askerian | ... I've got the weirdest idea about werewolves...

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... I've got the weirdest idea about werewolves...

So, the transformation. Body parts change shape, yeah? So my werebeasts are all five-toed. The tail -- well, it's just the end of the spine anyway, so it's not created out of nowhere. But the fur... okay, hyperactive hair follicles! I can buy that.

But they lose all their fur when they change back, yeah? And their head (and body) hair grows back.

How does their body know what length it was before the transformation? Hair is all dead cells.

So one logical way to go with that would be that every transformation = instant crew cut.

Or alternately it grows super fast and then they all end up with ass-long hair. But then I thiiink someone would notice a whole group of people growing a meter-long ponytail every month and then hacking it off, only to do it again, and again.

joisbishmyoga: I dunno, considering the mass problem and the reforming your entire skeletal and muscular structure in about five minutes flat without dying or deforming your brain to complete mush, haircuts seem a bit...

... or I might be thinking too much. Yeah. That's another possibility.

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*rolls thoughts around for a few moments*

well... a few ideas:

1) Magic! hey, why not? ;)

2) Maybe... their current hair is some how absorbed and used to produce the fur... which is reabsorbed and re-emited as hair? Okay, that's even more stupid then magic... ^^;

3) I do kinda like the idea of it jsut growing quickly.. If they, I assume, are taken by surprise by it, they'd have to take pains to keep their hair trimmed to the 'right length'.. so no one notices the random length changes... but.. well.. think about how much someone already does in the morning, with shaving and stuff... taking a pair of scissors and snipsniping a bit doesn't seem too outlandish.

4) possibly the easiest idea: the hair on their head doesn't DO anything. They change, it stays there. So you have a werewolf with long hair running around. Maybe they get a bit 'extra fluffy' around the scalp because of fur filling in the 'non hairy' areas of the scalp, providing extra lift. I think your average coat of fur has three different types of hair in it... long guard hairs and shorter, softer, fuzzier other types of hair that provide a bit of lift and warmth and stuff. Maybe they get the 'warm' fluffy fur on their scalps because their bodies thing the head hair is the 'guard hair' sort of material.

God, I'm explaining this really badly.. It's kind of a dumb idea anyway XD

speaking of thinking too much.. I have a thought to bother your brain for a while: I wonder what growing a baculum feels like... ;)

That's rather what I was thinking, too, before I went snarky on Asuka. "Why does the hair on their heads have to fall out at the end or shorten at the beginning or anything?"

... hehehe. So either they have straight, soft, furlike pubic hair, or the werewolves are running around with curlies up between their legs...

(p.s. - the shorter hairs you're thinking of are the undercoat. My cat's a smoke variety because she has a black coat and a white undercoat. A third kind of hair might be whiskers...?)

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Okay. I have now had sleep and might be able to use my words with more skill and agility! :D

Sad--here I am thinking about penis bones and not pubic hair :p Heh. Maybe their hair 'down there' grows in straighter and smoother--more like a pelt rather then pubic hair... very orderly and mostly pointing in one direction. it could be one of those weird indicators that someone might be a werebeast--like hairy hands and monobrows XD

Undercoat. dear god, why couldn't I think of that? :)

Okay: Guard hairs/top -- Thick, wide hairs that do all sorts of good stuff. Undercoat/down hair - fine, fluffy fur that insulates and stuff.

The third type of hair I was thinking of is present in domestic cats and other species. They are called 'awn hair', and are longer then the undercoat/down hairs, but shorter then the topcoat. They also insulate and protect the undercoat. I was remembering this detail because there are several species of cat who's coat is missing one, or more of these types of fur. (Sphynx lack all 3, Cornish Rex lack the awn hair and the topcoat, leaving them with just the down fur, and Devon Rex jut lack, mostly, the top coat.)

tl;dr - there are three kinds of fur :D they just don't always apply to werewolves XD

oh, please ignore that 'comment posted successfully"... I had managed to dumbfuckedly post the comment while half way done with it, then copied it, deleted it, finished it and reposted it without noticing that I grabbed that extra bit of text.

