THE PACK Message Boards

Noa wrote:Whether or not a werewolf would use it's tail for balance is debatable, but they should have one.... they just don't look right without a tail...

Blade-of-the-Moon wrote:One expert said it best : An upright walking stance isn't that great of an evoloutionary achievement, the stance makes it difficult to balance and causes a lot of stress on our bodies, humans are always one step from disaster.

Noa wrote:Whether or not a werewolf would use it's tail for balance is debatable, but they should have one.... they just don't look right without a tail...

Apokryltaros wrote:

Blade-of-the-Moon wrote:Most people would need training to balance well, the average guy off the street probably couldn't balance that well. Humans have adapted to life without a tail , which might not be a good thing from what I've read. Humans have a lot of back problems resulting from an upright walking stance. One expert said it best : An upright walking stance isn't that great of an evoloutionary achievement, the stance makes it difficult to balance and causes a lot of stress on our bodies, humans are always one step from disaster.

Of course, you do must realize that the humans' taillessness is our legacy from our tailless ancestors, who apparently could move about better without tails in the trees, than with tails. Our upright stance is the legacy of when our ancient tailless ancestors went from being tree-dwellers to plains-dwellers, who in turn, found that walking on two legs is much faster than walking on knuckles.
You do must realize that we humans, and our immediate ancestors, have had at least 2 million + years of practice with walking on two legs, and that, it is true that supporting 100+ lbs of weight, coupled with the stress of walking around on two legs can cause back problems, I hardly think that the overexaggeration of one anthropologist should be cause to go back to walking on all fours, especially since the human body is not designed to walk on all fours.
Furthermore, a tail would be of little help in balancing in humans, as almost all other animals which are bipedal and have tails, ie, birds, kangaroos, and some dinosaurs, hold their bodies parallel to the ground, whereas in humans, the body is held perpendicular to the ground. A bipedal body that's held parallel to the ground can benefit from a tail, as the tail can act as a counterbalance to prevent the body from falling forward. I don't see how a tail would be able to help a bipedal animal that holds its body perpendicular to the ground.

Scott Gardener wrote:If you think about it, the projected evolutionary path suggests something akin to the "Gray" aliens. Spooky? However, in order to evolve, selective forces have to influence who does or doesn't reproduce. I can put forth a perfectly good argument that humans are evolving dumber and dumber, at least here in the United States--educated people are having smaller families than uneducated people, and many educated people are choosing not to have children at all.

Since humanity as a whole is spread out over six continents with spatterings in the seventh, throughout the ocean, and two or three in orbit, however, there's plenty of places where this rule does not apply, so thankfully, intellect may yet prevail. It's just coming up short in my neck of the woods.

Blade-of-the-Moon wrote:We discussed further human evoloution in class and what ended up with is odd to say the least. We found out that the average human is actually getting smaller and stockier. Our smallest finger and toe are becoming obsolete as well, then they had larger ears and noses . We ended up with designs that resembled hobbits or dwarves of all things, that's the best desc. I can give anyway.

Blade-of-the-Moon wrote:Since we are talking about ducks, look at a T-rex, it has a longer tail to balance out the large skull and muscular body of the front, dinos with smaller build toward the front have slimmer tails. Now onto the bird part, a bird like a raven would fall forward with no tail. Flightless birds like DUCKS, chickens, and ostriches use larger posteriers for balance . Humans have shrunken tail bones and some humans are still born with a tail . Humans when they get larger in the chest and stomach tend to get the larger posterier whether it's muscle or fat. An animal with wolf-like feet will need a tail for balance, the size and weight of it will depend on how much weight is on the top. That will be reflected in how large boned it is, the size of the skull, and the amount of muscle. Any good artist will know all of this as I'm sure the one working on the film does.

Vuldari wrote: ...I created a crude, (VERY crude...), diagram to help myself understand what we are all talking about. I was expecting to create something that would support my "...it would make a WW 'less' balanced and back heavy", theory, but instead, when I took into account that a Wolves spine attatches closer to the back of the skull, I ended up with a WW that was slumped over slightly, thus making the "counter balance" argument quite logical.
http://img96.exs.cx/img96/6568/posture7iy.gif

Blade-of-the-Moon wrote:If we could animate that image as the WW's head would move up/down , far left/right the tail would swing just opposite to help counter his weight combined w/ movement.

Figarou wrote:Oh, I forgot to add something. Deer, Moose develop stronger neck muscles to support the weight of the antlers on the head. I don't see a long tail on them to counter-balance that.

Blade-of-the-Moon wrote: Now 1st question, the weight comes from the skull which I would guess would have to be at least 2 feet long if not larger, then it comes from the muscles in the head that allow biting, a wolf has 1000 lbs of bite pressure so a werewolf should have 5 or 10 times that. Then you have thick neck muscles which would allow that much pressure to be exerted and allow it to be used in a ripping motion as well. Then the upper torso has muscles supporting that system, so there is quite a bit of upper body weight.

Noa wrote:Werewolves should have tails, because they are half wolf and half human right... so in human form they are more human, in their wolf form they are more wolf, so logically depending on which form they are in the more traits they will have connecting them to that form....

A tail would make a good counter weight even if it doesn't weigh that much... for example if you lean forward and you get a small book and hold it behind you, you will become more balanced... All you need is a small amount of weight to counter the weight that is putting you off-balanced...

Blade-of-the-Moon wrote:You are thinking of the weight of a wolf's tail, which is light to a human. A werewolf's tail is going to be heavier than that, a human could still lift it of course it's not THAT heavy.

Do you fall over when you bend over ? It throws you off balance but you position your legs to account for it. Now if you do it for a long time you might fall, you have to practice in order to hold the position. If you plan on being near the ground for any length of time you could do the logical thing and either crouch down or lay down........

Silverfang wrote:In my opinion, the tail is essenial, ok when a werewolf is standing on 2 paws it may not affect its sence of balance as much but when he / she is on all fours , then it helps in changing directions faster when running. Also it's used in comunications in wolf packs.