While their natural bodies outwardly mimic the general shape of the equine form, changelings are actually far closer to their insect side than to their equine one. In their original forms, they have a chitinous exoskeleton that appears black to ordinary vision, but which is more colourful to those who can see infrared and ultraviolet light, as changelings can. Their blood is green, and their innards in general are much more insectoid than mammalian. They even reproduce through laying eggs which hatch into larva, and changeling females have ovipositors. Changelings are able to release pheromones at will to infect others and induce partial brainwashing, and their fangs also contain a kind of venom which amplifies all emotion to an extreme degree, to allow for easier feeding.

The base changeling form has hooves, wings, and a horn, just like an alicorn, and much like for ponies, all three of these are channeling points for a changeling. Changelings can channel magic into their hooves for strength and tactile telekinesis, can generate a flight field with their gossamer wings to fly like a pegasus, and can also perform spells with their horns like a unicorn can, but only a monarch is especially proficient with all these abilities. Drones are much more limited, having more difficulty with spells, flight, and channeling strength, but their skill with tactile telekinesis is much greater, even allowing them to stick to walls and ceilings.

An ability unique to changelings is that they can salivate a thick, sticky, green fluid, which has a number of applications. Its primary use is as a method of restraint for prisoners. Small quantities are enough to hold a live and conscious pony in place, and larger quantities will harden into a chrysalis, which can be enchanted to lull its occupant into a deep sleep. This changeling goo can also be used as a building material for a makeshift hive, and can be combined with certain natural ingredients to create a paste which has healing properties for changelings.

In addition to this, changelings have their disguise ability, in which magic is channeled through the exoskeleton to temporarily give the changeling an elastic quality that allows them to change their general shape. This allows them to grow or lose limbs or other body parts, shift their weight to stand in a different stance, puff themselves up to appear bigger, or even to compress their mass to make themselves smaller. By overlaying their altered form with visual, auditory, and tactile illusion magic, they are able to effectively mimic the appearance, sound, and feel of almost anything.

All these various abilities are not very costly individually, but are very draining when taken together. Fortunately for them, changelings are not just emotivores that can consume emotional energy and convert it into magic, but are also thaumivores too, who can consume magic directly for the same end result. Changelings can feed on energy either by passively absorbing it as it is directed to them, or by inhaling it through the mouth all at once. The latter process is faster, and can optionally be sped along even more by use of a horn, but it is less energy efficient, and more harmful to the target being drained, who will often be left a withered husk by the draining.

Changeling digestion then converts a portion of all consumed magic into chemical energy to provide physical sustenance to the changeling's body, and the rest empowers their soul to enable the continued use of their various magical abilities. Love is preferred for this in all cases, as it contains both harmonic empathy, which resonates well with the changeling hivemind, and chaotic passion, which is good for powering changeling transformation abilities. The changeling desire for love is so strong, in fact, that being in its presence will often drive a changeling temporarily berserk unless the hivemind is able to rein them in.

The great drawback of the emotivore tendencies of changelings is that any emotion that they may feel personally is a slight waste of energy, love for others especially so, since it is in such high demand. For precisely this reason, Chrysalis enforces a kind of sociopathy through the hivemind, ensuring that love energy is never wasted on feeling, but is instead only ever shared between changelings as a resource.

This is highly unnatural behaviour for emotivores, who are supposed to be at least semi-symbiotic rather than entirely parasitic. By being prevented from feeling love for others and having genuine, mutual relationships with them, the love that the changelings consume becomes bottled up and bitter over time, and even as sociopaths, the changelings are able to tell that something is wrong with them and the way they consume love. This feeling of wrongness they have manifests as psychological hunger pains, which did not go away until King Thorax took control of the hivemind and lifted the enforced sociopathy.

Seapony:
Seaponies are chimeras formed from a combination of a pony and a seahorse. Seahorses are naturally evolved animals that actually have no common ancestors with ponies, but physically resemble them through coincidental parallel evolution. The combination of the two in the seapony results in a creature that takes most after its seahorse side. The seaponies are colourful and have patterned skin, as well as translucent pectoral fins and sometimes short manes as well, and are roughly as big as ponies. They are also intelligent like ponies are, which is their actual biggest differentiation from regular seahorses.

