# Realistic Carnivorism: For? Against? Or meh?



## Liberonscien (Aug 7, 2019)

What are your thoughts on realistic carnivorism in furry media? I'm talking about stuff like having your anthro lioness catch, dismember, and eat an anthro zebra or your anthro spider catch an anthro bee and digest it externally. Do you prefer the predator/prey dynamic to be rendered realistically with all of nature's blood? Do you prefer the issue to be ignored? Or do you prefer when it is made a non-issue with options such as "lab grown meat" or "not all animals are anthro"?

I can see the appeal of all of the options and generally prefer options that allow for any two species to get along with plot devices such as "lab grown meat" but lately I have developed an interest in realistically rendered carnivorism. I think it is more realistic and it also can help to drive a narrative. (It can also be used as vore fuel.)

So, what are your thoughts?


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## Kinare (Aug 7, 2019)

I'm indifferent to it, but it's something I've thought about before. Blame Zootopia for getting me thinking on this... In that all animals are vegetarians. Would it be the same in reality? I don't think so. I think there would have to be prey species, whether humans were downgraded in the food chain to be prey, animals continued to eat their "normal" food sources, or some still non-anthro species were used. (I don't care for the vore thing, this is a purely non-kink view of it.) "Lab grown meat" could be an option... but it would likely not be cost effective for carnivores to partake in as often as they would need to in order to survive.

Edit: Me thinks if all animals somehow evolved into anthros and became as intelligent as humans are, it would probably be as it is now, but it would have more feels because language and awareness of actions and such. There would probably be those kind-hearted preds that tried to find solutions, and heck, maybe they'd find one - but there would also be "purist" types that would probably insist on doing it the hard way, whether because they sickly enjoy it or because of some belief system they feel they should stick to.


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## Keefur (Aug 7, 2019)

Personally I'm not really into that, but if you are, meh.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 7, 2019)

Kinare said:


> I'm indifferent to it, but it's something I've thought about before. Blame Zootopia for getting me thinking on this... In that all animals are vegetarians. Would it be the same in reality? I don't think so. I think there would have to be prey species, whether humans were downgraded in the food chain to be prey, animals continued to eat their "normal" food sources, or some still non-anthro species were used. (I don't care for the vore thing, this is a purely non-kink view of it.) "Lab grown meat" could be an option... but it would likely not be cost effective for carnivores to partake in as often as they would need to in order to survive.
> 
> Edit: Me thinks if all animals somehow evolved into anthros and became as intelligent as humans are, it would probably be as it is now, but it would have more feels because language and awareness of actions and such. There would probably be those kind-hearted preds that tried to find solutions, and heck, maybe they'd find one - but there would also be "purist" types that would probably insist on doing it the hard way, whether because they sickly enjoy it or because of some belief system they feel they should stick to.


I think so too. I think some races would suffer and have to go to war with the others just to survive. I think some would look for other ways and others would try to stick to the old ways whether they are motivated by sadism, Fantastic Racism, or some belief. 

I'm thinking, depending on how they became sapient, that they might even have ways to adjust. Maybe they would rationalize it as a way of purging criminals. 

I'm thinking that if cities were a mix of predator and prey then they might go to war in order to feed themselves. City A predators eat City B prey and vice versa. 

They would definitely have to come up with creative moral systems to solve this problem.


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## Peach's (Aug 8, 2019)

You can eat always like... normal animals, even in the Pokemon universe there are just some normal animals sometimes


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## Liberonscien (Aug 8, 2019)

Peebes said:


> You can eat always like... normal animals, even in the Pokemon universe there are just some normal animals sometimes


In the furry world I am working on, that is increasingly not being available: The thing that caused the animals to become anthropomorphic is evolving to turn everything sapient with the closest relatives to humans being changed first and the farthest relatives being changed last.


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## Trevorbluesquirrel (Aug 8, 2019)

Kinare said:


> I'm indifferent to it, but it's something I've thought about before. Blame Zootopia for getting me thinking on this... In that all animals are vegetarians. Would it be the same in reality? I don't think so. I think there would have to be prey species, whether humans were downgraded in the food chain to be prey, animals continued to eat their "normal" food sources, or some still non-anthro species were used. (I don't care for the vore thing, this is a purely non-kink view of it.) "Lab grown meat" could be an option... but it would likely not be cost effective for carnivores to partake in as often as they would need to in order to survive.
> 
> Edit: Me thinks if all animals somehow evolved into anthros and became as intelligent as humans are, it would probably be as it is now, but it would have more feels because language and awareness of actions and such. There would probably be those kind-hearted preds that tried to find solutions, and heck, maybe they'd find one - but there would also be "purist" types that would probably insist on doing it the hard way, whether because they sickly enjoy it or because of some belief system they feel they should stick to.



About Zootopia though........

The directors said in an interview that the predators do eat meat, made from bugs!

Makes sense, as they're pure protein, and could be raised on farms cheaply!

Also, during the train scene at the beginning, their're a shot of Tundra Town where you can see signs that say FISHTOWN MARKET, BLUBBER, and CLARK HALIBUTS.

So, apparently, preds also eat fish and aquatic mammals!


