History Main / VertebrateWithExtraLimbs

* The novel ''Glory Road'' by RobertAHeinlein has horse-analogues with eight legs, on an alien planet. They are used as draft animals.

* Dragons, also depending on depiction.

* In {{Anne McCaffrey}}'s ''Freedom'' series, there are beasts something like cows (can't remember what they're actually called) that have six legs in order to constantly pound the ground at night and keep the monsters that live underground (can't remember the name of those either - it's been ages) at bay.
** The cow-things are called 'rock squats.'
*** No, actually, they're loo-cows. I don't think the night monsters ever got a name.
** The cow things are called loo-cows (they say "loo" instead of "moo"), the tasty rodent things are rock squats (they just sit there on the rocks) and this troper doesn't remember the night monsters being named.
* There were 6 legged things in [=~Raymond E. Feist~=]'s {{Riftwar Cycle}}.
** 6-legged beasts of burden, centaur-like creatures, and the insectoid Cho-Ja, who don't count because they're invertebrates.
** To be fair, it was to accentuate how alien the planet of Kelewan is and probably imply a different evolutionary path. Only creatures not native to the planet [[spoiler:(tsurani, eldar, etc.)]] were exempt from having six limbs.
* There's a six-legged cat, among other things, in ''TheDarkTower''. These animals are called "muties", which is presumably slang for mutant.
** Probably a subversion, as the six-legged cat is implied to be the mutated descendent of normal four-legged cats, rather than six limbs being the norm for vertebrates on Roland's world. Throughout the series, King sticks an extra vestigial leg or two on animals to demonstrate that they're mutated freaks.

** Many of the specific subcategories of dragon violate this, though - wyverns always have two legs and two wings, lindorms always have only two legs, etc.
** I remember a series of books based around two types of dragons (Wyverns, with two legs and two wings) and the 'unnatural' six-limbed dragons were victims of FantasticRacism.
* By contrast, Asian dragons, being usually associated with rivers or water, almost never have wings but can have four or more legs (usually depending on how long/powerful the dragon is). For an example, see the river spirit in SpiritedAway.
** Interestingly, they can rarely be presented as having as many wings as they do legs - pairs of both running all along both sides of their long serpentine bodies.

** Though, again, sometimes they only have two legs. And in some of the original myths, the [[BizarreSexualDimorphism female has wings, and the male has enormous spikes protruding from its shoulders]].

* The peryton from the ClassicalMythology, a pegasus style animal only being a winged deer rather than a winged horse (and carnivorous, but thats another story). There's a recent tendency to portray it as a bird with a deer's head however, probably based on D&D.

* And Hippogriffs, Thestrals, and Dragons in ''HarryPotter''.
* {{Subverted}} in ''[[DragonridersOfPern The Dragonriders of Pern]]'': it's hinted that dragons evolved from insect-like creatures, and are thus not land vertebrates at all.
** Actually, WordOfGod and her later books explain that dragons were genetically engineered from native creatures that the humans called fire-lizards. Thus they are lizard type creatures. They have six limbs: four legs and two wings.

*** There are also the "wher" breed, which have their wings clipped and are used as watchdogs.
*** The entire "dragon" genus is derived from a 6-finned fish-like creature. Even the "snakes" (serpentine body, 6 spindly limbs). Thank you, Jack Cohen.

[[NorseMythology http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/odin_sleipnir2_op.jpg]][[caption-width:350:Odin riding Sleipnir]]

* Kinshaya in the modern StarTrekExpandedUniverse continuity. They have four legs and wings on their back. In an ancestral species, these were used for flying, but modern Kinshaya are too heavy and retain them for display purposes.

Why this is isn't entirely clear. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with six or more legs. It might be simply an accident of evolution that the current large land animals originated from a species with a four limb body plan. Evolution generally tweaks body plans much, much more often than it originates new ones. However, evidence suggests that when the first fish crawled out of the water, it did so on seven - toed feet. (In case you're wondering, they evolved to crawl while still in the water.) On the other hand, it's possible that four represents a kind of optimum practical number for limbs -- the energy required to grow, maintain, and use additional appendages might outweigh their benefits.

Why this is isn't entirely clear. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with six or more legs. It might be simply an accident of evolution that the current large land animals originated from a species with a four limb body plan. Evolution generally tweaks body plans much, much more often than it originates new ones. However, evidence suggests that when the first fish crawled out of the water, it did so on seven - toed feet. (In case you're wondering, they evolved to crawl while still in the water.)

*** Thecnically Wyverns aren't dragons. They're more like giant Lizard-Bats, whereas six-limbed dragons are closer to insects.

* The Cray from the PerdidoStreetStation sequel ''The Scar'' have a humanoid upper body and crayfishlike lower body.

* The Naga--super-sized snakes with human bodies from the waist up where the snakes' heads would be. They're originally from Hindu mythology and are now found in quite a few different fantasy series. The aforementioned DnD creatures may be Naga, but from the description above, probably not.

-----
<<|SpeculativeFictionTropes|>>

In RealLife, the standard number of limbs for land animals other than arthropods (insects, spiders, centepedes, etc) is FOUR, including legs, arms (which anatomically are really modified forelegs), and wings (which are modified arms), but not counting head and optional tail (or for that matter, genitalia, horns, antlers, trunk, etc.). The only exceptions are losses to injury and ''usually'' harmful mutations. Most biologists agree snakes and whales show signs of once having had four limbs.

* ''{{Bleach}}'': For some odd reason, Yammy, [[spoiler: The Zeroth Espada]], has a released form of a centipede-centaur. Not that that chapter made a lot of sense anyway...

<<|SpeculativeFictionTropes|>>)

[[AC:Mythology]]

[[AC:Anime]]

[[AC:Film]]

[[AC:Literature]]

[[AC: Live Action Television]]

[[AC:Tabletop Games]]

[[AC:TruthInTelevision]]

[[AC:Video Games]]

[[AC:Western Animation]]

[[AC:Mythology]]

[[AC:Film]]

[[AC:Literature]]

[[AC:Tabletop Games]]

[[AC:Video Games]]

[[AC:Western Animation]]