How Do I Alicorn? (Further Headcanon Nonsense)

The alicorn fluffy pony is not, as many suspect, a planned occurrence.  It is, rather, the first (and so far only) major genetic mutation of fluffy pony DNA.  This mutation is responsible not only for the alicorn having both horn and wings, but for all their other physical differences.  The very first alicorns came from regular fluffy parents, whose genomes were mapped and replicated to produce living alicorn factories.  Unfortunately, all of these dams died after two or three litters, due to the outsized nature of alicorn foals.  By that time, however, there were enough alicorns to form a breeding population.

The average adult alicorn fluffy pony is sixteen inches tall at the top of the head, and twenty inches long (including the tail).  They weigh eight to ten pounds.  Structurally, they are more robust than the standard fluffy pony; a drop from six feet will cripple a regular fluffy, but the alicorn will limp away from the fall with their legs intact.  Alicorns do not have the 'scruff' of regular fluffies.  A regular fluffy's skin is fairly loose, allowing for a human to grab it by the neck and lift.  Attempting to do this with an alicorn will result in severe pain, due to the higher average tautness of their skin in combination with their greater mass.  Alicorns have smaller eyes in relation to their skulls, rendering them less susceptible to eye infection or injury. The hooves of an alicorn are slightly closer to actual equine hooves; they will emit a clacking noise on a sufficiently hard surface.  The coloration of an alicorn can be as varied as any fluffy pony, but white and black remain the rarest colors.

Fluffy pony programming designates living creatures outside of certain size limits as potential threats.  To accommodate variances, the upper limit of this tolerance is twelve by sixteen plus two and one half inches.  Since virtually all alicorns fall outside of this tolerance, regular fluffy ponies view them as the catch-all threat class of 'munsta'.  No matter how nice the alicorn is to the fluffy pony, the fluffy will never fully trust the alicorn, as the alicorn is not human-shaped.  While the reaction to alicorns can vary from mild disdain to outright hatred, it is difficult, if not impossible, to get a fluffy pony and an alicorn to completely coexist.  Alicorns can get along with other common pet species without much issue, although larger dog breeds (Great Dane, Saint Bernard, etc.) may view the alicorn as a toy and not a companion if the alicorn is not vocal enough.  It remains to be seen whether an alicorn and regular fluffy can mate, as the latter are so terrified of the former they almost always run away.

The most striking aspect of the alicorn is their increased intelligence and emotionality.  In proportion with their larger bodies, they also have larger brains.  While the speech center still dominates, the extra brain mass allows for better recollection and deductive ability.  The alicorn is much easier to train than a regular fluffy pony, and will retain the training for longer.  They have the capability to remember the names of humans, instead of calling everyone 'mommy' or 'daddy'.  They are also very perceptive, able to understand body language and act accordingly.  Because of this, they do not need to vocalize some of the more basic fluffy pony inquiries, such as their current location or the intentions of the person they're with.  Ironically, due to the human-focused programming of all fluffies, they are much better at determining the intent of humans than of other fluffy ponies.  Unlike regular fluffy ponies, alicorns can pass the mirror test.  They usually do this by getting very close to the mirror and lifting a foreleg, watching it and its reflection for identical movements.

Also unlike most regular fluffies, alicorns know family from other, non-related fluffies.  This is due to their enhanced ability to retain information.  They also have the capability to pair bond; two unrelated alicorns that are together will grow closer over time.  Unlike a regular fluffy, who can seemingly remember, forget, and remember again a 'new fwiend' in the space of a couple of hours, an alicorn will recall that they have already met that fluffy/human.  They will still forget information that they have not used in a long time, but this process takes much longer than for regular fluffies.  Once trained, that training only needs to be alluded to periodically for them to retain the information.  Despite their improved retention, too much stimulus can still overwhelm an alicorn's ability to process it.  Unlike humans, who can prioritize automatically what they need to deal with, alicorns, as with all fluffy ponies, have some trouble categorizing the importance of stimuli that isn't pain or emotionally based.  An alicorn can be reset, but the voltage required is higher.  Resetting an alicorn can also lead to side effects, as their larger brains are wired slightly differently than the regular fluffy.  These side effects include loss of personality, total loss of memory (even that memory not affected by the reset suggestion), wild mood swings, and depression.

Alicorn reproduction proceeds along the same lines as other fluffy ponies.  Gestation is longer because the foals are larger and more cognitively developed.  An alicorn runt is the same size as a regular fluffy foal.  The gestation period of an alicorn is approximately twenty eight days.  The average litter size is three, with litters of one or two not considered to be unusual.  Litters of four or more are rarer than single or two-foal litters.  While paternal care is not universal in regular male fluffies, the alicorn fathers take their responsibilities to their children extremely seriously.  They will help the dam clean the babies and guide them to teats, and they will also ensure that any healthy alicorn foal in the litter gets the milk they need, whether by asking for/finding extra food for the dam, or eating less themselves so the dam may get more.  As the internal structure of the alicorn, besides the brain and skeleton, is just a scaled-up version of the regular fluffy pony, alicorn dams are also capable of the explosive stress birth, or 'fluffsplosion'.  The alicorn fluffsplosion is actually dangerous at close range, because of the more stout bone structure and increased explosive power.  An exploding dam can launch her foals to distances of nearly fifty yards, although their increased mass heightens the impact force and lessens their chance of survival.

The rejection process of an alicorn runt is vastly different than for a regular runt.  Both the mother and father will determine that the runt is too small to survive before anything happens.  If they do agree, the father will quietly take the runt away from the dam and set it aside.  The father will then put the runt out of its misery.  This takes a severe emotional toll on the parents; whereas a regular fluffy will say 'babeh dumb, no wan'' and repeatedly kick it away when it tries to obtain care, an alicorn family will ensure that the runt gets some love, and then is killed as quickly and humanely as possible.  In fact, while a fluffy runt will usually die covered in afterbirth, an alicorn runt is always cleaned before the father takes it away. Several owners that have witnessed the rejection process report that it is one of the most heartwrenching things they have ever seen.  Owners are strongly advised to monitor the emotional well-being of their alicorns if the mother should bear a runt.

Alicorn foals learn speech at a faster rate than regular foals.  Within twelve hours, they will know basic words such as 'wuv', 'hewp', 'mumma', 'dadda', and 'hung'y'.  Within three or four days, they will have the vocabulary of a two week old regular foal, including the realization of their gender.  By two weeks of age, an alicorn foal will have the mental capacity of an adult fluffy, being able to learn colors, names, and other information.  The average weaning time is roughly three weeks, although alicorn dams can become attached and teat-feed their broods for up to four weeks.  At four weeks, the dam's body will stop making milk altogether, as the nutritional drain can harm the dam if it continues on longer than that.

If a regular fluffy couple produces an alicorn foal, they will take care of it no matter what, because even an alicorn runt is still as big as a regular fluffy foal.  The runt will likely die despite their best efforts.  If the alicorn foal is healthy, it will crowd out the regular foals, killing them unless the parents/owner intervenes.  The fluffy dam will only notice something is wrong a few weeks later, as the foal will be as big as its parents (likely bigger), and by then she'll have forgotten it's her offspring and view it as a monster anyway.  Alicorn foals can drink regular fluffy milk without issue, as the nutritional content is the same; they just need more of it.

The odds of a regular fluffy couple producing an alicorn foal are approximately 1 in 295,000.