I have to agree with you two on human/furry antagonisim as well as the equalizing effect of civilization. However, I would have to disagree with RHJunior's specifics on humanity being physically weak. Modern (late twentieth century) suburbanite humans would definitely be at a severe disadvantage, but not quite so with our ancestors. For example, long-time pioneers of the Old West could run a mile, slow to a walk for a rest, then run for another mile, etc, with no problem. Many of us modern humans would be lucky to walk a mile without pooping out.
Humans may be weaker and slower than many furries (many of whom would loose some of their speed and strength when they switch to bipedalism), but humans are an endurance species, not so much in physical combat, but in covering long distances without stopping to rest. His vision is superb, not just in color, but in depth perception; the cat is one of the few animals who can exceed both of these traits (birds may have vision exceeding ours, but their depth perception is typically limited at best; they have to move their heads to create a depth effect). Humans actually have pretty good hearing for their needs, about average, but their sense of smell is better than is usually given credit for (birds have almost no sense of smell, though some male moths can sniff out receptive female moths over a mile away, upwind). I know that there are hypotheses that some early protohumans spent lots of time in shallow waters, possibly explaining such things as fat distribution, lack of heavy body hair, and the very shape of the human foot. It is true that humans aren't very good at climbing trees compared to monkeys and apes, but protohumans abandoned tree climbing to claim the savannahs when the early forests dwindled at an alarming rate. Humans are bad burrowers, awful mountain climbers, and absolutely impossible when it comes to flying (but we could fend off some flying attackers), but that's why humans invented construction vehicles and airplanes, and because protohumans evolved to be flatland species, it should be no surprise that modern humans aren't that great on mountains (but our big strength would be that we could outlast many other species).
But, then, humans are a highly adaptable species. Sure, they need clothes and tools to help cope, but they have filled nearly every ecosystem on all but one continent (I bet there would be aboriginal humans or signs thereof on Antarctica <I>if</I> any could have reached it over a long enough period of time in the past). Deserts? No problem; there are nomads in the Sahara/Arabian desert as well as the Gobi, aborigines in Australia (and they are believed to have created that desert), and native tribes in North and Middle America. Egypt was a desert civilization. Rain forests? Middle American, Amazonian, African, South-East Asian, Indonesian, and even New Zealand have had humans thriving in them. The Mayan civilization thrived in the rainforests of the Yucatan. Mountains? Tibet, the Alps, the Andes, the Rocky Mountains. The Incas built a civilization in the high Andes. Tundra? Go from the Laplanders in Scandanavia to the Inuit in northern Canada.
In fact, that adaptiveness could very well have meant that, in Gene's world, <I>humans</I> were the first to develop tools so they could fend off their protofurry neighbors, even chase them down and kill them for snacking on a friend or relative. As they developed intelligence too, furries would learn that humans, in general, may be physically disadvantaged in comparison to predatory furries, but because protohumans could outwalk the predator and was a nasty, vicious critter with sharp pointy things that are easily replacable, it was best to avoid rather than antagonize them. Then the furries would figure out how to make tools too (they might be slower in using them as some furries might be too prideful to see tools as anything more than weak replacements for supposedly superior natural weapons). Avariss Senior's mindset would have had its origins back in this time.
Then, humans would create the first civilizations (which would combine such things as the communal burrowings of creatures like prairie dogs, the cooperative behavior of lions, and the social structures of wolves). To survive against this advantage, furries would also need to either build their own civilizations or ally themselves with human civilizations (smaller animals like rodents and lagomorphs as well as some of the small to medium-sized herbivores would probably ally themselves with humans most readily; after all, if the meanest, nastiest, cruelest of all predators was your buddy, wouldn't you think that your regular predatory enemies might think twice about attacking you?) In order to keep from wiping each other out, humans and furries would have had to develop the skills of diplomacy far earlier. This would be when Avariss Junior's type of mindset would develop.
Castles and other fortifications, ships, gunpowder, spoken and written language, methods for conveying information such as books or smoke signals or whatever, some of these might have been first thought of by furries, but once humans managed to wrap their slimy little brains around the ideas, they would be the first to develop it to usable long-term advantage or brainstorm ways to make the advantage theirs.
Only recently, just as it has in our world, would humans be safe enough to slow down and consider other things besides survival. They would now have the equipment and technical knowhow as well as the alliance of relatively trustable furries to keep the hostile furry away so they could spend more time on less worldly things. It would be humans who would be the primary movers and shakers of the Rennaisance, the Industrial Revolution, and so forth. That's not to say that the furries would only be along for the ride. No doubt they made incredible advances that helped move humans forward.
All of that could explain why Gene's Furriston and Canovian furries have human mannerisms and lifestyles. Humans were the major trendsetters and the furries found it wiser to adapt to fit human styles (and some of what would be human styles on our world probably originated with furries in Gene's world).
However, because of the presence of furries, the humans of Gene's world would not be like those of our world. Avariss may indeed be a sedentary paperpusher of his world, but he just might be considered a very strong and tough man in ours (we did not have the same incentives as he did). Also, to control Avariss' humans' warlike instincts, a warriors' code not unlike bushido of Japan or chivary of Medieval Europe would have developed. In fact, that might explain why Michael Avariss did what would be to us a dumb thing to do and enter a potentially hostile city without bodyguards or backup readily at hand to perform nefarious and dangerous doings personally. To us, that would be an idiotic way of doing things, but, to him, that might be the proper way of doing things.<P>
DISCLAIMER: Of course, this is all speculation by a fan (ain't he a cute widdle thing? Anooying, but cute). The illustrious cartoonist may decide that humans got the advantage of furries because of alien intervention or because they could control furries through the use of totems. (He's either nodding his head at my clever speculations or laughing his head off at my presumptivness.)<P>------------------
"Please keep claws, fangs, and all rotten fruits and vegetables to yourself at all times." - Mngmt
