Do created beings have nipples and navels?

[Alzrius]

Welll. It does seem weird that they still have em. I mean, it is rather unnessisary.

Wait a couple hundred thousand years, and they'll be gone.

 

[Agamon]

Wait a couple hundred thousand years, and they'll be gone.

Mine will be gone long before that....

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

This isn't going to degenerate into another conversation about why men have nipples is it?

Well, why do men have nipples? Some sort of reverse-Oedipal fixation? Conjurer with a sense of humor? And why only two on humans -- most mammals get 6-8?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Well, why do men have nipples? Some sort of reverse-Oedipal fixation? Conjurer with a sense of humor? And why only two on humans -- most mammals get 6-8?

It's pretty much because men are degenerate women, genetically. Everyone has an X chromosome, and the default genetic state is female. But men have a Y chromosome as well, which pretty much just contains instructions on how to not be female. The genes encoding nipples are present in every human, and something on the Y chromosome precipitates hormonal states that suppress the development of female traits like mammary growth. This can be overcome by deliberate hormone control regimens, such as the ones that TS people undergo. The reason why men have even vestigial nipples, as opposed to no nipples, is because there's not really anything to be gained from suppressing them more than they already are.

As far as why there's only two nipples, every mammalian embryo has two of what are called "milk lines", which are lines of special tissue that can develop into lactating cells. Since there's two of these, the number of nipples in a species tends to correspond to the average litter size, rounded to the next highest even number. Since humans have, on average, one offspring per pregnancy, they have two nipples.

 

[Sejs]

Well, do they? Some D&D artists of the past have depicted creatures that weren't born, but made, with truly superfluous body parts. Is this an artistic gaffe? The sign of a deity with OCD? Something else?

Comes down to a question of .. okay, two questions..

1) Even though they're created beings, can they reproduce on their own? If not, there'd be no point in having sexual characteristics at all, but if so, then yeah they may belong.

2) Are they mamalian? Nipples and navels are characteristic of a species that gives live birth and weans their young. If a race doesn't do that, there's no point in those features being present. I've seen some art that gave female lizard folk nippleless repto-boobs. That pissed me off, just from a realism standpoint.

 

[Sejs]

Well, why do men have nipples? Some sort of reverse-Oedipal fixation? Conjurer with a sense of humor? And why only two on humans -- most mammals get 6-8?

Joking aside?

Nipples form before sex is determined. More than just that, human beings of both sexes functionally have all the same organs - 100% same hardware - it's just that during zygote development some of those parts get different sets of instructions on what to emphasize and how it should be arranged. Men have milk glands, it's just that they've never recieved the signal to trigger development; theoretically a man could lactate given a long enough series of hormone therapies. The testes and ovaries are are essentially the exact same organ, just serving two different but very similar roles in men vs women. So on and so forth. We're built with the same materials, we just had different blueprints.

As for the 2 vs 6-8 teats thing? Mainly has to do with litter size. We're not designed to crank out batches of 10 young at a time. Also the fact that we're bipeds instead of quadrapeds factors into it.

 

[Dragonbait]

Comes down to a question of .. okay, two questions..

1) Even though they're created beings, can they reproduce on their own? If not, there'd be no point in having sexual characteristics at all, but if so, then yeah they may belong.

2) Are they mamalian? Nipples and navels are characteristic of a species that gives live birth and weans their young. If a race doesn't do that, there's no point in those features being present. I've seen some art that gave female lizard folk nippleless repto-boobs. That pissed me off, just from a realism standpoint.

This is exactly what I wrote out on my first post, but I delted it and decided to make a joke instead. How.. bizarre!

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Well, do they? Some D&D artists of the past have depicted creatures that weren't born, but made, with truly superfluous body parts. Is this an artistic gaffe? The sign of a deity with OCD? Something else?

Well they are CREATED creatures, yes? Some are created with such vestigial silliness as nipples on men, unused reproductive organs, and appendixes, but some are not.

 

[Sound of Azure]

... men are degenerate women...

Sounds about right...

 

[Ambrus]

nippleless repto-boobs

My new favorite word! Congrats! you win the thread!