Topic: [BUR] Honey Pots and Honeypot Ant Anatomy

The bulk update request #11632 is pending approval.

Reason: a honey pot is a ceramic pot which is used to hold honey.

also...

the honeypot_ant is the name used to describe the specialized worker ants of several species of ant. these workers consume large amounts of food until their abdomens inflate where it is digested and fermented into a kind of honey. acting as sort of living food containers, they hold this honey inside their bodies until its needed. when full the membrane in their abdomen will become taut and the plates of their exoskeleton will seperate from each other.

"honeypot_(anatomy)" is the name I'm going with to describe both the actual real life feature of honeypot ants ("honeypot_abdomen") and other... less atomically accurate features seen in artist's depictions of them and other arthropod characters.

I did see a bunch of new honeypot tags and I wasn't sure what to do with them lol

also tangential...

dba_afish said:
also tangential...

tangent about arthropod body terminology

in researching this learned the word sclerite which is the term for the bits of exoskeleton on the body of arthropods.

it's always kinda bugged me _heh that we didn't have a _great_ word to use for arthropod body colours/qualities, and, at a glance, this seems like a really good candidate. previously we've had *_exoskeleton, which has seen some useage (and has implications), and *_chitin, which has seen a little, but neither of these really sat quite right with me, *_sclerite would seem to be more accurate and more precise than both of these.

would it be a good idea to switch/alias the existing tags to use "sclerite" instead?

What I've seen is that chitin is what forms sclerite
But I just got major whiplash hearing that word again for the first time in maybe 20 years
If you're looking to tag armor plates, then yes, sclerite would be the anatomically correct term

nin10dope said:
What I've seen is that chitin is what forms sclerite
But I just got major whiplash hearing that word again for the first time in maybe 20 years
If you're looking to tag armor plates, then yes, sclerite would be the anatomically correct term

chitin is what makes up sclerite, but it's also what makes up several other structures in mollusks and some other organisms.

exoskeleton is the name used for the structural elements of an arthropod's body, but it's also commonly used to refer to stuff like power armour and exosuits.

sclerite avoids that slightly ambiguity of those other terms since it's something slightly more clearly arthropod-specific.
(it's also an element of a larger structure, which would make tags using the *_sclerites format closer to other body colour tags like *_feathers and *_scales)

I feel like exoskeleton (the one that's the currently most used and is, like, canonised by having implications) is the worst of the three options, if I'm being honest, and both sclerite and chitin would likely be better words.

dba_afish said:
chitin is what makes up sclerite, but it's also what makes up several other structures in mollusks and some other organisms.

exoskeleton is the name used for the structural elements of an arthropod's body, but it's also commonly used to refer to stuff like power armour and exosuits.

sclerite avoids that slightly ambiguity of those other terms since it's something slightly more clearly arthropod-specific.
(it's also an element of a larger structure, which would make tags using the *_sclerites format closer to other body colour tags like *_feathers and *_scales)

I feel like exoskeleton (the one that's the currently most used and is, like, canonised by having implications) is the worst of the three options, if I'm being honest, and both sclerite and chitin would likely be better words.

Yes, I was agreeing with you :P

nin10dope said:
Yes, I was agreeing with you :P

yeah, I might've already had that loaded from when I was writing the first thing, kinda just waiting for an excuse to expand on my points.

---

on topic, I added a few things to the BUR, translucent tags and contents tags.

Definitely didn't expect to read Translucent Balls tonight
Although only one of the posts for that looks translucent, the other 3 look opaque

Agaisnt the non-mammal_breasts implications, otherwise fine.

anicebee said:
Agaisnt the non-mammal_breasts implications, otherwise fine.

I mean
Insects aren't mammals

nin10dope said:
I mean
Insects aren't mammals

hybrid.

anicebee said:
hybrid.

