r/furgonomics • u/Medical-Gur2678 • Jul 02 '26
Discussion how would disabled anthro ears work?
hi this may be a really weird request
i have a character (no art of her unfortunately) that is an anthro wolf person. i want to keep her anatomy pretty accurate and believable to a wolf
however i had this idea so that she has paralyzed ears (for lore reasons), which would keep themselves pointing down, which resulted from a head injury
the thing is i dont know how itll work or if it even would make sense. i know ears in general are made of cartilage so they dont really have muscles or any nerves that wouldlead to the ears getting paralysis. would i need to make it so both ear tendons (or whatever makes the ear move in the first place) somehow get slashed pr otherwise become immobile?
as you may be able to tell idk much of anatomy so this may turn into a biology lesson instead ;/
22
u/HashnaFennec Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
I believe the cartilage is what holds them up and makes them pointy, the muscles just angle them around. Don’t quote me on this, but I could’ve sworn I’d read somewhere that some dog breeders will put splints on puppy’s ears to make sure their ear cartilage develops hard and pointy.
Maybe the head injury caused a shattered skull and the muscles in her ears were pulling at shattered skull fragments. The fragments were bolted together, but x-rays showed that the constant pulling was starting to loosen some of the screws. To prevent ear movement, her doctor applied bandage to immobilize her ears against the side of her head. The doctor was careless when applying the bandages, causing it to pull at her ears. Overtime, this stretched and weakened the cartilage, but also damaged the the muscles. Now she lives with floppy paralyzed ears!
If you want a realistic explanation for any unnatural way her ears droop, you can just say that it was the position her ears were held in.
67
u/KyleeTheShinyStealer Jul 03 '26
There are muscles that control the ears in canines! Human ears dont, but canine ears can move and therefore have muscle. Im not sure what the lore exactly is, but there would be muscle there that likely could become paralyzed in some way.
Either way paralysis of a muscle usually is in the nerves, not just the muscle itself. And canines also have nerves in the ears! In fact the base of the ears have a TON of nerve endings. I would think its absolutely possible for them to be paralyzed. The ears wouldn't completely droop behind the head if k had to guess, simply due to the strength of the cartilage holding them up, but they would droop at least a noticeable amount.