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## ConorHyena (Aug 8, 2019)

In the universe my 'sonas live in there are feral animals as well as anthros, and it's basically the same as human societies. Anthros eating Anthros is not allowed (e.g. murder etc) and eating feral animals is ok.

Albeit it could be an interesting literary concept having a society where anthros eat anthros. of course that'd be a bit disturbing, but hey, there's lots of dystopic realities.


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## Nyro46 (Aug 8, 2019)

I have a few different universes, and they all kinda follow different rules.

In one universe, anthros and humans live alongside each other, and while the anthros do still have traits (both physically and behaviourally) based on their species, they are also a little bit more human-like in nature compared to my other universes. Basically, their society is very similar to ours IRL. In this universe, though, there are also "regular" animals, just like here, which are kept as pets or used for food. Herbivores are still herbivores and carnivores will eat meat more (but will still also eat other things too).

In another universe, the anthros are slightly more animal-like in behaviour and also their heights are more varied based on their species. They are rather separated from humans (humans having still treated them very similarly to if they were just regular animals). Realistic carnivorism is more likely to occur, but only with less civilized anthros. They may even go after humans. Regular animals don't exist here, instead there are just creatures or monsters, which more civilized carnivorous anthros would eat instead.

A third universe I've been working on more recently which takes place on another planet, is sort of like a mix between the two, but there aren't regular animals, just creatures and monsters, and for the most part the anthros would use them for food, but again there are some crazy or "feral" anthros that might be more inclined to eat whatever or whoever.

Then there is my more cartoony universe . . . realistic carnivorism doesn't really exist there, but really anything goes in terms of creatures and animals.

Basically, it all kinda depends on the universe I am going for and the setting I want, and atmosphere. I write a lot of stories, so I end up with a few different universes, and there might be (and probably will be) more to come. Though I can say I've never made a universe with anthros where realistic carnivorism is the norm.


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## Deleted member 132067 (Aug 8, 2019)

Connor J. Coyote said:


> Eh... we should ignore the predator/prey dynamic, I say..... and keep it toony and lovely. Unless - it's in a role-play situation, of some sort... or perhaps - something "adult oriented" like gore artwork, or something.


I had similar thoughts. Though it's perhaps one of the most shallow answers to the question. See, I like my fursona just like the adorable, pretty thing it is. Imagining/ portraying her chowing down on some prey, covered in blood and everything, would most certainly destroy this image. (For me at least.) I'd say if your fursona leans more towards the realistic or even darker side, hell, go for it.


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## Glossolalia (Aug 8, 2019)

I don't have a real preference (aside from not being a big fan of gore). I think it would depend on the tone of the work.

Bojack Horseman had an interesting and disturbing take on it. At first we just got lighthearted gags like a cow waitress judging the customers for ordering milk, but with the Gentle Farms episode they made it explicit- in their universe, factory farms still exist, and the population still does wild mental gymnastics to rationalize their ethics. The animal characters are so humanized that the predator/prey dynamic itself seems almost completely watered down, aside from prejudices between certain species (like cats and mice). All in all I think they explore it in an interesting way that makes sense for the world


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## Inkstars (Aug 8, 2019)

Nah it happens in real life, I consider furry to be escapism, so I'd rather my lioness eat a zebra burger. But. I don't mind if someone else does it, or draws it, that's cool by me. *thumbs up*


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## Infrarednexus (Aug 8, 2019)

The anthro furries eat the ferals of the fandom. That's why you rarely see any livestock/poultry feral sonas.


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## Tyno (Aug 8, 2019)

Why are you asking brightly colored animal people :V


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## MaelstromEyre (Aug 8, 2019)

There are sentient and non-sentient animals. 
I don't know how an anthro sheep would handle seeing an anthro wolf eat lamb chops in a restaurant, though.


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## Attaman (Aug 8, 2019)

A key thing to keep in mind with obligate carnivores is that... well, they're _obligate carnivores_. If you're insistent on having them for a setting that you're world-building, you have to keep in mind that they're going to either need to be in very small communities _or_ constantly moving around like a bipedal swarm of anthropomorphic locusts. Lions, for example, will binge in the wild to eat about 10-20 pounds of food a day on average (more accurately "Go several days without eating, then binge on huge amounts of meat at once"), and even in captivity in an ideal situation tend to eat about 6-8lbs of meat each. For an average pride of about 12-15 members, that's 60-120lbs of meat _per day _(depending on numbers), and needless to say 11 tons of meat / year for a dozen individuals is _*a lot of meat*_. 

The top tricks for getting around this are small community sizes (because if the average community is only about 20-or-so individuals, that amount of meat is... vaguely reasonable, so long as they can either still binge-and-starve or have decent preservation techniques), sticking to relatively food-rich areas (When you have herds of tens of thousands of bison, for example, and each bison will yield about 400lbs of meat, a community of aforementioned lions 100-strong would eat only ~2% per year, assuming they ate just the bison and supplemented their diet with nothing else), throwing a ton of megafauna in the setting (When you have chickens the size of Tyrannosaurus', you can hand wave a lot of the meat concerns), or to have them constantly on the move (because at that point the potential exhaustive effects on any one region are negligible). But even so... that runs into some obvious issues if you want them to be an established population, let alone if you're doing what was proposed above with some settings _exclusively_ composed of intelligent animals. 

