#high calorie human

[ilovecryoffearsm]

Fuck everyone i wanna walk out of my room naked and just do whatever the fuck i want but these nasty greasy old pigs are in my fucking living room instead of going on a walk that their fatasses need kill ypurself oh my goodness gracious no playlist seems to put feminine rage jnto words and i think im experiencing that rn cause j feel a bunch of other shit but i don't know what i am if im woman or not or whatever the fuuu TV g i fud fuck jdjcbxwudbrhec eycsibc i hate this

[bambroot]

TIL I'm a high calorie human. I prefer to call myself a food enthusiast.

[robichuwu]

[theartingace]

Idea: orchard harvester saddle. More of a standing platform with a scooter handlebar for the rider where the centaur can hand things up and down. (playing Farming Simulator is making me crave more peaceful/agricultural world building; there's already so much Warlike WB around, it needs some balance)

(also, eat like a horse vs eat like a bird, horse metab is high efficiency but a lot of it just due to net size, imagine that efficiency applied to refined grains and breads. Centaur diets would be less-per-weight than humans, although not necessarily by much due to the metabolic needs of sapient brain and foretorso)

Ohhhh I absolutely love this and absolutely think it should be a thing. I've been thinking more about the inherent benefits of centaurs in an agrarian society and more and more the borders of the Merchant city has been expanding outward towards the edge of Rider territory with enormous matriarchal farm towns that feed most of the surrounding societies so this would fit right in to that kind of lifestyle! And sounds so useful! One doing the moving and loadbearing, one doing the climbing and picking.

And I agree, war shapes societies undeniably but so many worldbuilders forget that trade, craft and industry shape cultures and societies just as much! It's definitely a topic i could GO OFF about haha, I have major exports and interrelated trade agreements drawn up between ALL my current societies 😁

(also absolutely, the use of refined grains and bread was a huge part of my initial thoughts about how centaurs could survive feeding that big horse body with comparatively small/limited human teeth. The efficiency of processed grain and grass fibers would be SO necessary to their digestion and overall survival!)

[habitual-creatures]

Hey Mx. H, question:

What’s your favourite part of the human body to eat? I’m very curious :p

(Also OOC- you’re cool have this 🫴🏻🌹)

IT DEPENDS...

FOR ACTUAL FOOD, FOR MEANINGFUL NUTRITIONAL QUALITY... I FIND THE THIGHS, UPPER ARMS, OR ORGANS (ESPECIALLY THE LIVER OR LUNGS) TO BE BEST...

HOWEVER, I LIKE TO THINK OF MYSELF AS A ROMANTIC...

SO I READILY ADMIT THAT MY FAVORITE PART FOR A... PERSONAL DINING EXPERIENCE IS PROBABLY THE HEART.

IT CAN BE SO BEAUTIFULLY CARVED OUT TOO... WHERE YOU CAN KEEP THEM ALIVE LONG ENOUGH TO WATCH THEM REALIZE WHAT YOUR GOAL IS... YOU CAN FEEL THEIR PULSE SPEED UP AS YOU GET CLOSER TO REMOVING IT FROM ITS CAGE...

IT'S INTOXICATING.

[ REGARDS, HABIT ]

(( gwahhh- thank you for saying you think I'm cool!!!! :'DDD I'm really not, I'm just a goober. And thank you for the digital rose!!! *I left a rose. /ref* sorry btw if this ask is really triggering in any ways to anyone... cannibalism is bad but so fascinating to hear about. :']] I'm weird so I know a lot about it. ))

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned why can animals eat each other alive but humans get sick eating raw meat

In Sapiens, Professor Yuval Noah Harari explains the reason. It was an evolutionary bargain. The human brain takes up 25% of the body’s energy. Compare that with 8% in other apes, and lesser in other animals.

Unlike today, the primitive Homo Sapiens did not have easy access to high-calorie food. And maintaining such a big brain took a lot of resources and energy. Our ancestors paid for the evolution of a larger brain in two ways — their muscles atrophied and their intestines got shorter.

It was a very heavy toll for the body to spend energy on digesting food, it was a lot more convenient if the food was somehow already broken down or cooked, reducing the amount of energy spent by the body that went into digesting the food.

And the cooked food saved the body vital energy to evolve the larger brain of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals.

As such, it became difficult to digest more complex food like cellulose.

Look at our friend Mr Gorilla here, munching on raw bamboo while none of us can eat sugarcane.

That’s why we cook because we simply can not digest most food in the raw form.

And that’s because we have big brains :)

So, thank evolution that we can choose from a range of tasty stuff to eat. ;)

[seat-safety-switch]

You might not think that the dead of winter, on whatever day it is right now, is the best possible time to enjoy a pickle. That's ridiculous. It is always the best possible time to enjoy a pickle, but especially now. Brine-infused fermented vegetables are one of the greatest inventions of the human race.

Regardless of culture, pickled food is part of it. Ancient titans got, as the modern vernacular would put it, "mad snacky" all the time. Whether working for landlords in a fiefdom, or working for landlords in a modern market-based economy, pickles helped keep them going long enough to pop your ungrateful ass out.

Now, as you walk through the grocery store with an insanely high density of calories available to you, you pass up these pickles for "other food" that you "need." Not enjoying them is to spit in the face of your ancestors, who struggled to stretch their valuable produce in order to survive the winter.

