The Insane Biology of Monster Hunter

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]It's easy to design a fantasy creature, but it's hard to design one that has to function. Tonight at Character Camp, we're looking at four monsters from the Monster Hunter series to see how this is done. Why? So you can make your own fantasy monsters that make sense. And we've even got a bonus at the end. So it's the Monster Hunter series. We had to do Raffalos. Raffthalos was the first monster design ever made for Monster Hunter. They really wanted something special that was understandable. It could kind of be the flagship for the series. Rathalos is the male version of the species. Ratheian is the female. As you can already tell, there are some noticeable biological differences between the two genders. Rathalos, of course, is a large bipeedal wyvern. This is evolutionarily explainable because their arms would have developed into these wings. Terasaur are reptiles who also had their hands develop into wings.

[00:00:46]Just how bats were mammals and their hands developed into their wings. We can actually see the thumb digit here. a little bit of a palm finger one, two, three, four, five. Just like a human hand. They're not reinventing the wheel.

[00:00:58]They're not reinventing the hand.

[00:00:59]Rathalos and Rivian Rivian Rathos and Rathian both have various physiological traits. These traits are common amongst all living creatures. Some creatures can regrow their limbs. Others can regulate their own body temperature. Some of them can produce venom. Here we can produce fire breath. Rathalos can also inject you with poison, but not from the tail stinger. It uses its talons. Right here in this model, I see a little bit of an indentation, a little hollow passage that looks like it goes into the toe.

[00:01:25]And that is how this creature injects its venom, which is incredibly odd to me because this is a very large bulb with a stinger, just like how scorpions have that on the end of their tail. This is against a big large heavy club attachment that subversion of expectations is very interesting, very nice to see. However, on Ratheian here, which has this large bushel of spikes and thistles and thorns, this does inflict poison. There's lots of animals like the scorpion fish which have venous spines. While we're down here, I do like looking at these larger scoots. The small scales and scoots down here don't make that much sense. You need a nice solid larger plate to be able to easily distribute your weight on the surface on which you stand on. Most animals have a solid large pad. I do like the bird's beak. Beaks are sharp. They give you a point of incision when you're eating into something. I see the tongue is ribbed. This can help it when it's drinking water, pulling it into the mouth. It can also help grip meat as it's being consumed. These animals are heavy. The head, chest, and these wings are all on the anterior of the animal.

[00:02:21]If this thing was real, it would probably fall over, which is why they added large, heavy counterweights to the back of the animal. The center of mass between all of this and the tail now falls on the pelvic girdle, which is supported by the legs, which are quite beefy. They could probably be a little stronger. Interesting ornamental coloration right here. It's a mystery until you consider that this only appears on the male Raffthalos. Arathia doesn't have that. This is classic male mating coloration. Looking at ducks here on Earth, the drakes are going to have better coloration than the females do.

[00:02:49]We can observe this trait with many animals. On the wings here, we have these long claws. They form a nice array along the front of the wing. They reminded me of the raptorial appendages on mantis shrimp. But here, I noticed not all the spikes are curved. Only the first four are really terribly curved.

[00:03:03]They're not very hooked. But I do notice they're clumped closely together here on Rathos, whereas on Ratheian they're more distanced. Why are these combined together? Then I reminded myself of another bug I liked when I was a kid.

[00:03:13]The vinegaroon. The vinegaroon has these brackets on its pedipuls. The vinegaroon's whole shtick is that it grabs and crushes its prey. We can see the same pattern of spikes here. My guess is that it's Raffalos that goes out there and gets the food. She's got poison. Seems more defensive. These spikes are probably for defense, not attacking or hunting the way Raffoses are. This little spike here on the chin of Rathian is actually for feeding young the same way a bird would feed the young. Very interesting. All these changes that happen between Rathon and Rathos can be summed up in two words.

[00:03:41]Sexual dimmorphism. It happens when the male looks very different from the female in the same species. That intentionality can really provide for interesting visual storytelling. I see what looks like to be like fur here on the female along with these two spikes down here. It looks like this fur is on some wear points. Maybe it can help with incubation of eggs or give a soft pad to move the eggs around on these two. Maybe they could protect eggs that are in a nest of some sort or they can help her kind of move them around with her head.

