We're gonna talk about goddamn centaurs now

[aturtledoesbite]

And for a bit of applied science, this is the same principle behind why you always wondered as a kid why real cars weren't made out of the same stuff as your toy cars, since clearly they were more durable, proportionally.

Or was that just me?

[Glass Knuckle]

Originally Posted by Patrick

Why is it that we can't fix horse legs? Is is just because they're dumb and they would continue to hurt themselves? Would a Centaur be able to sit still so that you could put a cast on, or just hang out and play Nintendo for a month while it heals?

Yes. I was in the middle of typing this with more words than necessary, so yes, that.

I mean, we can use tranquilizers to get a cast on, but trying to keep them sedated for the whole month or more they would need to heal is probably just as bad.

[Falselogic]

Originally Posted by aturtledoesbite

And for a bit of applied science, this is the same principle behind why you always wondered as a kid why real cars weren't made out of the same stuff as your toy cars, since clearly they were more durable, proportionally.

Or was that just me?

Also, why jumping off the swings as a kid, flying twenty to thirty feet in the air and then landing in sand felt like nothing and doing it as an adult will at minimum leave you writhing on the ground in pain just happy to have not shattered your shins

[Büge]

Originally Posted by Falselogic

Also, why jumping off the swings as a kid, flying twenty to thirty feet in the air and then landing in sand felt like nothing and doing it as an adult will at minimum leave you writhing on the ground in pain just happy to have not shattered your shins

Kids are also spongier than adults.

[Torzelbaum]

Originally Posted by Octopus Prime

Which also begs the question of what you should do when a centaur breaks a leg. I'm assuming you can't put it down, because of the sapience and all.

You give it a stiff drink (or a lot of them) and some hemlock.

[Lady]

Originally Posted by Vaeran

I distinctly recall my 10th grade physics teacher telling us that you could drop an ant off the top of the Empire State Building and it would be perfectly fine when it hit the ground due to having such a low mass-to-surface-area ratio.

I don't know how favorably that principle applies to either bumblebees or centaurs, but I'd be willing to take a guess.

The way my MEMS teacher put it, the forces that play the biggest role tend to shift with orders of magnitude of size. At the insect level, gravity is much less important (due to that mass times acceleration), and things like cohesion and adhesion start to become very important. Think about dewdrops sticking to a leaf rather than falling off.

Instead of continuing on, I'm just going to link this before I reveal my ignorance. http://home.earthlink.net/~trimmerw/mems/Scale.html

I think what Vaeran's teacher was trying to get at was that the pressure exerted on any one point would be less?

Originally Posted by Octopus Prime

Without figuring out the math involved, the general rule is that teensy things can survive a much farther drop, especially relative to their size, than big things. So you could toss an ant off a building and it would be fine (if annoyed), but if you dropped a brontosaurus more than a couple of feet, it would probably die. If you dropped a centaur 5 feet it wouldn't enjoy it very much.

Which also begs the question of what you should do when a centaur breaks a leg. I'm assuming you can't put it down, because of the sapience and all.

Originally Posted by Patrick

Why is it that we can't fix horse legs? Is is just because they're dumb and they would continue to hurt themselves? Would a Centaur be able to sit still so that you could put a cast on, or just hang out and play Nintendo for a month while it heals?

https://www.thedodo.com/young-raceho...190824902.html there's a link from this article that explains it pretty well

Originally Posted by Falselogic

Also, why jumping off the swings as a kid, flying twenty to thirty feet in the air and then landing in sand felt like nothing and doing it as an adult will at minimum leave you writhing on the ground in pain just happy to have not shattered your shins

I did this in kindergarten because the recess bell rang. all I got for my trouble was a mouth full of dirt

[Rebelfire]

[Adam]

A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. also a good description of last weekend

[Madmachine]

Originally Posted by Falselogic

Also, why jumping off the swings as a kid, flying twenty to thirty feet in the air and then landing in sand felt like nothing and doing it as an adult will at minimum leave you writhing on the ground in pain just happy to have not shattered your shins

You gotta roll when you hit the ground. Parkour 101: Never absorb the downward momentum of a long drop with your legs! You'll want to make sure to jump at the right time so that your angle of your momentum is far away from being perpendicular to the ground to make that roll easier.