Or, to use less words: You may want to make the anthropomorphication process also involve enough digestive changes to turn the carnivores into omnivores, because it's far less messy and thought-intensive for world building. That or introduce some bullshit ecological factors like with the Bagheera Kiplingi so that they can cheat their biology.


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## Purplefuzz (Aug 8, 2019)

Jackal anthros eating deep fried wolf burgers with a beer in their backyard. lol


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## Liberonscien (Aug 8, 2019)

Connor J. Coyote said:


> Eh... we should ignore the predator/prey dynamic, I say..... and keep it toony and lovely. Unless - it's in a role-play situation, of some sort... or perhaps - something "adult oriented" like gore artwork, or something.


I don't know if it has to be explicitly gore filled. It could be more implied. Lion chases a zebra into a cage, and the lion walks out with a zebra print hat and a sandwich.



ConorHyena said:


> In the universe my 'sonas live in there are feral animals as well as anthros, and it's basically the same as human societies. Anthros eating Anthros is not allowed (e.g. murder etc) and eating feral animals is ok.
> 
> Albeit it could be an interesting literary concept having a society where anthros eat anthros. of course that'd be a bit disturbing, but hey, there's lots of dystopic realities.


I imagine it as being something that varies. For a predator society they could have farmers for prey and it would look like a concentration camp to the prey but just another day of mental gymnastics to the predators. 



ClumsyWitch said:


> I had similar thoughts. Though it's perhaps one of the most shallow answers to the question. See, I like my fursona just like the adorable, pretty thing it is. Imagining/ portraying her chowing down on some prey, covered in blood and everything, would most certainly destroy this image. (For me at least.) I'd say if your fursona leans more towards the realistic or even darker side, hell, go for it.


I personally wouldn't be bothered too much by seeing a spider, not my fursona, a friend's, kill and eat a fly unless it was a friend fly. Then that makes it a bit different. 



Glossolalia said:


> I don't have a real preference (aside from not being a big fan of gore). I think it would depend on the tone of the work.
> 
> Bojack Horseman had an interesting and disturbing take on it. At first we just got lighthearted gags like a cow waitress judging the customers for ordering milk, but with the Gentle Farms episode they made it explicit- in their universe, factory farms still exist, and the population still does wild mental gymnastics to rationalize their ethics. The animal characters are so humanized that the predator/prey dynamic itself seems almost completely watered down, aside from prejudices between certain species (like cats and mice). All in all I think they explore it in an interesting way that makes sense for the world


That sounds fascinating and inspires me a bit. 

One thing that I really love is realism and plausibility in fiction and for them to not use a cop out is very nice.



Tyno said:


> Why are you asking brightly colored animal people :V


I assumed you, my fellow sapient entities, would have an opinion. 



MaelstromEyre said:


> There are sentient and non-sentient animals.
> I don't know how an anthro sheep would handle seeing an anthro wolf eat lamb chops in a restaurant, though.


I imagine it would either be with horror, unease, or maybe even perverse satisfaction.



Attaman said:


> A key thing to keep in mind with obligate carnivores is that... well, they're obligate carnivores. If you're insistent on having them for a setting that you're world-building, you have to keep in mind that they're going to either need to be in very small communities or constantly moving around like a bipedal swarm of anthropomorphic locusts. Lions, for example, will binge in the wild to eat about 10-20 pounds of food a day on average (more accurately "Go several days without eating, then binge on huge amounts of meat at once"), and even in captivity in an ideal situation tend to eat about 6-8lbs of meat each. For an average pride of about 12-15 members, that's 60-120lbs of meat per day (depending on numbers), and needless to say 11 tons of meat / year for a dozen individuals is a lot of meat.
> 
> The top tricks for getting around this are small community sizes (because if the average community is only about 20-or-so individuals, that amount of meat is... vaguely reasonable, so long as they can either still binge-and-starve or have decent preservation techniques), sticking to relatively food-rich areas (When you have herds of tens of thousands of bison, for example, and each bison will yield about 400lbs of meat, a community of aforementioned lions 100-strong would eat only ~2% per year, assuming they ate just the bison and supplemented their diet with nothing else), throwing a ton of megafauna in the setting (When you have chickens the size of Tyrannosaurus', you can hand wave a lot of the meat concerns), or to have them constantly on the move (because at that point the potential exhaustive effects on any one region are negligible). But even so... that runs into some obvious issues if you want them to be an established population, let alone if you're doing what was proposed above with some settings exclusively composed of intelligent animals.
> 
> Or, to use less words: You may want to make the anthropomorphication process also involve enough digestive changes to turn the carnivores into omnivores, because it's far less messy and thought-intensive for world building. That or introduce some bullshit ecological factors like with the Bagheera Kiplingi so that they can cheat their biology.


Good points all over. One thing I am doing with my furry world is to have each animal gain its intelligence over time and not all at once. So the apes get intelligent before the cows, for example. However some prey species to get sapient.

This is meant to be a reoccurring plot point. Each sapient population finds itself having to resort to "cannibalism" with mental gymnastics before coming to a solution that eventually fails. 

