babies

[Fyriewolf]

I am just a curious little female alpha wolve with a alot of curious questions

[WereWolfBoy]

okay

[Fyriewolf]

so what will the mother and father do to the cubs once they are adults?

[Fullmoonstar]

Either the Parents would bring the Cubs to their Pack to make it stronger or they would chase them away, if the Pack would be "full" and could not take more members......just the same things real Wolves would do i guess..

[Fyriewolf]

hmmmm that is a very good point my dear friend. So how would the pack chase them away if they are full chase them until they get tired or just kiled them.

[shiftergirl]

i agree with alot of you, the pack could chase them off, but then agian the pack could also use them to strengthen the blood or weaken others, forgot if any of you talked about this but the children i think would also have diffrent color pelts unlike most of the storys with only silver pelts or brown..... if this has been gone over then im realy behind on the subject.

[RedEye]

IRL, I would suppose that Werewolves would mimic their wild cousins as to coat coloration.

In the movies, the silver or brown Werewolves are probably due to the availability of fake fur at the time of filming. That stuff is ridiculously expensive, as many fur-suiters have found out.

[Fyriewolf]

hmmmmm. . . . . those are extremely very good points.

[Fyriewolf]

so what is there to talk about thats related to this topic?

[Fyriewolf]

i don't think lycanthrope fur can be in an orange color like in van helsing can it?

[Midnight]

Lycanthrope fur can be whatever colour the scriptwriter wants it to be. We're dealing with fictional creatures; and, at that, creatures which don't even obey the commonly accepted rules of biology and physics. Coat colour is a minor matter compared with them.

[inu]

thats funny. i just finished reading one of Kelley Armstrong's books, Broken, and the main character was a female pregnate werewolf. the story said that they were fine when she shifts and all and were born human. so that is one point of view.

[Celestialwolf]

It looks like this thread has gone off in another direction, but with regards to the original question, here's my opinion as quoted from my website:

The gestation period takes 9 months like normal, but it's hard to detect a pregnancy by sight becasue werewolf fetuses form completely at a small size and then grow to full size in the final weeks. When the mother shifts, the fetus shifts as well, and the baby will be born in whatever form the mother is in while giving birth. Young werewolves can shift to protect themselves if they go through a traumatic experience, but otherwise start shifting voluntarily at about age 8.

[Moss27]

It looks like this thread has gone off in another direction, but with regards to the original question, here's my opinion as quoted from my website:

The gestation period takes 9 months like normal, but it's hard to detect a pregnancy by sight becasue werewolf fetuses form completely at a small size and then grow to full size in the final weeks. When the mother shifts, the fetus shifts as well, and the baby will be born in whatever form the mother is in while giving birth. Young werewolves can shift to protect themselves if they go through a traumatic experience, but otherwise start shifting voluntarily at about age 8.

Wow... just by scanning the website, I'd say you got the whole forum covered. XD

I'm faving your website to my laptop. <3

[Celestialwolf]

Glad you liked it!

[Fyriewolf]

i limke it too. that is a very good quiote.

[archangel_athena]

the gene can also be passed on through bloodlines though it is less likly to actualy be awakened...werewolves cannot have babies because the females cannot prevent the change from happening.
you can try to ignor the calling of the change but when it comes to the full moon there is no control....
the fetus cannot survive the change because it its self cannot change with the mother therefore it cannot survive the differences of its mothers body...

sorry but its not possible to have children when your a werewolf.

[Fyriewolf]

Wait a minute. If the werewolf trait is passed through genetics. Then can the mother be able to have her pregnancy in human form and the cubs wouldn't have the genetics of the werewolf trait. Or the mother can have the trait, have the cubs in wolf form and the cubs still wouldn't have the trait. Or what? I am lost here!!!!

[Wingman]

Wait a minute. If the werewolf trait is passed through genetics. Then can the mother be able to have her pregnancy in human form and the cubs wouldn't have the genetics of the werewolf trait. Or the mother can have the trait, have the cubs in wolf form and the cubs still wouldn't have the trait. Or what? I am lost here!!!!

