No, they would turn into a normal bird. The extra mass is shunted into z-space where afterwards it can be called back to return the shifter to their previous form. Just don't stay a bird for more than two hours.
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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The real issue is remembering you're not a bird once you have a bird brain
That's easy enough. But for the love of god, don't morph into colony insects like ants or bees!
NOT THE BEEEES
Very Inkspell/Inkdeath.
Animorphs was literally my first thought as well
Oh, Tobias.
Did he ever manage to turn back in later books? It really stuck with me.
I only read the first 34, and he got the power to morph again, but not his human form. I learned how it all ended and stopped reading in anger.
Thanks. That's so sad.
ctrl-f “z-space”
Aww, yeah.
Marahute!
Preserving a mass while maintaining the ability to fly would require you to significantly increase in size, which comes with all sorts of drawbacks.
Humans can't fly precisely because we're too dense. Birds and other flying creatures have plenty of adaptations meant to reduce mass (or, rather, density) by all means possible.
If we're so dense how did we invent planes!?
Putting something small and dense into something big and not dense helps
Even dense brains know that. Ooga booga fly!
You ever seen an ostrich?
Bro they are bigger than humans.
But for a bird with a human's mass to be able to fly, it would have to be huge. Much larger than an ostrich.
Birds have hollow bones so their mass in comparison to their size is very little.
True true
Emu as well
Has either of you seen a flying ostrich or emu?
What if you use a trébuchet ?
Please dont introduce emus to siege weapons, they're already a significant military threat without them
Yeah I definitely missed that part. Also pretty sure they can glide. ? Does that count. ?
Have you seen their wings? They're not going to be gliding either.
CAW bitchhhh
You just cast ritual?
if a fan was stuck in my ass I'd be a windmill.
sounds like you might have a good idea.
And if my mom had wheels she’d be a bicycle.
The village bicycle?
When I was a kid I had a book called The Science of the X-Men (which that site lists for $11 but eBay lists for anywhere from $100-1500) that attempted to use real world physics to explain how the powers of the X-Men might work.
Mostly the explanations came down to "I dunno, maybe black holes?" For example, it speculated that Jean Grey might have a microscopic black hole in her brain and had subconsciously learned to use it to open the other end in other brains and somehow vibrate the brain matter in a way to communicate telepathically.
Anyway, I don't recall whether it covered any shapeshifters, but if so, it probably handled it the same way Animorphs did (as others have mentioned in this thread), but with black holes instead of z-space.
Are you also preserving the ratios of materials that the body is made of? We'd have very heavy bones for a bird (or a lot of bones at bird density) and probably not enough muscle to lift 2m long wings. Also all the keratin in our hair and nails wouldn't make many feathers. We'd be a mostly plucked bird
you would need to turn into something like a Pterosaur given the hollow bones and everything. Those could be anywhere half the mass of a person to like twice the mass or something.
Biggest by mass, but a bird with the mass of a human cant fly (biomechanically impossible), so there needs to be magic fuckery involved.
Meaning that a shapeshifter that turns in a flying bird with the same mass as a human would likely not be as large as you think. Humans are very dense compared to birds. Assuming we keep that density, we could be smaller than some of the larger eagles or carrion birds.
The largest flying animal to ever live, as far as we know, was the Quetzalcoatlus, which is estimated to have a mass up to over 400 pounds. Thats more mass than 99% of all humans, flatly disproving your claim. Just because theres no living bird with that mass doesn't in any way mean its biologically impossible.
Why would you assume it would have the same density as a human? This is an arbitrary restriction you're adding to the scenario. Conservation of mass doesn't require conservation of volume.
I love the quetzalcoatlus, it's one of my favorite summons in D&D. 80ft fly speed, flyby, 10ft reach, 22 (6d6+2) damage with a flying charge, and only CR 2. 🤌
The largest flying animal to ever live, as far as we know, was the Quetzalcoatlus, which is estimated to have a mass up to over 400 pounds. Thats more mass than 99% of all humans, flatly disproving your claim.
If you assume that we can change density then its possible sure.
Just because theres no living bird with that mass doesn’t in any way mean its biologically impossible.
If you just reshaped a person into a bird shape, its biomechanically impossible for them to fly.
Why would you assume it would have the same density as a human?
Because otherwise you arent turning a person into a bird, you are just making a bird (or other flying mammal) with the same approximate mass as a human.
This is an arbitrary restriction you’re adding to the scenario.
Seems implied to me
Conservation of mass doesn’t require conservation of volume.
So the original post would just be "a flying bird with the same mass as a human would be a huge bird"
Which...sure
dig in those heals, double down on the argument you pulled out of your ass. you're part of what sucks about the internet.
UH huh
By quite a lot too. The kori bustard is the heaviest known flying animal at around 18kg or 40lbs.
not as large as big bird
Just because mass is conserved doesn't mean size/shape is conserved. If you're always human-sized, you're a pretty shitty shapeshifter. No offense.
thats... the whole point of the post. a bird with a humans mass would be huge. maybe you should have left your shitty assumptions in your ass. no offence.
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