#sphinxes

[hurglewurm]

women :)

[yzegem]

Adult male sphinx.

Another sapient creature for the Cross Lands setting.

Sphinxes evolved from a forest ground dwelling ape similar to a mandrill (obviously) that became more specialized for living on open savannah. They grew in size and took a digitigrade stance.

With this new way of locomotion they lost their opposable thumbs, but they didn’t become vestigial appendixes and still retain a lot of mobility, specially on their hands. Their fingers, though short and stubby, also retain a lot of mobility and can grasp small objects and aid in eating and grooming peers.

Their diet expanded to include meat, specially carrion. Though they are not the best hunters, their large canine teeth and coordination in large groups allow them to intimidate predators off their prey. They can also grasp relatively heavy stones with their hands to smash bones open and eat the bone marrow.

They ecosystem they inhabit hosts mass large herbivore migrations (similar to the Serengeti migration) that sphinxes follow and have developed a close relationship with.

The sphinxes benefit from the protection of these large groups and are also known to rest on top of wild horses.

The sphinxes also feed on the sick, injured or elderly herbivores left behind, but generally avoid calves.

On the other hand, the sphinxes have a great vision (they have front facing eyes and can see the same color range as humans) so they can detect and alert when predators get close. They are also sapient, have great memory and live longer than most of the herbivores, so they get to know the routes and the predator’s behavior really well. When predators get too close, the sphinxes are really good at scaring them away. In general, the herds guided by sphinxes are more successful during the migration. So much so that some stay together even when the migration finishes.

Over the centuries, the sphinxes have slowly “domesticated/tamed” these herds, specially the horses, and human domestication of the horse in this setting started off this sphinx stock.

Regarding their intelligence, they have spoken language, but also rely a lot on scent for identifying each other, so they are not that good at recognizing exact facial features or visual features in general. This, and their lack of dexterity in their hands blocks them from further technological advances. (this is my own personal interpretation of how human intelligence came to be how it is).

They do surpass the human mind in one area. While humans are not very good at conceptualizing large quantities in our mind and need to picture them in groups or other strategies (a billion of anything is too much for us to picture, so we usually think of how long it would take us to spend that many dollars, for example), sphinxes can intuitively comprehend and calculate with large quantities. This is largely because their sapience evolved to guide and manage very large herds and they needed to keep them in sight and in mind at all times. Who knows? maybe in the future some sphinx living among humans might become the next great mathematician, or be hired as living calculators…

Sporadic peaceful contact with both humans and giants have occurred, and tales of red-faced dog people have spread among distant human cultures.

bonus crappy sketches:

[korybing]

My two spreads for Almost Real Volume 5: MYTHOLOGY! You KNOW I had to do an entry for sphinxes!

This is a combination of the work I've done for Skin Deep sphinxes as well as its own thing set in a world where mythical creatures are known but still largely a mystery to science. I leaned hard into the Zoobooks aesthetic for this, one of my favorite parts of those magazines were the anatomy drawings so I wanted to do one just like it!

You can buy the Almost Real PDF (and some physical books) here!

[sea-spines]

beast 🥩

acrylic and gouache on wood panel

[becdecorbin]

Link the sphinx????

[ruthirlcartoon]

Sphinxes by memory

[kitcactusart]

Sphinxes, I love them I love them

Three sisters of the old knowledge

They have riddles and they’re unfair and they’re going to eat you