Hello, your blog is amazing. I know this is not realy your weelhouse but you seem like the best blog to ask. I need some help figuring out hove some traits my humanoids have would influence their anatomy and aperance.
So bot of them are heavily based on real life humans when it comes to apperance because i am boring but i wanted to put some subtle changes to indicate that neither of them are humans and to give an oportunity for them to have wow you are not like us shock moments when they interact.
So the first species? is the one with the most oportunity for fun anatomy changes. Their bones and muscles are not thicker but they are denser. So they can have immpresive feats of strenght and endurance. I know this would mainly be noticabel by touch. I am not troubeled by this. What could be some changes to their skeletal structure that would allow stronger muscles to anchor better to bones or some uniqe muscle structures in nature that allows for more tissue to be packed into smaller spaces. Also am i understanding it right that this would mean they need more food and would be more sensitive to a lack of oxigen? My second idea ties into that i wanted to give them different blood for better suply. I originaly wanted to just make it thicker with higher iron content but i realized that having ticker blood means the heart needs to pump harder to achive the same blood floow. I found my second solution while browsing your blog whic is giving them the blood particel that makes blood blue beside standard hemoglobin. But i know very littel about how that would influence their anatomy, would that make their blood purpel or another color? Would that mean that their skin has a light purpelis, or a greyish tint?
The third one is a freeby. So its well known that human anatomy is kind of a mess, especialy the spine. What changes would you, as an anatomy nerd make to make humans more efficent humans? I had the idea to give them more muscles around their ears, harder and sharper nails and hardier teeth in general and slighly pontier canines (yes that one is for the visual) as a kind of vestigal trait from back their hunter gatherer days but other than that I am stuck. Do you have any anatomical traits that could indicate a healing factor. I know its kind of vague but i don't know how to better word it.
The other guys, who i took to call mages for distintction because i am abundant in creativity, are kind of boring because their main trait that separates them from humans is having magic whic doesnt realy translate into anatomy. They channel it through their senses, voice and movements. I had the idea that they could have different voices that are more sing-song, but i think that would be more cultural norm, could there be some anatomical difference that helps it. My other idea was giving them on average more slender limbs, and more flexibel joints to allow for more gracefull and controlled movements. My other two ideas are that since magic produces heat they could develop thicker, darker fire resistent patches on their skin on parts where they frequetly direct their magic. Other than that i have no idea.
Sorry, this is long and rambly I understand if you don't answer it. I am also sorry for the grammar, english isn't my first language. I would be grateful for the smallest help. Thank you for even reading through this monstrum.
okay, so there is a lot to go over here! let's break it down point by point.
1: increased bone and muscle density. what does this mean? bone density refers to the internal structure of the bones. bones must be porous in the center because that's where the marrow is! it acts as a blood factory, basically. having porous bones allows for blood to flow through, and it also allow us to have more durable bones without making them so heavy. too little bone density makes them fragile, but too much bone density makes them heavy and more likely to snap because of poor shock absorption. so there's an important balance to find for the density.
muscle density jut means more muscle packed into a smaller space, and it is correlated to increased strength. I can't find much on what might be considered "too dense" for muscles, but since it's often determined by a ratio of fat to lean muscle, I think it's important to note that fat is important for the body and having less of it tends to create other problems. Intramuscular fat provides energy directly to the muscles, which is why humans are so good at endurance walking. it's one of the reasons we have such nice round butts! So you also need to keep in mind how to balance the muscle density with the body fat here.
Essentially, what is the purpose of the denser bones and muscle? simply increasing the density does not automatically mean these people will be stronger and have greater endurance. Having very dense muscle might make them good at performing short bursts of strength, like quick sprints, fast hard punches, etc. and having dense bones might make them more sturdy, giving a strong brace to their dense muscles. but they may also be more prone to exhaustion if they don't have intramuscular fat, and if their bones are too dense they might break faster and be less useful for blood production and blood flow.
2: blood color. as for changing the material their blood uses to carry oxygen, I have had trouble finding any sources on how efficiently different colors of blood actually carry oxygen. As far as I'm able to determine, haemocyanin, the blue blood component in molluscs, is better suited for low oxygen? Most sources on this are highly academic and I don't understand a lot of the vocabulary.
So, maybe these are smaller people, living in a low oxygen environment. Perhaps it's a warm climate, allowing survival with less fat, and their dense muscles and bones make them very good at quick bursts of strength and speed with lower endurance compared to the average human. they would be very lean, and I imagine their bones would be shorter and a little thicker to minimize the chance of breaks.
If anyone else here is a better expert on the fine points of what exactly dense bones and muscles as blue blood would mean for a humanoid species, please add your thoughts! As I've said, I'm not an expert on biology haha, I only know what I can find through internet research and a lot of it is academic vocabulary that's a little beyond my knowledge. and a lot of it is also niche topics that are difficult to find studies on, like the efficiency of different blood colors. I will note, however, that red blood seems to correlate most with vertebrates, while the other known blood colors correlate to invertebrates! the blood circulation of these groups can be very different!
the blood color might affect the skin tone a little, but it depends a lot on how translucent or pale their skin is, what pigments are coloring their skin, and what color their blood vessels are. humans have red blood, but some of our veins look blue! it does have a stronger color effect for blush though!
3: what traits would make humans more efficient? depends on what we're making more efficient! the spine is wack because we stand upright. our knees are wack because we walk bipedally. our teeth look like this because we are omnivores. we're very very good at all of those things, especially compared to other creatures. sharper teeth and claw-like nails would certainly make us more efficient as hunters, but only if we were hunting with our bodies as our weapon! humans are very very good at making and using tools. personally, as a human who spends most of her time sitting down (because of my creative work) I would appreciate having the butt pads that allow other primates to sit on tree branches for extended periods of time without going numb. and just in general having a body that didn't feel so stiff and sore from sitting in one position for so long.
4: anatomical traits that indicate healing factors: hard to say! the animals in real life that can regrow their limbs don't really have any special outward indicators of it until it's actually happening! like lizards and amphibians that can drop their tails or lose a leg and just cut off the circulation to the open wound and start growing a fresh limb. you might have some luck studying how all of that works, it's a pretty fascinating process!
5: voice anatomy: your mage people might have different vocal cord structure! perhaps theirs has more flexibility than the average human, and maybe they also have better lung capacity. This would allow a broader vocal range, volume range, and increase vocal endurance somewhat.
6: dark thick skin to resist heat: callouses could certainly develop with frequent magic use, just as they develop for physical activities (like the callouses on my hands from holding a pencil or holding yarn and thread over my finger for crochet). Melanin, the pigment that makes skin darker, is not actually for heat resistance. it inhibits UV radiation somewhat. so I don't think darker patches would really occur as a form of resistance to magical heat, though the skin would likely grow tougher in those areas. They may also develop anatomy that's more efficient for regulating body temperature. Large ears full of veins, for example, or maybe they'd have longer fingers and some form of membrane between their fingers that only exists to release heat.
Overall, I think you've got some pretty cool ideas! You're clearly putting a lot of thought into your worldbuilding! I hope this has been helpful and I wish you luck and to have fun on your creative journey!