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Description
–Intro—To start with, the term “bat-pony” isn’t technically accurate at all from a biological perspective. Genetically, they’re just pegasi; it just happens that pegasi have a variety of possible traits they can inherit.
Those who is currently considered to be “bat-ponies”, are actually just pegasi with a combination of several different, unrelated, traits. Some of these -the ear tufts and the naked ears are actually not limited to pegasi at all, and all ponies can inherit them. However, the “cat-eyes”, fangs and bat-structured wings are tied to the genetics which determines if a pony is a pegasi, unicorn or earth pony. Unless there are some other mutations in play, no earth ponies or unicorns have slitted pupils or fangs.
–Biology–
Most Chiropterasi have bat-like wings, with a clawed thumb and three long “fingers” connected via leathery skin membranes. The “arm” of the wing is usually covered in extremely short and fine fur, while the membranes are naked. This causes the wing to usually be a different color than the rest of the pony, as the color of the skin of the pony doesn’t always match their fur color.
Luckily, the bone structure of a pegasus’ wings seems to be one or the othereither bat-structured or bird-structured, nothing in-between; if that ever were to happen, it would be very unclear if the pony in question would be able to fly or even comfortably fold their wings, hence the “luckily”. What can occasinally happen is a pony with bat-wings having feathers or someone with bird-wing being covered in short fur. The former is not terribly uncommon, and may cause the pony some issuses with flying initially but isn’t severe in the long run. The latter is a lot rarer and will make the pony to be completely unable to fly without some kind of prothetics.
The eyes with slitted pupils are better at seeing in low-light environment than those with round pupils; although, similarly to those with round pupils, they mainly see in grey-scale when the amount of light is low. They are much more sensitive to light, and those who have to be awake and outside during the day can often be seen wearing sun-glasses, even during overcast weather. While not always true, the sclera is often slightly colored.
Despite them often being referred to as “bat-ponies”, they aren’t actually bats. They cannot sleep upside down anymore than a normal pegasus can. Any who tries just faints and then get concussions.
—Culture–
The country of the Chriopterasi is still (suprisingly?) a democracy. When it was first founded, the original inhabitants had just left a heavily rigid and military based society, of which they were generally considered outcasts, so they were very keen on personal freedom and anti-authority. At the beginning, they were few enough in numbers that having everyone vote on major decisions was actually feasible; whoever had a proposal would send out a message with a date and time, and those who wished to vote would gather in a coliseum-like structure. Anyone who wished could take the podium and argue their position, and once everyone had said their piece, the vote was held.
This system was fairly slow, so when the country was reformed with a lot more inhabitants, they opted for a representative democracy. Each “county” votes on local matters, and selects a representative who votes in national matters. Nation-wide votes are still held for really important decisions, such as when they opted to open their borders to Equestria.
Socially, they live much more like larger closer groups than ponies do, while also much more isolated -while ponies traditionally live with their closest family in a tight-knit settlement, chriopterasi usually live together with their extended family but more spread out from other family groups. This isn’t always true, as there are several larger cities, but it is the norm for the majority of the country. The reason nowadays is just tradition, but the original reasoning was that hunting in larger groups were easier, but you could not have too many living too close to each other or you’d overhunt the area. But nowadays, as most of their meat is produced by farms and such, they don’t really hunt wild game all that much.
Equestrain chriopterasi are varied in their social structure; some still live with their extended family a bit outside of pony settlements, and some have adopted the smaller family units and live in the settlements. It usually depends on the pony and their reason for moving to equestria.
Those who is currently considered to be “bat-ponies”, are actually just pegasi with a combination of several different, unrelated, traits. Some of these -the ear tufts and the naked ears
–
Most Chiropterasi have bat-like wings, with a clawed thumb and three long “fingers” connected via leathery skin membranes. The “arm” of the wing is usually covered in extremely short and fine fur, while the membranes are naked. This causes the wing to usually be a different color than the rest of the pony, as the color of the skin of the pony doesn’t always match their fur color.
Luckily, the bone structure of a pegasus’ wings seems to be one or the other
The eyes with slitted pupils are better at seeing in low-light environment than those with round pupils; although, similarly to those with round pupils, they mainly see in grey-scale when the amount of light is low. They are much more sensitive to light, and those who have to be awake and outside during the day can often be seen wearing sun-glasses, even during overcast weather. While not always true, the sclera is often slightly colored.
Despite them often being referred to as “bat-ponies”, they aren’t actually bats. They cannot sleep upside down anymore than a normal pegasus can. Any who tries just faints and then get concussions.
—Culture–
The country of the Chriopterasi is still (suprisingly?) a democracy. When it was first founded, the original inhabitants had just left a heavily rigid and military based society, of which they were generally considered outcasts, so they were very keen on personal freedom and anti-authority. At the beginning, they were few enough in numbers that having everyone vote on major decisions was actually feasible; whoever had a proposal would send out a message with a date and time, and those who wished to vote would gather in a coliseum-like structure. Anyone who wished could take the podium and argue their position, and once everyone had said their piece, the vote was held.
This system was fairly slow, so when the country was reformed with a lot more inhabitants, they opted for a representative democracy. Each “county” votes on local matters, and selects a representative who votes in national matters. Nation-wide votes are still held for really important decisions, such as when they opted to open their borders to Equestria.
