Families

-``Just wait, you will love this. If you thought you were a freak just look at this... I am so glad I came earlier, I wasn't expecting you not to know anything, this way the talk will actually be fun.'' - ``Akita'' was really enjoying himself at my expenses.

-``I am so happy for you. Where did you come from anyway...'' - If I wasn't already nervous I would definitely get there! It was the start of the semester and I already could use some long distant vacations.

-``Let us start by the Felidae.'' - and the tail like figure moved to the top left of the board giving place to pictures of cats, lions, tigers and other feline. ``Marvelous creatures, modesty apart. Agile and independent.'' - The board filled with text... - ``If we go to wikipedia, this is what we get.''

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Wiki: Felidae - the biological family of the cats; a member of this family is called a felid.

The most familiar felid is the domestic cat, which first became associated with humans about 10,000 years ago, but the family includes all other wild cats including the big cats.

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-``Catman have made history since the early Egipt and up to our day.''-She carried on to a new slide...

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Catmen in fiction:

goddess Sekhmet, who with the head of a lion was the goddess of war;

Mau, a personification of Ra as a cat;

Tefnut, a lion headed goddess whose name means Moisture and represents one of the most primeval forces of creation;

Mafdet, a goddess of protection;

Catwoman, fictional character from Batman, who due to popularity gained her solo career in comics.

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The granny lady smiled warmly and clicked again on the remote. The white board was filled with cats... or images of hairy people with whiskers and small, sharp fluorescent eyes and salient small ears... and jeans with tails coming out off them... and long red nails in white furry hands.

-``No way! It can't be... it makes no sense. And the other omens of the symbol?'' - I turned to the ``Akita'' who looked as if his huge cheeks couldn't hold the stress of his gigantic smile, even his eyes seemed like they were going to burst into laughter. -``You didn't tell just so you could see me like this, wasn't it?'' - My heart started racing, but the seminar waited for no one and for no heart.

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Homo Filidae Sapiens characteristics:

- fur, with distinctive spots, stripes, or rosettes;

- tongue of felids is covered with horny papillae;

- fully retractable claws;

- nocturnal hunters, night vision especially good, tapetum lucidum reflects light back inside the eyeball;

- ears, especially sensitive to high-frequency sounds;

- vomeronasal - organ in the roof of the mouth, allowing them to "taste" the air;

- sensitive vibrissa (whiskers) set deep within the skin, which provide them with sensory information about the slightest air movement around;

- fall on their feet, due to vision and balance together;

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-``The Canidea, our not so subtle dear rivals of great nose.'' - She continued. And for the first time, the sight of a werewolf on the board... of his big bent furry ears and huge burning eyes, of the hairy claws born from human hands, of the legs twisted forward standing on tip toes, of the conic jaw extruded from a distinctively hairy human face, of the swinging elegant tail forced out of some jeans... that months ago made me drowsy, now actually represented the one known factor of this reality, the one floating wood in this ocean of spiral truth, of folkloric tails and nightmares.

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Wiki: Canidae - the biological family of carnivorous and omnivorous mammals that includes the wolves, foxes, jackals, coyotes, and the domestic dog; a member of this family is called a canid . The Canidae family is divided into the "wolf-like" and "dog-like" animals of the tribe Canini and the "foxes" of the tribe Vulpini. The two species of the basal Caninae are more primitive and do not fit into either tribe.

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"Of course their presence in fiction..."

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Wolfmen in fiction:

- In folklore, mythology and anthropology, lycanthropy (from the Greek words lycos ("wolf") and anthropos ("human being"));

- The term "cynanthropy" was applied in 1901 to Chinese myths about humans turning into dogs, dogs becoming people, and sexual relations between humans and canines;

- The werewolf ledgends date the medival era, registered in many cultures from European to the native americans;

- The French name for a werewolf, sometimes used in English, is loup-garou, from the Latin noun lupus meaning wolf and from Old French garoul meaning werewolf;

- lycanthropy alibi - a mental illness in which a patient believes he or she is, or has transformed into, an animal and behaves accordingly - is responsible for the coverup of social contingencies. This is sometimes referred to as clinical lycanthropy to distinguish it from its use in legends.