So take it from me and not at all the Pickle Council of North America, whose innovative advertorial campaign is being run by an absolute but mysterious genius. Pick up some fermented fruit or vegetables today, share them with your family and friends, and then buy some more. Because if you stop buying this stuff, maybe civilization will end, and do you really want that on your conscience?

[b1asho]

Round one of the species introduction!!!!

Prectikar Master Post:

Here's some info on them, and if you want to see some other drawings I've done of them (albeit some occasionally older n crustier ones), check out my deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/blasho

Anyway:

Prectikar are a large sentient species, usually standing at around 8-9 feet tall when fully upright and weighing anywhere close to or upwards if 1000 pounds

They are covered in feather-like fur (or is it fur-like feathers? They're occasionally branched like feathers, and all have quills, but some are more hairlike) due to the cold climate they evolved in, though length and thickness of it now varies by region.

They are omnivorous, and while they have many traits to help them hunt and kill, most of their diet tends to be plants.

Originally rush-down predators, they use their considerable strength to move in quick bursts and their specialized tusks to either ram prey to death or gouge into it as they grapple it.

Their jaw strength is also insane,with their skull actually sacrificing brain space in favor of it, which helps them eat pretty much anything they come across. They pay a lot of attention to food and cooking because of their high calorie needs and very sensitive nose/tongue.

They have manganese as an oxygen carrier is a result of the scarcity of other metals in their environment and potentially because of its general affinity for oxygen.

This causes their blood to be an amber/orange brown and shades of pink depending on its exposure to oxygen.

Through a network of cooperative bonding and other adaptations (like better oxygen retention in muscles and the easily carried size and longevity of the molecule) they’ve managed to bring this manganese transport molecule close to hemoglobin in terms of effectiveness, though they can also make use of manganese’s catalyst properties to temporarily push it to bring lots more oxygen to their tissues at a time (used for short bursts of speed and strength that allow them to take down large prey and plants for food).

their large body size (selected by their colder environment) lets them use their own high body heat to keep the O2 fixation and liberation going in their highly effective lungs.

An extensive understanding of their internal chemistry is unknown (aka gatekept by their colonizers/"uplifters" who ill get to later) but it seems like they also have a network of bacteria in their body just to manage the more reactive and damaging oxides that form, and to remove/convert the spent manganese into connective tissue and aid in bone maintenance.

They have higher calorie needs from keeping up the body temp and recycling/removing all that stuff, alongside just being big in general. Alongside a lot of sleeping, they also basically just eat all the time (compared to other species) to compensate, though their mammal-like fat retention and other metabolic adaptations for scarcity mean that they can handle long periods without resources(though this causes increasingly compounded problems for them)

Some other downsides include low tolerance of changes in oxygen levels (particularly low) and temperature levels, and poor adaptation to environments outside of their biosphere/without all the microorganisms since these things upset their delicate balance.

(part of why so many tribes were nomadic was/is to chase temperate and ‘warm’ seasons, even though to us that’s still cold. Prectikar living in human dominated areas often just take a lot of supplements with beneficial bacteria in them to cope with thr lack of that in their environent, and any food printers need an 'ink' cartridge containing these things or else theyre basically useless.),

They also experience faster general wear and tear from having constant complex and intensive chemical reactions(sometimes with dangerous chemicals) going on in their bloodstream and tissues.

( I’m not a biochemist, so if there’s any glaring issues with this then just explain it away to yourself with ‘they have a gland for that’ or ‘just don’t think about it actually’ which is what I did. I just wanted the fun color with a metal that can reversibly bond with oxygen :). )

They have one nasal passageway for smell/air and a second, bigger cavity for just vocalization (which they can’t breathe in from as easily).

This second cavity is between their first set of eyes, and has a phonic lip structure inside to produce higher pitched sounds.

The upper nasal opening has muscled nostrils that act as lips to further help control sound. The noise coming from here sounds very high to them, but to us it sounds like a nasally human voice, broken uobhere and there with squeaks, buzzes, and clicks).

They can pitch this nose voice very high, closer to dolphin-like clicking noises but not quite echolocation level.

Their throat vocal cords by their air sac are very long and thick, used for making very deep noises that carry long distances.

However, the vocal control they have through their mouth is very poor due to this and the inarticulate lips and tongue they have, and due to the more limited air they can bring in and out of it, so when speaking only through their mouth they sound a lot like seals or dogs and can only really go in short bursts before having to refill the sac.

Most of their languages are spoken with the nose and mouth sounds in tandem, where the high and low mix to make a more even sounding voice.

It’s fairly easy to understand them, but nearly impossible for us to truly speak any of their native languages, and if they wanted to they could also just start making sounds we cant hear.

They see it as strange that humans and other species speak with a single tone without difficulty.

The red flaps pictured on the drawing of their mouth and nasal passages can be moved to seal off the passage and direct airflow elsewhere.

The big red one in their throat acts as a “diaphragm” to fill and empty the air sac (which is left over from when their digestive and respiratory tracts were more connected like ours, but time in the water heavily shifted it to a more ‘blowhole’ type outline to help them breathe and vocalize from the surface).

The other flap by the air sac and its vocal cords moves upwards to block off the digestive tract whenever the mouth or nose is opened to allow air to be drawn in by this diaphragm.

The two red flaps making a pinched shape can move independently or with the other red flap, but never at the same time with each other. The main airway is always separate from the digestive tract, though the flap to the middle, non vocal nasal passage can be moved so that it’s a part of either the vocal nasal passage to draw in air or the air sac part to act as another resonance chamber.