The lion Anthros eat the zebra Anthros for a while before finding non sapient hippos to hunt instead. 

Then the hippos develop sapience, causing the problem to iterate again. 

So to speak.


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## Attaman (Aug 8, 2019)

Liberonscien said:


> Good points all over. One thing I am doing with my furry world is to have each animal gain its intelligence over time and not all at once. So the apes get intelligent before the cows, for example. However some prey species to get sapient.
> 
> This is meant to be a reoccurring plot point. Each sapient population finds itself having to resort to "cannibalism" with mental gymnastics before coming to a solution that eventually fails.
> 
> ...


Something to keep in mind when writing this is that a lot of cold-blooded species need to eat far less than warm-blooded ones. For example, an American Alligator (~500lbs) weighs almost a hundred pounds more than an African Lion (and almost twice the weight of a African Lioness), but versus the 6-8lbs / day of a Lion, a Gator can quite comfortably get by on the same amount _weekly_. This is in part due to their lifestyle, but also differences in metabolism and its impact on the body's needs. This can have some interesting ripple effects, and in world-building cases would definitely provide an edge to the cold-blooded species if evolving concurrently (admittedly it comes with the side effect of being cold-blooded, causing some issues in what environments they could plausibly expand into).

Though again, this theory craft presumes that you intend to keep a creature fully carnivore versus _mostly_ carnivore, as well as that dietary needs remain relatively unchanged (despite them potentially losing as much as half [or more!] of their normal weight in the process of becoming bipedal). Obviously if you cut down size enough you cut down food needs too, and if you let them supplement with some vegetation you can theoretically make the meat thing a much smaller concern (if still significant when speaking about tens / hundreds of thousands in one area).


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## Liberonscien (Aug 8, 2019)

Attaman said:


> Something to keep in mind when writing this is that a lot of cold-blooded species need to eat far less than warm-blooded ones. For example, an American Alligator (~500lbs) weighs almost a hundred pounds more than an African Lion (and almost twice the weight of a African Lioness), but versus the 6-8lbs / day of a Lion, a Gator can quite comfortably get by on the same amount _weekly_. This is in part due to their lifestyle, but also differences in metabolism and its impact on the body's needs. This can have some interesting ripple effects, and in world-building cases would definitely provide an edge to the cold-blooded species if evolving concurrently (admittedly it comes with the side effect of being cold-blooded, causing some issues in what environments they could plausibly expand into).
> 
> Though again, this theory craft presumes that you intend to keep a creature fully carnivore versus _mostly_ carnivore, as well as that dietary needs remain relatively unchanged (despite them potentially losing as much as half [or more!] of their normal weight in the process of becoming bipedal). Obviously if you cut down size enough you cut down food needs too, and if you let them supplement with some vegetation you can theoretically make the meat thing a much smaller concern (if still significant when speaking about tens / hundreds of thousands in one area).


Good point. So I'll want to do some proportions. Say animal A needs to eat amount X every day. Animal A is twice the size of a human and needs 150% the meat intake as a human. Anthro animal A would therefore just need 75% the meat intake of a human, give or take a few percentages. 

Good idea. That will help make this more realistic. It will also require more research into animals but that is not a bad thing. 

One thing I am trying to do is make it so that each species can sustain a politically and genetically diverse population. I am very interested in exploring reluctant/very willing/other predator/prey relations. 
I want it to be plausible for the mental gymnastics to develop to eat other sapient organisms when non-sapient alternatives may exist. The politics of it all fascinates me. The thought of having predator A/prey B families preying on prey C families to sustain their dysfunctional family sounds intriguing to me.


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## ConorHyena (Aug 9, 2019)

You're painting up an absolutely dystopic, monstrous society, at least from modern standpoints.

I like.


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## ryuukei8569 (Aug 9, 2019)

I get around it by making my anthros a completely different species from their feral counterparts, and their feral counterparts still exist. Thus the anthros have no need to prey in each other. I go so far as to invent completely unique names for my anthro species as well. For example an anthro Feline is never, ever referred to as a cat, rather they are called an Akurian.

This is in all honesty, probably the most realistic option anyway, since it is highly unlikely that an animal can spontaneously develop human like intelligence. Plus developing said intelligence would very likely require increasing their brain size to about human levels, thus animals smaller than humans will have to be scaled up.

In my setting anthros came about due to very advanced genetic engineering done by aliens about a hundred thousand years ago, then the Anthros where scattered across numerous earth like planets.


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## Toby_Morpheus (Aug 9, 2019)

I suppose it depends on how 'human' your anthros are.
If they're rather animal-like, especially the mouth parts, I'd say stuff like spiders and insects digesting externally is appropriate.

Hell, I can think of a few ways you can write that into funny situations.
Like, imagine a non-arthropod fur hands a grasshopper a plate of food in a cafeteria.
The grasshopper says "Thanks, this looks delicious" then proceeds to vomit all over the plate to the shock and horror of the others around him.

I think that'd be hilarious.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 9, 2019)

ConorHyena said:


> You're painting up an absolutely dystopic, monstrous society, at least from modern standpoints.
> 
> I like.