Despite their names, seaponies are the least equine of all known equine chimeras, and they are often forgotten by land-ponies, who often accidentally attribute their name to merponies or kelpies.

Merpony:
Merponies are chimeras formed from a combination of a pony and a fish. Most of their bodies are fishlike, including their tails, gills, and fins, and they also have scales rather than a coat. However, their necks and faces are more equine in appearance, they are colourful like ponies, and some even grow manes. Merponies also have lungs in addition to gills, and have the ability to close off either respiratory system if the other is in use, meaning they can breathe and speak in open air. They are also notably bigger, stronger, and faster than seaponies are, are often more introverted, and have an unusually high female-to-male ratio in their birth rate.

Kelpie:
Kelpies are an example of what is called a recursive chimera, formed from a combination of a pony and a seapony, with the intent of making a chimera with more equine elements. Kelpies are much like seaponies, but differ in that they lack the translucent pectoral fins. Instead, they have pony forelegs ending with hooves, which are capable of tactile telekinesis. Their faces are also much more equine, like a merpony's, and their bodies are much more flexible. However, they also have more fish features than seaponies do, having scaly tails, and dorsal fins instead of manes. Like the mermares, kelpies also possess both gills and lungs.

The kelpies were intentionally designed to interbreed with other sea-dwelling equine chimeras, and so while seaponies and merponies cannot breed with each other, kelpies can breed with both. Kelpie and seapony hybrids are always kelpies, but take on more seapony traits, such as having pectoral fins instead of hooves. Kelpie and merpony hybrids, however, will always take more after the mother than the father. Hybrids mothered by kelpies are mostly indistinguishable from true kelpies, but hybrids mothered by merponies strongly resemble merponies instead, but have kelpie hooves instead of merpony fins.

A notable trait of kelpies is that despite being chimeras, and inclined to chaos, they have an ability to channel magic through their voices, which is ideally done through song, more suited to harmony. Some kelpies are naturally gifted singers, and thus are magically powerful by kelpie standards, but others lack this talent, and can only sing and channel magic properly with the assistance of certain magical artefacts.

Breezie:
Breezies are chimeras formed from a combination of a pony and an unknown species of insect. They take very strongly after their pony progenitors, essentially being very tiny pegasi with minor insectoid features. Much the same as ponies, they reproduce through mammalian sex despite their size, come in a variety of colours, and have dextrous forelegs ending with tiny hooves capable of tactile telekinesis. However, they lack cutie marks, have extremely thin bodies, and their manes, tails, heads, and eyelashes are all disproportionately large.

The most notably insectoid feature of breezies aside from their size are their luminescent antennae and large, translucent wings. These wings are capable of generating a flight field, just like pegasus wings can, but this flight field is fragile and easily disrupted, just as the breezies in general are physically fragile. They are dependent on soft breezes and calm winds to carry them safely, as anything stronger can physically endanger them and cause their magic to stop functioning. Intense enough light and sound can also be harmful to them.

As well, breezies depend on an exclusively vegetarian diet, the majority of which is derived from pollen and nectar that they collect on foraging trips. Breezies even produce honey with this nectar, much the same as bees, but it is unknown if this indicates a bee component to their makeup.

Draconequus:
Draconequui are chimeras formed from a combination of a pony and a dragon. They come in two varieties: the qilin draconequui, who take after the great dragons, and the longma draconequui, who take after the serpent dragons. Both qilin and longma draconquui are similar in most respects, and only significantly differ in body shape. They are considered to be one species, but different races, in a similar fashion to how earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi are regarded.

Generally speaking, draconequui take more after dragons than they do after ponies. They have long, equine faces and can have manes, but they also have draconic eyes and teeth, and their legs end with claws rather than hooves. Their front halves may or may not have a coat like a pony's, but their back halves are always scaly. For those that have both scales and a coat, the colours may not necessarily match. Draconequui also have long, thick dragon tails, and if they have wings, these will also be draconic in appearance.

