Felinoid

Felinoids are furred humanoids characterized by lean physiques and large, bushy tails. Unlike most humanoids, their spines are able to rotate nearly halfway around their body, and elastic tissue covering vertebrates allows for spinal contraction. This allows a high level of flexibility and speed, though it weakens spinal anchoring.   A typical felinoid will reach just about five and a half feet, with much of their muscle concentrated in their powerful legs. Unlike most furred races, felinoids do not have particularly tough skin, making them generally quite fragile. The bushy tail is used primarily for counter-balance, and is not prehensile, with no internal musculature.   The primary morphological characteristics of Felinoid are the colour and pattern of their fur. Most dull colours are represented, with the most common being shades of yellow and brown, and all felinoids are either black-spotted or white-spotted, with the exact pattern differing between individuals.

Felinoid reproduce sexually, with a male and female partner. Once the female is fertilized, she will gestate for nine months, and give live birth to a litter of three to five kittens. The kittens are helpless at birth, and require milk from their mother to survive for the next year, though they do not become truly self-sufficient for another four years afterwards. The kittens will become independent within thirteen years of birth.

While Felinoids are furred, this affords them little resistance against the cold, so most felinoids will prefer to live in temperate climates, preferably on larger, open plains where they can exploit their speed, or in rainforests, where they can exploit their natural flexibility and claws to climb effectively.

Felinoids are carnivores that require a diet entirely composed of meat, typically eating three to four pounds of meat a day. Unlike most other carnivores, felinoids are rather repulsed by raw meat, and will attempt to cook and season their meat before consuming it.

Felinoid societies are characterized by a distrust for strangers, with most groups being no larger than 100 members. Larger groups are usually comprised of smaller felinoid groups who have banded together for their mutual good, but mostly stick to their own. Internally, felinoid groups are typically very loosely stratified, acting more as extended family than a governmental group.

While Felinoid intelligence is generally average for humanoids, felinoid are deeply unsuited to most fields of study due to a complete mental inability to organically process arbitrary symbols. While they can learn numbers and letters with some effort, and even draw arbitrary symbols if trained, they simply lack the mental ability to read arbitrary symbols. Most felinoid who are integrated with other humanoids find this incredibly frustrating, and places with high densities of felinoid tend to ensure symbol use is minimized.

Felinoid have the typical sensor suite of humanoids, but are renowned for their generally excellent senses. Their pupils cover the entirety of their eye sockets, allowing very advanced night vision, and both their sense of smell and hearing are highly developed, though neither are truly discriminatory.