Prick up the Ears

These two Panotti have a sad. They have been looking through the Yandy catalog of Sexy Animal Costumes and it appears that long floppy ears are not sexy -- all the Yandy models have perky little pricked up ears; even the Rascally Rabbit's aural appendages are upstanding!

Once again Looksism rears its ugly, large-eared head.

Left: Sexy Honey-Badger costume

Right: Two sexy sea-otter
costumes and a bikini

No surprises, then, that when unscrupulous people set out to market mood-reactive animotronic animal ears -- built into headsets, with scalp electrodes to pick up one's alpha- and beta-waves -- in a transparently heartless attempt to exploit the naivete of Furries, cats were the animals of choice. Also available through re-branding third parties as bear, fox, wolf and pikachu ears. And bunnies.

Here at Riddled Enterprises we condemn the entire phenomenon in the strongest possible terms, meanwhile quietly creating a subsidiary to re-fit the headsets with mobile wings so as to sell them as winged Gaulish helmets to Asterix-and-Obelix cosplayers. No word yet on self-wagging mood-expressive tails, nor on nose augments that extend if one's speech is not wholly sincere.*

One person was excited by the possibilities:

[The purveyor] was really excited to tell me all about them and show off the range of emotion they can convey. For example, they perk up when you see somebody cute, they droop down when you feel relaxed, and they wiggle when you get excited.

They sound suspiciously akin to the Emotion Registers that Brian Aldiss brought onto the market 50 years ago. They have the same problem, that many of us already have body parts that do most if not all of these things, but does SOCIETY allow us to expose them? DOES IT BOGROLL.

* Feature, not a bug.