[00:04:06]Cuz in Rathos's version, you really wouldn't want to move the eggs around with that. What interests me most about a lot of these monsters in Monster Hunter is that they're humanized. They give him actual humanoid ears with lobes, not at all like any kind of reptile or traditional dragon. The spikes do protrude from the skin and they are symmetrical, but it looks like a human's face. Also, the black coloration right here makes it look like he has some huge eyebrows. I notice over here he has pec muscles and then he has abs. That's another great way to humanize your character. Overall, I can clearly tell that there was a lot of intentional design that went into making this creature. Nothing is left a chance and they don't hide it. They'll actually tell you, "Oh, hey, this is used for feeding capabilities." Zenogre is a lupine quadrupid. It's got four legs, looks like a wolf. It has a great mix of reptilian scales and scoots, as well as mamalian fur and horns. As these little digging tusks of his come to a point, they kind of look like they're made of ivory. No longer just big bony plates, maybe made of a softer keratin. I get that feeling again here. And especially on these back plates. Look at the lines that these plates developed in. They grew upwards just like fingernails that you and I have. We have these kitenous scales, but they slowly morph into these keratin composite plates. Then I splend a reptile moving forward into a mammal.

[00:05:14]Perfect for our reptilian wolf. Did I mention that this wolf controls electricity? Actually, he doesn't. All around him, you see these little glowing dots. These are completely separate organism. These are thunderbugs. They act as vector points for his electrical attacks. A little bug here, here, here, here, here, here. This helps him generate the field to spread his electrical attacks. So, we have one organism in other organisms. working together to achieve the same goal.

[00:05:38]Sounds like symbiosis to me. Mutualistic symbiosis. And most people theorize that these divots in the horns actually work as scaffolding housing for the thunderbugs. That's very cool. We have lots of mutualistic symbiosis examples in our human world. But I mean, the evolutionary path that these two creatures have taken together to the point where one evolves basically little bees nests on his head to house the other bugs. That's insane. Very creative expansion of our understood sciences right here. When I was doing research, I can't believe nobody pointed this one out. The back tail is literally just a gigantic wolf's paw. I have wolves where I live, so I know their prints pretty well. This is a wolf's paw. Instead of pads, it has little spikes right here to slam and tear and rip and grip. But that is clearly a wolf's paw right there.

[00:06:20]That's not random, uninspired design.

[00:06:23]That's intentional. I enjoy how Zenogre has denser scales in the extremities on the wear point where it's more likely to come into contact with trees and brushes and stuff in its environment that has thicker armoring than say over here in the belly or a place that assists with the range of motion like the shoulder.

[00:06:37]You want to have lots of motion here that's not as very necessary down here.

[00:06:41]Another thing I notic is that he has a very humanoid muscle pattern right here.

[00:06:44]He actually has quite a bit of a tricep right here, bicep. All his deltoids have kind of merged into one. And again, he has human ears with a lobe. You could have gone with dog or wolf ears, but they went with this very fairy elf-like appearance, and that's very interesting to me. The black snout right here is iconic for dogs and wolves. These tusks right here probably help it forage. Back over to the feet here, you'll see that these two toes right here are raised. It has two raised digits, and these aren't like de claws that would be hanging back here. These are facing forward, just like a velociaptor. If you've ever seen a raptor, a bird of prey kill an animal, they make impact, they bring these down to grip it. They don't want that thing going anywhere. This is an actual phenomenon. It's called the raptor prey restraint. And then it can kind of go down and bite it while it's being restrained. That must be what these claws are doing. They help it pounce and they hold on. Maybe they could provide more traction, but I mean, if you look at the length of the actual claw itself, that's pretty brittle in comparison to the rest of it that's more robust. I'd say these are fragile, kept out of the way until they get them into the restraint hold. That's what Zenogre is trying to do here, cuz I imagine once he makes you immobile, he can make you ride the lightning. I enjoy the furry belly a lot. I'm assuming this is a warm-blooded animal, so it needs to retain its body heat that it makes in order to keep itself within homeostasis. I don't like that most of these monster hunter designs have these fake teeth. These mullers are not real. The real teeth are white in here. These are made of skin.