...DOH.

the third sounds fun, but also problematic for people who have long hair and like it that way. They'd have to keep it short all the time instead of being able to enjoy it long at least part-time. Maybe I can keep that idea for a works where werewolves are out -- oh hey, Breanna and James. Alright, that idea goes there. XD

I like your fourth idea. That would work really well. But pffffhahahaha some of them must have really weird head-fur. XD Also the ones who have long hair -- wow, no way to pretend they're just run of the mill animals. Maybe it tangles into the rest of the coat as it grows, so unless someone combs it out it's not obvious. Hmmm. HMMMM.

speaking of thinking too much.. I have a thought to bother your brain for a while: I wonder what growing a baculum feels like... ;)
*dies a little inside*
Probably real kinky. Tho they must be in so much pain from the rest of their bodies they don't notice. XD

Why would they have to keep it short all the time? it'd be easier to keep it long: gather it up in a pony tail and just one generally big snip, rather then little snips all over. it'd be a bit messy, sure, but.....

My husband, in regards to the forth idea, proposed the idea that the 'scalp' area slides back a bit more to the back of the neck, resulting in more of a 'mane'... and some animals do have more of a pronounced ridge of fur along their necks/spines, so....

I like the idea of it getting all tangled up so it's a bit harder to tell that it's REALLY weird, and not just a little weird... it could lead to more of a werewolf 'culture' too... where they take the time to groom their hair out when attending 'official' wolfy evens and stuff.

of course then. I wonder how it'd look when braided pre-shift...

as for penis bones.. I was thinking really kinky, or excruciating XD

... au début, je ne sais pas mais... si par la suite ils parviennent à contrôler leur transformation dans un sens comme dans l'autre, peut-être qu'ils pourront contrôler leur pilosité et décider de leur longueur de cheveux...?

Mais sérieusement, ne pas avoir d'explication à ce niveau ne me gènerait pas du tout (ça reste une partie du corps, pas comme des vêtements qui disparaissent ou apparaissent par magie). Vu la refonte corporelle générale, que les cheveux soient 'internalisés' puis reconstitués à l'identique de retour à la forme humaine par l'opération du sein esprit ne me paraît pas poser de problème. ~~Tu te prends la tête pour rien ! :D~~

...Damn to you itty bitty bits for inflicting that stupid yet mind-boggling and thought-consuming question on me.

I like uneko's "Magic! hey, why not? ;)" theory. Explains a lot. XD Other than that... Maybe the hair on their bodies like, drop off or something? Em. How to explain. Hmm...

Okay, just when they are transforming back to the original human form, all their fur starts to shed, and when the human form is nearly completed the human hair (with right lengths for everywhere) starts growing again. Superfast, the same way as with the fur grows. And so, all werewolves don't have the privilege of very long hair. The length that is naturally grown back will be different for everyone, because it's made of the dead skin cells that, er, died through the transformation. I think something slightly below the shoulder might be the longest they can grow? (so the men can have longish hair too! <3)

This is the perfect solution. ~~Ahaha, what do you mean that there are loopholes?~~

P.S. I heard somewhere that for eyelashes and eyebrows, when the hair gets to a certain length, it just drops off naturally. Maybe this fact can help with... Something.

I heard somewhere that for eyelashes and eyebrows, when the hair gets to a certain length, it just drops off naturally.

How much do you think they go through in vacuum cleaner bags a month, then? Because that's an awful lot of hair floating around. (Good god, can someone be a werewolf and allergic to dog hair?)

LOL! Please! Don't give me any more questions to keep me up in the middle of the night!

I think for eyelashes and stuff, it grows much more slower??? Hmm. That doesn't sound pausible enough, huh? Maybe it's something like they grow to a certain length, stay at that certain length a while, then drop out. (If you wanna argue about hair lengths, do you notice your leg/arm/underarm/whatever hairs growing lengths like Rapunzel? ...dear God, I think I just traumatised myself with the image.)

ooh.. interesting idea there.... or maybe their body attempt to use up as much of the, er, 'hair growing' material inside them as they shift back... so if they haven't been shifting a lot, or have been eating very well, their hair can GROW.. and GROW... and GROW... 'til some fail safe kinda kicks in and the body goes "that's enough hair!"... and if someone's been eating poorly, or shifting a LOT... maybe they end up with just a vague fuzz until they can chow down and shift again.

Everyone could have a generally different 'stopping' point (jsut like how everyone has a differnet point where a fever starts making it hard to think)... so someone might not ever really get past shoulder length while someone constantly ends up with floor lengthed hair.

the real question would be, does it grow out in, like, 5 minutes? or is it a slower process that takes several hours, or even a day or two?

I like the five minutes idea. Because well, it's convenient for the writer. XD And hair growing constantly over the next day or two might be rather obvious. "Morning Jane!" "Evening Jane! Wait, did you get hair extensions again?" Or something.

