Part pony, part eagle

[Steve Piranha 29,428]

I've been curious about the hippogriffs, it's said in the movie that they are  part pony, and part eagle; similar in how griffons are half eagle and half lion in Gilda's debut back in S1. Thing is, in mythology at least, hippogriffs are actually half equines, half griffons. You think that's actually the same case with FiM hippogriffs as well? You may argue that they lack any lion parts, but hippogriffs rarely look different from griffons with horse rear instead of lions  . 

Edited October 24, 2017 by Steve Piranha

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,632]

This to me seems like the movie is instead using a more simplified version of the creature. I guess that is one positive of mythology, customization. :3 You can make it to whatever you please. Me, I would have them be half pony, half toaster.

[ShadOBabe 18,997]

I’ve always believed Hippogriffs were the offspring of ponies and griffons. I think Queen Novo’s people are a little different.

Headcanon territory, but hear me out. Back when the three pony tribes didn’t get along, ponies and griffons did occasionally have children together. These would be first generation hippogriffs. But if ponies couldn’t even accept and get along with members of their OWN species at the time, I image hybrid children would face heavy prejudice too.

These marginalized hippogriffs would form communities for support. Eventually, I imagine many of them just left together to carve out a place for themselves. These hippogriffs eventually became their own society and culture, and their descendants became the multigenerational hippogriffs of Queen Novo’s kingdom.

And meanwhile, back in pony territory, prejudice against different tribes began to fade away, but the culture was still pretty homogeneous. But while very rare (since we saw a bunch of ponies didn’t recognize what Gilda was), when the odd pony/griffon couple occurred, they and their kids didn’t face the kind of stigma they had in the past and just lived as regular citizens.