Culture, Biology, and Dietary Headcanons

@Latecomer  
types*

@LightningBolt  
Indeed - earthponies, pegasi and unicorns, just like in the Hearth’s warming tale.

@Latecomer  
No love for snakes smh.

@LightningBolt  
Snakes are cool - so cool, they don’t need to be ponies. i am now totally considering lamia as a race for mi southern continent.

@Latecomer  
Aw c’mon, I was talking about snakes with legs and not even lamias. Why do they always gotta steal the spotlight.

@LightningBolt  
Because ever since a certain incident, not having legs has kind of been snakes’ thing, you know? I mean, if they walked instead of slithering, they might as well be lizards.

@Latecomer  
Discrimination.

@LightningBolt  
niche protection.

@Latecomer  
Don’t be mean to him.  

@LightningBolt  
only one snake in that pic, and it’s coiled around a tail.

@Latecomer  
You hurt me.

Since we’re talking about batponies, I think they are indeed a mutated subspecies of Pegasus, created by the magic of Nightmare Moon herself. After the failed rebellion, they were shipped off to a penal colony, which eventually became the new home nation of batponies. The nation is called Thestralia.

@Random-Rambling  
is it monster-infested enough that they would find living in the Everfree a break?

I don’t like the term Thestrals for batponies that much. It’s too much Harry Potter for me. Even if the word itself comes more from the Old English word thīestre, which is actually really nice and clever, the fandom should have chosen a name that does not remind so much of another franchise. At least in my opinion. Na ja, was soll’s. ;-)

@Mildgyth  

How do you know Celestia’s guards only look identical? Maybe they actually are. I mean, think about it for a second. Problems in Equestria don’t typically just stop happening, and for a thousand years of Equestrian history, Celestia had to contend with not only being cut off from the always useful deus ex machina gems, but also with being one of the only princesses able to deal with all princess level stuff. And sure, you can open up applications for the guard or start aggressively conscripting ponies to deal with the threats that pop up all over the Equestria, but it would be a lot faster and easier to simply find the most combat talented, loyal soldier already in your service and just copy him or her a few thousand times over.
 
Not that we’ve ever seen some ancient, well hidden location where you could magically clone an entire army on the show, of course.  
 
I mean… come on, the room has a ramp. What natural cave has a winding ramp like that?  
 
Ok, it probably wouldn’t be the smartest army ever, but the copies do get the same talents as the original and so long as the personality is set to “protect princess and country”, it would probably be a very effective force.

@Background Pony #1356
 
Issue is, Celestia’s guards don’t actually look identical – or at least they haven’t for a while. We’ve had clearly individual ones with distinct personalities since… Season 5, I believe.  
 
And we know that guards can and do leave service and take up different lifestyles, interests and careers once their tour’s ended.  
 
This guy and the blue-maned guard above are the same person.
 
Afterwards, when large numbers of guards are on-screen at once it’s common for them to look distinct from one another.  
 

@Frustration in Excelsis  
identical guards were just the biggest manifestation of the once-common duplication of background ponies - but since theu were there right from the beginning and very obviously, even becominng somewhat iconic, iv’s an image which sticks with the guards.

@Latecomer  
Next you’re gonna start parroting the “95% of the population of equestria is all female so of course everyone being lesbian makes perfect sense and stallions are treated as lesser beings” nonsense. :P
 
Joking, of course…unless?

@Frustration in Excelsis  

Yes, I know. I was mostly just having fun with the idea based on what Mildgyth said about them being identical looking.
 
But… the distinctiveness that came about in later seasons could still be logically explained without losing the clone idea. The guards started showing more distinctiveness and stopped being completely identical after Celestia’s student bonded with the elements of harmony, and her sister returned. Once she had backup and support for herself in place again, the more drastic measures she had needed to keep Equestria running smoothly could be relaxed, and the royal guard could once again afford the time for training and resume using volunteers instead of copies.

@LightningBolt  
I don’t think it was that out of balance even in season 1 - but yes, the proportion of stallions to mares defintlu went up over time. (likewise the proportion of ponies who wear clothes.)

@Latecomer  
It wasn’t, and I doubt that anyone who ever even made that claim, or still does to this day, ever thought that hard about it, and are only saying it to justify something dumb.
 
I don’t see people in other franchises act like ‘the world is 95% X’ because X is what most main characters are.

@Latecomer  
I wouldn’t say the guards all being stallions was an issue, that’s one thing. The issue is that until about Rarity Investigates (if the above screencap is any indication) we only had two guard models and one was only ever used in the intro.

@LightningBolt  
not just mane characters, all ponies even in the background. although admittedly, it wasn’t as bad as most previous gens…

@Latecomer  
Wasn’t there a scene that had three Trixies? Not even two of them palette swaps like DT&SS had in their debut episode, three legit Trixies.

@Wiimeiser  
Three Trixies? Three Trixies is nothing.