# Animal Senses vs. Human Senses



## PrincessVixen (Nov 11, 2021)

When writing furry fiction, how much do you account for the sensory strengths and weaknesses of various species? For example a dog character might focus less on colors and vision but be all over smells, while a fox might be nearsighted but with great night vision.


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## NutmegsBigAdventure (Nov 11, 2021)

Well since it's my story I'll take creative liberties with the attributes of a species, but I love to stay true mostly and play with differences in senses or even personalities. My coyote character is more sporadic, timid, and aggressive than a domesticated breed would be etc. It's always fun to write characters that compliment and contradict each other!


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## The_biscuits_532 (Nov 11, 2021)

My Thylacoleo is the dimmest of all my characters. 

Marsupials lack the corpus callosum, which allows for data transfer between brain hemispheres. This alone isn't really justification, as non-mammals lack them too and my bird character is pretty smart

HOWEVER, Thylacoleo also sacrificed brain size for larger jaw muscles.

I haven't written anything with him yet, but my line of thought is that it'd play into how he's seen as intimidating. His species was among the most overspecialised carnivores to ever develop, and that ain't gonna go well with low intelligence.


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## NutmegsBigAdventure (Nov 11, 2021)

The_biscuits_532 said:


> My Thylacoleo is the dimmest of all my characters.
> 
> Marsupials lack the corpus callosum, which allows for data transfer between brain hemispheres. This alone isn't really justification, as non-mammals lack them too and my bird character is pretty smart
> 
> ...


I don't think I've ever hear of a Thylacoleo as a character before, that's super creative! If you do ever do some writing about him I'd love to read it sometime! ^^


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## The_biscuits_532 (Nov 11, 2021)

NutmegsBigAdventure said:


> I don't think I've ever hear of a Thylacoleo as a character before, that's super creative! If you do ever do some writing about him I'd love to read it sometime! ^^


I did volunteer him for a another person's project on Amino a while back, but unfortunately it was discontinued by chapter 3, at which point he'd only cameod 

I keep coming up with ideas for scenes, but I find it hard to tie them all together as a story. I'm studying literature, but I feel like I excel more at non-fiction.


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## Yastreb (Nov 12, 2021)

Once I was writing story where the first-person narrator was a raccoon. I never finished it but I remember wondering about how I should describe colours. For example, should I call plants grey or any red things yellow? Would the character even understand the difference between words like red and yellow if they can see little difference? In the end I just decided to talk about colours as little as possible.

Also since raccoons have super sensitive hands I tried to keep track of what the character was touching and when they encountered something new I would describe its material and texture first and foremost.


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## Foxridley (Dec 10, 2021)

Yastreb said:


> Once I was writing story where the first-person narrator was a raccoon. I never finished it but I remember wondering about how I should describe colours. For example, should I call plants grey or any red things yellow? Would the character even understand the difference between words like red and yellow if they can see little difference? In the end I just decided to talk about colours as little as possible.
> 
> Also since raccoons have super sensitive hands I tried to keep track of what the character was touching and when they encountered something new I would describe its material and texture first and foremost.


That gets interesting because, even in real life, the diversity of words for colors varies considerably across languages. For instance, some languages do not have separate words for blue and green, and we didn't have a distinct word for orange for the longest time.


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## Pomorek (Dec 11, 2021)

The_biscuits_532 said:


> I keep coming up with ideas for scenes, but I find it hard to tie them all together as a story.


Exactly my case too. 

But as to the sensory differences, I probably give them far less thought than would be needed. I just tend to mostly ignore this aspect.


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## Yastreb (Dec 11, 2021)

Foxridley said:


> That gets interesting because, even in real life, the diversity of words for colors varies considerably across languages. For instance, some languages do not have separate words for blue and green, and we didn't have a distinct word for orange for the longest time.


Good point. Russian has different words for deep blue and light blue but no word for just blue in general, while Finnish used to lump almost all colours under brown (we still sometimes say things like "brown as gold").