Air can be drawn in by the diaphragm via open mouth and through the nose via open top red flap at the same time, and can be released at the same time, resulting in their near continuous double speak sound they use for their own language.

Their characteristic large tusks are retractable and housed in a cone-shaped bony socket on the side of their jaw.

A muscle is attached to the bony root of the tooth, and pushes it out. As it slides towards the front of the mouth, the cone socket narrows and wedges a protrusion on the tooth into a hole in the socket, and then the muscle stiffens, locking it in there.

When the tusk retracts, the muscle quickly jimmies the tooth forward then draws it back to get it out of the hole, and then pulls it back into the wider part of the socket.

This is mainly because their tusks are ever growing (but very slowly) but not great at self sharpening, and are their main weapon in self defense and hunting,so it seems this just happened to keep them safe.

If a tusk is broken, as long as it was not cracked at the root, it can be regrown with extensive time in the socket, but otherwise they stay safely stowed in da socket where the majority of its sharp edge can stay protected from chewing and other mouth stuff. Tusks won't start growing in until their teenage years.

They are primarily bipedal/ quadrupedal and switch between the two occasionally.

Knuckle walking helps distribute their top-heavy weight and give them more balance for long and short distance, while walking upright gives them better visibility, less stress on their neck/upper back, and quicker but unsteadier movement.

Their gallop/sprint utilizes both arms and legs to propel them forward in a gait halfway between a bear and a gorilla (since their big mid arms are set like a bears) to overtake prey after an ambush or drive them into the rest of the pack waiting elsewhere. Quad walking also helps them get around in buildings meant for species half their size.

Their hands are some of their only places without hair, but as they age, they loose it on their arms and face too.

Prectikar have different uses for each of their pairs of limbs, and have for all stages of their evolution.

The front ones specialized for grappling prey and grabbing things, and so have a ‘sprawling’ shoulder position like humans and have hands with relatively nimble fingers, the outer two are angled inwards but can also move in a pamprodactyl ish fashion (which acts as their version of a thumb, and lets them switch from big to little grabbing motions) .

Their mid limbs used to be wings with hands, and still have a basically zygodactyl finger position that was helpful for holding onto branches (with the backwards facing finger), but over time they have been converted into terrestrial knuckle-walking limbs, with the one that swings back and forth being brought forwards to walk or swung back to adjust grip on big things they want to move or for balance on unstable terrain like ice . The fingers on this one are big and clumsy, pretty much only useful for digging, walking, or slashing.

Their back limbs also used to be for grasping but were mainly counterbalances, but have now turned into plantigrade walking limbs (and much like humans, that’s pretty much all they use them for). All have nonretractable claws.

Prectikar are viviparous and usually give birth to litters of up to 8.

They have a specific mating season, where their dimorphic traits will become more pronounced.

Males in rut will shed the feathers on their throat sac region and it will become a bright ambery yellow color, and they will also grow in longer feathers on their butt region (in a fan shape for display purposes. The dont have a true post anal tail like humans).

They will also develop some of that pinkish orange/yellow on their chest skin. Females go throguh estrus cycles and will also grow a more prominent butt feather crest, as well as some very long feathers around their neck, shoulders, and abdomen for babies to hold onto.

Their skin patches turn a much brighter shade of yellow to help direct newborns to where they can feed from. Once they give birth, they will start making an oily and thick secretion across the skin patch which is collected into a divot which the infant licks from. Part of why the babies hold onto them is so they can constantly lick the 'milk'so they can grow.

Newborns come out blind and hairless, but quickly grow in a thick down and open their eyes so they can climb on mom.

Once they're weaned, they'll drop off and use the muscles they gained hanging on and climbing to start moving with the adults. They grow very fast, and canes are a common sight in teens to help deal with the rapid bone and muscle growth.

Usually, it is only during this season where chest/skin related nudity standards change to be more conservative, since showing those colors means youre down to fuck and so doing that is usually restricted to in private with their partner or for bachelors.

They have very strict binaries for sex and gender based on this seasonal divide and religion.

Most tribes show gender identity through a piercing on their lower nose for male or chin for female (so dont worry, the main guy up there is showing some male presenting chest outside of the mating season, so hes fine).

Normally, only some cultures pierce their ears, which are like if owls had a little mobile flap of outer ear to swivel I stead of their whole head. Very little of it is actually flesh, and the sound is mainly captured by the feathers around it.

While they have a reputation otherwise, Prectikar are highly social within their tribal/family groups.

They regularly allogroom, greet each other with hugs, and usually travel in sibling groups. Households are multi generational.

They have a reputation as standoffish or irritable because they take things very differently and have other standards/specific body language truggers. also most other species treat them differently/with fear by default.

their upper pair of eyes is larger and focused on long distance vision while their lower pair is for close up vision, creatign a bifocal effect for them when using both at once.

Aaaaaand that oretty much everything, I think. I'll post some other arts related to them soon, but consider this the Master Post on the things you should know about them!!

[bigification]

Malleable

Experiment: Testing human bodies malleability for potential species transformation.

Notes: Human was abducted from pool in the human country of Saudi Arabia. Subject has an average human build, tan skin, and more hair than the average male human. Subject will be kept in simulation of a pool to reduce stress on the humans mind.

