Just a random thought I had. Fluffies don’t like getting dirty, and their soft cotton-like fluff must be a magnet for dirt, twigs, mud, shit, blood, etc…
So if a fluffy is out in the wild, is it just doomed to become host to filth and insects and bacteria? Or are fluffies able to keep themselves clean on a very basic level by licking at themselves similar to how cats do it? Licking their hooves and wiping at themselves to at least keep their faces clean? Or is that too much competence for an ultimately incompetent species?
Plus, we all know about poopie-babies and ‘lickie-cleanies’ (give me a minute, I need to shudder in revulsion), it got me wondering, could there be a place in a feral herd for ‘lickie fwiends’? Cleaner fluffies who help pick twigs and leaves out of the other fluffies, and lick stains out of their fluff? Maybe every fluffy in the herd is meant to do it for each other, but a Smarty starts insisting that only some members of the herd are dumped with all of the ‘lickie’ duties for everyone else.
Just some ideas I’ve been juggling for a few minutes now.
It seems unlikely. They have extremely poor range of motion for their necks it seems like so that even cleaning their hooves would be difficult and their heavy fur is basically like a magnet for debris.
Despite disliking stinky things they are likely doomed to it without human intervention.
Yeah, it just has the logic part of my brain kicking in, since in reality, a fluffy pony living outdoors would last for say… a month before ultimately dying of an illness or infection. Yet feral herds can survive in the wild for years on end.
In the end it’s still fiction so who fucking cares, it just got me wondering.
Fluffies are a curious case where logic will never apply. They are both so fragile they can drown in a puddle of their own piss and also so resilient they can survive an impromptu at-home total limb removal, castration, and then survive on nothing but feces for months. Their survival rates are wholly dependent on how funny it will be for any given scenario.
I imagine that they groom each other when in a herd, mom’s cleaning babies and special friends cleaning each other aso
but yeah I do imagine that ferals are filthy as fuck, and herds that have been around long enough know how to roll around on grass to help wipe off some of it, rubbing against trees aso
edit: took zoology classes in school, I have a need to at least try and make some weird shit somewhat logical…
I do believe they are social cleaners. Basically they can clean themselves to a limited degree but they clean and groom each other in either families or herds. Also if there are “poopie fluffie/stallion/mare” in the herd they are forced to be the communal cleaners of the whole herd and have to clean every member of the herd on top of most likely being forced to clean up the herd’s waste.
I think they probably LIKE to be clean. But I think they probably can’t move thier bodies like that. Outside of a home, they might have to rely on each other
I imagine left in the wild for long enough some of the pig/sheep hybrid DNA would kick in and their coats would get coarse and dense like a wild hogs, and also shorter. It’s an observed thing in other domesticated animals that were left to nature like bunnies. There’s also that fluffies reproduce quickly. Insanely quickly, some stories have them having six litters a year, so they’d evolve and adapt quickly.
Lots of animals scratch against trees to get themselves free of excess shed coat, as well as social grooming that most animals do to bond.
I image the fluffy pony we would see after 100 years with no humans looks a bit like the the eocene ancestor of horses.
I really like this idea! Fluffies would so love to be clean, and I imagine they can lick their front legs clean and maybe their front hooves, but anything else might be a struggle depending on how much movement you give them. And the idea of herds cleaning each other is perfect. I think I’ll be saving this post for later.
Be my guest. If I ever write anything else about feral herds, I think I’ll incorporate ‘lickie fwiends’ as I’ve described them here: something everyone should do, but of course, Smarties know best and delegate that task to the fluffies they don’t like.
Fluffies can not clean themselves like a cat or a dog.
Ideally, with the right diet, they would not have explosive bowel movements constantly. But that requires a very specific diet that a feral (and honestly, many house fluffies since owners don’t know what to feed them) ponies can’t get.
The best a Fluffy can do is drag its ass along a saferoom floor.