[Destil]

Originally Posted by Patrick

Can a bee fall from a reasonable height (let's say 6 feet) and live? I have no idea how things work on that scale.

Same question for a centaur.

Yes. Square-cube law, air resistance and surface area make heights safe for small things.

"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."

— J.B.S. Haldane

EDIT: DAMN YOU, ADAM!

DAMN YOU!

[Lady]

Originally Posted by Adam

A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.

this is a wonderful treatment!

[Googleshng]

Originally Posted by Destil

"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."

I just don't see the appeal of these Jackass movies...



Alt gag:
Hey, Mythbusters!

[MagFlare]

You know, I'm no anatomist, but I'm starting to wonder whether a spine that takes a sharp 90-degree turn is really, structurally speaking, a good idea.

[Zef]

Maybe they have a secondary brain at the base of the stump.

[Lucas]

I figure their backbone has to look similar to a llama or alpaca's spine: curved way more than you think.

[Rebelfire]

[MarsDragon]

But what about Archduke Gorgon?

[Falselogic]

Originally Posted by MarsDragon

But what about Archduke Gorgon?

that's just fucked up

[Torzelbaum]

Is that what they mean by "leading from the rear"?

[Daikaiju]

Man I don't even want to think how the digestive system is hooked up in there...

[Octopus Prime]

Originally Posted by Daikaiju

Man I don't even want to think how the digestive system is hooked up in there...

At least there's two sets of mouths for calorie intake, that's better than the usual sort of centaur. And looks like two sets of butts as well.

I see nothing incongruous with regard to digestion involved here.

[krelbel]

Originally Posted by Octopus Prime

At least there's two sets of mouths for calorie intake, that's better than the usual sort of centaur. And looks like two sets of butts as well.

I see nothing incongruous with regard to digestion involved here.

I disagree with your claim that there are two sets of butts on that creature, and demand you defend it immediately.

[Octopus Prime]

Tiger-Butt is quite evident and, while the existence man-butt is conjecture, there appears to be enough of a pelvis to support one.

[Daikaiju]

At any rate that's a chimera, in the clinical sense.

[Zef]

Originally Posted by MarsDragon

But what about Archduke Gorgon?

The tiger-force at the heart hip of all things.

[That Old Chestnut]

Oh hey it's like a tiger nuckelavee, except it still has its skin!

You guys should totally Google nuckelavee.

[That Old Chestnut]

okay fine i'll do it myself you're WELCOME

Originally Posted by Wikipedia, cause I ain't got TIIIIIME

The nuckelavee, or nuckalavee, is a horse-like demon from Orcadian mythology that combines equine and human elements. Originating in Norse mythology and the most horrible of all the demons of the Scottish islands, its name may be a progenitor of that by which the Devil is sometimes known, Old Nick. The nuckelavee's breath can wilt crops and sicken livestock, and the creature was held responsible for droughts and epidemics on land despite its being predominantly a sea-dweller.

And stories of this thing go back as far as the 16th century, because evidently enough people decided that the world needed a skinless dude welded to the back of a skinless plague-breathing cyclops horse. Any world where that's not rad as fuck isn't a world I want to live in.

Couple more pics. Spoilerpopped for big:

[Octopus Prime]

Man, Vikings didn't go by half-measures when they decided something needed to be METAL.

[Büge]

Huh. The Magic card doesn't look anything like that:

[That Old Chestnut]

For some reason, I kept thinking that was the name the Noggles went by, instead of...well...Noggles.



I miss Shadowmoor / Eventide.