Test Subject 1

Species: human

Weight: 180 pounds

Height: 5"10

Age: 27

Race: Arab

Experiment 1: Muscle growth

Notes: Subject will be given a muscle growth agent, as well as some hormones that may help ease the human body through its transformation. Subject will be kept in simulation of their home for comfort.

Subject has responded well to muscle growth. Muscle has grown mostly in chest, arms, and legs, consistent with proportions of muscle in the average male human. Added hormones have increased the subjects body hair significantly, primarily in the subjects face. Hormones have also slightly affected height and age of subject.

Species: human

Weight: 250 pounds

Height: 6"2

Age: 30

Race: Arab

Experiment 2: Racial change

Notes: Subject will be given an agent to change their genetics from Arabic to American. An American department store has been selected for maximum comfort.

Results are not as expected, but experiment is still a success. Subject has been transformed from an Arab male human to an average American male human. Subjects skin has lightened to a pale beige colour, and majority of their body hair has fallen out. Also, the subjects genitalia decreased slightly in size. These changes are suspected to be caused by change in genetics during transformation.

Species: human

Weight: 250 pounds

Height: 6"2

Age: 30

Race: Caucasian

Experiment 3: Fat growth

Notes: Subject will be given a large dose of calories to significantly increase body fat mass. We have observed that fat gain can often be stressful among humans, so subject will be kept unaware of fat gained for maximum comfort.

Subject has reacted well to high dose of calories. They seem unaware of their high body fat percentage. Fat has concentrated primarily in the stomach, with some in the chest, arms and legs, which is consistent with fat distribution in the average human male.

Species: human

Weight: 359 pounds

Height: 6"2

Age: 30

Race: Caucasian

Experiment 4: Hair growth

Notes: Since subject has lost majority of their body hair, we will test their ability to grow it back. Subject will be given a mixture of hormones to help the body grow hair. The subject will be given larger clothes for maximum comfort.

Subject has reacted well to mixture of hormones. Subject has grown an amount of body hair comparable to their body before experiment 2. Although, the hair is a brown colour, when it was a black colour previously. This is suspected to be a side effect of racial change. Other side effects of the hormones is a deeper voice, slight change in fat distribution, and increase in generalist size.

Species: human

Weight: 350 pounds

Height: 6"4

Age: 30

Race: Caucasian

Experiment 5: Age progression

Notes: The human body has been observed to change drastically while aging. The subject will be given an aging agent. Subject will be given clothes that have been observed an older human for maximum comfort.

Not as much changed in the human body as expected. The body hair turned a light grey, the fat distribution has concentrated in the stomach and chest, and the subjects skin has become dry and spotted. Also the subjects seems to have lost muscle mass and gained fat mass during the aging process, we have yet to discover whether this is normal in aging male humans.

Species: human

Weight: 330 pounds

Height: 6"0 Age: 60

Race: Caucasian

Experiment 6: Species transformation

Notes: Human subject has been deemed to be malleable enough for species transformation. Subject will be exposed to a fungus from the fungus forests on the home planet. Subject will be placed in an average sillian household for maximum comfort.

Subject has completed the species transformation without problems. Facial features have changed significantly to match those of a male sillian. Subject has grown two extra limbs, a large amount of body fat and muscle mass, and body hair comparable to the average male sillian. Fat has concentrated in chest, stomach, and legs, consistent with an average sillian. Muscle has concentrated in the arms, legs, and chest to optimize the subject utility in battle. Subjects genitalia have increased in size to match the average male sillian. Intelligence has also increased to that of an average sillian soldier and subject now comprehends English, Arabic, and Sillian.

Species: sillian

Weight: 1240 pounds

Height: 12"4

Age: 132

Race: N/A

This concluded the laboratory report on the malleability of the human body. We will continue to transform their male human into loyal Sillian soldiers in an attempt to outnumber their troops for the next invasion.

[luxuourr]

WHEN YOU know LOA AND FEEL FAT/SKINNY/INSECURE.

currently made this post for me and everyone who has these issues

I've got alot of trauma , growing up as the chubby cute baby became taunts and mockery, i never looked fat and ugly and anything like this , I was always admired everywhere for my body except at my house and over the years it's become my trauma, my mom being a psychologist and still not realizing her solutions from the internet, telling me my leptin hormone is shit,my metabolism is so slow or I have PCOS as an intersex it never made sense, she never did make any sense and I know some people in this community have been struggling and are struggling with weight loss since for years. I have come across this manifesting coach, most of y'all know called electrasoul and for context they struggled with body image issues and weight loss too until it clicked in their mind. Those are some of the most important points I made you'll love. You will fall in love with this guys.

SHE DID NOT CHANGE HER DIET, YOU DONT HAVE TO EITHER.

"WTF that's not true, impossible, nah you need to count your calories and workout to loose weight , ain't no way my lifestyle doesn't have to change and brain needs to be controlled", so it really works like that. First of all this drill of changing diets and workouts that has been draining us people who wanna loose weight has been going on since we have been mature, the biggest enemy of our weight has been our own parents, if you're skinny, you're too skinny. if you're healthy, you're too healthy but you now need to find yourself a balance but it'll only come if you're a LOA person and finally have the will to loose weight, throw logic and society's diets and workouts out rn , if you're too tired for that , you don't need it. The brain is the strongest part of your body because it's capable of doing things you'd never imagine.

