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Description
Wow, this is probably the quickest amount of time between drawing a sketch and colouring it in - I got the idea for this drawing earlier today and am uploading it tonight. But yeah, out of my Nusu the Okapi cast, Sumu the mongoose is the one I've drawn the least, so I decided to draw a little comic based on his origins, as my friend gave me some help with it, and after doing research into why mongooses are resistant to snake venom, it gave me an idea.

Mongooses are resistant to snake venom because they have a very high amount of acetylcholine receptors (an organic chemical that functions in the brain and body of many types of animals (including humans) as a neurotransmitter—a chemical message released by nerve cells to send signals to other cells, such as neurons, muscle cells and gland cells) - to try and study snake venom and make antitoxins, human scientists studied the amount of acetylcholine in Sumu's blood, and while the research was done for a worthy purpose and the lab was well kept, Sumu couldn't take the testing anymore after year of being a subject and escaped from the lab one day. (I tried to go for a more fleshed out portrayal of animal testing with the lab being kept more respectable and the scientists looking more normal to try and make a change from the usual portrayal - while horrifically kept labs where animals are tested do sadly exist, there are others that aren't as poorly managed and have more respectable ethics, and if no other option for testing is available, I don't mind it if it's done humanely. )

While he does have scars on his body, Sumu did manage to gather some kind of knowledge of what humans knew as natural remedies for snake venom (custard apples, tumeric, plantains, cowhage, and the antivenom he was making in the previous picture I drew him), and I see him as some kind of sagely medic for the animal community he's in. Seen as Mti is a rather intellectual animal as well, I figure he and Sumu would get along (but I love the idea of Mti having to kneel down REALLY low to even TRY to poke his head into Sumu's cave. )

Description
Wow, this is probably the quickest amount of time between drawing a sketch and colouring it in - I got the idea for this drawing earlier today and am uploading it tonight. But yeah, out of my Nusu the Okapi cast, Sumu the mongoose is the one I've drawn the least, so I decided to draw a little comic based on his origins, as my friend gave me some help with it, and after doing research into why mongooses are resistant to snake venom, it gave me an idea.

Mongooses are resistant to snake venom because they have a very high amount of acetylcholine receptors (an organic chemical that functions in the brain and body of many types of animals (including humans) as a neurotransmitter—a chemical message released by nerve cells to send signals to other cells, such as neurons, muscle cells and gland cells) - to try and study snake venom and make antitoxins, human scientists studied the amount of acetylcholine in Sumu's blood, and while the research was done for a worthy purpose and the lab was well kept, Sumu couldn't take the testing anymore after year of being a subject and escaped from the lab one day. (I tried to go for a more fleshed out portrayal of animal testing with the lab being kept more respectable and the scientists looking more normal to try and make a change from the usual portrayal - while horrifically kept labs where animals are tested do sadly exist, there are others that aren't as poorly managed and have more respectable ethics, and if no other option for testing is available, I don't mind it if it's done humanely. )

While he does have scars on his body, Sumu did manage to gather some kind of knowledge of what humans knew as natural remedies for snake venom (custard apples, tumeric, plantains, cowhage, and the antivenom he was making in the previous picture I drew him), and I see him as some kind of sagely medic for the animal community he's in. Seen as Mti is a rather intellectual animal as well, I figure he and Sumu would get along (but I love the idea of Mti having to kneel down REALLY low to even TRY to poke his head into Sumu's cave. )