History Main / VertebrateWithExtraLimbs

[[quoteright:350:[[Theatre/TheRingOfTheNibelung https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/odin_sleipnir2_op.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[Music/{{Manowar}} This eight-legged steed crosses eight points of the compass.]]]]

* The land vertebrates of ''Manga/ACentaursLife'' evolved from a common hexapod ancestor but turned out quite close to ours, with many species in common but six-limbed: six legged cows, dogs and horses, and about six main human sub-species, including some with wings and two {{centauroid form}}s, one extinct.

* Creator/JackVance's ''Literature/PlanetOfAdventure'' features six legged beasts of burden.

[[folder:Mythology & Religion]]

[[folder:Truth In Television]]
* A parasite called ''Riberoia trematodes'' attacks tadpoles and burrows into their hind limb buds, damaging the growing limb so that upon metamorphosis the frog is redered crippled, is unable to escape predators and gets eaten, allowing it to move into its next host. While usually, afflicted frogs end up with stunted or missing limbs, some cases have been documented of them sprouting extra legs instead, as many as eight in certain cases.
* Scientists who were asked to imagine what an alien world would look like, and what sort of creatures might inhabit it, agreed that a six-limbed version of a common land vertebrate wouldn't be too unbelieveable.
* And not to mention [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshmi_Tatma Lakshmi Tatma, the 8-limbed girl.]]
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[[folder:Web Comics]]

[[folder:Mythology]]
* The Boi-Vaquim from Myth/BrazilianFolklore is a winged bull from the Rio Grande do Sul state prairies with diamond eyes and golden, flaming horns.
* [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Western dragons]] are typically depicted as having four limbs and one pair of wings.
* Eastern dragons are sometimes presented as having as many wings as they do legs -- pairs of both running all along both sides of their long serpentine bodies.
* Likewise, [[OurGryphonsAreDifferent griffins]] also usually have four limbs and a pair of wings.
* Pegasus, the flying horse in Greek Myth, has four limbs and a pair of wings as well.
* The peryton from the Literature/BookOfImaginaryBeings, a pegasus style animal only being a winged deer rather than a winged horse (and carnivorous, but that's another story). There's a recent tendency to portray it as a bird with a deer's head however, probably based on D&D.
* Semargl, a Slavic god, takes the form of a winged dog.
* Thai myth has a lot of fantastic mix-and-match critters, including numerous winged, six-limbed vertebrates. Among them are flying kirins, winged horses, a sort of griffin called kraisorn puksa, and even flying elephants.

[[folder:Film]]
* The titular God-monster in ''Film/QTheWingedSerpent'' has four legs and two wings.
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* In ''Literature/DragonridersOfPern'', dragons are genetically engineered creatures descended from fire lizards, which also have four legs and wings but are much smaller.

*** Incidentally, [[AllThereInTheManual supplemental material]] indicates that Pernese arthropods have four limbs.

* TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons has dragons, winged serpents (which aren't this trope because that's two limbs total), and many others. In 3.0 and 3.5 there were also numerous templates that could be added to a creature to give them wings, as well: half-celestial, half-fiendish, half-dragon (if the base creature was at least large size), and [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin winged]], just to name a few.

* Several characters in ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'', being pegasi or dragons.
** And in the ''Friendship is Magic'' generation, griffons as well.
* ''WesternAnimation/SheRaPrincessOfPower'' character Imp possessed two arms, two legs, and two wings.

[[folder:Other]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989'': [[UnscaledMerfolk Ursula]], the main villainess, is half-octopus, and as such has a large number of tentacles sprouting from her waist instead of legs.

* ''WebComic/GrrlPower'': The reason for the humanoid form being common among many non-Terran species is [[https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-759-its-evolutionary-my-dear-washington-post/ discussed]] by Dabbler during a press conference. Aside from the possible local benefits of six limbs instead of four, too many extra arms or legs (or eyes or...) or too much variation among the ''types'' of limbs is not efficient when it comes to survival, taking up resources while providing diminishing returns.[[note]]The other subjects she discusses, such as the squishy humanoids living on dry land being the most likely to develop magic and/or tech, fit under other tropes.[[/note]]

* The ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' Giratina has six legs when in its Altered-Form.

* ''Art/RealisticPokemon'': A few Pokemon, but the most notable is Dragonite, which has wing-like protuberances on its back despite being flightless. Subverted with Crobat, whose extra wings are depicted as modified legs, and what appear to be vestigial legs on its hindquarters are actually two small tails.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'': Rouge is a white bat with separate arms and wings.

* ''WebOriginal/{{Serina}}'': The gibbets and simiagibs have six limbs. They descended from the three-legged tribbets (terrestrial fish), but two fingers on each arm and two toes on the single hind limb became larger to aid in climbing trees, eventually developing their own fingers and becoming six functional limbs.

