Golden
goldens (pl)
Basic Information
Anatomy
Normally, goldens are seen in a bipedal form. Hands and feet have four clawed digits, though a golden's fingers are thinner and more dexterous than the short and wide toes. Their hocks are pronounced, with long hind feet before their paws. Goldens' hands are attached by wrists which are on a swivel joint - able to twist and turn any direction.
Goldens have two forward facing eyes, prominent, upright ears, a long snouts. They have 42 teeth exactly, twenty on the bottom and twenty two on top, with their four canines the most obvious and dangerous. Goldens are covered in a rather uniform coat, with either one to five short tails attached at the end of their spines.
When shifted into their quadrupedal state, most of these features remain the same.
Genetics and Reproduction
After a prolonged courting time, goldens carry their young for two to three months before giving birth to a litter of one to four pups.
Growth Rate & Stages
Golden pups have closed eyes and unmovable ears for the first week or two of their lives. At the end of this period their puppy teeth come in and they move to eating solid food. An initial short and soft coat remains, until shed and replaced by a grown coat at eight months. By ten months the adult teeth emerge. At this point a golden pup is considered an adolescent, which lasts until full sexual maturity at four years.
All goldens are born with one tail, and develop more as they age. Almost all goldens at least end up with a second tail by adulthood, the third through fifth tails coming depending on their physical strength.
Dietary Needs and Habits
While omnivorous, a golden requires the protein given by meat and cannot go for too many meals without it. When in the wild and hunting, most goldens shift to catch their prey. While in their shifted form they prefer all food raw and can't handle vegetables or fruits as well as they can when unshifted.
Biological Cycle
As the seasons change, goldens grow in a thick undercoat to handle the colder months, to shed it fully for a thin summer coat during the warmer ones.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Goldens have a wide array of average senses. Their primary sense is smell, able to differentiate between most objects with this sense alone, as well as size and shape. What they cannot tell with smell they make up for with their eyes. They have a wide angle of vision, though their periphery is not very focused. However, they are very good at noticing movement. Their day and night vision is similar to each other, likely because of eyesight existing to supplement their sense of smell. While also keen in hearing, goldens are less able to tell sounds apart the further away they are, therefore they do not rely as heavily upon their ears at a distance.
Civilization and Culture
Courtship Ideals
Upon deciding to have a family, goldens tend to remain together for life. It is also very public when they decide to have a litter, for all goldens involved in the process spend as much time as possible not separating for any reason until copulation. This can last two or three months, the same amount of time as the gestation process.
Culture and Cultural Heritage
Goldens are well known inventors. If they need something that does not exist (whether at all or in their possession), they will create something to fill that gap. This is also how cars were invented.
Goldens are very protective of what is theirs: their homes, their families, themselves, and their ideas. This includes their culture. However, depending on where the golden has been raised and what culture that is, it could very well be a typically non-golden culture. In which case, the protective nature might come out in very different ways. If living in a mainly golden community, they are very ignorant and uncaring about the cultures outside of that. If living with another race(s) and partaking in that culture, they can become just as ignorant of their own golden culture. If managing to transition from their golden culture (a difficult transition that happens seldom), they consider themselves "beyond" that initial culture.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
Goldens are okay with other species, but it very much depends on their position to any and what sort of culture the golden belongs to.
Lifespan
70 years
Average Height
6'-7'
Average Weight
180-265 lbs
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