Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-4830106-20140806180925/@comment-25154376-20140821085154

BenRG wrote: Bismarkus wrote:

So, if Faunus are half Human and half Animal, and they could mate with humans, wouldn't that also mean they can mate with animals? One big asumption is that humans and Faunus are able to breed; we don't know that for a fact.

However, I would say that Faunus look a lot closer to humans, genetically, than to any animal species. It would probably be better to see humans and Faunus to be close cousins, Homo Sapiens and Homo Faunus. So, they would be like horses and donkeys; they could breed when, say, donkeys and giraffes or Faunus and Chimpanzees could not. Well, it could be that the human traits in Faunus (excluding tail and/or ears) are Phenotypes -- a genetic trait that show up as physical traits -- and the animal traits are Genotypes -- genetic traits that do not show but are still passed on by its carrier.

Perhaps Faunus can only breed with animals if they have the same traits. For example, cat Faunus can only mate with cats, dog Faunus with dogs etc.

Faunus could have evolved to mate with whom/whatever was available. Much like the Asari in Mass Effect. It could make sense, especially since the land outside the Kingdoms is apparently very dangerous and wild (this land it can be assume is where Faunus originate), that it would be very useful to be able to have offspring with whatever species is available in order to have sufficient numbers for the species to survive. In a world like RWBY, where things like souls and semblances are scientific fact, would it be too much of stretch to say a species evolved the ability to mate with other species?