# How do you handle size differences between animals in your writing?



## Pretentious_Latin_Words (Dec 29, 2021)

Are your anthros all the same size? Are they as tall as they are IRL? Is it in-between, with two-foot-tall mice and eight-foot-tall elephants?

What's your approach to this?

Mine is to make it entirely fluid, and the size is based off of the parents. For instance:

> mouse, 6 inches tall, (somehow) has baby with elephant, 12 feet tall

> you get a 3-foot-tall mouse rather than a 6-inch-tall one


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## n1ghtmar3w0lf (Dec 29, 2021)

for base life Zootopia is the best refence i can say for sure as they had many of varying sizes, for me my comic anthros are taller then humans but my other just fun characters are all human sized relatively , i guess it just depends on what one has their characters do, and part of the fun is thinking how would it work


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## Firuthi Dragovic (Dec 29, 2021)

Normal human ranges for size all the way around, but certain species have a tendency towards certain sizes within the human range.

As an example, rabbits are often a bit on the short side UNLESS they're a Flemish giant, then they have a tendency to be massive.

Really short species might tend towards dwarfism (fennec foxes for instance), and really large species might tend towards gigantism (rhinos or elephants for example).


In my case the anthros in my setting were essentially the next step in the human race's evolution (the real answer involves an apocalypse and a form of energy fatal to pure primates and I'd rather not get into it now).


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## The_biscuits_532 (Dec 29, 2021)

I typically try to maintain some resemblence to human scales, but with scaling based on species. 

Like my Oncilla is 4'4, whereas my _Thylacoleo_ is 7'5.

I've been thinking of a Leopard Seal character lately - based on my current system he'd be much larger than any of my other characters, at minimum around 11ft.

But, I have a solution, inspired by Michael Bay of all people

I remember watching the documentary bundled with _Transformers 2007 _as a kid, with Bay explaining why he made Starscream such a wide boi

Basically, as a jet, he would tower over the rest of the cast if the mass was consistent between forms, something which Bay wanted to pay attention to, but past writers for the franchise hadn't. By making Starscream as wide as he was tall, he mitigated that. 

So TLDR - less height, but thiccness to compensate.


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## Vakash_Darkbane (Dec 31, 2021)

I ignore it in most cases, mainly because it would drive me insane if i didn't


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## Mambi (Dec 31, 2021)

Pretentious_Latin_Words said:


> Are your anthros all the same size? Are they as tall as they are IRL? Is it in-between, with two-foot-tall mice and eight-foot-tall elephants?
> 
> What's your approach to this?



I tend to make most of my animals _relatively _the same size, but semi-proportional usually between 4 and 8 feet. So when I write, tigers and bears and most standard sized creatures would tend to be around 6 feet tall or larger for example, while bunnies or mice would be shorter. It tends to make it easier to interact as you don't have to think about the weirdnesses too much while still giving credit to the fact they are different. For example, how would a deer even hear a mouse talking without bending over to the point of laying on the floor? But if they're only a foot or 2 shorter, no biggie. Obviously exceptions apply as I choose, but that tends to be my default.


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## Faustus (Jan 4, 2022)

I like to use believable human size ranges - say 3' to 8' or so, believable but not limiting - and place animals on that scale roughly based on their size in real life, so your mice would be 3' or so, your medium carnivores such as large dogs would be 6', most everything else would be 7' except pachyderms who would top out at 8' or so.

That said, giraffes would be a special case because of the neck.

I like this approach because it retains the size difference and predator/prey dynamic while still allowing the characters to interact meaningfully with each other on a personal level.


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## quoting_mungo (Jan 6, 2022)

In most of my writing with “true” anthros (they’re just anthropomorphic animals, not fictional species with animal traits) they’re all pretty people-sized. I do have one setting in which size is determined by the size of the RL animal compared to its taxonomical relatives. So the wolverine, as the largest mustelid, is freaking massive, while the pony is pretty smol. It’s a bit of a compromise that lets me have a span of sizes without condemning certain groups of animals to all be large/small.


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## The_biscuits_532 (Jan 6, 2022)

quoting_mungo said:


> In most of my writing with “true” anthros (they’re just anthropomorphic animals, not fictional species with animal traits) they’re all pretty people-sized. I do have one setting in which size is determined by the size of the RL animal compared to its taxonomical relatives. So the wolverine, as the largest mustelid, is freaking massive, while the pony is pretty smol. It’s a bit of a compromise that lets me have a span of sizes without condemning certain groups of animals to all be large/small.


I think I might've subconsciously done something similar. My Thylacoleo is enormous, even beating out both my Hyenas, which should be larger, if I was being 100% strict.


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