Now this makes sense, and I can agree with it. However the challenge now is the windpipe/esophagus, As in most vertebrates this is predominately on the very front of the neck, until it reaches the collarbone/rib cage. Even the stomach is at the very end/bottom of the rib cage, which is 'assuming' this was to ensure other tissues didn't expand/contract to pinch/close this important transport of consumption and air (spit balling with no research as to why this is the case the majority of the time).
We could assume that everything important follows the spine (in the human bit) like major arteries, and esophagus. Potentially the connection point of human and horse has a pelvic/tailbone like structure to help prevent any bending in that area so the tube can progress safely to the lungs and stomach without too much trouble if the human part jackknifed in a direction.
The relative locations of stuff like the windpipe/esophagus are fairly easy to adjust. The rib cage in this case is in the horse part, the human part is just a neck really that has been extended and has had two arms added on by replacing the collarbones. This means that the windpipe/esophagus will go down into the horse part without any real problem, just as it does with giraffes.
Would the weight distribution impair a centaur in DF, anyway? I haven't been modding for very long, but from what I've seen, it looks like you'd be able to slap together any odd assortment of limbs and ligaments with 0 consequences to your resulting monstrosity (provided you edited your raws right).
This is not actually entirely true. Somebody else added in a fantasy giant creature called an athach, which has three arms and two legs. The game 'decided' (the gaits are all the same as everything else humanoid) that the creature owing to it's three arms was top heavy and hence reduced it's speed by a third. A centaur however does not I think have any in-game problems, because it has an even number of limbs, but an odd number of limbs is detected by the game.
This bit makes very little sense to me. How exactly does a human torso (±60kg?) placed right over the front legs, overcome the leverage of a horse body (±450kg) with a centre of mass around the centre of the two pairs of legs? I doubt it would affect balance much at all given that a horse's head and neck is placed further forward and not actually that light either.
Running horses also do not have both pairs of hooves on the ground at any given point. The rear legs push off while the frost legs are raised, and vica versa. At most the centaur would need slightly stronger muscles for its front legs.
Let's also look at some other fast-running quadruped in nature, especially carnivores like cheetahs or windhounds. If you look at these from the side you'll notice that the rear end is much thinner than the front end, which also carries the forward-pointing head and neck. They seem to have no issues with running fast.
I do agree with the part about the organ distribution. Human torsos are a whole lot smaller than a horse's, there is no way going half-half is going to result in a Plausible Centaur (which is of course very important). Possibly you could get away with filling the entire torso with lungs, if only to not have the torso just be a really weirdly shaped neck with arms.
Yes running horses do not have both pairs of hooves on the ground at any point. That is the problem with centaurs, they are fine as long as they do not move, moving means they have to constantly rebalance their weight, the greater the weight imbalance the harder it becomes to do this and the more it penalises their speed. Eventually we get to the point where when the centaur will simply bowl over whenever it places it's weight on it's front legs.
The issue here is not the relative weight of a horse body VS a human torso, this is because the horse body is balanced so that the halves can be easily rebalanced; so it is the combination of the front half of the horse part WITH the weight of the human part which is the problem. The horse neck (and every other quadruped neck) is slanted at a slightly diagonal angle when moving, this is so the weight is directed towards the centre of the creature. Centaurs could potentially do this, place their human part at a diagonal forward angle when moving, the problem is the weight of the arms and internal organs would in a simple splice as it were cause an unbearable amount of stress on the joining point.
The need to balance out weight is why we have so many odd proportions in quadrupeds, if you place lots of your internal organs in your back parts you have to add extra bulk to the front part in order to balance out your back parts. Horse however have bulky backparts and scrawny front parts to help balance out their rather large necks which are not aligned giraffe style in such a fashion that they align directly with the centre of the creature. They need these necks because they are grazers, cats or dogs are predators who only need short necks, causing the need to reduce the relative weight of the back parts instead of the front parts.
You cannot put either the lungs or the heart in the human part, because these things must be central to the body in the order to distribute blood/oxygen to all the creature. The wierdly shaped neck with arms approach is very much the way to go, it does not actually have to look like a neck since the neck vertebrae can be extended so that they are basically ribs; but yes it is actually a neck. The giraffe approach is the way to go, align the human parts by default at a diagonal angle from the centre of the horse parts (like we see with giraffes). Without the rib cage and the lungs we have the ability of the human part to bend forward rather well, meaning that we can get a far more powerful swing than a normal human has; add the weight of the charge, with the forward motion of the human-torso and the arms themselves.
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Topic: Centaur anatomy (Read 5864 times)