That is humorous because besides the horror of realistic carnivorism in this world, things are somewhat sweet. Some predator species live together and have romance, same with prey species. Like a lion male might live with a tiger female and have adopted children, for example. 

Humans and other omnivores can get along with most species. Insects don't start out sapient so they can be safely farmed for a while. 

It is not just dystopian. There are places for positivity in the world I am crafting. 

Though with the current plan of the timeline, it will be unpleasant when the "easy factory farmable" species, like insects, become sapient. 

One thing I am going for is that the size does not change instantly as they become sapient. It happens iteratively. One generation of elephants might be slightly smaller and slightly more intelligent but it won't become anthro in a single generation.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 9, 2019)

ryuukei8569 said:


> I get around it by making my anthros a completely different species from their feral counterparts, and their feral counterparts still exist. Thus the anthros have no need to prey in each other. I go so far as to invent completely unique names for my anthro species as well. For example an anthro Feline is never, ever referred to as a cat, rather they are called an Akurian.
> 
> This is in all honesty, probably the most realistic option anyway, since it is highly unlikely that an animal can spontaneously develop human like intelligence. Plus developing said intelligence would very likely require increasing their brain size to about human levels, thus animals smaller than humans will have to be scaled up.
> 
> In my setting anthros came about due to very advanced genetic engineering done by aliens about a hundred thousand years ago, then the Anthros where scattered across numerous earth like planets.


I'm planning on having the anthro insects in my setting slowly increase in size as they gain sapience and also gain the systems needed to survive on a larger scale, e.g lungs.

I know that anthro animals are not the most realistic thing but I have a plot reason in place for them becoming anthropomorphic. The same plot device explains why none of the humans in the setting are born with flaws like missing limbs. 

The plot device in question is a rogue AI meant to repair the human genome. Unfortunately it enters value drift and its definition of "human" starts to change. For instance, some humans struggle to communicate with other humans yet stay human. Chimpanzees also struggle to communicate with humans. They also share a lot of DNA with humans. The AI fixes them by giving them the parts of the brain needed to communicate and also fixes their posture.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 9, 2019)

Toby_Morpheus said:


> I suppose it depends on how 'human' your anthros are.
> If they're rather animal-like, especially the mouth parts, I'd say stuff like spiders and insects digesting externally is appropriate.
> 
> Hell, I can think of a few ways you can write that into funny situations.
> ...


I'm personally planning on rendering that stuff fairly realistically.

I'm also going to write "expansion packs" to appeal to people with different tastes. For example, for most people they will read it described as a gross thing when a spider captures someone and eats them. Vore fans will get a different version.


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## TrishaCat (Aug 9, 2019)

Hard vore is hot so I am for it


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## Toby_Morpheus (Aug 9, 2019)

Liberonscien said:


> I'm personally planning on rendering that stuff fairly realistically.
> 
> I'm also going to write "expansion packs" to appeal to people with different tastes. For example, for most people they will read it described as a gross thing when a spider captures someone and eats them. Vore fans will get a different version.


I'm not really into vore but I do consume horror media so.
Take from that what you will.
Good luck and have fun :3


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## Liberonscien (Aug 9, 2019)

Battlechili said:


> Hard vore is hot so I am for it


Hmm. I'm a bit unsure about writing hard vore because I don't like writing gore unless I am in a proper mood for it. 



Toby_Morpheus said:


> I'm not really into vore but I do consume horror media so.
> Take from that what you will.
> Good luck and have fun :3


Well, vore and horror can be rather similar. It is a matter of phrasing sometimes.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 10, 2019)

Connor J. Coyote said:


> Ah.... well, if it's dialed down like that, then... I can see how it might work out.... as that sounds kinda toony and cuteish, with a slight hint of realistic gore, underneath the covers.


Or I could write it out in detail. Lion chases a zebra into a cage. Lion grabs the neck of the zebra while it cries out in fear and begs to be let go. Crack. Dismembers and eats the zebra. 
I am inclined to write it out realistically but I am unsure how much detail is needed to get the point across.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 10, 2019)

Connor J. Coyote said:


> It's up to you, really.... but - I like the tamer version (above) myself..... and alot of other people probably will, also.


I very much want the furry world I am writing to not ignore what I perceive as being the reality of sapient animals. 

One thing that I am planning on doing is making sure at least a small population of each kind of animal survives to the next age. This has less to do with realism and more to do with Author Appeal. I want humanity to never go extinct in this world. I'm thinking that I'll include this furry world as a part of a larger universe I am working on.


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## m9necraftmecanics (Aug 11, 2019)

not for but meh


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## Limedragon27 (Aug 11, 2019)

I usually prefer seeing anthro species have to stick with what their feral counterparts have to eat, seeing fursonas that are of carnivorous species go vegan kinda makes be cringe tbh.

However, I'm not really of fan of anthros eating other anthros, kinda weird to me. Usually in the worlds where my various storylines and character lores take place in the cultures in these worlds see eating other intelligent species((Be it anthro or humanoid)) as almost as bad as cannibalism, mainly due to religious and morality reasons. To me they usually have livestock like we do, aka four legged animals. 