First of all, I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I will hazard a guess that you're talking about gender-specific traits, or recessive traits, or ones that depend on the mother being transformed at the time. If so, then yes it's entirely possible for a werewolf to have children that aren't werewolves depending on the gender of the child, or depending on whether or not both parents are werewolves.
If the mother is a werewolf, but doesn't transform while pregnant, logically her child would still be a werewolf unless there's some sort of magic or weird science involved. A brown haired woman doesn't have red-haired kids if she dyes her hair while pregnant, the same logic should apply here as well.
If the mother is a werewolf, but stays transformed while pregnant it should be the exact same. Although, you're perfectly free to require that your werewolf females choose either option, staying human or staying transformed, and then having the status of the child be determined by that. This would mean that in order to have werewolf babies, she would need to give birth to them while transformed, but that involves a bit too much unexplained magic for me.
Or option number three would be to pick a percentage and use that to determine if the child is a werewolf or not.

Me personally, I'm of the mind that the werewolf trait is a recessive one. This means that both parents need to be werewolves for you to be born a werewolf, but if only one parent is a werewolf then you can still have the trait and pass it along to your children. Doing it this way allows for all sorts of fun stuff like having two normal people get together and have a baby, and then the baby is born a werewolf because both parents carried the recessive werewolf trait. It makes the job of werewolf hunting a lot more interesting if one or more of the hunters possess the trait, and then after they've killed off all the werewolves they have kids and the kids are werewolves. I am a little evil, however, and find stuff like that amusing.

[Terastas]

So, I stuck with the "period of dormancy" thing when writing Inhuman. Might seem like a convenient plot device at first, but think about it: How much shifting could an egg and sperm possibly undergo? The newborn starts at a state so small that there is literally nothing to be shifted, so the viroid effectively shuts down and becomes active later in life (as early as three years old or as late as never -- I took the rhyme and reason out to avoid the "coming of age" cliche).

That said, the werewolves in Inhuman live more like humans than wolves, and while they do keep tabs on pack size and territory, they don't do so by traditional wolf pack means. I say that because it's important to understand how I answered these:

so what will the mother and father do to the cubs once they are adults?

The werewolf survival strategy is to maintain anonymity even among their own members; no werewolf knows by name every other werewolf, so if something bad happens to one werewolf, it won't create a chain reaction that will affect every other werewolf in the area. The whole "parent/child" relationship, however, is one that can't be kept a secret, so werewolves who are directly related to each other tend to stay together. Typically that means the young adult werewolf will either reinforce their parent's native territory/community, or will go off to live in another community and only maintain ties to the old one through their parents.

hmmmm that is a very good point my dear friend. So how would the pack chase them away if they are full chase them until they get tired or just kiled them.

The only time a werewolf ever chases their offspring away is if they've been exposed, in which case they sever all ties with everyone so it will have as minimal an affect on the rest of the community as possible. They live predominantly as human beings; they keep tabs on the availability of money, housing and employment instead of hunting territory, which generally gives them a lot more leeway when it comes to pack size. Killing is only done if the werewolf in question is too serious a liability -- if they do anything to potentially compromise their anonymity like hunting humans, shifting in public or discussing "coming out" to the masses. The family relation is a permanent connection, so there's little to no point in requiring them to settle in a new community. They can if they want to, but a young adult werewolf that's been brought up proper will understand the value of anonymity and may be hesitant to venture into territory where they'll have to establish themselves all over again.

[lycanthropeful]

I'm not really sure how else to describe it, but I think it makes sense for a lycanthropy-afflicted female to give birth to a child that is 1. human at birth and 2. is also afflicted with it. I can't really imagine any other situation, unless you prefer your women giving birth to wolf cubs or something.

Also, refer back to the first page of this very old thread, Set's dislike of the "waiting until puberty" is something I completely disagree with. When I wrote a lot of Versa's backstory, I allowed her to wait until she was 11 to have her first shift. though that's early even for puberty in some cases, I don't think a body could handle all that gruesome shifting until it is ready. It also was the most painful shift probably of her life, and I designed it that way intentionally so that it was the catalyst for the rest of the transformations she has to endure. Nothing will ever be "worse" than that.

Honestly, I just don't want werewolf infants running around. It takes a lot of mental strength to be a werewolf as well, I'd presume. How would you be able to explain to a 4-year old that they turn all fuzzy and scary when a full moon is out? Having to wait until the afflicted person is at least a little older makes more sense to me.