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Homo Canidae Sapiens Sapiens characteristics:

- fur, bushy tail;

- inhabit a wide range of different habitats;

- digitigrade - walk on their toes;

- non-retractile claws;

- social, communicate with each other by scent signals, can discriminate odors at concentrations nearly 100 million times lower than humans;

- crepuscular hunters, high density of rods in the fovea, an increased flicker rate, and a tapetum lucidum,

- dichromats - color vision equivalent to red-green color blindness in humans, visual discrimination for moving objects is very high;

- detect sounds far beyond the upper limit of the human auditory spectrum, ear mobility to rapidly pinpoint the location of a sound;

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-``The Chiroptera, our dark flying cousins.''- The bat wing found its way to the corner of the slides and the parade continued...

-``How is this possible? How can this be real?''

-``What? Wolfmen can exist, but other crossed humans can't? You are being unreasonable.'' - ``Akita's'' eyes were now confused between a smile and a sweet concern for my painful reaction. I could feel the air coming short in my lungs, like I had a punch on the stomach and could no longer fill them. As the bat wings filled the board, attached to naked pale muscled yet slim shoulders; sharp long teeth and bleach eyes... the bleach eyes, not as surreal void bleach eyes as "those eyes", but even so my body trembled and I checked over my shoulder.

I hadn't thought about it in a while, haven't even felt any paranoia yet. I turned back and scanned the full long room, but all I could see were students. Some talking in indifference, other commenting in amazement and a few just listening... all very different and none very normal. There were reflecting shiny eyes, dim shiny eyes, bleached pale eyes and strongly colored eyes, but I could not find normal brow or blue eyes. Sonya would definitely stand out in this crowd.

Even the nervous movements with the pencil or pen were strange. While some chew compulsively in a goofy wet way, some moved it in dancing jugglery within their hands. Some preferred to move their whole body in a silent lullaby, and other would just let their bleach eyes zoom in as a predator training, trying to absorb the auditorium's collective movement in an hypnotic wide look. I could tell these had something alike the bleach eyes that followed my classes, but be it because of the darkness in which he hid, or because of a disconcerting painful loneliness, the look that by corrosion tattooed its way to the back of my head was something else.

A shiver of cool blood climbed my spine up to my neck and I turned back to find two very warm and patient eyes glancing at me all the way across the crowd, from the stage platform.

-``I know it hard for therianthropes to pay attention and stay foot, it is a dreadful problem in the first years and most of you are just getting started in this life, but you must discipline yourselves if you want to be able to be integrated into the global society. And don't fool yourselves, there isn't enough of us to build a decent self-consistent society of our own. And scattered around the world as we are it's not like we can build a country.'' - I could feel some sympathy in "granny"s words. She was once where we are now and it is true that I couldn't remember the last time I was swooped in dreams for a full night, and when I didn't feel a ticking bomb of bad temper peeking constantly underneath my skin.

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Wiki: Chiroptera - the order of the bats . The forelimbs of bats are webbed and developed as wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums and colugos, glide rather than fly, and only for short distances.

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Batmen in fiction:

- cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demons and spirits considered precursors to the modern vampires;

- Brian Frost - the belief in vampires and bloodsucking demons is as old as man himself, and may go back to prehistoric times

- folkloric vampires of the Balkans and Eastern Europe had a wide range of appearance ranging from nearly human to bloated rotting corpses, until John Polidori's (1819) novella the vampire, that established the archetype of charismatic and sophisticated vampire;

- Then the Batman was turned even into a hero by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. Nowadays a mixture of anti-hero and hero was obtained by the American author Stephenie Meyer.

