# What exactly do Anthro characters eat?



## Arcadium (Mar 26, 2009)

Well, i want to write something. Question on my mind is, what do they eat?

I mean, a fox, eating a ham? How does that compute? Two types of animals? What about the pigs? IS THAT WHAT THERE EATING?

OMGWTFBBQ

Just stuck. DX


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## duroc (Mar 26, 2009)

Well, what kind of story are you writing?  Or better yet, what does eating have to do with the plot?  And do your anthro characters need to be based on their real life counterparts?

Can't speak a hundred percent for foxes because I haven't researched it, but from my understanding, they're carnivores.  So as long as they eat meat, it shouldn't be a problem.  

Pigs are omnivores.  They'll eat anything, even other pigs.  So with swine, what they eat shouldn't be an issue.


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## Arcadium (Mar 26, 2009)

duroc said:


> Well, what kind of story are you writing?  Or better yet, what does eating have to do with the plot?  And do your anthro characters need to be based on their real life counterparts?
> 
> Can't speak a hundred percent for foxes because I haven't researched it, but from my understanding, they're carnivores.  So as long as they eat meat, it shouldn't be a problem.
> 
> Pigs are omnivores.  They'll eat anything, even other pigs.  So with swine, what they eat shouldn't be an issue.



More or less a sci-fi thing i wanna work on. Characters in the future who go out and do something. (Very rough as you can see). This has been something i've been thinking about for a while. If they eat pig, now where does the pig come from?


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## M. LeRenard (Mar 26, 2009)

> If they eat pig, now where does the pig come from?


Some people are working on growing edible meat in a petri dish.  Maybe that's where it comes from.
Besides... if a fox was man-sized, he'd probably eat ham.  And beef.  And a lot of other stuff he doesn't normally eat because he's not three feet long.  So I see no problems here.
Oh, and foxes are technically carnivores, I think, but they eat pretty much whatever.  They're scavengers a lot of the time, so they're seen eating anything from berries to paper sacks from MacDonald's.  But they need mostly meat.
If you want to get real technical about it, you'd have to go into a whole social order involving what is and isn't appropriate for anthro characters to eat, depending on who they work with and things like that.  So like... Mr. Wolf probably wouldn't have Mrs. Sheep over for lambchops, because, well, that would be rude.  This is really a world-building question more than anything.


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## Arcadium (Mar 26, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> Some people are working on growing edible meat in a petri dish.  Maybe that's where it comes from.
> Besides... if a fox was man-sized, he'd probably eat ham.  And beef.  And a lot of other stuff he doesn't normally eat because he's not three feet long.  So I see no problems here.
> Oh, and foxes are technically carnivores, I think, but they eat pretty much whatever.  They're scavengers a lot of the time, so they're seen eating anything from berries to paper sacks from MacDonald's.  But they need mostly meat.
> If you want to get real technical about it, you'd have to go into a whole social order involving what is and isn't appropriate for anthro characters to eat, depending on who they work with and things like that.  So like... Mr. Wolf probably wouldn't have Mrs. Sheep over for lambchops, because, well, that would be rude.  This is really a world-building question more than anything.



Man, tougher than i thought. Now, if these guys would be out on space, what would they be eating? This is turning out tougher than the creative part of the thing.

I'm considering to just make it fish that they eat. It seems the most practical.


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## M. LeRenard (Mar 26, 2009)

Well, just figure out the basics so that you can make it something reasonable.  I mean.. I'm assuming this isn't a huge important plot-point or anything, right?  No use wasting a ton of time thinking about something that takes up a whole 15 words in your story.
If your ship's got gravity, a normal diet would suffice anyway.  There could be a spot for growing plants and one for your petri dish meat lab.  I dunno'.  Or a fish tank.  Sure.


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## Aden (Mar 26, 2009)

Arcadium said:


> Now, if these guys would be out on space, what would they be eating?



Powdered astronaut food. 8D


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## Teracat (Mar 27, 2009)

Arcadium said:


> what do they eat?



PEOPLE.


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## GatodeCafe (Mar 27, 2009)

Teracat said:


> PEOPLE.



Imagine the irony!

Cannibalism is a top-knotch way to add a dystopian flair to any sci-fi story.


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## ScottyDM (Mar 27, 2009)

Soylent Green!