Plus in these worlds not Every animal species has an anthro version, and whenever the livestock in question looks more like cows and pigs, made up dinosaur like animals, or alien like animals depends on the setting and culture in question.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 11, 2019)

Limedragon27 said:


> I usually prefer seeing anthro species have to stick with what their feral counterparts have to eat, seeing fursonas that are of carnivorous species go vegan kinda makes be cringe tbh.
> 
> However, I'm not really of fan of anthros eating other anthros, kinda weird to me. Usually in the worlds where my various storylines and character lores take place in the cultures in these worlds see eating other intelligent species((Be it anthro or humanoid)) as almost as bad as cannibalism, mainly due to religious and morality reasons. To me they usually have livestock like we do, aka four legged animals.
> 
> Plus in these worlds not Every animal species has an anthro version, and whenever the livestock in question looks more like cows and pigs, made up dinosaur like animals, or alien like animals depends on the setting and culture in question.


That is an interesting take on it. You appear to be against having an anthro tiger have a salad, for example, but at the same time you are opposed to having it eat an anthro zebra.


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## Limedragon27 (Aug 11, 2019)

Liberonscien said:


> That is an interesting take on it. You appear to be against having an anthro tiger have a salad, for example, but at the same time you are opposed to having it eat an anthro zebra.



Well the thing is since the tiger is of a carnivorous species it couldn't necessarily survive on eating just plants, it would need meat. At the same time a mixed anthro society wouldn't necessarily work if everyone's eating each other, which is why I usually make them largely go against the idea of it in my worlds.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 15, 2019)

Limedragon27 said:


> Well the thing is since the tiger is of a carnivorous species it couldn't necessarily survive on eating just plants, it would need meat. At the same time a mixed anthro society wouldn't necessarily work if everyone's eating each other, which is why I usually make them largely go against the idea of it in my worlds.


I imagined that it would necessarily be in a state of constant war between the different consumer types once all of them were uplifted. Before that they might be able to survive. 

Before the insects and fish are uplifted the carnivores would be able to avoid eating the herbivores by farming the insects and fish instead.


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## Limedragon27 (Aug 15, 2019)

Liberonscien said:


> I imagined that it would necessarily be in a state of constant war between the different consumer types once all of them were uplifted. Before that they might be able to survive.
> 
> Before the insects and fish are uplifted the carnivores would be able to avoid eating the herbivores by farming the insects and fish instead.



Don't necessarily need to stick with insects for food, just unintelligent ferals. Like I said, not Every Earth animal species needs to be anthro in a particular world, and it is often fun designing custom animal species types, which is what I often do. But yea if your anthros accept the concept of eating other intelligent species and they tried to have mixed societies, there would be chaos, which is why it wouldn't work unless there's laws preventing them from murdering members of other intelligent species and/or their culture largely looks down on the action.


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## Peach's (Aug 15, 2019)

Liberonscien said:


> I'm planning on having the anthro insects in my setting slowly increase in size as they gain sapience and also gain the systems needed to survive on a larger scale, e.g lungs.



What exactly is the bottom for this setting? If this is just animals, that still has stuff like skin mites, without them humans (and all these creatures) would have like loads of dead skin on them by the end point, and that's if they aren't trying to uplift bacteria.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 15, 2019)

Limedragon27 said:


> Don't necessarily need to stick with insects for food, just unintelligent ferals. Like I said, not Every Earth animal species needs to be anthro in a particular world, and it is often fun designing custom animal species types, which is what I often do. But yea if your anthros accept the concept of eating other intelligent species and they tried to have mixed societies, there would be chaos, which is why it wouldn't work unless there's laws preventing them from murdering members of other intelligent species and/or their culture largely looks down on the action.


I'm thinking that this world is somewhat post apocalyptic. Like some species were uplifted and a civil war occurred between the newly sapient and the humans. 

So the world might slowly become Low Culture, High Tech (lots of high tech equipment around but the infrastructure needed to create it has been lost. Like a person could scavenge for car parts to build a junk car but not be able to make a spark plug and more knowledge would be lost over time while they would learn how to reuse and repair what they already have with low tech solutions). I'm still thinking about how the world works.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 15, 2019)

Peebes said:


> What exactly is the bottom for this setting? If this is just animals, that still has stuff like skin mites, without them humans (and all these creatures) would have like loads of dead skin on them by the end point, and that's if they aren't trying to uplift bacteria.


That is a planned issue that I'm working on writing. Eventually the uplifting process will target things beyond animals, e.g. plants, fungi, protists, and the like. That is where things really get hard. The world will slowly become more and more dystopian over the course of millions of years.


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## Deleted member 111470 (Aug 16, 2019)

In the universe that my sona lives in, some species are just feral, and predators eat them. Fish, birds, pigs, cows, most rodents, insects, reptiles - they are all feral in the world my sona lives in. There's plenty of game to go around for carnivores.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 16, 2019)

Rimna said:


> In the universe that my sona lives in, some species are just feral, and predators eat them. Fish, birds, pigs, cows, most rodents, insects, reptiles - they are all feral in the world my sona lives in. There's plenty of game to go around for carnivores.


Interesting. Which animals are anthropomorphic?


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## Deleted member 111470 (Aug 16, 2019)

Liberonscien said:


> Interesting. Which animals are anthropomorphic?