With that much variation even in human languages it's hard to say what anthro languages would be like in this regard. Probably a ton of words for different scents. Anyway in my story's setting anthros were a small minority so they were speaking human languages instead of having their own ones.


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## Mambi (Dec 11, 2021)

PrincessVixen said:


> When writing furry fiction, how much do you account for the sensory strengths and weaknesses of various species? For example a dog character might focus less on colors and vision but be all over smells, while a fox might be nearsighted but with great night vision.



I try to be realistic but factor it in as best I can as _additions _not negatives. For example I'd include the heightened sense of small and hearing for my feline characters, but their eyesight in daytime would be normal human just to make thing easier (otherwise for example they'd never be able to read anything). It may not be fair to ignore the negative aspects of their sensory experience, but I guess I choose to focus on what they bring to the experiences and not what they'd take away. 

So if I was writing using your examples, my dog would be all over smells AND have normal vision, while my fox would probably have normal daytime vision AND awesome night vision. Kind of feels like celebrating the animal's enhancements over us mundane human sensory ways to experience the world. Totally personal choice though.


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## The_biscuits_532 (Dec 11, 2021)

Mambi said:


> I try to be realistic but factor it in as best I can as _additions _not negatives. For example I'd include the heightened sense of small and hearing for my feline characters, but their eyesight in daytime would be normal human just to make thing easier (otherwise for example they'd never be able to read anything). It may not be fair to ignore the negative aspects of their sensory experience, but I guess I choose to focus on what they bring to the experiences and not what they'd take away.
> 
> So if I was writing using your examples, my dog would be all over smells AND have normal vision, while my fox would probably have normal daytime vision AND awesome night vision. Kind of feels like celebrating the animal's enhancements over us mundane human sensory ways to experience the world. Totally personal choice though.


The eyesight thing could be interesting for Gladiator Spiders. They have the best night vision there is, but due to the fact their eyes don't have much protection, their retinas get destroyed every morning.


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## Foxridley (Dec 11, 2021)

One idea I want to explore, if I every get around to writing the story, is of a transformed character (a human turned into a kitsune) having to adapt to altered senses. I imagine it being rather overstimulating, since smell and hearing would carry a lot more information.


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## Mambi (Dec 11, 2021)

Foxridley said:


> One idea I want to explore, if I every get around to writing the story, is of a transformed character (a human turned into a kitsune) having to adapt to altered senses. I imagine it being rather overstimulating, since smell and hearing would carry a lot more information.


That sounds awesome! Though to be fair, didn't the movie Senseless with Damion Williams and the transformation scene in Hally Berry's Catwoman and Richard Greco's Tomcat do the exact same thing?


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## Foxridley (Dec 11, 2021)

Mambi said:


> That sounds awesome! Though to be fair, didn't the movie Senseless with Damion Williams and the transformation scene in Hally Berry's Catwoman and Richard Greco's Tomcat do the exact same thing?


I have not seen any of those movies, so I wouldn't know.


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## Mambi (Dec 11, 2021)

Foxridley said:


> I have not seen any of those movies, so I wouldn't know.



Oh they're pretty good actually! Sensless is a comedy having the guy given injections of an experimental sense enhancer...then things go astray as they rocket up hissenses yes but things go wrong and they start shutting down others randomly. Catwoman is...well...she gets cat powers and let's just leave this Razzie winner at that, but they show them well enough. And Tomcat has the lead healed from a degenerative nerve disorder by genetically fusing some of his DNA with a house cat's and it gives him the same advantages in senses as well.


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## Faustus (Dec 13, 2021)

Mambi said:


> Oh they're pretty good actually! Sensless is a comedy having the guy given injections of an experimental sense enhancer...then things go astray as they rocket up hissenses yes but things go wrong and they start shutting down others randomly.


That reminds me strongly of a short sci-fi story, probably by Asimov or Clarke, in which a scientist develops a cure for the common cold, and finds out shortly afterwards that every human actually had a permanent cold anyway which was stunting their sense of smell. He ends up having to develop an even worse version of the common cold to infect himself with because he can't stand all the smells.