[00:08:04]These are made of scoots. These are made of bony protrusions. Brother, we haven't had bony fish since the Deonian period.

[00:08:10]The only modern parallel we have is birds beaks. So, I guess having set one, set two is entirely feasible cuz some birds do have teeth set within their mouth. It's not as realistic. Maybe if one or two animals have it, but so many Monster Hunter characters have this weird false tooth array. I'm not the biggest fan of it. Make of it what you will. Now, for a fan favorite, Lagris.

[00:08:30]Lagi Acris is a serpentine crocodilian.

[00:08:32]The face is uniform, not very segmented by scales, just like a crocodile. The body is entirely serpentine. It has that Chinese water dragon phenotype. For a creature that lives in water, it does not have webbed feet. However, just like a crocodile, the hands and feet are rather paddle-shaped. Anyways, there's not too much webbing anywhere on here.

[00:08:49]Spare the tail and the neck. I mean, if you stretch this guy out, he'd actually look like his head and his tail look the same. I don't think this creature has any predators, but some prey items in our world have a false head. My cousin had one of those geckos with a false head, and it actually dropped its tail once in fear. Pretty cool. I don't think that's intentional, unless he drops his tail in the middle of the game. Having no webbing back here is really strange.

[00:09:12]He does control the electricity. Once again, I see these little electrical conduit lines. They go from the neck all the way back to the spikes. This would allow electricity to move quickly up and down the animal. Animals that can control some elements of electricity in real life have similar lateral lines on them. A lot of them have pits where they're receiving electrical signals.

[00:09:29]Call me a hater, but these uh very unified scale designs I'm not a huge fan of. Yeah, some animals do have it, but it looks very manufactured and fake. I much prefer the style they went for here where they rendered each individual scale. This scale bifurcates these other two and they have to be symmetrical.

[00:09:44]There's a line of symmetry happening right here. We get a reflection over the side. It's more intricate and timeconuming, but it's better than just doing like ribbing like that. It looks more intricate. Looks more designed. I think it looks better in my opinion.

[00:09:55]They still managed to get the wispy eastern dragon visualization pattern here with those two earike appendages.

[00:10:01]They could have gone for like actual like hairy whiskers right here. That would have been too on the nose. Those serve literally no purpose unless they were actual barbells like on a catfish.

[00:10:10]It would look exceedingly generic at this point. I think they saved it. They did a nice job here. Those stupid fake teeth are pervasive here. I don't think they're made of bones cuz we don't see any bone protruding from them, right?

[00:10:20]It's not like there's a little ring right here and then suddenly there's a bone here. If that was the case, it would totally make sense, but it's not.

[00:10:25]It just looks like skin biting down on skin. Skin on skin contact is not something us predators strive for. It would be very painful. Usually in our mouths, we prefer bone on bone to get a grinding or shearing action or we like to have cartilage between our bones and our joints. Why they have like skin on skin anywhere is a mystery to me here.

[00:10:46]Even if it's thick armor plating, why these are teeth right here. This is just stylization. And you know, they can be as creative as they want. All the more power to the developers. And that's not saying that wouldn't serve a purpose.

[00:10:58]Crocodiles rear their young in their mouths, but they usually sit within the teeth, not within an environment that has teeth within it. Okay, maybe this is used as like a cage, like how baileene on whales holds krill and fish inside of it. I I don't see that. Pretty big gap right here. I think his teeth do a better job of that. Maybe they're for crushing like turtle shells or something. I think it's an easy fix. You just got to add a line where there's clearly some sharp bones protruding and that means that these are actually teeth. It just looks like he stylizes the mouth to be fake. I don't know. Did you want to be more scarier? It definitely looks more fearsome that way, but you probably could have guess put the real teeth on the outside here and have the same effect. Little nitpick of mine. Little nitpick. Apparently, these nodes on the back house the electricity.