Most other species - canines, felines, primates, equines, rabbits, deers, ursine... I just don't see the appeal of some species being anthro. It sits weird with me. I don't like art where there are anthro sharks and orcas running around dry land like they own the place. Or an anthro elephant who's relatively the same size as other anthros like dogs or cats. Makes no sense to me, so I'd rather have some species as feral, some as anthro.

I'm weird that way.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 16, 2019)

Rimna said:


> Most other species - canines, felines, primates, equines, rabbits, deers, ursine... I just don't see the appeal of some species being anthro. It sits weird with me. I don't like art where there are anthro sharks and orcas running around dry land like they own the place. Or an anthro elephant who's relatively the same size as other anthros like dogs or cats. Makes no sense to me, so I'd rather have some species as feral, some as anthro.
> 
> I'm weird that way.


I can understand being unhappy with anthro aquatic life behaving like terrestrial organisms. I think that they would be better off having an aquatic society OR having to use environmental excursion suits. 

I can understand having difficulties suspending disbelief when the proportions are off. Having an anthro whale be the same size as an anthro insect makes little sense. 

I don't think it is weird at all. I like the way you think. I'm personally working on a furry setting where each species slowly becomes anthropomorphic and sapient. They keep their primary attributes during the process for the most part. 

The anthro insects will be small, the anthro elephants will be large, and so on. However, the anthropomorphizing process slowly adjusts their size to be human sized as well. The process struggles with certain species.


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## Peach's (Aug 16, 2019)

If whales came back on land they wouldn't look anything like whales anymore.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 16, 2019)

Peebes said:


> If whales came back on land they wouldn't look anything like whales anymore.


They would look more like vague monsters, so to speak.


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## Peach's (Aug 16, 2019)

Liberonscien said:


> They would look more like vague monsters, so to speak.


My mind goes more to fleshy-rat-alligator. 







_want to go for a dip_


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## Liberonscien (Aug 16, 2019)

Peebes said:


> My mind goes more to fleshy-rat-alligator.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That is somewhere in the Uncanny Valley for something for me.


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## Peach's (Aug 16, 2019)

Liberonscien said:


> That is somewhere in the Uncanny Valley for something for me.


Rodhocetus btw

I just had the thought that outside of apes, whales and dolphins are like next for sapience due to their intelligence, so very early on in this furry evolution these things are coming from the sea and hunting our proto-furries with skilled marksmanship. 

Jesus Christ the beginning is a dystopia also.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 16, 2019)

Peebes said:


> Rodhocetus btw
> 
> I just had the thought that outside of apes, whales and dolphins are like next for sapience due to their intelligence, so very early on in this furry evolution these things are coming from the sea and hunting our proto-furries with skilled marksmanship.
> 
> Jesus Christ the beginning is a dystopia also.


The plan was that the things that are closest genetically to humans would be uplifted first.

Indeed. The entire planet is a dystopia. However that does not mean that there is not cause for hope for a better future. While all of the carnivores, herbivores, omnivores, etc are in a low grade of war at the best of times, there is always peace to be found somewhere. 

The elites of the prey have nothing to fear from the predators (because of how they sacrifice those below them to the predators) and the elites of the predators also have nothing to fear because they can be assured that they will get their meat.


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## Peach's (Aug 16, 2019)

Liberonscien said:


> The plan was that the things that are closest genetically to humans would be uplifted first.



wait, so that means after the primates its [looks on wikipedia] Flying Lemurs, then Tree Shrews, and then Rodents and rabbits







Didn't expect rabbits to be that close.


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## Liberonscien (Aug 16, 2019)

Peebes said:


> wait, so that means after the primates its [looks on wikipedia] Flying Lemurs, then Tree Shrews, and then Rodents and rabbits
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Interesting. I'll need to keep that in mind.


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## AlexJMurphy1982 (Apr 16, 2020)

Glossolalia said:


> I don't have a real preference (aside from not being a big fan of gore). I think it would depend on the tone of the work.
> 
> Bojack Horseman had an interesting and disturbing take on it. At first we just got lighthearted gags like a cow waitress judging the customers for ordering milk, but with the Gentle Farms episode they made it explicit- in their universe, factory farms still exist, and the population still does wild mental gymnastics to rationalize their ethics. The animal characters are so humanized that the predator/prey dynamic itself seems almost completely watered down, aside from prejudices between certain species (like cats and mice). All in all I think they explore it in an interesting way that makes sense for the world


what about in Rocko's Modern Life with chokey chicken?

And in Talespin where furries and feral animals co exist or in Tucca and Bertie which is the same as Talespin even in Regular Show where anthros, humans, robots, aliens, magical creature folk and all co-exist?


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## Deleted member 82554 (Apr 16, 2020)

You do you man.


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## BlackDragonAJ89 (Apr 17, 2020)

While I haven't settled on a specific universe for my various characters and fursona, I have set that there are feral, non sentient creatures that are eaten for meat (although most of characters are either herbivores or omnivores, and my fursona is also an omnivore). However, these universes also have developed synthetic meats/proteins, because you need to have more than one source of protein if you're planning on getting tanky. 