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## Troj (Dec 22, 2021)

I try to be mindful of exactly this, because it's easy to just slip into writing fuzzy humans.


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## Vakash_Darkbane (Dec 31, 2021)

I usually refer to good ole Savage Species from DND 3.5, I treat my characters as if they still retain some of their animal senses with a slightly diminished capacity.  I assume that anthros would still use them,


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## Firuthi Dragovic (Dec 31, 2021)

There's a difference between accounting for a difference and being able to explain it to an audience.  If there's anywhere I trip up with the whole anthro thing, it's that issue in particular.

Problem in my case is, the anthros in my setting very specifically ARE the result of humans mutated to survive a harsher environment.  So a lot of them only wind up with slightly more advanced human senses - and nearly pure animal senses are considered a freak mutation, with varying degrees of social acceptance.

Technology tends to be better designed around advanced senses though - to the point where "minimal sensory output" almost beats physical ergonomics as a prime goal of design.


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## Raever (Dec 31, 2021)

For my setting, while certain primal senses are heightened many anthros are also given more human-like senses (ex. dogs don't see in black & white).
That being said, their strengths are highlighted well enough I think. I just personally don't think that feral senses should remain feral in an evolved world (such as mine).


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## ConorHyena (Dec 31, 2021)

I just write about fuzzy humans.

Reason 1 - I was a human-centred writer before I did furries

Reason 2 - Over-explaining. 

This'll go a bit more into depth so bear with me.

A lot of furry writers I've read make this mistake. They have a very detailed world thought out in their heads, been carrying this around for potentially years, and once it gets put to page, they engage in describing in minute detail as to (in this case) why different anthros have different sense/colour perception/etc and how this affects stuff and in the end there's a lot of descriptions and no plot movement and the reader will get bored. 

There's a writing principle called 'Chekov's gun', it states "If you hang a gun up on the wall in the first act, it must invariably go off in the third" - paraphrased to 'Every detail should contribute to the overall narrative' and it cautions artists against making false promises. This applies in this case. If the altered sense perception is a plot device it's neat, but if it's just there cause 'cool' or 'fluff' this opens up another can of worms concerning the suspension of disbelief.

If your writing fiction with furry people, suspension of disbelief is essentially the most important currency you have as a writer. People choose to follow stories that are quite clearly fantastical and, when viewed logically, complete and utter bullshit, for the sake of entertainment. This means that you, as the creator of this work, have to make sure that your audience can suspend their disbelief undisturbed. Long-winded, pseudoscientific explanations are a fickle thing in this aspect because they draw your work from the plane of the clearly fantastical further into the reach of the rational mind, and this is where you'll very quickly encounter holes in your explanation that can be jarring to the reader. 

I'm going to give an example now to illustrate what I'm talking about

We assume that someone is writing a slice-of-life fiction that revolves around modern time, with three different species living in a modern-day city and the plot revolving around this setting.
We assume that these three species see, as has been previously suggested in this thread, colours in completely different ways. As an example, traffic would be a total nightmare - most lights, be it traffic lights, brake lights on cars, etc are all colour coded, and this would make the efficient running of a city almost impossible.

Now this can serve as a plot device - if one assumes that, say, only the dominant species is allowed to use cars, etc. But if the writer is focused on writing a romance between char A and B and the general state of societal affairs is irrelevant for this and the setting only serves as a backdrop - all this information is uneccsary, and thus, can be done away with without affecting the aesthethics and the mechanics of the plot.


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## Yastreb (Jan 1, 2022)

Raever said:


> For my setting, while certain primal senses are heightened many anthros are also given more human-like senses (ex. dogs don't see in black & white).
> That being said, their strengths are highlighted well enough I think. I just personally don't think that feral senses should remain feral in an evolved world (such as mine).


Just a quick note, normal dogs don't see in black and white either since they have two types of cone cells, not one. They see black, white, grey, blue and yellow.


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