KNOWING AND STATE

first you need to know what you want, so you wanna gain or loose weight , or you want a healthy weight? ok did you choose what you want now let's proceed.

all your life they told you to eat less otherwise you'd be overweight and eat more to gain weight but sometimes underweight people genuinely eat enough or don't like eating and don't gain weight and sometimes people who are overweight barely eat at all, it's just their mind " oh I drink water and gain weight " ofc bro you really drilled it in your mind to be this way. The essential step is that don't look for logic. Law of assumption was made to remind you nevillie didn't need knowledge to marry the woman of his dreams and you don't need logic or calories In the world of law of assumption where you made rules. ARE CALORIES EVEN REAL, IS DIETING SOMETHING WHEN YOU ARE GOD?? YOU'RE CREATING THIS ALL THEN WHY ARE YOU LISTENING TO OTHER HUMANS AND THEIR BS WHEN ITS YOUR LIFE.

dieting and workouts is for the weak, the true mind power lies in you, it is now your choice to turn your weaknesses into strengths, It is now your choice to eat food knowing you're gonna loose and reach your body goals with it. So apparently the best way and a good example of this , that you will understand what I mean is, you can still eat food staying naturally in the state or affirming.

calories are nothing to me in my life

eating makes me loose / gain weight

no matter what I do, I have my dream body

my metabolism is slow/fast ( if you wanna loose or gain weight )

No matter what I eat, whatever i do, however I eat, binge or die and cry or spiral, I have to gain / loose weight

this is literally my world so I have decided and have my ideal body and weight.

These are the examples of simple affirmations you can use to persist, even while eating.

DONT COUNT YOUR CALORIES

if you truly believe in LOA stop counting calories , calories is a man made thing , bro who tf even found out about something that you can't see, do fruits grow and are labelled low or high cals? did they experiment people for fat or thin, to find out that?? nahh bffr ☹️ giving the control of your life to some dumbass calories scientists made. We don't believe in that. Girl you're just having a maintained body for the rest of your life no matter what ✊🏻

IT IS YOUR CHOICE

whether you can start affirming and assuming and knowing that you're at your ideal weight , food makes you loose or gain weight or tire yourself with diets and workout if you're already tired from every aspect of your life.

for someone struggling with PTSD AND DEPRESSION

This is an honest advice, goodluck loosing/gaining weight/ getting your ideal body.

you don't have to stop all those sugary stuff and things want, just assume you can do this. ✊🏻🌹

[olderthannetfic]

One thing I wish more people understood is that a calorie is not a real thing, it's a unit of measure. Calories are just a measure of how much energy a human body can obtain from digesting a food.

I've seen people talk about calories as if they're a contaminent, like mercury in fish or something. As if "zero calories" is both healthy and humanly possible.

With the right lab equipment, you could separate out the fat, sugar, protien, fiber, vitamins, salt, etc. in a food and look at them, weigh them, measure them, poke them a stick. These are real things that actually exist. You can't separate out the calories. You find out how many calories are in a serving by doing math about how an average human digestive system processes the components of a food.

A "low calorie" food is just a food that you get less energy from. That's all it is. It isn't nessecarily healthier, it doesn't nessecarily have more nutrients. It certainly isn't more "pure" or "clean". It's just a less efficient fuel, that's all.

Vegetable oil and refined sugar are high calorie because our bodies can wring an absurd amount of energy from them. They're less healthy than other foods because they have fewer nutrients in them, not because they're "full of" evil calories.

--

This one poor youtuber I watch has to explain that her "healthy" foods are intensely calorie-rich because she physically cannot eat large volumes. She's got to be efficient. That doesn't make it a good approach for someone who wants the feeling of teeth crunching on a snack all day and night. Celery is ideal for the latter, but woe to the idiot who thinks eating mostly celery is going to make them healthy. You need fuel, people! Celery is an adult pacifier for people who can't stop clenching their jaw while they write. (It's me. I'm people.)

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

Do you ever struggle not sharing details of your story / spoiling people? It's one of the hardest parts of writing for me! I always want to just divulge all of my ideas immediately!

The answer, weirdly enough... is no!

And a part of that is definitely due to me being a giant, secret-hoarding dragon in disguise. But another part of that is the fact that I largely suspect that...

Keeping secrets and avoiding spoilers is the reason this comic is still alive and updating.

Now, that may sound odd. Why would keeping secrets help me post? Sharing work is kind of the life-blood of a lot of creative endeavors. Storytelling is an inherently social activity. All humans, even the most introverted ones, thrive on peer recognition and feedback.

But over the years, I've come to realize something about myself. And this realization may be mostly stemming from me, but I suspect it's actually a pretty common factor for other creatives as well. So maybe I should talk about it (again).

Let me introduce you to something I call...

The Emperor's New Accomplishment.

Here's the thing. I'm an extremely introverted, non-social person. I can go for months without talking to friends easily, even if I love them a whole lot. That all being said, I'm still a human being, and my brain derives happy-social-animal chemicals from being recognized as A Person With Traits. Humans are built that way! We can't avoid it.

So what you gotta understand is - at all times, our brain is seeking social/peer recognition like it seeks out high-calorie foods. And it (largely) does not care what we have to do to get it.

Herein lies the problem.

Usually, creating stuff and thinking about stories and then sharing what we wrote with friends is a great way to get that happy chemical.

But it's time consuming. And difficult. And there's a shortcut.