[Fyriewolf]

woooooowwwwwww!!!!! I have been just confused at the moment

[Terastas]

I'm not really sure how else to describe it, but I think it makes sense for a lycanthropy-afflicted female to give birth to a child that is 1. human at birth and 2. is also afflicted with it. I can't really imagine any other situation, unless you prefer your women giving birth to wolf cubs or something.

Also, refer back to the first page of this very old thread, Set's dislike of the "waiting until puberty" is something I completely disagree with. When I wrote a lot of Versa's backstory, I allowed her to wait until she was 11 to have her first shift. though that's early even for puberty in some cases, I don't think a body could handle all that gruesome shifting until it is ready. It also was the most painful shift probably of her life, and I designed it that way intentionally so that it was the catalyst for the rest of the transformations she has to endure. Nothing will ever be "worse" than that.

The "waiting until puberty" is a cliche, but it may also be a necessary one because, as you said, if we accept the possibility that a first-time shift could kill a healthy adult, it should be even more hazardous to an infant. Activation at puberty may be a cliche, but it could also be a result of natural selection: the longer a strand of lycanthropy's period of dormancy, the greater the chances are that a werewolf's children will one day have children of their own.

There might be room in the refined definition for a werewolf's lycanthropy to become active while an infant, but taking into account the chances of an infant surviving that kind of process, lycanthropic maturity in an infant might mean to a werewolf the same thing as a miscarriage.

I've actually got a character in Inhuman to whom that could easily be applied as background info actually. And that's what I love about these seemingly pointless and mundane discussions: even after all these years and all that's been said, I still occasionally get inspiration from them.

[Ember]

I think that a pregnant were would be able to shift, but that she would shift around the uterus, leaving it and it's contents unaltered, which would probably make shifting difficult in the final weeks of pregnancy. As for gestation and the shifting ability of the offspring, Celestialwolf pretty much said it for me.

What about the children after they're born? Wolves mature more quickly than we do, so would werewolf youngsters mature more quickly than human ones?

[AreTheyReal...Yes]

Let's say that there are children...I suspect that for at least the first few years they'd be indistinguishable from Smooth children (survival, here)
As they age, they would start gaining their Wulfen heritage, perhaps making their first shift around fifteen or sixteen, with reproductive maturity occuring a few years later.
I also think that the main difference between Born Were's vs. Bite (inoculated) Were's would be in the TIME that the shift requires. Lycanthropy would also have to be sexually transmissable, simply because the vector would have to invade the entire Host's body in order to work.
Possibly, the pregnant Female Were wouldn't show her pregnancy until the last few weeks: there are models where the fetus develops completely, but remains tiny until the last weeks of pregnancy when it grows to birth weight.
Just some thoughts...

I think that the babies should be able to shift at birth. I know what you're thinking physical trauma, apperance, and going on with apperance school. I can answer all three. Humor me PLEASE. A pregnate werewolf eats a deer while in the woods. So what right? where does the food consumed by a pregnate female go? To the womb, correct? Saying this that baby is eating raw flesh. Now an adult cannot eat raw flesh, without consicuinses (sorry for spelling). With this,if a newborn baby can die from a minor cold what will raw flesh do to an unborn one? Plain and simple... Aww baby dead. But somehow this baby is not dead, how? It inherited the werewolf gene. SO WHAT?! a minor change in metasoblismic function. Wrong sir! With changing that function you're changing a major organ. So even with that out of the equation that change is the effect of the werewolf gene. in that he inherites it wholey just like hair and eye color. Therfore it shuld be able to change. Not enough proof? Still think a baby can't change. You're saying that a baby can't take that much physical trauma. Neither can an adult. All the organs, muscles, bones, and tissue have to double or triple in size. That's like five heart attacks and failures for every organ. No human can handle that, BUT 'they' can. If it inherited the gene it would survive on the same conditions that the parent/parents do. Apperence that's easy a baby can't crawl, walk, talk, and/or swim at birth... usually. With a werewolf it would have to learn those things and their apperance and hunger. Their parents teach them. They're experienced. They can teach the children. School=homeschool. Problems solved. Thank You for your time.