Longma and qilin draconequui differ primarily in their body shape. The qilin draconequui, like great dragons, are bulkier, and have similar proportions to ponies, aside from their tails. Longmas, on the other hand, have long, powerful, and flexible bodies, like serpentine dragons. While both races are normally quadrupeds, longmas are comfortably able to stand upright if they prefer, and can also slither and curl around things.

Another difference between longmas and qilins are their additional abilities. Like some great dragons, qilins can potentially grow a pair of draconic wings from their backs, which are able to generate a flight field sufficient enough to allow long-term, sustained flight, though they are not particularly fast or agile compared to pegasi. Longmas do not naturally grow wings, but like serpentine dragons, many of them do have gills instead, allowing them to live underwater, and their sleek body shapes make them effective swimmers as well.

All draconequui have draconic back halves, and so reproduce like reptiles rather than mammals. Much like dragons, draconequui lay eggs, which must then be incubated for long period of time before hatching. Incubation typically involves breathing fire over the egg for qilin draconequui, but not for longmas. Because of their reptilian reproduction, draconequui are mutually fertile with dragons, but not with ponies.

Draconequui also have magical channeling points in their claws, which can allow for some limited freeform spellcasting, but this is not a skill that comes naturally to draconequui. The flame breath of the qilins, in contrast, is more easily mastered, and can also channel spells in much the same manner as dragonfire.

Centaur:
Centaurs are chimeras formed from a combination of an ape and a pony. Their lower body is equine, going up to where the neck would normally begin, and the upper body resembles the structure of an ape's, starting from the stomach upwards.

Like ponies, centaurs have four hooves, a tail, and a coat on their lower bodies, but their hooves are not capable of tactile telekinesis, and they do not have cutie marks. Their upper bodies, in contrast, have broad shoulders and muscly arms ending with hands. They have fur instead of a coat on their chests, and they can grow manes and beards as well, though their arms and faces are bare. Their coats and their fur are typically both dark, but may not necessarily be the same colour. Centaurs also have apelike faces, red skin, black and yellow eyes, and a pair of horns atop their heads.

While not known for being especially magical, centaurs can use their horns to channel magic for spellcasting, just like unicorns can, and they can also channel magic through their muscles to enhance their size and strength.

Acknowledgements:
-The name "thestral" for batponies is semi-common fanon, and I do not know where it originates from in this fandom, but I personally got it from the Seattle's Angels review of Perchance to Dream, by Ether Echoes, a fic which I have yet to read myself.
-Thestrals being technically a separate species and preferring to dwell in caves is inspired by Lauren Faust's tweet about her original ideas for batponies.
-The idea of biologically engineered unique variant changelings, as well as the changeling monarch's ability to possess drones, is from The Life and Times of a Winning Pony by Chengar Qordarth.
-Changelings being telepaths, and changelings not normally being able to feel emotions, are also often-seen fanon concepts, but I first saw them myself in Smoke and Mirrors by TeaPartyCannon.
-Changeling exoskeletons being colourful to their own eyes is from For Whom We Are Hungry by Cold in Gardez.
-Changelings having venom and ovipositors were concepts that I was respectively introduced to through Hard Reset and The Reign of Queen Twilight Sparkle, both by Eakin.
-I'm pretty sure I took the healing and building properties of changeling goo from The Changeling of the Guard by vdrake77.
-The concepts of ordinary draconequui being mostly unlike Discord, the longma name, and longma having gills, all come from Alara J. Rogers and her Last Draconequus universe.
-Draconequui laying eggs and incubating them with dragonfire was taken from Lopoddity and her Pandoraverse.

5577055
Fascinating stuff all around, but bats aren't blind.

5577436

I'm sure I knew that before I began typing this up, but it's such a widely believed myth that I forgot that it wasn't true somehow. Thank you. Edited now.