What we seek when we create Scenarios and Characters and Conflicts is not hard work toiling away writing/drawing/constructing stuff. Many artists actively enjoy this process, but it's grueling.

And just telling our friends about our ideas actually accomplishes the end goal, as far as our brain is concerned! We made up ideas! We told people about it! We got the Good Feelings!

So when I tell people about my Plans to Write A Comic or Ideas To Make a Story, what I'm actually doing is tricking my brain into thinking 'wow, this feels great! We have accomplished the task we set out to do! No more effort necessary!'

And that motivation to actually draw/write/create?

It goes directly into the trashcan.

Now I'm not saying this to suggest people who do this/fall prey to this are lazy. They're not!

But our brains are. They're lazy, and they want to save energy. And they don't care if you WANTED to actually make the story. They will gladly rip the Motivation energy out of our grubby little hands when they no longer deem it necessary to the process.

So - why do I keep so many secrets? How do I stop myself from talking about what happens next in the story?

I'm doing it to keep my actual comic alive.

Disclaimer: Not everyone functions like this, obviously. Everyone has a different creative process. But this is how I've realized MY brain works, so I now take steps to trick my brain back into working. Ha! Take that, brain! Two can play at this--waitaminute.

[jayrockin]

Inktober 24 is scrappy development sketches for centaur silk dairy livestock and “string cheese,” a nutritive silk produced by the livestock (and nursing centaurs). It serves a similar function to mammalian milk, i.e. it feeds the kids. It has a greasy texture and contains a lot of high-calorie macromolecules packed inside structural sheaths. A human would get sick if they ate it, but it would be like chewing on a fibrous plant stem. It is commonly knotted and boiled in brine; then either eaten fresh or preserved via smoking, salt packing, pressing, dehydration, etc. Talita eats some in this comic.

Centaurs have bred this species (referred to by the Shess as “tep”) specifically to overproduce silk after pregnancy so that they can harvest and eat it. I'll post a more comprehensive ref later but, they are from a viviparous sister clade of centaurs where the rear limbs evolved into claspers in males and a pouch in females. Their front tooth is also a nose sword, which centaurs like because it looks like a trunk smile to them.

PATREON | STORE | Runaway to the Stars

[bonefall]

i can’t help that feel like 350 calories per cat per day across 5 clans (150 some odd cats!!!) is more prey than there is! even with really generous cooking estimates you’d need to catch a rabbit or two or a large fish or something per clan every single day of the year. i feel like that would really mess up prey populations, wouldn’t it? i know animals have a lot of babies, but 3,650 rabbits’ worth of calories every year (not to mention what other predators like foxes, snakes, and hawks are eating) feels like too much for one territory. are we assuming that there’s more prey than there is or do i just not know how much offspring animals produce?

WELL, there's a lot of factors here, but you are actually organically figuring out something true and horrifying. BB!Cats are sapient, able to understand their impact on the environment and ergo manage it, but feral domestic cats are devastating to local ecosystems.

Not even because of caloric need btw just because of how much they hunt, and their odd behaviors.

The Bad

There is a reason why predator populations are so massively outnumbered by prey species. One rabbit would feed a single cat for days, but one colony is typically 3 - 15 cats. Most predators are solitary, or have "loose" social structures spread out over many partially overlapping territories covering miles (like alligators)! but something changed when cats were domesticated, and they now seek out dense social units unlike their wild ancestors.

That's why the only social wild cats are lions. Lion prides are extremely flexible, ranging from 3 to upwards of 30 members, and their populations are going to depend completely on how much prey they have access to. Even the shocking "infanticide" thing that male lions are notorious for serves an ecological purpose; less lions means more meat, so every cub that isn't yours is a future rival.

(tangent: the largest lion prides actually set up in major migration "hubs," where there is a constant influx of traveling animals. Not really an "ecosystem" where the pride can damage the population.)

But now domestic cats are doing this, in ecosystems that can't support them and never had predators that behave like them. They compete with the local mesopredators ("middle" hunters that hunt small game but are killed by larger predators. Ex: raptors, snakes, caniforms like foxes or raccoons, etc) and put extra pressure on prey populations.

But that's not the worst part.

In nature, there are Predator-Prey cycles. When there's too many predators, they decrease the prey population. When there's not enough prey, the predators starve and their population lowers. Here is a graph of this phenomenon;

In this way, starvation is required for an ecosystem to stay healthy. It's how nature regulates.

But human beings feed cat colonies.

So colonies end up hitting DOZENS of cats. Upwards of 30 in a tiny area. The sizes you see in canon WC and in BB are TWICE the size of what a feral cat colony typically reaches. In the real world, this is because humans feed them. They HAVE to starve to lower the population, and make no mistake, these are slow, painful deaths.

"But, if we feed the colony, then they're not hunting the local prey, right? Because they're not hungry?" INCORRECT. THEY ARE ANIMALS. Cats are not humans with our sense of morality and long-term consequences. Hunting is only partially driven by hunger, it's also driven by prey drive. Even an outdoor cat, who gets all their meals at home, is killing an average of 90 animals a year.

(note: you may hear the number "they kill 3.5 animals a day." That is a misreading of this study which says 3.5 animals a month based on owner reports; but better study shows they only bring about 18% of their kills home.)

I could get into why I'm actually not a big fan of TNR as a conservation strategy because of this, but in a nutshell, the best solution to feral cat population management overall is (expensive) high-intensity TNR (70% or more) PAIRED with (inexpensive) removal/euthanasia and other methods (like banning colony feeding). PURE high-intensity TNR takes up to 30 years to remove a cat colony in computer simulations. And they keep killing wild animals that whole time.

