Where are the organs!?!

[SangoProduction]

Yes, the title is riffing on online art "critics." But that's not the point.

A centaur is half man half horse. Where does the heart reside? (Two hearts getting out of sync sounds like it'd be a bad time.)

Is it found in the horse half, and have to somehow pump from where the human anus would be all the way up to the head, without having the creature knock itself out? Or is it situated in the human half, leaving its powerful legs critically lacking in blood flow?

It doesn't seem as though this thing has an exceptionally large chest cavity for a more powerful heart....unless we think about the lungs. Obviously, we can't have the lungs being inside the horse half - it's too far away from the air hole. That's just asking for trouble. So those have to be in the human half...And obviously, human lungs probably aren't going to be enough to power an entire horse + human.
So, what if the lungs took up the whole of the human chest cavity (or perhaps even going into/through the abdomen), meanwhile the mega-heart could be situated in the horse chest to be as large as it needs to be.

And then the digestive system can just be in any of the empty space. But there'd be an awful lot of empty space. Possibly for a more robust digestive system with multi-phase digestion, sorta like a cow has? Dunno. A centaur could probably be compressed a lot more. I mean, I guess you could make it a horrific monster by simply having it be a horse with a man's face, and you solve all of these issues immediately.

[Ramza00]

Centaurs use Ichor for they often have Major or Minor Gods as at least one of their two parents.

[False God]

I went over this with a friend of mine, they would probably have two hearts, one more "normal" in the upper torso and a larger heart in the lower torso, connected, but primarily supplying blood to those areas of the body.

The majority of the upper torso would be lungs, much larger than normal humanoids, with all of the "other organs" in the lower torso. Probably multiple stomachs, for pre-digestion in the upper torso and final digestion in the lower. Other organs like kidneys, liver, would be in the horse-half.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Look at a cut-away of a snake's organs. That but with a different skeleto-muscular setup.

[The Viscount]

I could easily envision the centaur still having a horse heart in the same place, with different vasculature. Horses appear from my cursory searches to have a single trunk emerging from their aortic arch, which instead of splitting off we connect to the abdominal aorta in a human. Centaur torso cuts off before where the bifurcation would go. The specifics on the human part would be different since the flow of blood is originating from much lower, but it's still a shorter distance from heart to head than in a giraffe, and they don't faint all the time.

As for the lungs, the human torso if it was otherwise completely empty is still far too small for the lungs of a horse. If you look at images of horse lungs, one is still bigger than a human torso.

You could probably store one of the chambers of the stomach in the human torso, though I don't know if it would be advantageous to put it so far from the others.

[Psyren]

I don't think there's a definitive answer to this one. Two hearts and big lungs sound fine to me.

[emulord]

This is horrifying, but I always imagined they had "vent holes" in the lower half for the horse lungs.

[SquidFighter]

I think it is reasonable to have the organs be mostly identical to a horse's, but resised to the appropriate ratios.

Because I don't think circulatory systems are impossible over such lengths, since, you know, giraffes.

[Nifft]

Centaurs are merely the second layer of a triple-planar being.

Their biology makes no sense in 3 dimensions, but that's fine because they extend into more than that.

(That's why they're hexapods, obviously -- it's hard to balance in higher-dimensional spaces with just two legs -- and their name comes from being the center layer.)

[Tvtyrant]

Yes, the title is riffing on online art "critics." But that's not the point.

A centaur is half man half horse. Where does the heart reside? (Two hearts getting out of sync sounds like it'd be a bad time.)

Is it found in the horse half, and have to somehow pump from where the human anus would be all the way up to the head, without having the creature knock itself out? Or is it situated in the human half, leaving its powerful legs critically lacking in blood flow?

It doesn't seem as though this thing has an exceptionally large chest cavity for a more powerful heart....unless we think about the lungs. Obviously, we can't have the lungs being inside the horse half - it's too far away from the air hole. That's just asking for trouble. So those have to be in the human half...And obviously, human lungs probably aren't going to be enough to power an entire horse + human.
So, what if the lungs took up the whole of the human chest cavity (or perhaps even going into/through the abdomen), meanwhile the mega-heart could be situated in the horse chest to be as large as it needs to be.

And then the digestive system can just be in any of the empty space. But there'd be an awful lot of empty space. Possibly for a more robust digestive system with multi-phase digestion, sorta like a cow has? Dunno. A centaur could probably be compressed a lot more. I mean, I guess you could make it a horrific monster by simply having it be a horse with a man's face, and you solve all of these issues immediately.