This is disturbing, but in reality, pigs would probably do this.

Here's a thought: Why does _every_ species need to be represented in anthropomorphic form within a given storyworld? If foxes are intelligent bipedal tool-and-language-using people, it does not follow that chickens and rabbits must also be so. Or you can make the level of intelligence unequal between species. In one story I have a "high" wolf society moving toward an agrarian existence as they learn to tame the "low" rabbit society. The rabbits are not quite smart enough to realize that their benefactors intend to breed them, then eat their offspring. Much like humans breed and eat the offspring of sheep--except we don't hold conversations with sheep.

Scotty


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## Stratelier (Mar 27, 2009)

ScottyDM said:


> Here's a thought: Why does _every_ species need to be represented in anthropomorphic form within a given storyworld? If foxes are intelligent bipedal tool-and-language-using people, it does not follow that chickens and rabbits must also be so.


^ "Furry for the sake of being furry".  It's like . . . reverse tokenism or something, and just as bad as the regular variety.


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## wendyw (Mar 27, 2009)

I would either go the route of only making a few species intelligent and leaving the rest like their real world counterparts or doing something like PSI has where they basically breed really big bugs for food instead.


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## ScottyDM (Mar 27, 2009)

We're diverging into two related questions: What should anthro-characters eat--a diet similar to their natural counterparts or a diet just like humans eat? Where does this food come from?


To answer that first question, personally I like to go with a diet similar to their natural counterparts. For some critters this can be remarkably similar to what humans eat. For example the red fox, _Vulpes vulpes_. In fact most canids are omnivores and are mostly capable of eating what we eat in the same ratios we eat that stuff in. The differences are in how we eat our food. Wolves, wolf stuff down, and will eat until they can hardly move. Red foxes are dainty eaters by comparison and will bury tidbits for later rather than eat it all at once.

So restaurant scene with a wolf and fox: The wolf gobbles up every scrap then eyes the fox's food, and the fox asks for a "to go" box to save half his meal for later (even if later means an hour later). A fox and a wolf would probably not make good roommates for this reason--unless the fox kept a refrigerator in his room and put a lock on it. On the other hand, two wildly mismatched roommates like this could be really funny.

Red foxes and coyotes are two of the most physically and socially adaptable species on earth (not counting humans), and both are gaining territory and numbers as we humans change the environment. They can live in strict male-female pairs, or as extended families with multiple adults of both sexes in a group. They can live in the wilderness, or inside factory buildings. They can have static territories that last generations, or their territories can move and shift from month-to-month. They like the quiet, or they can tolerate the noise and hustle-and-bustle of city life. The faster we kill them the faster they breed. And they can eat almost anything. Wolves, not so much. They have a more rigid social system and they have a less adaptable diet. Which is why wolf populations world-wide are in decline.


The second question is a storyworld issue. If every species is equally intelligent and socially equal as well, even the bugs and fish, then you're going to have a problem. Many authors just ignore it. But in such a story, where animal protein comes from could be a major plot point.

One approach I thought of, but haven't even outlined as a possible story yet, is to make some fast-breeding prey animal the intelligent tool-using "race" in my story. Then use their natural enemies as the villains. They could be four-leggers, or they could be semi-intelligent primitives. For example, the anthropomorphized species are rabbits and their enemies might be wolves, coyotes, foxes, lynxes, eagles, etc. The issue to explore would be how a society might function if you could _not_ count on your friends, loved ones, or business partners being around tomorrow. For example at lunch your boss might be carried off by a great horned owl--would you still have a job that afternoon? Go off to work in the morning and will your wife and children be waiting for you at home that evening? Or will _you_ even make it home? Let's say your husband is killed, how soon until you replace him? What is a proper mourning period when life is so uncertain? And how many children are enough when you know that 90% won't make it through high school? In this sort of environment, do high schoolers start breeding as soon as they are able just so the population won't crash? And do couples even form pair bonds?

So yea, your characters _are_ the menu.


IMO these kinds of questions are fun stuff and a fantastic source of story ideas. Writing about humans is boring by comparison.  

