animal weapon generation problem (Carnivores)

[GypsyComet]

Again: "Weapon types should always be considered to be descriptive of result rather than of strict process."

This can be represented by the trample of a herd animal, a heavy tail used as a club, or some other object, including the victim, used to impart kinetic energy in large amounts well beyond the scope of personal armor. It isn't about how sharp, accurate, or poisonous it is (those all being covered by other rolls on the weapon table), its about imparted energy and force in large amounts.

Animals (and children) that bite are biters. The cartoon gorilla of my example thrashes, and is therefore a Thrasher by weapon type. That he is also an Omnivore Gatherer is a different matter.

 

[EDG]

Maybe it should be renamed to "Club" or "Impact" then, if that's the case. My point really is that people shouldn't be calling animals "thrashers" - they're not listed as such on the animal types table, and it just confuses the issue. (I know one can always say that they're "biters" or "kickers" or whatever, but those aren't the classifications in the tables).

 

[lurker]

... the tables should be able to produce an Earth-like distribution of animals....

Why? What is wrong with animal life evolving differently? How about a world where there are no meat eaters or omnivores at all and only herbivores?

 

[phild]

... the tables should be able to produce an Earth-like distribution of animals....

Why? What is wrong with animal life evolving differently? How about a world where there are no meat eaters or omnivores at all and only herbivores?

Such a world doesn't make any sense. Some of the herbivores would discover that they can actually get energy much more efficiently by spending 5 minutes eating the carcass of 1 dead herbivore than spending all day munching grass. Some of those would stop eating grass altogether and just eat meat. Of those, the leaner and faster ones might get more food, so evolution would begin to favour speed and agility ---> chasers. Etc. etc.

The point is, evolution is not Earth-based, it is a universal fundamental, as fundamental as any of the laws of physics.

caveat: an imaginative GM with a group of players willing to suspend [reasonable] disbelief might be able to come up with a rationale for herbivore only planet, e.g. plants which are very efficient at providing energy to herbivores, some natural process which keeps herbivore population in check but otherwise a safe static environment that minimises evolutionary tendencies.

 

[GypsyComet]

... the tables should be able to produce an Earth-like distribution of animals....

Why? What is wrong with animal life evolving such that there are no meat eaters at all and only herbivores?

You are missing my point. While the tables can and should be able to produce alien assortments, the type and distribution of animals seen on Earth needs to be within the capabilities of the tables.

Well, maybe some of the plants eat the animals and this is what they need armor for!

A plant that aggressive belongs on the animal encounter table, regardless of classification. Carnivore Trapper, perhaps.

Evolution tends to work to fill gaps and exploit resources as a natural consequence. If the plant life feeds upon the animals actively, then those animals that successfully defend themselves will live longer. That defense can be sharper horns to cut themselves loose, nimbler feet to avoid the traps, sharper eyes (or noses, or minds) to recognize the danger, or a change in diet to be able to survive in a place where the aggressor plants don't live. If that other place lacks something else important, then further adaption may take place. Say there is a vital nutrient missing, but those grazers that have taken to eating a specific shrub are getting it. IF this nutrient isn't in the shrub, but instead comes from the bugs that live on the undersides of the leaves, the large grazer has taken steps to becoming an omnivore, and may take further steps into carnivory down the line. In evolutionary terms, you'll have carnivores soon enough.

But what of the aggressive plants? If some of their herbivorous food source remains in their range, things won't change quickly if at all. If all the previous food animals move away, the plants will either find a new prey animal or go back to living off of sunshine and soil nutrients. Or die.

At the same time, some of the animals that stay will have learned to exist despite the aggressor plants, and some may eventually learn to exist by exploiting the aggressor plants, either by "stealing" their prey or feeding directly on them. Here too you have the potential to regain carnivores, as perhaps some small and agile critter has figured out that the soil underneath a feeder pod is rich with iron, calcium, and "exotic" proteins from where the pod dumps the indigestable material. This can lead to a critter than will investigate the feeder pods directly, perhaps developing a method to share the meal being digested, steal chunks off of a meal that is still being dragged into a feeder pod, or even exist within the feeder pods, immune to its processes, and feed off of secondary digestion products. Carnivores and scavengers are the end result here (to the extent that evolution ever has an end result).