Well damn
Clawstripe says you're right
topic #34495

anicebee said:
Agaisnt the non-mammal_breasts implications, otherwise fine.

nin10dope said:
Well damn
Clawstripe says you're right
topic #34495

I'll reiterate what I've said previously, if the mammaries are clearly being formed out of non-mammalian body structures then they should be tagged with the non-mammal tags, regardless of if a character is, like, part mammal. the abdomen of a honeypot ant is, unequivocally, an arthropod feature, if a character has breasts that look like one of those, they're non-mammal_breasts.

in regards to what Clawstripe had said in that thread:

clawstripe said:
If they're a hybrid with one of the parent species as a mammal, then they would already be tagged as mammal. In those cases, non-mammalian_breasts should be removed as it could be argued that the breasts are one of the parent's mammalian characteristics expressing itself.

while this is true in some cases, maybe most cases... I mean, for example the orca dragon hybrids that a few artist draw, there's not really any point on the character where the dragon stops and the orca begins you can't really say the characters have got, like, orca tits or dragon tits. that's a clear case where non-mammal_breasts shouldn't be used.

however, I don't think that you could really argue that in all cases, especially in cases where there are clear dividing lines between what is a mammal part and what is otherwise, I don't think "transparent membrane with chitinous structural plates that inflates with partially digested nectar" could be argued as having come from a mammalian parent.

I think a prerequisite for more support would be a short definition of the honeypot organs (or at least for the breasts) so people will know if that tag applies to given art

You'll also notice that I'm not arguing against Dba's point, either. :p In fact, I'm even agreeing with them before they made the argument:

Depends on the fictional species, I suppose.

After all, a mammal hybrid or an anthro insect for that matter, is fictional, even if the base species happens to be real.

But that's why multiple viewpoints are essential. Just because someone might be right to a degree doesn't mean they've managed to work everything out. Someone else could very well come up with something that'll help refine the concept which the first someone might have missed.

In this case, I'd say that, generally-speaking Nicebee and I are right, but as Dba brings up a very good counterpoint, I'd like to refine what I said in that earlier thread by adding that, even though a character might be a part mammal hybrid, if their breasts manifest in a distinctly non-mammalian way, then non-mammalian breasts might indeed be appropriate. On mammals, breasts are mammary glands. Their primary purpose is to provide milk to the offspring. However, although honeypot breasts and honeypot teats might look like mammal breasts or teats, as Dba points out:

...I don't think "transparent membrane with chitinous structural plates that inflates with partially digested nectar" could be argued as having come from a mammalian parent.

So, they don't just have some visual cues that they're not on a mammal but are clearly visually meant to dispense something other than milk. With that, I don't really have an issue with implying them to non-mammal breasts/teats.

Nicebee isn't wrong. Hybrids do throw a spanner in the logic. However, Dba points out that it's not an issue with honeypot breasts/teats because tagging a plausibly expressed (in a TWYS manner) mammalian trait on a non-mammal body, regardless of hybrid status, is the point of those two honeypot tags.

____________________

You could make the point we're overthinking it now, to which I counter with: we're discussing the finer points of fictional biology in the forums of a furry art curated archive. We passed the point of "overthinking it" 18 years ago. :p

Yeah these forums have shown me that overthinking is par for the course lmao

I do agree with Fish's counterpoint that if the breasts look translucent and full of honey, then they are not mammalian by default

clawstripe said:
...but are clearly visually meant to dispense something other than milk. With that, I don't really have an issue with implying them to non-mammal breasts/teats.

Should unusual_lactation imply non-mammal_breasts?

I'd also like to point out the existence of these tags was to appeal to an audience against breasts on non-mammal characters, rather than breasts based off of non-mammal anatomy.

anicebee said:
Should unusual_lactation imply non-mammal_breasts?

No, because characters who have udders but no breasts can lactate unusually as well.

post #866695

And characters who do have breasts can still lactate unusually with those breasts, while being a mammal.

post #5318382

anicebee said:
I'd also like to point out the existence of these tags was to appeal to an audience against breasts on non-mammal characters, rather than breasts based off of non-mammal anatomy.

I feel like it's really, really hard to define it like that, though. and there's a lot of edge cases where I feel like people who'd want to avoid/find characters like this would have problems if we're just like "well a part of it's mammal so, the breasts aren't non-mammal".

I did sort of vaguely gesture towards chimerae before, but we actually have a few posts I can find that actually illustrate my point. here's just one:
post #3390701
this character is a mythological_chimera: two parts mammal, one part reptile. I think this post is a pretty clear non-mammal_breasts situation, despite the character being part mammal, because the breasts are on the snake part of the body.

I think that the easiest, most consistent, most useful way to define the tag is to take stuff like this into account when dealing with taur and chimera characters as well as other split-form hybrids/humanoids.