#minks

Finger wrestling with a tiny mink kit

A few winters ago, Bill was in the right place at the right time when this American Mink came bounding his way. It spotted him, then came to a sudden halt. He was able to get a few quick images before it took off.

(Cute art from Pinterest)

How those people can sleep with themselves at night I do not wish to know.

Who could look into the eyes of this little fuzzy flying snowball and feel anything but the urge to protec?

I’m thinking instead of having her wings on her back (much like Shriek) maybe she would have hand wings like actual bats and their wing membranes

A bat’s wing is technically just an arm and hand with really long fingers and flesh between the body and the finger bones (known as a wing membrane).

So in short, I’m thinking Isla should look a bit like these references:

I really like that choice!

Honestly, I think there's a ton of variety with how bat mink wing anatomy works. Some have wing arms, others have back wings, and some may even have partial wings akin to flying squirrels.

The reason I ended up placing Shriek's wings on her back is for mostly practical reasons. It's generally a lot easier to draw her with regular clothes without having to work around wing arms. It also frees her arms up for more mobility, plus it's reflective of how she's visually based on the characters from Gargoyles and Goliath the bat dragon from DC comics.

Doodle, just the fact that you took the time to draw this little fanged sweetie makes me happier than a black cat in a pumpkin patch!!! 😁😁

If Charles and or Mahina were Minks, what do you think they’d be?

Charles would be a cheetah, no question. The animal so anxious that their numbers are in danger because they barely breed and need emotional support dogs in captivity. His little spots are shaped like clouds!

For Mahi, I'm tied between a Lunarian-mink hybrid between the Hawaiian hoary bat (I think half feathered-half leather wings is a really cool comb) or the poi dog which went extinct in our world in the early 20th century and fits with the Lunarians practically having gone the same route on Blue Planet

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Isla is specifically a Honduran White Bat which means she doesn’t feed on blood like Shriek does and instead has a diet of fruit (and sometimes meat because she’s still a mink but she prefers fruit)

This isn’t even taking into account their physical differences, such as the fact that Shriek is going to grow much bigger than Isla because Isla is already fully grown at 3 feet tall (Honduran white bats are SMALL).

Yup, you hit it right on the money! I'll be the first to admit that Shriek sometimes embodies most of the pop culture image of what bats are like rather than being an accurate representation of one particular species. She gets vampire bat traits for the blood-drinking and her social skills and fruit bats for most of her design (namely her snoot) and love of all things in the produce aisle. From what we see of the minks, some are the generic version of their species like how the dog minks mostly seem to be standard dogs even though theres dozens of different dog breeds and even more mixed breeds, while others are more specific like Bepo being a polar bear mink.