Centaur skeletons

[Bucky]

[kentauros]

1. Oh, I thought you were talking about bicycle brakes!

:P

(those are really old, by the way...) ;)

[raccoon]

2. Where is that, at the creation museum in KY? :silly: nt

[Countdown_3_2_1]

3. Centaur anatomy, 2 hearts, 2 sets of lungs?

I like the concept, but the human half has a lot of redundant organs.

In reality the skeleton would look slightly different. There would need to be some sort of bone at the junction of spines (human and horse) to protect the spinal cord at such a drastic bend. Probably a modified hip bone, invisible from the outside.

Two hearts would work, one specializing in the torso, brain and arms and the other working with the main body.

Two pairs of lungs might be a problem. a human nose might have a hard time breathing for both. A horse has huge nostrils. same with the digestive organs.

--mostly the human torso might be pure muscle and maybe internal fat/water storage.

Legends claim centaurs were omnivores, so they wouldn't need the huge belly horses and other omnivores have. They would lead to a more svelte, attractive to the human eye look.

My guess is the centaur would not be as large as a horse. It would still be stronger than a human.
On the down side it would eat a lot more just to support its bulk.
Still a centaur cavalry would be an awesome sight.

[Bucky]

4. centaurs are probably oral tradition mistranslations of the first nomadic cavalries

[Countdown_3_2_1]

5. Oh yeah. Take all the fun out of it,

I always kinda wanted to see it work...

[kentauros]

6. Here's one interpretation:

Do a search on "Donna Barr" and "Stinz". In one issue of Stinz, she addressed a little bit of the anatomy, giving him two hearts (it was for a German Army physical, circa WWI ;))

[Countdown_3_2_1]

7. This is cool. He's a hundred times more efficent at digestion than us

Let me check out those sites.

[Countdown_3_2_1]

8. Stinz takes centaurs out of the Greek mythos

I like it.

[kentauros]

9. And Donna Barr is an amazing character!

She's got another comic called "The Desert Peach" and it is about the fictional, gay brother of the Desert Fox (Rommel) :P It was even turned into a musical at some point. I did a radio-interview with her just on that, but I gave the reel-tape to a friend of mine that is a leader in Houston's GLBT communities, and the producer of one of KPFT's longest-running GLBT shows :)

Here are her pages if you haven't seen them yet:

http://www.donnabarr.blogspot.com
http://rummelhart.deviantart.com
http://scua2.sdsu.edu/archon/?p=collections/findingaid&id=65&q=&rootcontentid=9154
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/dbarr/afterdead/series.php

[Kaleva]

10. Lung capacity and airways are way too small for such a creature.

"To summarize, your horse needs high capacity airways and healthy lungs, a large, powerful heart, a plentiful red blood cell supply, and an abundance of mitochondria. In comparison to less athletic species, even when we adjust for size, the horse has a greater lung capacity, a larger, more powerful heart, and more mitochondria within the muscles. What does this do for a horse's VO2max ? Well, the best human athlete has a VO2max of approximately 80 mls/kg/min. Compare this to a Thoroughbred racehorse, with a VO2max of 180 mls/kg/min. This means that is twice the best recorded values for humans even after correcting for size."

http://www.tufts.edu/vet/sports/oxygen.html

[kentauros]

11. Yeah, I've seen that.

Thankfully, the overly reasoned and logical don't write fantasy :P

[Kaleva]

12. The Centaurs in my novels are all laying on the ground gasping for air.

[kentauros]

13. And thus why people that like the fantasy of centaurs

won't like your novels :P

[Kaleva]

14. But mine are recommended by Bill Nye The Science Guy!

[kentauros]

15. And how many fantasy novels has he written?

;)

Basically, you don't over-explain or take away the mystery of just how a centaur, mermaid, fairy, dragon, or whatever can work with the scientific stuff or people that want a fantasy won't read it or will stop reading and want a refund. It doesn't matter if you love to tear the fantasy stuff apart. That's no longer classified as the fantasy genre and more appropriate for science-fiction/speculation.

Let us fantasy-lovers have our fantastic worlds and you go write the stuff without the sense of magical wonder that is the reasoned, scientifically backed-up approach of speculative science fiction :)

[Bucky]

16. Well another German doctor had a better idea... The Human Centaurpede!

You've been warned...

[kentauros]

17. You have No. Idea. how weird this stuff can get:

[mstinamotorcity]

18. didn't have on my glasses

I thought you were talking about Rep. Eric Cantor :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[spinbaby]

19. Pac Man skeleton