To niche and fantasy related to be accepted in /k/ or Ganker and it's not really something i suspect will ever see the light of day but i'm dabbling in worldbuilding. It's a fantasy world version of earth only populated by sapient animals. Other details are peripheral to that but not so important like why there's some animals who are sapient or what some magic does. It's minor enough for me to be confident in it not mattering. I want to ask around for what people think would be some tactics and methodologies that sapient animals would device for fighting one another. Sort of touch base with other minds. This isn't some fern valley land before time/Avatar kind of talking animal setting i've got in mind here it's developed to an extent with tax collectors and paved streets and predator/prey race wars.
The number of Sapient animals is 1 to 100 against feral ones.
They don't magically live longer then normal animals, nor can they all speak as well as one another.
Only vertebrate animals are sapient this does also include the fish. I will not entertain the concept of dealing with sapient feral bugs.
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Have you ever gone so far as to?
but for when and which to get to from here with you one
How do they make stuff without hands
But how do they make tools?
they make cow tools
I don't get it.
I understood that reference.
They'd need some kind of manipulator to use their intelligence. The only species I can think of besides monkeys would be elephants, birds with long beaks and maybe snakes.
Unless they make some sort of alliance with one of the aforementioned, the other species can't use tools
That’s less true then you might think. The question of manipulator appendages did of course come up early but I ultimately had to conclude that a majority of animals are capable of handling things with enough finess to make the world spin round just fine. most are less well off at it then a human would but only marginally, like say a man with only one hand instead of two which is barely even a disability Also there are a lot of them I had to conclude would altogether be more adept at tool use then humans.
Firstly, hindquarters.
There’s something to be said about the utility of being able to casually bring one’s hind leg up to the face. It’s a fast track to having four stubby arms by laying down. We don’t think of hind legs as being a tool use option in the toolkit because animals only every do it to their own dicks and scratch their necks but basically any creature that can touch it’s snout with a paw has at minimum five thumbless arms when also accounting for their mouth and functionally more then that when also consideringl utilities afforded of paws and other such leg setups that can spay apart and oftentimes partially grasp. Doing this is a hassle but it’d a lot less of a hassle for say a dog to sit down then a person. A raccoon or even a mouse can basically exist as a human being in miniature as is.
So animals having big maws is an obvious avenue for handling I don’t think is appreciated enough, I’ve seen video of irl cripples doing wild things with just shoulders and mouth and basically every animal the world over can replicate that and do it better.
%3D%3D
Whatever you are envisioning about ‘Birds with long beaks’ being special also applies to a majority of animals at large. I suspect most would be in the habit of wearing some kind of mouth cushion for day to day life as they handle things with their mouth. And what you missed about birds in general is that most birds also come of two sets of simple hands in the form of their legs. The things parrots do is not beyond the scope of what’s possible for most avians.
The ones truly fricked in the tool use game are mostly the fish and large hooves/grazer animals. Elephants included but at least they have the trunk hand. Snakes are also mega fricked. I did also reach a similar conclusion about cooperation with the more adept of tool users being a logical outcome for finess work as well. Knot tying for example comes across as a challenge for any who can’t already pick things up with paw hands but that is a large pool in and of itself which is hardly just monkeys but also include also something like a squirrel or even most birds.
Anon I'm not sure you understand how mechanically complex the task of swinging a hammer or turning a wrench is
Could you replace cavemen with intelligent tigers? Yeah probably. Anything that requires a complex tool like dedicated agriculture or carpentry is out the window though.
I wouldn't expect any animal that isn't capable of bipedal motion to even somewhat fill the hole left by humans.
Bears, most rodents, weasels and stuff would probably do okay on account of having mostly a suitable anatomy for tool use. If you think a dog is going to be able to build shit by holding a hammer in its mouth you're mistaken
Just thinking it over for for some 10 seconds with the near worst case scenario that is a horse or deer or some other large quadrupedic hoofed animal. they’re not so much incapable of those handling it as it just being unfeasible hard because the horse is so large and would have to shuffle around and finagle to a ruinous degree. That is the real trouble for most people who’re arm disabled in some way.
Leveraging a wrench for this horse hypothetical is easy as them pressing a knee into it side to side and gyrating it. A stick hammer is more or less unusable for a horse unless that whole mouth cushions thing works out. A hoofed creature would be most limited to gravity aided downward strikes. Some kind of hoofboot with a hammerhead Sideways hammering at most and never able to work inside of tricky angles.
It sounds like you're crafting a unique and complex world for your fantasy setting with sapient animals, and exploring the tactics and methodologies they would employ in conflicts can be a fascinating aspect of your worldbuilding.
Would there even be the slightest bit of counterplay to birds with sharp things dipped in poisons pricking everyone?
>Bot was set up by an ESL
Twice as disgusting as regular bot-posting
are these sapient animals ponies?
Swarm animals should gain sapience coward