Given enough time, every exploitable niche in an ecosystem will be exploited, often by multiple parties that may or may not recognize each other as competition (think lions and hyenas and vultures vs the maggots that finish the job). It never stops.

A world without obvious carnivores will get plenty of attention by the local Scout/Survey service, because that gap is an indication that something has happened to that ecosystem.

 

[lurker]

The point is, evolution is not Earth-based, it is a universal fundamental, as fundamental as any of the laws of physics.

It is?

I guess I am a bit of an idiot.

Could you please give the percentage of animals that have to be herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores on all planets according to this universal fundamental?

 

[lurker]

... the tables should be able to produce an Earth-like distribution of animals....

Why? What is wrong with animal life evolving such that there are no meat eaters at all and only herbivores?

You are missing my point. While the tables can and should be able to produce alien assortments, the type and distribution of animals seen on Earth needs to be within the capabilities of the tables.

Ah, thank you for clarifying. I agree.

Well, maybe some of the plants eat the animals and this is what they need armor for!

Hey! You must have been in the middle of creating your post before I deleted this comment. I didn't want to sidetrack the thread with too much talk about plants. Since you did use the quote though, I wanted to let people know where it came from.

 

[phild]

The point is, evolution is not Earth-based, it is a universal fundamental, as fundamental as any of the laws of physics.

It is?

I guess I am a bit of an idiot.

Could you please give the percentage of animals that have to be herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores on all planets according to this universal fundamental?

I think this response is trolling, but I think it deserves a sensible answer nonetheless. I didn't describe evolution as a universal constant or equation, but it is a fundamental, in that any universe that has any element of change will inevitably have some level of evolution. Evolution is merely a handy label for the principle that where life has some mechanism for mutation, over the long term there is an inevitable process of change and adaptation to fill environmental niches.

Evolution is not an equation, it is a process or principle - like newton's laws of motion. It can happen through any range of mechanisms, and result in any number of different options: just as the random factor in the Traveller table allows. But over the long term, it will always be there as long as there is the chance that life can improve its reproductivity by doing something slightly different.

I strongly recommend you check out Richard Dawkin's "A Selfish Gene" - he's not everyone's favourite scientist owing to his empassioned athiesm, but nonetheless this is a classic of popular science that explains comprehensively, yet without complexity, what evolution is and how it functions on Earth.

 

[GypsyComet]

The point is, evolution is not Earth-based, it is a universal fundamental, as fundamental as any of the laws of physics.

Could you please give the percentage of animals that have to be herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores on all planets according to this universal fundamental?

:roll:

While the numbers will vary a bit based on specifics of available energy intake from food, in general you'll need a lot more mass in food animals than you get in carnivores. This isn't on an individual animal basis, mind you, but on total mass. Thousands of cattle provide both continuance of the species AND food for a couple hundred wolves. At the same time, there are thousands of mice for every fox, weasel, stoat, and rat, and many millions of bugs for every chicken.

 

[lurker]

I guess I am a bit of an idiot.

Could you please give the percentage...

I think this response is trolling...

I'm not sure what trolling is in this context. [told you I was an idiot]

I was not trying to put anyone down (other than myself), just trying to make a point that there may be a lot of theories which are based on Earth examples but there is not a lot of indisputable facts and figures (or as stated in another post: equation) to go along with it. Can it be predicted with any certainty how the current species on earth will evolve over time? How can we predict the way life will evolve on alien worlds with exotic atmospheres and climates?

I was hoping to eliciting a post that percentages could not be defined - which I did.

My planned response: Can you even define an upper and lower range? Why couldn't the number of carnivores be very low and if not zero, how about very close to it?

I realize that I've made an error. Probably many! My thoughts are not on the quantities of animals but instead the quantities of species that fall within a certain category. Since this post was about weapons and armor, in my original concept, I was considering a carnivore to be an animal that kills another animal and eats it and was not thinking of mosquitoes as being carnivores or insects that eat an animal that has died.

I would also like to apologize for taking this a bit off topic so I'll talk a little about animal weapons...