Also, if their fur can grow out all over their whole body in a matter of minutes, why can't the process, when restricted to a certain part of the body, grow just as fast or faster? (The other body parts' hair length is much shorter, so I don't think it'll grow as long. Or it might just drop off after reaching a certain length, and energy spent growing and shedding a few short strands of hair would be wasteful, so it'll probably get redirected elsewhere.)

I think this is where you put your fingers in your ears and chant, 'lalalalala magic clause! lalalalala magic clause!' where the magic clause is the answer to the question, 'how does that happen?' and the actual answer is, 'because it's magic, duh!'

Then again, I do the same thing when it comes to any magic I write, as well: spending countless hours trying to figure out if there's any kind of scientific basis for an action. Eventually I fail, and have to accept the dreaded magic clause. Sigh.

But it's better to explain what the magic DOES and HOW -- nrgh. ;__; Ahhhh I want to explaiiinn.

Ahh, nevermind. i've wasted two hours thinking on that stuff. What the hell, self. XD

Yeah, I was thinking the same -- the hair on the head just stays there . Depending on what their normal haircut is it might or might not look shaggy and a little overgrown, but hey.

Sorry I just kind of lol'd >_>;;; I'm rather useless 8D

But reading the comments, I'm leaning towards the hair on the head not really doing anything lol... unless the person is initially bald and then I guess they'd spontaneously grow hair? XDD

Lycanthropy = the new rogaine

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! "Become a werewolf! The one stop solution to all your hair problems!" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Dear Lord, I can see the ads on the TV already! XD

Hormones control hair growth, yes? I can't give a very well thought out complete answer here but a few things that're trying to make a point in my over-tired brain are as follows-

-It was already mentioned that eyelashes and eyebrows have a control factor to keep them from growing over long. So does all healthy body hair. It's different in most people, I have a cousin who grew ten inches of new hair in the last three months where I've only grown three. And let us not even talk about how little time it took my half-hispanic other cousin to grow ass length hair after a boot camp chop job.

-Women with polycystic ovary syndrome (among other things) often develop male-pattern hair growth. Body hair grows longer, thicker and in all the wrong places for a woman.

Eh, I've forgotten the relevant point I was trying to express, so a few more thoughts that hopefully conform to logic. Getting them all beastly is the easy part. Once they're human again, where does the hair go? I like the idea of all the new hair just falling out, but that wouldn't be instantaneous, there'd have to be some rubbing and brushing to get rid of all the dead hair, particularly that patch in the middle of the back that's so difficult to reach with any degree of dexterity. And wow, don't do that in the house. It'd be like, take the sheddings of one average dog and multiply by infinity, ugh. Also, for the paranoid mind, all that shed hair laying around would be a marker of note to those who know what to look for, they'd want to keep that discrete.

I like the idea of them having to cut their hair after. Having them just go back to normal looking without a hitch is too like kid magic; don't ask questions, just enjoy the show. Even a BS explanation is better than indefinitely suspended disbelief. Also, imagine how good at least one of them would get at cutting and styling hair. Unless they found an outside source they could trust to groom them. Still, social grooming is prrrlll, squeee! and also kind hot.

--How does their body know what length it was before the transformation? Hair is all dead cells.-- Okay, I'm drawing on an old memory here, so doubt my accuracy please, but I think someone explained to me once that hair puts a certain amount of weight on the follicle. The nerves around the hair follicle are very sensitive so the body would know how long the hair is by how much it weighs? You may want to look up why the body grows hair back darker, and in multiples, when a person shaves. It would likely have some relevant application.

Hmm, I like your last theory/statement. Was going to suggest something like that, but didn't really think it through. I'll say if they wanted to look like they usually do, the 'weight on the follicle' would be the best theory.

Simple non-magic solution might be to make the hair LIVE cells instead of dead cells in werewolves.

Yeah but then haircuts and shedding = potential ouch and bleeding. the cells wouldn't live long if they're not irrigated by blood XD;;

Not necessarily. For example people constantly shed cels that have died off from their skin (surface as well as intestinal lining!) and that doesn't hurt, does it? And if you make each hair just ONE cell, which is constantly growing, you can keep the blood vessels nurishing it just at the root, so no bleeding during haircuts either. And if the cell has an extremly high level of keratin filaments and other assorted filaments, plus a slow metabolism (like, e.g. bone cells, which are live cells too) then there wouldn't be any dripping of cell fluids during cuts either.

Dogs have five toes on the front paws if you count the dewclaw, surely wolves do too?

