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CR1M

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S3RK3TBR8K3R
@S3RK3TBR8K3R
virovirokun
@virovirokun
lupi
@lupi

yes

anthropomorphic upper

non-anthropomorphic lower. you dont have to have legs to be a taur

merpeople are taurs

fluffy
@fluffy

Usually "taur" refers to an entire whole-ass body cut off at the neck to replace the human's legs, though, unless you're talking about the specific case of the Minotaur where the human half is on the bottom.

Which is to say a naga and a merperson are not taurs... they're satyrs.

vurren
@vurren

🖤 drew a diagram because this fascinates me

I guess the key difference between the two is indeed where the body is cut

satyrs uses the bottom half of an animal (like the back legs of something), while taurs use the whole body except the head

so most mermaids in art are satyrs, but they could be made into taurs

snakes are harder to define as they don't have much as for things to differentiate between body and tail. a real headscratcher, you could make a religion out of it

Bonbon
@Bonbon

The tails of snakes are actually pretty defined!
This is most obvious in flying snakes, who flatten out their ribs to glide in the air, which leaves the tail (which just have shorter ribs) dangling about behind it.
i think that their tails look comically small when they're not more seamless with the snakee

And in looking at satyrs, it looks like the cutoff point is the pelvis??
Like, they'd have a goat's pelvis, but a humanoid torso.

.......Except — most snakes don't have pelvises.
But some have vestigial pelvises!
Pelvic spurs are derived from them, and they're used in courtship.
So, suitably, the pelvis is wherever the cloaca would be, which I think we can presume would be where the pelvis used to be in all other snakes, too!

And so, wherever the cloaca (and, in turn, the pelvic region) would be, the cutoff for a satyr would be.
And that would be..........

anatomical diagram of a snake.

..............Oh. Aha.
Well, then.

a close-up of where the cloaca would be, which is at about the tail–body junction.

It would be around the area where the tail begins.
which makes sense  since tails ordinarily come out from pelvises in the first place

And so:

a snake taur (or, 'snektaur'. i overlaid @vurren's humanoid drawing over the top portion of the snake's head, leaving a fairly majestic-looking naga-like person. an itty bit below the neck, though, since it looks better...... so artistic license. a snake satyr (or, 'snaketyr'). i overlaid @vurren's humanoid drawing over the lower portion of the snake's body, leaving an almost worm-like person. also added some sweat emanata after because funny.
poor snaketyr lacks the tail strength to keep themself uprighttt
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Bonbon
@Bonbon

ahhh, snakes.
without the confinement of legs, they can achieve all manner of locomotion.. such as “"”flight“"”

omg a flying snek

they can swim

omg a swimming snek

they can... uh. do this

omg a snek... moving sideways in sand (called "sidewinding")

they can even....... crawl..?

omg a snek...... engaging in rectilinear locomotion

and, of course, slither

omg a slithering snek! just as we're used to!!

it seems that there isn't much that snakes can't do without their legs.

...except, i guess..

for walking.

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Bonbon
@Bonbon

(..also pretty amazed that it took well over a year of chosting before actually posting anything about my special interest that is biology.
we'll see whether i keep doing itttt 😅😅✨)

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Bonbon
@Bonbon

hmmmmmmm  taurs definitely appear to be the closest!

but strictly speaking, if a taur is substituting a neck, but the naga's serpentine body starts well below the neck, then it wouldn't be a taur by that definition.

tbh, my post is more the resulting silliness if applying the strict neck‑substitution definition of taur, and including pelvis‑substitution as the definition for for satyrs.
to me, it matters more whether the substitution occurs above the forelimbs, or below the forelimbs.
for example, keep the neck of a giraffe and substitute a humanoid body at the top of the neck, then you would have a probably at least mildly upsetting giraffe taur with two necks.
whereas for weird satyrs, a humanoid torso stacked atop a goat's torso but below the forelimbs would... probably just be seen as a satyr with a weirdly long humanoid-ish torso.
and if we instead divide the humanoid torso at the shoulders instead of at the pelvis, then that would just be a proportionate fuzzier-looking satyr.

so, for snakes, we know we where the pelvis is.
and where the forelimbs should be would be just below the neck vertebrae.
so if you substitute quite a bit below the neck vertebrae, which would be quite a bit below where the forelimbs would have been, then i would argue that that particular naga is a satyr.

so that'd be easy to figure out if you were designing a naga.
but what if you were classifying an EXISTING naga??

..........and, from what i can tell, unless the naga looks like my snaketyr, then there isn't really much way to tell whether they're substituted at the neck, or well below the neck, since...... it doesn't look like we can tell which of their vertebrae is, for instance, thoracic (chest) or lumbar (abdomen).
because if the snake body consisted of all all lumbar vertebrae, then that would be an unambiguous satyr to me, since it would be below the chest.
whereas if it contained thoracic vertebrae, then it could be a taur if they had all of those vertebrae, but it could also be a satyr if the substitution were somewhere along the middle of the thoracic column.

....................but as i said, we can't subdivide the so-called trunk vertebrae into thoracic or lumbar in snakes.
people have tried, and there seems to be inconsistencies, especially between species of snakes.
and the number of vertebrae between snakes varies so much that we can't depend on that, either.
the issue is because, normally lumbar is differentiated from thoracic by just whichever vertebrae lack ribs, but virtually ALL snake vertebrae have ribs.
even, arguably, at least some of their tail vertebrae.

i want to check out the genetics to see whether it's at all meaningful to say that snake spines are a multiplication of mostly thoracic or lumbar vertebrae (..so lumbar vertebrae with ribs), but i kind of doubt that the genetics work that way.
my guess is that the DNA just codes for nonspecific vertebrae, and afterwards determines for each animal which vertebrae will be ”allowed“ to have ribs, and which vertebrae would have their rib production turned off (since...... apparently having ribs is the default for all vertebrae — just the areas where they get turned off and aren't a tail are then called lumbar vertebrae).
and if this is the case, then.......... there is no telling where on the snake's body the substitution happened

..............sorry for such a long reply to a short question in the comments!

the tl;dr of my honest answer is that........... we really can't normally tell whether naga are taurs or satyrs — but the important part is that I argue that it could be both.
....like merpeople, yeah.

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