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The cherub is a strange sort of angel with a strange sort of form. They are overall humanoid, with 2 pairs of wings. These wings also bear hands on the underside. Furthermore, they have 4 heads, each facing a completely different direction. Furthermore, their feet have 2 shapes, appearing humanoid above but with the soles of a bull

How could this wonderous creature fit together?

Ichthys King
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    Other than the physical description, how does this vary from the AC's question, Anatomically Correct Angels? As a means of producing deeper, more valuable answers, what isn't dealt with there (if anything) that should be dealt with here (other than the physical appearance)? – JBH Jul 02 '22 at 03:06
  • @JBH Why must there be more than physical appearance? Would you object to a question about primordial vertebrates being asked again for humans? – Ichthys King Jul 02 '22 at 07:10
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    @IchthysKing I think that what JBH meant is that in general, creatures are not bones, mucles and pancreas because they need to be muscles, bones and pancreas. If you work along with a known behavior, it could give some more meaning to your question, a direction we could follow. Could be as simple as flight -though you'd need to demonstrate angel's flight doesn't solve the case-, or as funny as eating simutaneously with all faces at once. Now I want to know how cherubs rub all this food in their throats :p. – Tortliena - inactive Jul 02 '22 at 12:55
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    Like Tortelena said. There's a saying around here: form follows function. We could better tell you about the form of the anatomy if we knew what they did, how they moved. – Escaped dental patient. Jul 02 '22 at 12:59
  • (a) You call the cherub an angel and we already have an ACS entry for angels - so why isn't this a duplicate? (b) I'll give you the same quote I used in defense of your answer, "Their purpose is to invite site participants to consider how to describe fictional or mythological creatures from an evolutionary context with as much biological and behavioral realism as possible." It's tough to meet that goal when you (consistently) provide so little information. The link to wikipedia is more valuable than your Q - and yet you include almost nothing from it. (Link-only Qs are as bad as link-only As.) – JBH Jul 03 '22 at 05:54

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Heads

The anatomy of the heads seems hard to figure. It seems there is no way to connect necks in this manner. However, we don't need necks: Instead we could have each skull connected at the occipital bones, with an extra bone on top to cover it. All of the throats empty into a common pharynx in the middle, and the brains are linked by a ring of nervous tissue

This entire system would be connected to the rest of the body by a standard tetrapod neck, with the gullet and trachea coming off the pharynx and the spine linking to an extra occipital in the rear head

Wings

The wing shoulder joints should be easy to insert under the arms. They can share the major muscles between them, to save complexity

The hands can be added in by a forked wrist joint, with the hand on a palmar fork of the wrist. This is simpler, and should require few extra muscles to move

Feet

The unique feet could be simple to form: Perhaps the heel could be replaced with a cow hoof extending forwards, sat in the arch of the foot. This would quite simply give the desired effect, without much complexity

Ichthys King
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  • Counterpoint: You're overthinking this. Angels are, by definition, spiritual creatures. It is not necessary or even reasonable to expect that they would be constructed in what we call an "anatomically correct" manner, because this definition of anatomical stems from limitations of matter that spirit doesn't share – JB3 Jul 02 '22 at 00:47
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    @JayroBoyNeto Ichthys is referring to a tradition on this Stack called the anatomically correct series. From that series post we read, "The Anatomically Correct (AC) series of questions are a popular tradition on Worldbuilding.SE. Their purpose is to invite site participants to consider how to describe fictional or mythological creatures from an evolutionary context with as much biological and behavioral realism as possible." Whether or not that effort expresses anyone's cultural, philosophical, or religious beliefs isn't the point. – JBH Jul 02 '22 at 03:04