Hi everyone! I have a bit of an odd question regarding bowl fluffies and their pregnancy. More specifically, what do we think would happen to their inherent bowl shape when they are pregnant.
Would they have a regular pregnancy with a distended belly and be unable to walk? Do the babies somehow mutate out of their back like the Surinam toads, and they are unable to be in water during their development?
I haven’t seen anything really about pregnant bowl fluffies, so I figured maybe there are some hc floating around.
I think they would probably be like normal fluffies. Balloon up during pregnacy, and then go back to normal afterwards. I think floating would be out of the question during later stages of pregnancy.
In my headcanon, normal fluffies don’t balloon up to the extent that they become immobile, but bowlfluffies do due to their anatomy.
The expansion of the uterus pushes the skin on top of the “bowl” upwards, making the mare resemble a fluffy ball, and preventing her from standing.
The only thing I’ve read is that bowl fluffies are exclusively a feral sub-species - why would a normal house fluffy need to develop the ability cross streams and other bodies of water?
I would speculate that they are still buoyant and stuff but give birth like sea otters. But given how they use their tails like a slow propeller, they’re much much slower when trying to swim propel in water which means they’re more at risk of predators or environmental hazards such as being more vulnerable currents or waves in rivers or lakes. That and i speculate their foals when birthed, like otters, simply crawl onto her belly so she then feeds them. Which leads to my thing to point out, her vision is a bit obscured by her “milkie place” so she could clumsily try to use her lower legs to scoop up or corral the chirpies onto her, she might miss one or two or accidentally kick one. Also due to the nature of water births, a Bowl Fluffy mare when giving birth in water will mean its less mess to lick the foals clean and its less painful.
But depending on the environment she and the foals may still be at rusk of predators like herons, frogs and toads, mosquitos, freshwater crabs or crayfish, leeches or lampreys, fish including pike or catfish, snakes, or even otters to name a few. Also if the mare cant go to a land shore and prefers to stsy on the water, it will need to clean the foals constantly to keep herself groomed for health-related reasons for herself and her offspring. But in addition if she doesn’t expecting the water around her to do that for her or let her foals spill milk in any way, this becomes a sort of Scaphism situation (if you know the torture method called “The Boats” you know what i mean) basically the mare is almost like a floating litterbox cesspool stinking of the sickeningly sweet curdled leaked milk and the bodily waste of her foals which leads to the artraction of flies, maggots and other vermin as the milk will spoil leaving the foals to gain health complications like diarrhea which makes things worse.
Apparently the original idea was to cover and hide their foals plus a rain resistant coat and they were just dumb enough to realize they wee boat shaped.
But also, bowl fluffs tend to have smaller litters than domestics so they have less chance of ballooning up.
Bowl Fluffies are hands down one of the most bizarre fictional species I’ve ever seen created. No other animal that I know of, real or fake, has a concave on their belly like that. The fact that they’re only there so they can hold their babies while lying on their backs in the water is so oddly specific, when Fluffies aren’t even known to swim in the first place. Their anatomy makes no sense either. Whoever had the idea for them must’ve been completely spitballing but they succeeding in making a fascinating yet confusing creature.
I had this exact one, along with a duck version where the indentation was in the back.
Both sets are probably still around somewhere since I’ve always kept all my toys.
From what I read here I like the idea of them ballooning enough to start sinking or becoming more useless, but it does makes sense that because of their biology they don’t have that big of a litter … Or maybe they do get filled up yet out of, let’s say 8, 4 or most of em get to be runts, doesn’t get to develop properly or just die before even being born, since they get crushed because of the shape of their race.
I guess the female ones would get a way more painful progress of carrying the offsprings, yet their programming/mommahs brain makes them endure the pain or something along the lines.