[00:11:37]That's fine to have these things house the electricity, but they definitely don't look like they were designed to have that. That's fine, but it's just copying Godzilla at this point. And living creatures have an actual organ that houses the electricity. Seeing that or having that visible somewhere else on the creature might make it a bit more interesting. You know, maybe on the neck it has some visible sacks right here.

[00:11:56]You can see it charge up from the stomach to the neck and then to the mouth. Maybe these instead of being fake teeth can be some kind of conduit as well and it'll like come out from those guys. There's evidently some more creativity they could have had here with this creature. Having some kind of sail on the back would have been nice and it would have actually done something for the animal in real life. Sure, it has this one here which definitely helps with locomotion. The paddle tail also helps too, but he could have gone further. He could have added more.

[00:12:20]Again, that's my opinion. I included fat lag yakers here because uh he's really mostly crocodile. He's just a stretched crocodile. He had those big hands, big mouth. You increase the size and he just looks like a crocodile. I think them taking inspiration visually from a crocodile was a great choice. It gives him a lot of solid things to start with.

[00:12:37]This all looks very crocodilian. We just need a little bit more clarification as to what these are. And I think I'd be more open to seeing them as teeth. Maybe go deeper here. You know, add a third eyelid that you can see kind of come down. Something that goes up and shields it when it goes underwater or when it's doing its electrical attacks. A little something to elevate this character, not just leave it as is. There's always a way to elevate. I like that the tail isn't super thin all the way around.

[00:12:59]Animals and water are very large. They need that surface area to kind of push and propel through the water. In terms of physiology, there's nothing here that gives away the heat controls electricity. Something needs to change.

[00:13:08]Something needs to get added there to give it away. Also, to breathe on land, he must have some kind of a lung. So, even though we don't have like pecs right here, there should be muscles or plates or something that could give us that lung action. Or just go full Godzilla and give us gills here on the sides. Maybe give us some nice opening closing nostrils right here. Maybe shape these things a bit more like a rudder, you know? Then we can get some kind of understanding as to their biological purpose. I think the coloration here is sweet. He's not like electric blue. Blue and tan are great for water monsters.

[00:13:36]There's so many of them. Finally, we have Brackados. He's an interesting case. Brachadillos controls a slime mold. Slime molds are all over the place in nature. It's a variant of fungus.

[00:13:45]They have lots of cool properties that have been adapted into various IPs throughout the years. It's cool to see a creature incorporate some of those ideas. It can shoot the slime. It can plant the slime into the ground. This is fun. Lots of gameplay mechanics here. I do like the trinity they had here. They didn't make this one smaller. They made it just as large. So, it's the same organ on both of the hands and on the head. The craziest thing to me is that he actually does have full-blown claws right here on his hands. He just kind of chooses not to use them at all ever in any of his attacks. So, evolutionarily, these should become vestigial appendages at this point. We shouldn't see them.

[00:14:18]So, that's kind of uh interesting as to why those are even there. This guy looks way too friendly. And I'll tell you why.

[00:14:24]We have a huge line of motion from the eye all the way down to the end of this horn on the collar. We have to start this line of motion from the front. And so, his eyebrow becomes that. He looks like freaking Eeyore here, dude. A What happened, buddy? The only time he looks cool or even menacing is when he rears up and the line of motion then becomes angled like that. That's better.

[00:14:42]Otherwise, dude just looks like a lost dog. He's not very intimidating. Even though it's a monster, you're still looking for humanoid features in the face. And when you read his face, he looks sad. Now, you're probably wondering, "Oh, it's just symbiosis all over again. He's just like an ogre with the bugs, except for this time, it's Brachadios with the slime mold." That's actually not the case. In the game, you can kind of break a creature's limbs.

[00:15:01]When that happens, that kind of slows and stops the slime mold from generating. And if you think about it, he has some control over the slime mold.

[00:15:08]If he didn't, it would be all over him.

[00:15:10]He's got slime on his hands. He gets broke into a factory of Neidato. And he's got slime on his mind. They don't control him. He controls the slime. Lose an arm. You don't get that anymore. The slime's also explosive. Real slime mold.