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Homo Chroptera Sapiens Sapiens characteristics:

- one-way valves in the arteries to prevent the blood from flowing backwards;

- thin and easy to maneuver, the wings are fragile but renewable and retractile;

- high quality sense of smell and hearing tuned to specific frequency;

- poor visual acuity, but they use echolocation - a perceptual system where ultrasonic sounds are emitted specifically to produce echoes. They sight is even worst upon high intensity day light.

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Even in my trembling nerves I couldn't help but laugh at the pictures of cartoon and fiction novel vampires, wearing long capes and extravagant blood dirty teeth that filled the following slide. Atila looked at me and smiled, as if he approved my tension release. It was efficient to des-dramatize the existence of a dark world I once more ignored.

He pinched my cheek as if I was just a cute little baby, while his cheeks were stressed pressing his lips forward in a baby talk face. - ``Oh, what a chubby little thing you are''

-``Finaly! A smile, I was starting to think you didn't know how to anymore.'' - I felt a weight leave my shoulders and I laughed again, this time I really felt like it. My chest filled and air was free again to enter at ease.

-``I felt like I couldn't.'' - Seems like I can feel unstressed as drastically as I can be despaired and depressed.

-``The Cetacea, our aquatic cousins.'' - The ``granny'''s lecture continued inert to the background noise or the overall conversation. And the whale tail was cornered by fotos of... I couldn't belive my eyes...

-``Mermaids, seriously?'' - I couldn't hold it back anymore. It was hilarious to see all of these wetsuit rubber tailed tights crossing gradually to bathing suited shiny skin, and the webbed hands... and the muscled glossy upper chest... and the transparent eyelids on huge forcibly colored eyes.

-``See? Not so bad, is it?'' - He was still concerned about my reactions, but I was no longer tense, and even the thought of Bleach Eyes seemed less disturbing.

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Cetacea - the order includes the marine mammals commonly known as whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Cetus is Latin and is used in biological names to mean "whale"; its original meaning, "large sea animal", was more general. It comes from Ancient Greek "whale" or "any huge fish or sea monster". In Greek mythology the monster Perseus defeated was called Ceto, which is depicted by the constellation of Cetus. Cetology is the branch of marine science associated with the study of cetaceans.

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-``Can't believe there is no reference to the little mermaid.'' - I pretend pouted.

-``Seriously, one moment ago you were having trouble concentrating on how inhuman it all is and now you would enjoy cartoons?'' - His warm voice answered laughing and his large arm involved my back pulling me against him. I flinched. He let go before I could do or say anything and the movement was so impulsive and innocent I couldn't complain, though his mild fragrance would torment me for a while and my blood rushed up and down my spine crazy lost with no direction.

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Whalemen in fiction:

- mermaid, old English word for "sea" and maid, a woman;

- In Assyria (ca. 1000 BC), the goddess Atargatis, mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal shepherd and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty;

- In Greece Alexander the Great's sister is turned into a mermaid after she died;

- Sea-people are referred in many stories of ``One thousand and One Nights''; In Britain, mermaids were unlucky omens;

- In China, their tears turn into precious pearls; In Poland the capital is symbolized by a mermaid;

- In the Caribbean (Neo-Taino nations) the mermaid is called Aycaia...

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Homo Cetacea Sapiens Sapiens characteristics:

- tail nearly hairless, insulated by a thick layer of blubber, with horizontal flukes;

- can remain under water for long periods;

- greasy tears, which protect the eyes from salt water;

- generally poor vision out of water;

- excellent hearing, sensitive to sound waves under water along the whole body, capable of echolocation; absolute hearing hence the affluence to music;

- known for high cognitive abilities.

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-``So now that you know your colleges, it is time to know their families. You will have gymnastics, history of the therianthrope and specialized law from this day until the end of the semester. I hope you will enjoy it. And welcome to the start of a new dawn.'' - Lady ``grany'''s voice echoed through the large room, ending our introduction lecture. I was a brand new woman, I knew of that much and I was ready to face my world. What choice did I have?