Scotty


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## Shotgunjim (Aug 9, 2009)

Considering the human characteristics of anthros, I would say that they would eat many of the things that humans eat, but that would also be up to the author. How animalistic or humanistic are your characters, do they have characteristics that are not typical of their species? Like a rabbit with sharp teeth? You may also want to look at the things that different animals eat. A wolf, would probably have a diet that consists mainly of large amounts of meat. It would be kind of awkward for say, a deer, to be eating meat, since they are herbivores. A deer or another herbivorous animal would most likely prefer salads and fruits, or maybe bread products.


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## Murphy Z (Aug 10, 2009)

When it comes to furry fiction, animals come in basically two sets choices: "regular" (you know a regular fox) and "anthro" ("furry" fox with hands and feet) ; then you have "non-intelligent" (regular animals) and "intelligent" (somewhere around human). So you have four combinations:

regular intelligent (like Bambi, etc.) 
regular non-intelligent (just regular animals)
anthro intelligent (furries)
anthro non-intelligent (strange, but possible I guess failed experiments? Sort of humans as portrayed on Planet of the Apes?)

Your "world" could have any combination of these. Sci-fi tends to have anthro intelligent as main characters - maybe they eat animals or they can be forced to eat other anthro intelligent creatures because there's no choice. 

If world building, as said before, spend some time figuring it out, but not too long. Another thing is write some of your story, then later on figure things out from your draft, and build your world on a "per need" basis; this prevents a lot of "I have lots of (mostly unnecessary) details about the world but not much story" syndrome.


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## Aeturnus (Aug 11, 2009)

For the most part, my anthro characters pretty much eat what I eat. I also don't use cows, pigs, chickens and what not as anthro characters.


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## Tewin Follow (Aug 11, 2009)

Suicide for Hire has the anthros living alongside regular animals.
Hunter even shot a normal dog with an arrow.

I think it solves a lot of problems, but it's also a bit creepy. I mean, there are dog characters, would they have pet dogs? And if they're the same breed, doesn't it bother them?


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## Zweihander (Aug 11, 2009)

Whatever's on my plate. Mainly sushi and fish.


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## GraemeLion (Aug 12, 2009)

Here's another question.. pick up a novel.  Read it.  Does it tell you what the people eat for every meal?

Yes, food is important in the real world, but is it a part of your novel that you need to explain?  I don't know.. but as I've grown as a writer, I've gotten really good at analyzing what is minutiae that is unnecessary and what is important to think about.  It sounds like you might be thinking too hard about something that might not play as big a role as you think.


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## Reggy-Renegade (Aug 12, 2009)

i think it depends on the species. it probably also depends on the furry personally. i'm sure some furries eat foods that align more with their animal species, while others can eat varied foods like humans. and i'm sure there are furries that, like some humans, will eat anything and everything at some point if it is edible. XD


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## VÃ¶lf (Aug 18, 2009)

redcard said:


> Here's another question.. pick up a novel.  Read it.  Does it tell you what the people eat for every meal?
> 
> Yes, food is important in the real world, but is it a part of your novel that you need to explain?  I don't know.. but as I've grown as a writer, I've gotten really good at analyzing what is minutiae that is unnecessary and what is important to think about.  It sounds like you might be thinking too hard about something that might not play as big a role as you think.



Yeah, I would pretty much agree with that. Describing food could be used as a tool to further detail a character's culture or something. I did run into the same dilemma with one of my stories. I got around it by using my plot to my advantage. It was a war story, so some of the characters salvaged corpses on the battlefield and at them. 

Of course, you could always take a vegetarian route, or just leave some spices, like livestock, as they are in the real world. Or even, pit the fox in Mortal Kombat against the pig. Instead of using a fatality, the winner eats the loser XD


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## Duality Jack (Aug 18, 2009)

THEY EAT BABIES!


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## Stratelier (Aug 18, 2009)

Come to think of it, when I wrote my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel, I never forgot what time of day it was or when the characters found a spot to sleep the night off in, but I rarely mentioned exactly what they ate.  Guess it just wasn't that important.


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## hara-surya (Aug 18, 2009)

With mine they are generally omnivore with most races leaning toward whatever diet their animal type prefer, with the exception of insectivores who tend toward meat. As for the question of "pigs" eating a ham? Heck, why not, they do in farms already. More specifically, most livestock races prefer a vegetarian diet (with the exception of pigs) and might very well simply avoid meat in general and the kind from their animal side specifically. (I've batted around the idea it tastes bad to them, until I learned that human meat tastes like pork and I love pork...)


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