(tangent: you may come across articles that say that killing feral cats doesn't work. This is often based on this Tasmanian case study by Lazenby et all, where they trapped and removed cats, only to find an influx of subordinate "satellite" individuals that filled the vacuum that the previously established individuals left and increased the overall population. This is a well-documented phenomenon of predator control. They don't tell you that this is short-term and also happens with TNR, just over a longer timeline, as discussed in the above studies, and the solution is to mix methods and make sure that these programs are carried out systemically, NOT ONLY in one limited range.)

So... feral cat colonies with totally realistic needs are very harmful to local ecosystems. They are animals, and they are an invasive species. Keep your cats indoors please

The Good

But BB!Cats and Canon!Cats aren't just animals. These are cats with governments and religion. They do understand long-term consequences.

Even on the page in-canon, they show an understanding that prey comes from breeding (unlike, say, a medieval human who believed in spontaneous generation), WindClan doesn't disturb lapwings during their nesting season showing a basic understanding of ecology, and they even have a law against food waste. Like it or not, these aren't realistic cats. They are small humans with a fuzzy little kitty coat tossed over them.

So we can actually reasonably assume that Clan cats are modifying their behavior so they aren't the ecosystem-shredders that their real-world counterparts are, like;

Hunting over a wider area and having a large territory (so to address you directly anon, their territories are not as small as you might think they are)

Taking the pressure off specific areas by sending their hunting patrols to various parts of their territory

Avoiding hunting animals during their breeding and nesting seasons.

Not killing animals that are pregnant or nursing

Leaving baby animals alone so they grow into bigger food items

Not killing what they don't plan to eat

Intentionally varying their diet so they take a little from many populations.

Hunting animals that real cats don't usually target, like fawns, seagulls, and young boars.

Breeding their own prey, if you're willing to do a little domestication innovation

If you're VERY cool, give them fire. go on. do it. 20% to 50% caloric increase is prettyyy cooool~

But also, you may be underestimating just how many babies prey species produce. Let's use rabbits because these things are insane. They weren't lying, rabbits can breed like rabbits.

European rabbits (and all the domestic breeds they are descended from) have a double womb. That means that when they've given birth to their litter of 4 - 12 babies (usually 6), they can already be pregnant with the next. Gestation is a month. These babies are able to leave their mothers at 2 months and can breed by 4 months. They can have 10 litters a year.

So a SINGLE rabbit COULD have well over 100 bunnies a year... but rabbit warrens are usually 10 - 50, mostly females, plus a bunch of bucks who are more solitary and more likely to travel around. And you're gonna have multiple warrens on a territory.

Low litter estimate, small warren; 10 x 4 x 10 = 400 bunnies. Big litter estimate, big warren; 50 x 12 x 10 = 6,000 bunnies.

That said, most estimates say they functionally end up with 20 adult children a year, which then go on to breed at four months. That's still 200 rabbits a year coming out of that small warren ALONE, and isn't counting the fact that those children are also going to have children of their own.

(though, rabbits in particular are facing a massive crisis in england and even across europe because of two diseases that hit them one after another OTL but it's not related to predation.)

Don't forget that a territory also has more than just rabbits. This is also happening with mice, rats, ducks, sparrows, voles, etc. Like I said, if your cats just diversify the prey they hunt in response to population changes, they'll be golden. In BB I even have a role dedicated to this now; the Head of Hunting, who is tasked with assessing this sort of thing.

SO, to answer you directly;

Feral Cats Bad

WC characters have more in common with a small human than a cat

Pure carnivores are pretty demanding on their ecosystems

There is plenty an intelligent creature can do to reduce their impact on the ecosystem

Their territories could still support them along with the other predators

You did underestimate just how many babies prey animals have, though

Overall, they would be fine. You COULD overhunt a territory, but not with basic prey management practices.

[hedonists-den]

POV: We’re roommates and I’ve finally had it with your fatass behaviors after you help yourself to my chocolate. I let a lot of pent-up frustration out on you before realizing that there’s only one fitting consequence for your greed.

⚠️ Heavy fat-shaming ⚠️

TRANSCRIPT:

[distant] You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Did you take my truffles? You did, didn’t you? I can see the wrappers right there! I can’t fucking believe this…I put up with a lot from you, but blatantly stealing my food? Aren’t you fat enough as is? I mean you’ve already broken three office chairs—two of which I carried inside, by the way—but noooo, you’ve got to have my chocolate. 

Those truffles are the only things I allow myself at the end of the week, you know that? You know how hard I work to keep my diet in check? All the calorie tracking, exercising, and meal planning I have to do? No, you couldn’t possibly understand. You don’t try hard at anything. You don’t even know what self-control means. All you do is sit around all day, stuffing your fat fucking face and getting high. 

I’m being mean? That’s all you have to say to me? No apology, no “I’ll pay you back for it,”? Are you serious? Well how’s this for mean: You’re a fucking embarrassment. You’re a shameless fat blimp of a human being that only exists to consume. You’re no better than livestock, grazing on whatever it can because its only value is how fucking fat it is. The only difference is that you have at least a modicum of self-awareness to know how completely helpless and useless you are.

