hooves to hands

so, i'm working on a little anthro universe. i love anatomy, biology, etc... especially when combined with fantastical elements, so i've put a lot of thought into how these animals work. there are no domesticated animals, different species behave differently, coldblooded animals don't live in cold climates without extensive heating plans, fantasy animals fit into real taxa and have evolutionary history, etc... but i'm stumped on one thing. paws and claws can be pretty easily translated over to dexterous hands, but hooves aren't so straightforward. i think that the most likely option is that hooved animals would just have normal pawhands but 1) i wanted to keep the number of digits the same, so equines just wouldn't have hands and 2) some of the recognizability is gone. i also considered like... half fingers with hardened tips which i kind of like, although they don't scream hooves to me. does this make sense at all??? i hope it does. let me know what kind of solutions you guys like.

I mean, if you’re going to apply evolutionary history to fictional mega-fauna, then presumably you would do the same for hoofed species.

So the question you’d have to ask yourself is if hoofed forelimbs became disadvantageous, as traits that aren’t advantageous but also aren’t disadvantageous tend to stick around until or unless something changes that does affect that trait.

Paws tend to be depicted as hands in stories with anthropomorphism both because it’s visually easy to make the correlation, and irl they largely function similarly anyway - they’re used to grip, manipulate things, and for locomotion.

Hooves don’t really have any use outside of bearing weight and making for a quick getaway.

So, presumably in your world, hoof species would either:

1. Evolve a forelimb structure that’s similar to paws or hands.

Or 2. Use a variety of tools specifically designed to help them with their day to day needs by overcoming their lack of having hands.

Edited by Angelspawndragon on Oct 24th 2022 at 4:05:14 AM