* Edgar Rice Burroughs' ''Literature/{{Barsoom}}'' novels had:

* ''Fanfic/AngelasPetMonster'', ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'' fanfiction: Randall's ex-girlfriend Sylvia Schneider is a wolf with four legs, two retractable arms, and a pair of wings.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'': It's common for a summoner's [[BondCreature eidolon]] to end up with a large number of limbs, as increasing their number of attacks per round with extra arms, tails, tentacles, or heads is one of the easiest and most effective ways of boosting their power.

* In RealLife the prehistoric reptile ''Coelurosauravus'', a relative of lizards that lived during the Permian Period, had four legs and two gliding "wings." Unlike today's gliding lizards, whose gliding membranes grow on spread-out ribs, ''Coelurosauravus'''s "wings" were an entirely unique set of bones not connected to its ribs. Their morphology suggests they evolved by ossification of connective tissues in the skin, though that's the sort of thing that almost never fossilized so it's difficult to confirm.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[Music/{{Manowar}} This eight-legged steed crosses eight points of the compass]].]]

* The ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' games have basilisks, crocolisks, and diemetradons, all of which have six legs. However, the dragons in the game (who have 4 legs plus wings) did NOT evolve from these creatures. They are this trope because AWizardDidIt: the Titans transformed them from a type of creature now referred to as a proto-drake. Proto-drakes, surprisingly, avert this trope: their wings are connected to their forelegs. The explanation for the six-legged reptiles is probably that the Titans tested their transformation techniques on creatures they considered "lesser" than the proto-drakes, due to not being as eusocial and intelligent. The presence of diemetradons is a fairly reliable indicator that a Titan laboratory is somewhere nearby, or that someone has been messing with Titan tech. Crocolisks are one of the few creatures that appear on Draenor as well as Azeroth, a further indication that they are Titan creations. So again, probably AWizardDidIt.

[[folder:Mythology]]
* The [[Myth/NorseMythology Norse God, Odin]] had an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir. Which was born from Loki ([[ShapeshiftingSquick shape-shifted into a mare at the time]]) and a giant's stallion. [[OvenLogic The extra legs let it run faster.]]
* Basilisks, depending on the depiction. While many have two chicken legs and two either bat-lizard or bird wings, and some are just snake-like, several depictions have four lizard and/or chicken feet in addition to the wings, or no wings but more than four legs, often of the lizard variety.
* Asian dragons, being usually associated with rivers or water, almost never have wings but can have four or more legs (usually depending on how long/powerful the dragon is). For an example, see the river spirit in ''Anime/SpiritedAway''. More rarely, Western dragons can also look like this.
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[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Film]]
* Most of the Pandoran wildlife in ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' has six limbs: two pairs of forelimbs and one of hind. The Na'vi do not; this is explained in-universe by their evolution from the monkey-like creatures Jake sees on his first trip out which also have six limbs, but the forelimbs on each side are joined at the elbow -- so, two total upper arms and four total lower arms.
* {{Justified|Trope}} with Stitch from ''Franchise/LiloAndStitch'': he is not only an alien, he's a genetic experiment as well. Also, most of the time he keeps his extra arms hidden so {{muggles}} mistake him for a dog.

* In Creator/RobertEHoward's Literature/ConanTheBarbarian story "Literature/QueenOfTheBlackCoast", when they spot the ruins, they also spot a winged ape.

* The peryton from the Myth/ClassicalMythology, a pegasus style animal only being a winged deer rather than a winged horse (and carnivorous, but that's another story). There's a recent tendency to portray it as a bird with a deer's head however, probably based on D&D.

* Hippogriffs, Thestrals, and Dragons in ''Literature/HarryPotter''.
** Oddly enough dragons in the movie verse avert this. Their wings are part of their forelimbs.

In RealLife, vertebrates have at most four functional limbs - legs, arms (which anatomically are really modified forelegs), or wings (which are modified arms) - and one tail. If it has more than that, like arthropods (insects, spiders, centipedes, etc), it's not a vertebrate. Some individuals have abnormal numbers due to injury or glitches during development, but additional limbs rarely function properly. Those with less, like snakes and whales, still evolved from four-limbed animals.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with six or more legs - it's just that current large land animals originated from a species with a four limb body plan, and adding more requires all sorts of complicated skeleton and muscle changes that are much more complex than just making the ones the organism already has a little better. Or, if they're weighing the critter down... take them out. Just look at whales for a demo. This apparently happens a lot - evidence suggests that when the first fish crawled out of the water, it did so on seven-toed feet. (For more info on the topic, try [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection the other wiki]])

* Most of the Pandoran wildlife in ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' has six limbs: two pairs of forelimbs and one of hind. The Na'vi do not; this is explained in-universe by their evolution from the monkey-like creatures Jake sees on his first trip out which also have six limbs, but the forelimbs on each side are joined at the elbow - so, two total upper arms and four total lower arms.

* Eastern dragons are sometimes presented as having as many wings as they do legs - pairs of both running all along both sides of their long serpentine bodies.