I think that it is possible for a world to evolve with a low number of carnivorous animal species. The predominantly herbivore animals on this world could still develop 'weapons' and 'armor'. Some possibilities:

- Claws and horns for digging in the ground for plant roots.
- Thrasher for breaking large plant materials up to get to some nutrient inside.
- Teeth for ripping plant materials up to get to some nutrient inside or for chewing plants in order to aid with digestion.
- Armor may be protection from a harsh environment.
- Plants may have developed thorns and other mechanisms for 'defense' and animals then develop armor to protect themselves.

 

[phild]

In esssence, you're right - there could be low numbers of carnivorous species. One good example might be a world like the realm of the Living Land in the Torg RPG. There, biological decay occurs at a much higher rate than on Earth (for mystical reasons, but there could be scientific reasons for a Traveller equivalent) meaning that being solely carnivorous is much more effort. However, some carnivorous life might still evolve - but it might be microscopic (ie the reason for the fast decay) or able to consume large numbers of living creatures (eg a carnivorous grazer, like an ant eater).

Sorry for accusing you of trolling, I shall hold by breath and count to ten before typing next time.

 

[GypsyComet]

Out of order:

The predominantly herbivore animals on this world could still develop 'weapons' and 'armor'. Some possibilities:

- Claws and horns for digging in the ground for plant roots.
- Thrasher for breaking large plant materials up to get to some nutrient inside.
- Teeth for ripping plant materials up to get to some nutrient inside or for chewing plants in order to aid with digestion.
- Armor may be protection from a harsh environment.
- Plants may have developed thorns and other mechanisms for 'defense' and animals then develop armor to protect themselves.

All of these have occured on Earth.

I think that it is possible for a world to evolve with a low number of carnivorous animal species.

I don't, but I suspect there is a blind spot in your definition of "carnivore" or in your perception of what "species" means.

You are likely to get sparse variety in "true" carnivores only where there are very few herbivores. In such cases most of the meat eating species will actually be omnivores. Omnivores are typically not built to be mass consumption engines, so an environment with few herbivores and relatively few carnivores is either going to be incredibly sparse for plant life or incredibly fecund. Its a situation that won't last long in evolutionary terms, however.

If there are no or few herbivores then there is likely to be alot of unexploited plant life. An omnivore that can adapt to make that exploit will do so, becoming an herbivore eventually should the new resource prove to be sufficient. If the resource now being exploited is extensive enough, a population explosion of the new exploiter will occur, which will in turn lead to a larger population of something that can hunt or otherwise exploit the new herbivore. That might mean more wolves, or it might mean more fish eagles. If the shift takes place in a jungle that has fish eagles, as a ground simian (for example) takes to the trees to exploit the high-hanging fruit, that eagle might take up simian hunting. If the eagle moves into new territory to take advantage of the tree monkeys, some of the local rats might shift their diet away from seeds and mice to eagle eggs. So might some other smaller bird...

It never stops.

A particular environment might have only one "apex predator", just as the African veldt is dominated by the Lion, but there are a lot of other niches even in one environment, and more than few of these will be comfortable spots for another carnivore. Most of the other species we think of when the African veldt is mentioned are herbivores (antelope, water buffalo, rhino, elephant, giraffe), omnivores (baboons), or scavengers (vultures and hyenas) in Traveller parlance, but there are also many species of birds that run the entire gamut of types including carnivores (look up the Secretary Bird, not to mention the many insect eaters). Most snakes are carnivores, and quite a few lizards, frogs, and fish are as well.

Now move over a few hundred miles. More jungle, but with a direct interface to the veldt. Every one of the veldt species that can adapt to the jungle *will*, often more than once. The process also goes both directions. Each time an adaption takes place, most taxonomists will call the results a new species.

In any world with varied and connected environments condusive to animal life, the number of "species" is going to proliferate to fill every niche. If a mass extinction occurs, re-proliferation is generally swift once the conditions that caused the extinction subside or the animal life adapts to those conditions.

Worlds with single environments are going to be very strange indeed. Just temperature and rainfall is enough here on Earth to have created more than a dozen basic types of biome, and isolation due to landmass distribution has differentiated those even more.