Yet another one of my "What if?" ideas. Boys and girls meet Kanis. Kanis belongs to a hominid species called the Huvan. His species evolve don a parallel earth which has a much diffrent. On his earth the meteor which caused the extinction of the dinosaur did not have as drastic an effect on life on earth and was smaller. Still all the larger species of dinosaur died out but many of the smaller breeds did survive all be it at very reduced numbers. The environment remained too poor for them long enough for mammals to gain a foot hold and secure an advanced evolutionary lineage. At least in parts of the world. Africa, Europe, and Asia were dominated by mammalian life. North and South America saw the recovery of the dinosaurs back into many of their ecological niches. Australia saw marsupial mammals rise as well.

Huvans like Kanis like humans were born of Africa and since spread to Europe and parts of Asia. His species fills much the same niche humans did. Intelligent endurance runners. Huvans have a similar evolutionary tree to humans but it's differed. For example his kind still bear a fairly simian muzzle, the ears are diffrent, and the pinky fingers and toes are now nothing more then vestigial bones. Also Huvans have evolved a digigrade upright stance which lends them extra height and speed. They also have superior sense of smell to humans and are about 10% stronger. Ohter then that intellectually they're on the same footing as us. Their skin and hair tones generally run the same range as us with some subtle differences.

Huvans however are not the sole sentient life form on earth however. There is also a marsupial and saurian sentient species.

Kanis here is fairly average among his kind. He likes to listen to music and go out and about with his friends. He hates his math teacher and loves art and science class though. He's pretty open and hopes one day to study paleontology. Kanis' diapers are a bit common among his species. A new mutation has popped up in his species a half dozen centuries ago which which has made their digestive systems more efficient however it seems to have had the effect of giving them little control over bodily functions. This is common to 28% percent of the population and more so in males as the gene for this seems to most often be on the Y chromosome. Kanis doesn't mind it much. He may get some light teasing with it but given that over a quarter of his school mates are just like him it's not really much.