There are weirder things in reality, I don't think those are real objections. Saurpods had to transport air a lot further to their lungs, and all land chordates have a nerve that, due to our jaws being made of our gills, swoops all the way down into the chest cavity to come back up and plug in a few inches from its origin point. Animals are randomly built, centaurs aren't that far out of normal animal designs.

Edit: Personally I would have the heart and one smaller lung in the human torso, the other lung and the rest of the organs in the horse torso.

[Falontani]

Which mammary glands are functional? Where does the urinary tract lead?

[Nifft]

There are weirder things in reality, I don't think those are real objections. Saurpods had to transport air a lot further to their lungs, and all land chordates have a nerve that, due to our jaws being made of our gills, swoops all the way down into the chest cavity to come back up and plug in a few inches from its origin point. Animals are randomly built, centaurs aren't that far out of normal animal designs.

Edit: Personally I would have the heart and one smaller lung in the human torso, the other lung and the rest of the organs in the horse torso.

Great point.

In support of what you said, a giraffe would look at the air-transport "issue" and snort.

A centaur with all major organs in the horse would have a more reasonable anatomy than a giraffe. The centaur's "neck" having arms attached is weird but not anatomically problematic.

[Tvtyrant]

Great point.

In support of what you said, a giraffe would look at the air-transport "issue" and snort.

A centaur with all major organs in the horse would have a more reasonable anatomy than a giraffe. The centaur's "neck" having arms attached is weird but not anatomically problematic.

Exactly.

Alternatively centaurs might not be human-horse hybrids at all, but soft shelled insects (since oxygen levels are much higher in D&D.) Their shells could be more cartilaginous and have skin over the top, giving them a humanish look while being somewhat more rigid.

[Malphegor]

Personally for Centaurs I like to think that they work exactly as they do in their mundane equivalents, which means that their horse end gets the fully digested remains the human side is done with. This may explain somewhat why centaurs have temper issues: Their diet generally doesn’t work without magical supplementation. (this also means that the centaur has 4 lungs, 2 of which power its horse end, and 2 hearts, with 2 mostly seperated circulatory systems but for a few veins and arteries).

I like to think that most centaur health issues come from the intermediate part where they join halves because they were attached originally with magic, no sense of how biology works, and no ethical consideration whatsoever. Fluid build up, strokes, blockages, it’s all in the joint!

[Bronk]

This is horrifying, but I always imagined they had "vent holes" in the lower half for the horse lungs.

I like this, it works so well with the insect idea...

https://www.webtoons.com/en/comedy/illustrated-internet/ep-11-girl-stuff/viewer?title_no=750&episode_no=11

I normally think - mostly magic? However, for more 'information' on scifi centaurs, you might want to read the Titan, Wizard, and Demon book trilogy by John Varley.

[SangoProduction]

I like this, it works so well with the insect idea...

https://www.webtoons.com/en/comedy/illustrated-internet/ep-11-girl-stuff/viewer?title_no=750&episode_no=11

I normally think - mostly magic? However, for more 'information' on scifi centaurs, you might want to read the Titan, Wizard, and Demon book trilogy by John Varley.

Insects use a mostly passive form of breathing. I believe what he was talking about was basically having a second "mouth" (or more) that's dedicated to respiration on the horse body.

[Ashtagon]

https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=19379941&postcount=33

You're welcome.

[Chainguy]

Centaurs in fantasy are often depicted as having their "human half" larger than a regular human, where the human's hips would be almost as large as the horse's shoulders, hence allowing for bigger organs in the top half.

I'd imagine the heart using up most of the top cavity and the lungs taking up the extra space left in the lower cavity. The other organs would be the same as the horses. The human waist would be mostly filled with muscles for stability and flexibility, allowing the top-half to act almost independently from the lower part.

I like to imagine the top half almost acting as a rotating turret while galloping on the battlefiled, them sinking lots of skill point in spot and listen to stay aware of their surroundings even when not looking directly forward.

[johnbragg]

Secret awful canon: Centaurs are not the result of magical interbreeding or twisted magical experiments combining humans and horses. In fact, humans are the horrid result of MIOTME involving centaurs and minotaurs. (Horses the result of similar abominable combination of centaurs and (googling) horse-faces, or hayagriva-types. )

[Zaq]

Where does the urinary tract lead?

Out. Unless you're into stuff I don't happen to be into. I won't judge.

[Erik the Green]

"There's the Organ Hut, that's on Third. There's Organs-R-Us, that's on Third, Too. You got Really Loud Wind Instruments, that's on Third. Squeak High, Bellow Low...Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the organ complex on Third."
"Oh, the organ district."











Sorry, couldn't resist...

[Falontani]

Out. Unless you're into stuff I don't happen to be into. I won't judge.

Okay I'll leave.