How much effort does it take to heave your fat ass up from that chair? Gotta get some momentum going before you can actually stand up? Go ahead. Try to lug yourself to your feet without grunting and struggling. [...] Yeah, that’s what I fucking thought. I’m shocked that you were able to even make it to the pantry to take my chocolate after such a pathetic attempt. That must be why there’s always piles of dishes stacked up in here, too. You’re too fucking lazy to even take them into the kitchen. I always have to clean up after these goddamn feasts of yours or else I’ll never have any dishes for myself. 

Fucking hell, when I signed up to be your roommate, I absolutely did not sign up for this. You at least had some decency when I moved in, so what the hell happened? Did you lose some fucking bet? Or did you just wake up one morning and decide that you were going to be a lazy, fat pig? What kind of degenerate shit did you—ugh, for fuck’s sake, pull your goddamn shirt down…your fucking gut is spilling out… That’s fucking disgusting… Nothing you’re wearing right now even fits! Your fat is just…oozing out of everything… I can’t believe you look like this and still you justify to yourself that you need my candy on top of everything else you shovel into your mouth. Just… No, you know what? You don’t want to apologize? You want to be a fatass? To live in this offensively obese body that you’ve ruined?

[unwrapping candy] Then eat. Eat, you fucking pig. You wanted my candy? You’re going to have it. Every single piece, and then some. You’ll never be any smaller than you are right now. I’ll make sure of it.

Oh no, no, no, you don’t get to stop now. Open up, fatty. You’re done when I say you’re done.

[bootleg-nessie]

List of Extremely Cursed Knowledge

Having autism and ADHD is a blessing and a curse because on one hand, I’m basically a walking encyclopedia of random facts and information. On the other hand, a fair amount of that information is so fucked up that it’s not socially acceptable to share it with anyone. So naturally, I took every fucked up fact, every bit of twisted trivia, every bit of cursed knowledge that I could come up with off the top of my head and compiled it into one big list to post on the internet. Some of this information may permanently ruin your (you, the reader) perception of certain things. None of this information should have ever seen the light of day, and a fair amount of it was never, ever meant to be known by humans.

You cannot unlearn anything on this list. This is your chance to scroll past.

You have been warned.

\/ \/ \/

According to FDA standards, a jar of peanut butter is allowed to have up to seven (7) rat hairs before it’s considered unfit for human consumption. If it has 7 or less rat hairs it will still be sold in stores.

If I just ruined peanut butter for you, don’t google the FDA regulations on any other foods you enjoy.

Human teeth have 36 calories each.

The average human body has roughly 125,000 calories. This is actually relatively low, which makes cannibalism in humans generally unsustainable.

Human meat tastes like pork.

Penguins have been observed practicing necrophilia.

Dolphin vaginas secrete a substance that acts like an aphrodisiac on steroids. When scientists swabbed some of it on a chimpanzee’s penis, it masturbated so furiously that it had a heart attack and died.

Dolphins have been known to intentionally commit suicide if kept in poor conditions.

Scientists that work with cockroaches often become allergic due to exposure. Simultaneously, they also develop an allergy to chocolate and pre-ground coffee. Make of that what you will.

Dolphins have been observed masturbating using decapitated fish heads.

Dolphins have been observed getting high on pufferfish venom recreationally, sometimes even passing a pufferfish around like a joint.

There’s a LOT of rape across the entire animal kingdom. Like, a LOT. It’s especially prevalent in dolphins, otters, ducks, penguins, and primates, to name a few.

On a related note, female ducks have corkscrew shaped vaginas. Male ducks also have corkscrew shaped penises that measure in at a whopping eighteen inches.

The barnacle has the largest penis to body size ratio in the animal kingdom, with its penis being up to eight times as long as its body.

Chimpanzees have been observed using frogs as a fleshlight.

A disembodied human head weighs about 10-12 lbs and is balanced in such a way that requires you to use both hands to pick up.

Pigs will eat every single part of a corpse - including bones. In 2012 a farmer in Oregon was eaten by his pigs after having a heart attack and falling in their enclosure. This also makes pig pens a prime spot for dumping bodies.

A body will decompose faster if you fill the rectal cavity with yogurt before burying it

When burying a body, make sure to bury it in a heavily wooded area. If vegetation is too sparse and/or the body isn’t buried deep enough, it will be easily noticeable after a few months because plants will grow in much thicker directly above where the body was buried.

You cannot bury a body in sand, as sand is too porous. The smell will seep through and give away the location

The entire universe could theoretically exist as a false vacuum and collapse into nothingness at any moment without warning.

Any alien civilization advanced enough to detect life on earth is also probably advanced enough to destroy our entire planet almost immediately. At the peak of interstellar technology, the only limiting factor is the speed of light. If they decided to attack, we probably wouldn’t even know it was coming until the entire surface of the planet was already vaporized.

It takes three and a half rotations to fully detach a human head from its body.

Recently deceased bodies can experience rigor erectus, which translates to “death boner.” This is especially common in victims of hanging, as it’s primarily caused by trauma to the cerebellum or spinal cord.

There is an extremely real chance that you have unknowingly purchased a product that was made by modern day slaves at least once in your life. Coffee, cotton, fish, clothes, shoes, and technology are among the most vulnerable industries.

A decapitated head remains conscious for several seconds after separated from the body.

The entire koala population across Australia is currently undergoing a major chlamydia epidemic. It’s actually been extremely devastating for them and they’re currently facing the threat of extinction because of it.