Socially, they live much more like larger closer groups than ponies do, while also much more isolated -while ponies traditionally live with their closest family in a tight-knit settlement, chriopterasi usually live together with their extended family but more spread out from other family groups. This isn’t always true, as there are several larger cities, but it is the norm for the majority of the country. The reason nowadays is just tradition, but the original reasoning was that hunting in larger groups were easier, but you could not have too many living too close to each other or you’d overhunt the area. But nowadays, as most of their meat is produced by farms and such, they don’t really hunt wild game all that much.
Equestrain chriopterasi are varied in their social structure; some still live with their extended family a bit outside of pony settlements, and some have adopted the smaller family units and live in the settlements. It usually depends on the pony and their reason for moving to equestria.
The reason all of these traits are now almost only found in one population of pegasi beguins back when pegasi were first created. In my other headcanon you can read more about how it came to be, but to sum it up; millenia ago, Discord used the world as his personal playground, mixing creatures intentionally and causing mutations by accident. Among other things, he grabbed a handful of ponies and stuck wings on their backs, thus creating the first pegasi, as well as accidentally causing some ponies to mutate different ears/eyes/teeth etc.
Originally, there were pegasi with almost any type of wings you can think of; birds of all shapes, bats, dragons, pterosaurs, insects… most of these were not beneficial for the pony’s survival, so eventually only the bird and the bat wings remained.
For a while, before they really started forming alliances with unicorns and earth ponies, pagasi just sometimes had bat wings and sometimes bird wings, sometimes round and sometimes slitted pupils, etc. They were all just a grab-bag of traits.
However, as the tribes stared interacting more with each other, they encountered problems. Unicorns and Earth ponies found the cat-eyes and fangs to be really unnatural, since they don’t have them, and bat-wings look a lot more creepy with their long finger-like structures than fluffy bird wings do. So, it became common for pegasi with short canines, round pupils and bird-wings to interact with them, while the others kinda hid away in the background. Eventually, as pegasi became more and more dependant on the other tribes, the others got even more pushed away, until a group eventually just decided to leave. They founded their own small country, while the ones who remained got pushed out of the gene pool over the generations.
Due to their previous alliance with earth ponies, they’d somewhat forgotten how to farm, so this group of pegasi focused more on eating meat and hunting small game. (All pegasi requires more protein than other ponies, due to how much energy it takes to fly, but previously this came more from eggs and fish)As it turns out, night vision, fangs and naked ears that could focus on sounds better were were advantageous to hunting, so natural selection favoured pegasi with those traits. Feathered wings remained for a long time, but were eventually also selected against as the bat-wings allowed for more maneuverability, which helped when hunting in dense forests. Ear tufts didn’t help or hinder; just like how red hair became common in groups of humans, it just happend to spread to the majority of the population by pure chance. Also, a lot of ponies thought they looked cute.
At this point, the group now referred to themselves as “Chiropterasi” or sometimes “Bat-ponies”, and did not consider themselves to be “Pegasi” at all. Their country was actually democratic, as they had grown distasteful of the monarchies of the other ponies, and their country was small enough for this to be feasible, even at their low-level of technology and communications.
After Equestria’s founding (A.E)
Once Celestia and Luna took the thrones, they started by trying to bring the different pony-nations into equestria, including the land of the Chiropterasi. It took a really long time, but eventually they “joined”; their land is now part of equestria, they are equestrain citizens, but they live very separate from the rest of the population. Partially because of cultural differences, partially because… ponies sleep when they’re awake; makes it pretty hard to form relationships. And that was the status quo for hundreds of years, although the Chiropterasi still taught their foals the history of their people, and made sure they knew about their original nation.
Once Nightmare Moon happend, there was a huge pushback against bat-ponies, as they were nocturnal, and Nightmare Moon has chosen a really bad form to use; bat-wings, cat-eyes, fangs… obviously they had something to do with this. Celestia tried to help curb the rumours and violence, but eventually could only let the Chiropterasi have a section of land, re-form their country, and close their borders.
Over the thousand years since then, Celestia has worked on trying to integrate the countries again. It was slow, but eventually the Chiropterasi partially opened their borders, and some even began moving back into Equestria. But they were still very selective about who was allowed into their country.
Once Luna returned and was welcomed back, she visited the Chiropterasi, asking for their forgivness for her involvement in their having to leave equestria again. After many, many debates, arguments, protests, riots, and several country wide votes, the Chiropterasi decided it was time to re-join Equestria more fully. The borders were opened, and they formed the same type of alliance as the Crystal empire; they would remain as their own independent country, but citizens of either country could live and work in the other, and they would collaborate on matters such as national security, criminal investigations etc.
Unlike the last time, Chiropterasi integrate much more into Equestrian culture when the borders open. With cities who never sleeps, like Manehattan and Las Pegasus, it’s much easier to actually interact and become friends with other ponies. There is still a lot of mistrust and fear between them, but with the princesses, especially Luna, voicing their support very vocally, noone dared to do anything but avoid them. There have also been cases of Chiropterasi and other ponies forming romantic relationships, even having foals together. The foals are considered to be cross-breeds by the general populous, and many wait with bated breath too see if they will be able to have foals of their own or are infertile (like mules or zonies usually are) -a bit ironic considering that these foals are as close as a modern pony will get to how the pegasi originally were.