What are them Thraits?
I've gotten a ton of questions over the last two years, and seen people confused on the topic of what Thraits are. Are they horses? Are they rats? Maybe they are reptiles. Are they meant to be furries, or like scalies or something? What gives! For me, Thraits are honestly none of the above. They are simply aliens. While they carry traits of reptiles, mammals, etc., they aren't meant to represent a single one of those, or really be related to them at all. It's more a case of convergent evolution than anything else. Though a Thrait's head may bear resemblance to the snout of a reptile or maybe an ant eater, they do not actually have nostrils, and would most likely use olfactory receptors in the mouth and on the tongue to detect scents in the air.
When designing the Thraits, I wanted to specifically avoid having them be one creature specifically. They have short fur and breasts, like mammals, but also have a somewhat reptilian body plan, and even then, some features seen in bony fish? In the real world, the Thraits would not be considered any of these scientifically, since they have developed on a different planet from potentially a different common ancestor. I also wanted to call to the primordial and strange feeling of an "in-between" era in evolution, like the non-mammals that existed in the Permian, connecting Reptiles to Mammals. For me, I see the Thraits closer to a sort of science fiction alien, an alternative path for evolution or creation to take us, rather than an anthropomorphized real life animal.