[00:15:21]The real fungi kind of explode. When I looked at his tail here, it immediately reminded me of another kind of fungus I know about. In my backyard, I have the little um Oh god, I wouldn't even I wouldn't even know what to call a a cup fungi or whatever. But the raindrop falls in. It causes the water when it falls in to kind of splash outwards like this and it shoots the seeds. That's what this tail immediately reminded me of because we're on the fungus topic. I have a personal issue with how this character was colored. It doesn't look good. No animal in real life would look this way. Okay, sure the slime mold can be green, but why are you monochromatically purple? It's a cave dwelling creature. I get that. But why are you not lucistic? Cave animals are a pale white because they can't waste energy on creating color pigments.

[00:16:01]There's no sunlight in a cave, so why be dark to get heat? Okay, maybe he's made out of obsidian, and that makes sense.

[00:16:06]But that's really the only way I could justify this creature being purple. A real biological animal, not made of rock, would not be purple. He does have like some pale fleshy areas. He even has pecs and an ab again. And there's a rotator cuff in there somewhere. He's another humanoid design, but he's just modeled with this weird shapeless half scale, half ivory, half bone. He's just covered in the same material. Teeth and nose and back plating and the gills and the tail and the leg like shinuards are made out of. The only difference we ever get here is in his tongue and his underbelly and his feet. Yeah, why are his feet not like protected by anything?

[00:16:45]I also read that he actually takes a little bit of damage from his own slime mold. You'd think that a creature controlling slime mold would be able to evolve or develop some way to stop themselves from getting hurt by it. Not this guy. He didn't get the evolutionary memo. I guess it just looks like in Blender they just used the same exact material for the entire creature.

[00:17:03]Zenogre had so much variation.

[00:17:05]Raffthalos's uniformity is at least understood. Even Lagias had a very nice difference between the nodes on his back, the armored scales, and the softer flesh. This isn't possible. No sir. Get the texturing team back in there. Get a new pass on this creature. This model is very different. It looks like it's actually an organic creature sporting the rocks as like armorament. That looks a lot better. That's more believable.

[00:17:28]Maybe these models are just old, but I really like what's going on down here.

[00:17:31]Much more distinct, much more understandable, much more believable.

[00:17:34]Regardless, for all these monsters, there's evidently deep intentional design on the parts of their morphology and physiology. How can you do the same?

[00:17:41]Easy. The first thing you have to do is consider the function of your character.

[00:17:45]What does it need to do? Clearly, Rathos is a large aerial apex predator. That's what it needs to be. Okay, so it's got to have huge wings, got to have traits of a carnivore, spikes, some kind of poisonous defensive attribute. Add all of those things and then come back maybe a day later. I like to wait one or two days. Really, literally set the design aside, come back to it. question it now.

[00:18:05]How does it use venom? Maybe it's not the tail. Maybe it's the claws cuz those come in direct contact with the prey items. I call this support the reasoning behind your creature. Supporting quirks.

[00:18:16]I sometimes say poisonous talons are the explanation as to how it injects venom into its prey. These cool colorations could be how it attracts a mate. This often leads to a nice byproduct called hubris. Hubris is drawbacks, negative parts of an animal. So yeah, because this animal has super large awesome wings to fly around. If you lose those wings, he's in trouble. The wings are his hubris. He has these awesome wings to fly, but if you shot them, put a single hole in them, they'd be a lot less effective. This can improve lore.

[00:18:46]This can improve gameplay because it gives your character a weakness.

[00:18:48]Nothing's more boring than having a character with no weaknesses.

[00:18:51]Everything's perfect. You got to have a little bit of a weakness somewhere. So, if you're trying to create your own functional monsters, try this out.

[00:18:56]Character Camp is really close to hitting $600 in revenue. I'm excited to give this back to the character designers and artists themselves. I think that's where this money should be going to. On our website, you can support artists directly. 100% of our proceeds from buy a coffee go to supporting local and online artists.

[00:19:11]Pretty soon, we're going to have some community events that happen monthly that not only have prizes, but also we get to actually pay artists for doing art work. I think art is valuable to society. Something exciting is about to happen here. If you learned something, tell me in the comment section down below. Have a great rest of your evening. I'll see you around camp.