Dogs and wolves both have five functional digits on the front paw: even the thumb/dewclaw has its own tendons, joints and whatnot.
As for the hind ones, pure-blooded wolves are supposed to only have four, while dogs may have a vestigial dewclaw (often it's barely even attached to the foot).
This was used in some research here in Italy to study the level of cross-breeding between the local wolf subspecies and stray/feral dogs: while our wolves managed to survive pretty well alongside humans, compared to other countries where they were hunted to extinction, they may now face the same fate of their northern cousins because of simple bastardization...

Going back to the werewolves, in my head-canon I always thought that weres would keep their 1st toe in the form of a dewclaw, resulting in another physical difference between them and the actual wolves. You know, "One: He's sitting on my chair. Two: He's wearing my clothes. Three: His name's Remus Lupin." Four: He's got dewclaws.

Sorry for the infodump, but hypothetical/fantasy anatomy does keep me up at night on occasion XD (going to vet school probably didn't help...)

Asuka: I was reading a comic called "Peter is the Wolf" and it dealt with this at one point.

http://www.peteristhewolf.com/adult/061.html this is the "adult" version of the comic, with all the nibbly bits and such shown, but there's a less nibbly version too.

Fur just...ungrew!

XD Ungrowing fur is kinda weird, though... But thanks for the link, I spent all afternoon reading! It's a really fun comic. *starts stalking it*

Hee. I have a million and one comics I read every day. (I think at last count I was over 80? I dunno anymore. :D )

Ooooo. I should send you the link to Jess Fink's Chester 5000 XYV!

http://jessfink.com/Chester5000XYV/?p=34 It's so effin' pretty and steampunk!

The above comments seem to all like the not-changing-head-hair? There could be a control that prevents werewolves from growing long hair--similar to eyebrows--so that they don't look ridiculous?

Wow. I feel like a total loser for not having thought about this before now. But I think the answer to your question would depend primarily upon what sort of werewolf/lycanthrope you're dealing with. Because the answer that I would come up with would probably differ greatly from yours. (I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any of the stuff you've written with werewolves, except for your vaguely-KakaSasu-ficlet. Which I liked btw.)

I've been working on a novel that centers around lycanthropes that were created through genetic tampering by Secret Government Facilities. Since they aren't lycanthropes through any sort of magical means, curses, etc., I have been working through ways of justifying their existence scientifically, and for some reason the hair growth thing never even occurred to me.

I justified for the progression of scientific experimentation. As in, scientists implanting women with embryos that contained the genetically altered human DNA. The first waves were mostly stillborn, miscarried, etc. After this, they would have been learning from their mistakes, altering DNA, so that waves coming after this wouldn't be true lycanthropes, but instead might have feline eyes, odd skin pigmentation (i.e. stripes or spots),hair everywhere, maybe be born with a tail or teeth more fitting for a wolf's mouth. Things that wouldn't necessarily mark a person as a lycanthrope, but could be explained away as birth defects or other diseases that already exist (I know there's one for having lots of extra body hair, but I can't remember the name of it atm). Once the scientists had perfected their formulas, they'd be able to implant women with embryos that would eventually grow into true lycanthropes.

And that was when I really had to fill in blanks. I decided that I'd explain their transformations as caused (or at least started) by hormones and certain neurotransmitters. So it was justifiable that their true lycanthropy would begin at puberty, a time of wildly fluctuating hormones. I know most lycanthropes usually turn into animals larger and potentially more fearsome than the actual animal itself is, but for the sake of being able to scientifically justify mine, all the lycanthropes in my novel preserve body mass. The scientists also chose only mammalian DNA for the animal counterparts, and only mammals near to the mass of a human, based upon extremes in both directions.

For example, one of my characters is a guy whose parents were both over average height/weight, and they combined the parent DNA with that of a bear, hoping that the combination of the parents' DNA would give them a lycanthrope who would essentially be a tank. This man is below average height, trim and wiry, and the smallest black bear you've ever seen. He doesn't particularly mind this, but he is aware of the fact that he is a cosmic joke.

To go back to the hair thing. Obvi, for my lycanthropes the "POOF IT'S MAGIC DON'T LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN" explanation won't work. I really like

charcoalcat's suggestion about follicle nerve memory. Though, coincidentally, I think most of my lycanthropes ended up with fairly short hair. Of course your suggestion about the hair growing super-fast would probably work for my lycanthropes, too, because they don't suffer the lunar curse; they transform whenever. Which is actually, not very often for reasons I won't expand upon here since this comment is long enough already. SORRY FOR RAMBLING.

Also I'm a retard and posted with my RP log journal. >_< FORGIVE MEEEE?

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... I've got the weirdest idea about werewolves...

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