Which is another thing to consider; most predatory species save for a very small number aren't actually that massive or muscular in comparison to most prey animals. Your average wolf only weighs around 60-80 pounds, and some big cats are lucky to hit 300 or 400. However, the average bovine bull weighs well over a ton, and isn't just a big walking flab of fat either. Which is also another thing to consider; muscle is 3x heavier than fat, and having a lot of muscle often requires a lot of calories. 

For instance, I'd argue that my fursona probably consumes in the neighborhood of 3200+ calories a day in order to maintain his muscle mass and still have enough fat content for a soft belly. However, throw him into the wilds and half the caloric content and he'd be burning off the gut within a few weeks.


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## Frank Gulotta (Apr 21, 2020)

Kevin & Kell is a webcomic that has been running almost daily since I think 1994, it explores this theme if you're interested.

It's a thin rope to be walking in my opinion, because I don't know how a society could develop when your survival basically relies on murder. But still, if you make everyone a vegetarian, or choose another cop-out like lab meat, I think you miss out on a LOT of possibilities that both make sense, and are great opportunities for plot points and expanding your mind. Not to mention, how do you even get to lab meat if everyone is gonna be at war for food-related reasons for millenia? you've got to start from the bottom and find a solution. It can be anything.
That's the great thing with world-building, it makes you think. If you want things to make sense.


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## MagnusLucra (Apr 23, 2020)

I think this is a topic that shouldn't have sides, but I think that using realistic carnivorism can be used to represent some powerful metaphores, and be a useful tool to add conflict or suspense to a story. However if done poorly, I feel it can shock people leaving them with nothing but a distaste for the topic.


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## Dinocanid (Apr 23, 2020)

I haven't completely written out the universe my characters live in, but in mine the carnivores do eat other sentient characters. When something like this is done it needs to be consistent and make sense within universe, unless it's done for laughs (like donald duck eating a turkey for thanksgiving). In the lion king for example, they're mentioned more than once to hunt and eat the other animals (besides select friends) which are shown to be completely sentient. However...they're wild lions, and they eat what lions gotta eat


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## Dexin (Apr 24, 2020)

I personally don't like gore in general. So my personal preference is the Arthur setup XD Where anthro animals and regular animals are different species. The anthros being an evolved humanoid life form of their world while the regular animals are still regular animals. So the anthro characters eat pizza and have pets without it being ethically wrong or cannibalistic.

But I do realize that not every story is suited for this setup (and shouldn't be). If it's supposed to be some sort of feral/wild/caveman world that the story is set in I think realistic carnivorism makes since. For example The Land before Time would not have been as powerful or exciting if the carnivores were unrealistically vegetarian.


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## ZeroVoidTime (Apr 24, 2020)

Some animals eat their young in the wild if they are desperate enough for food. So yeah think on that for a moment.


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## Stray Cat Terry (Apr 24, 2020)

Good point. In biological / natural perspective, it's always a hidden conflict having Furry civilizations.

Provided that the evolution worked instead of labs, the species of Furry race can be pretty limited from natural selection, otherwise a sort of lucky consolidation.

For the former, there might be another monkey anthros as the main race of the Earth, or, if the monkeys didn't make it like it was in reality, there would be any other limited species to evolve into 'humans'. (Maybe they shouldn't develop clothing to avoid devolving their fur over time)

But it's likely that we aren't talking about another human, so let's get over to the latter choice.

The lucky consolidation. In order to, shall we say, have a result of various species like us in the fandom, to come to life, the carnovorism should fade already during the process of evolution and consolidation. Now we won't need to worry about hunting or being hunted.

In summary, and in my humble opinion, without the 'lab meat' concept, the carnovorism and Furries replacing real life humans cannot coexist(Unless some sort of cannibal tribe). However it's partially possible if the evolved species are limited. Plus, the ancestors shouldn't develop clothing, otherwise we'll end up being partially different but still real life humans.


Now that the textbook logic is against the idea of Furries, let's take off those evolution science stuff and get into actual Furry.

While mentioning carnovorism vs community-sort of conflict, we cannot ignore Zootopia, as mentioned already in this thread. Simply, Furries replacing humans. As a society, allowing carnivorism can be a total mess, so there must be some sort of law or ethic to limit the instinct's interruption against the purpose. It's so vast to be said in one or two paragraphs, like how people(Furries) conflict or violate the law/ethic against it, or how it's being fulfilled via various ways(ex: kidnapping, sentence to death, banned from society or moreover, cannibal society which doesnt eat their members all the time, etc). It is likely to be tied to some distopian backstage stuff.

Otherwise we'll simply have new/relative ancestral species as ferals to work like real life!


It's complicated, but we can do whatever we feel like to set up the lores and stuffs when it comes to constructing our own universe featuring Furry civilizations. Fortunately, you can decide with your purpose of the universe, which isn't too hard.


P.s. In my case, my civilization has those instincts almost devolved that it is no longer a major issue of general public, with custom made species working as ferals. (Plus the backstage predators)

P.p.s. Thank you for the thread, I'm enjoying it. UwU


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## hazmat_doormat (Apr 24, 2020)

You know what’s dark? Peppa Pig. There’s a _zoo _in the Peppa Pig universe. I wonder what could possibly be in the zoo. I wonder if they eat bacon.


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