Re: Herd Men

From: TTrotsky_at_aol.com
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 12:27:34 -0400 (EDT)


 David Weihe:

<< Rabbits also manage without the advantages of multiple stomachs, by using multiple runs through their digestive system.>>

     Rabbits, like horses, rhinos and tapirs/Morokanth have an enlarged caecum/appendix in which to ferment the vegetable matter with cellulose-digesting bacteria. In effect, this is a second stomach. Without it even eating their own faeces wouldn't help them too much. So, IMO, unless we're going to say 'it's magic' and/or 'who cares?', herd-men still need a second stomach of some kind.  

 <<Additionally, and less revoltingly, the human appendix was supposed to  be a vestigial second stomach inherited from primarily-plant-eating  monkey and prosimian ancestors. Maybe this swells to its ancestral  proportions in herdmen.>>  

     The only monkeys I can think of which eat a lot of fibrous plant matter are colobus monkeys, colobine monkeys, howler monkeys and, of course, baboons. Howlers do have an enlarged caecum/appendix, as you say, but colobus and colobine monkeys have multiple stomachs similar to those of cows. The latter is more efficient, so the howlers have to eat high quality leaves and preferably a fair amount of fruit and the like (which is what most monkeys eat). This seems dubious in Prax. Baboons, somewhat surprisingly, have a simple stomach and an unspecialised gut.

     As for prosimians, I'm less sure, but at least one - the sportive lemur - - eats its food twice like rabbits do. So there *is* a precedent if you really like that idea... :-P

     As I said in a previous post, IMG herd-men are not the same as fixed-INT humans, they are the result of much more potent (but clearly related) magics wrought by Waha in the Godtime. Thus I have no problem in giving herd-men multiple stomachs like a colobus monkey. Not that I expect this is ever likely to be relevant in game!

Forward the glorious Red Army!

    Trotsky


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