Ask: Would mannuls have pouches at their rear to prevent water getting in it like thylacines?Annonymous asked over on Tumblr You mentioned that your sophonts have pouches. Would mannuls have pouches facing their tail to prevent water getting in it like thylacines? 2026 -Their upright locomotion and height, and how maanuls are from open areas with low vegetation, do not require their pouch to be at the rear to prevent debris from getting in like thylacines do. To prevent water from entering their pouch, maanuls have a strong ring of muscle, a sphincter , to make it water-tight. Like a water possums !It is at their lower stomach because they also need easy access to it, for grabbing their young in and out, and other basic social interaction between the parent and the fledgling for bonding. But most importantly, they need easy access for egg transfer. The biological family the sophonts of altuyur are a part of, lies a soft, basically a meat egg / amniotic sac, onto their hands before rapidly transferring it into their pouches. If the egg is not transferred, it dries up, or other damage happen because of the sun's UVs, causing death for the embryos.The transfer triggers "gestation," where the pouch itself seals, not through muscle sealing as it would cause strain during extended periods of time, but through the growth of tissues at the entrance, and all around the egg sac. The membrane is pierced by the hatclings or cut by the parent if the baby is unable to do it themselves once gestation is over. The pouch is basically an external womb first, then later becomes a transport pouch for the striped fledglings.(Though I say they lay into their hands, this isn't possible for mierthri's anatomy. They require external help from entourage/direct family to do so. Out of the 3, theirs is pretty difficult, while maanul probably has it the "easiest".) Maanuls pouch is still positioned much lower than what the other two sophonts have; Mierthri has it at the highest because interactions are mainly with their jaws and not their hands, which are not very good at being manipulators. Maanuls and kyhuines will sit on their rear in order to access their pouches easily, though they are capable of bending their bodies around to do so (more flexible than you think!), it is not the most comfortable and safe way to do so. Now, why does the biological family have this complicated cycle that involves extra steps instead of just having a full gestation internally? Millions of years ago, before any of the sophont's recent ancestors were even a possibility yet, they used to be specialised in brood parasitising a now extinct family of distantly related species. As the species they preyed upon became rarer, individuals developed temporary pouches of folded skin, similar to what echidnas do, to carry the egg before they eventually found their target. This turned into a permanent, all-year-round pouch that they rely on as they had to abandon the parasiting as the targets went extinct.There was a split in the family where some just kept the egg inside the body until it hatched, while others became pouch reliant. The sophonts of Altuyur, are a part of the pouched group.2 Ask: How did you come up with names? + Does Maanul have an in-world meaning? Annonymous asked over on Tumblr : How did you come up with the names for your species? I don't remember why maanul is called maanul, to be honest. It was back in 2021, i think i just compiled letters togheter until it clicked. I wasn't thinking ahead about conlang, which i doubt is something i'd dip my toes into seriously, aside from some rules i've given to myself related to the vocal lungs.Kyhuines used to be called Okapies back in 2021- 2022, but since the spelling was so close to the spelling for okapi, I changed it.Mierthri are recent (late 2024-early 2025 if i'm correct), but my memory is horrendous i can't recall last week, so i can't recall why they're named mierthri. Sadly i didn't think of noting down the process. Most of what I remember is that they're named after a scrapped biome I already created. The biome isn't fully scrapped, it has become different enough that i consider it a seperate thing than the base idea. For maanuls, I didn't think about "are there things named like this already?", in fact, there is, pallas cats are also named manuls! Though how manul is pronounced is different than maanul. "Okapies" (Kyhuines), I knew of okapis, so the name didn't stick long because of the reseamblance. If you want to think of your sophont as named from an outside viewer, go for it, if you want an in-world name, go for it, too. You'll just have to think of what the name means in the language chosen someday, haha.<hr> Jamesofangus reblogged , asking: Does Maanul have an in-world meaning? Maanul is a word from the Shumatt's common language, Shuaait. While many ethnic groups spread across the territory still speaks their native languages, what's considered as "standard" language to speak under Shuamatt is Shuuait. Shuuait takes from the Nuinuk and Sani languages, as these are their close neighbors.Most words across my blogs referring to maanul concepts, inventions, or how other maanul groups are called, are in Shuaait. Some words are more so how they would phonetically read words from other languages into their own, deforming them in their language not having the same whistling as another. Maanul is one of many ways to refer to the species, making a distinction between the word for people as a whole. "Maaui" means "People", which includes all species together, and the word for the species they are. Maanul is referring to the maanul species.Like the way we'd call another sophont a person, but we would use human to distinguish which species we are talking about. "Maa" is for "my people". The "my" refers to "people who look like me". Like how in "Maaau" the maa is pronounced with a pitch in the whistle near the end, to sound like a deformation. Maaau means "Almost my people", it is the species name for maanul's closests living relatives. "Nul" is a deformation of Nuaulu, referring to the sea as a neutral gendered person rather than an object, more akin to reffering to a parent. So basically, if taken apart, maanul means "My people from the Sea", tales of people washed over the waves because they were born by the ocean itself are very common in traditional maanul mythology for the population who were seaside, which a third of Shuamatt is, and the oldest part of Shuamatt originates there too. The name carries it too.play_arrowtrophy