Just a mummah doing her best.
Well, she gets an A for creativity but the sensitive baby needs to lose some weight
I’m debating in my headcanon if it’s just because they don’t move enough and comfort-nurse constantly, or if there’s some kind of actual inborn error of metabolism that makes them chunky no matter what. Probably a mix.
But yeah, at least she’s encouraging movement, and everyone else got/gets plenty of milk. (I think at the size I drew them, the rest of the litter is weaning.)
Looks like that might hurt
She’s an experienced mummah with tough titties.
I was just thinking the same thing lol.
That’s a good mummah. She gets to have as many litters as she wants.
That’s a good mummah.
With regard to the chunkiness of SBS foals, in my opinion, it’s down to lack of inactivity.
Pretty much all animals wean onto real food because milk no longer has the calorific density to sustain them: depending on species (sea mammals like seals are special), milk has between 0.6 - 0.7 kcal per gram, while puree baby food is around 3.7 kcal per gram.
If they’re putting on weight, then their total daily energy expenditure has to be less than how many calories they’re eating. TDEE is equal to your basal metabolic rate (how much they burn just by being alive) plus your activity level (how much you burn by moving around and doing stuff).
Since there’s an upper limit on how much they can eat in a day (there’s a physical limit on stomach volume), there’s a cap on how many calories they can get on a milk only diet, so after subtracting the BMR, the only part of the equation they can reduce is the activity level.
A metabolic flaw that gives them a slow metabolism would have other symptoms (e.g. thin hair, constipation), which don’t overlap with being a fat lazy bastard (e.g. weight gain, lethargy, general weakness).
I mean, it’s hive canon that their manes and teeth don’t come in, which does sound like metabolic error.
From what I understand of a slow metabolism dysfunction, it’d be all hair, not just the mane, so under this interpretation, a SBS would also have really thin fluff like a newborn chirpy.
This might be partly why a mare might have such affection for a SBS foal - she still sees it like a chirpy because it feels and smells like one.
The milk teeth not coming in, is called anodontia, which is caused by a genetic error, which is separate to the causes of a metabolic error (which can be genetic, but it’s one step removed as they’re normally hormone production imbalances).
This is all my point of view though; if you want the defect in the fluffy chimeric genome that causes SBS, also causing metabolic issues and anodontia, it’s perfectly reasonable in my book - it’s called sensitive babbeh syndrome for a reason.
Exactly, I pretty much just use enough scientific realism to sparkle.
I look at Sensitive Babbeh Syndrome as a chromosomal disorder like Down Syndrome that has metabolic effects among other stuff, but humans also see an SBS spectrum, because not only does SBS proper have a range of manifestations and severity, but it’s hard enough to get all your various things diagnosed as a human, so fluffies that are like, fluffy-autistic, fluffy-developmentally-delayed for any reason, or whatever, get put on the SBS Spectrum by everyone but cutting-edge researchers in fluffy mental health.
“Smarty Syndrome” is a term, but it’s more generally understood as scientifically-crappy nomenclature. Smarties are just slightly smarter and/or more assertive than the average fluffy. Everything from, “this fluffy is justifiably tired of your crap” to, “if this fluffy were human we’d diagnose it with Antisocial Personality Disorder” gets called Smarty Syndrome.
“Bitch Mare Syndrome” is just a street term, anyone who does fluffy mental health, or even an experienced breeder who isn’t stupid, knows that mares have their reasons, and you need to figure out if they’re just awful, traumatized, scared of alicorns, or smell a terrible medical problem you haven’t noticed yet.
See THIS is well thought out scientific realism in a fantastical setting
When she needs a break, I have just the thing, but with Sensitive formula
(UNSOLICITED PRODUCT PLACEMENT)