Say again, I think you are hitting on something here.
Two scalings, the 1.2 (or whatever) in descr_skeleton.txt and
the x, y, z, scalings you can put in when exporting an extracted
skeleton to an animations directory. Which combination seems to
be working ok? or, if not ok, at least better in some way.

I'm leaning more and more on the problem being a weird animations
interaction that hasn't been seen on more conventional guys (like
armored sergeants with small tails).