Treecat animal husbandry

Or treecat ranching, if you will. Specifically: where are treecats in terms of managing or cultivating their meat animals?

They're still primarily hunter-gatherers, but they've settled into fairly permanent habitations - the central nesting places - and they've taken up agriculture. If you stay put, you can think and use tools, and you eat any vegetation, you're almost certainly on at least the low end of an agricultural spectrum - well, unless none of the plants you eat is remotely hopeful for domestication by you. (Sometimes humans eat acorns, but we may not have much hope of domesticating oaks because squirrels have pretty much done it already.)

But treecats eat much, much more meat than we tend to - either humans with a huge choice of cultivated foods, contemporary hunter-gatherers, or our less fortunate agricultural forebears or contemporaries. So plant cultivation isn't going to be as nutritionally important to them as it is for humans.

I don't recall anything about treecats and animal domestication. (That is, treecats domesticating Sphinxian species for meat or by-products, or, heck, taking up imported chicken farming.) Not even (e.g.) preparing dams or assuming control of them from the Sphinxian beaver equivalents to have a large, convenient pool for fish and excluding other predators from it, much less chipmunk pens, cattle herds, beasts of burden, riding animals, or pets.

Plenty of uses we've had for animals they probably wouldn't - the forests are too congested for mounts, even if treecats cared to ride and something tolerated being ridden. (I guess humans are serving that role for adopted 'cats, but even then, the 'cat's at best a partner when it comes to direction.) And there may be few or no meat animals in their range that lend themselves to domestication, or imports that they've been allowed or yet able to adopt as domesticated animals. Last, there may be a problem with them domesticating meat animals just because they're as carnivorous as they are. Chickens and cows had wild ancestors with field smarts, and they would likely have stayed away from animals that made their full and certain intention to gobble them up obvious - our ancestors may not have looked and smelled as much like hungry wolves as treecats do.

So - Are they cultivating animals? If so, how? If not, why not?

Jeff, no textev that treecats raise meat animals.
While they have home territories they do move from place to place as required. IE drought forced one group to move in one of the Stefanie Harrington books. ( The second book IIRC ).

exiledtoIA wrote:Jeff, no textev that treecats raise meat animals.
While they have home territories they do move from place to place as required. IE drought forced one group to move in one of the Stefanie Harrington books. ( The second book IIRC ).

Plus they live in forests and periodically have to move because of Forrest fires. And to some extent share their ranges with Hexapumas and Peak Bears.

Domesticating animals is easier if you can keep them penned away from predators. It's harder if you have to migrate them through forests where the predators live. Plus many herbavors need access to grasses or meadows; which aren't all that safe an area for Treecats to hang out.


Domesticated meat would provide a bit more dietary stability from year to year, but it would be a huge impact on how the 'cats lived. (Plus they can probably get emergency food from Rangers if they have a real starvation year; reducing some of the life or death urgency of ranching to ensure food.

Jonathan_S wrote:Domesticating animals is easier if you can keep them penned away from predators. It's harder if you have to migrate them through forests where the predators live. Plus many herbavors need access to grasses or meadows; which aren't all that safe an area for Treecats to hang out.


Domesticated meat would provide a bit more dietary stability from year to year, but it would be a huge impact on how the 'cats lived. (Plus they can probably get emergency food from Rangers if they have a real starvation year; reducing some of the life or death urgency of ranching to ensure food.

I remember reading a paper where the archaeologist claimed that animal domestication came after plant domestication. Thus raising animals maybe a step further than treecats are currently. I would expect that some of the early steps are already being taken, identify what the prey animals eat, what special needs (i.e. salt licks), and mating or migratory habits.

Castenea wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Domesticating animals is easier if you can keep them penned away from predators. It's harder if you have to migrate them through forests where the predators live. Plus many herbavors need access to grasses or meadows; which aren't all that safe an area for Treecats to hang out.


Domesticated meat would provide a bit more dietary stability from year to year, but it would be a huge impact on how the 'cats lived. (Plus they can probably get emergency food from Rangers if they have a real starvation year; reducing some of the life or death urgency of ranching to ensure food.

I remember reading a paper where the archaeologist claimed that animal domestication came after plant domestication. Thus raising animals maybe a step further than treecats are currently. I would expect that some of the early steps are already being taken, identify what the prey animals eat, what special needs (i.e. salt licks), and mating or migratory habits.

Right. One of those early steps would be prepared ponds for more effective fishing; another may be excluding other predators so that they can keep more of the herbivores for themselves. Prepared ponds I think we could have missed - or, at any rate, I'm confident I could have missed and was wondering if anyone else caught them. I don't recall anything about rival exclusion. Hexapuma-bashing would be an instance of it, but they seem to prefer to avoid hexapumas (understandably!) when it is an option.

How about drying or salting meat for later consumption? It'd be another fairly early step, but I don't recall mention of winter stores including meat (fish included).

Jonathan_S wrote:

exiledtoIA wrote:Jeff, no textev that treecats raise meat animals.
While they have home territories they do move from place to place as required. IE drought forced one group to move in one of the Stefanie Harrington books. ( The second book IIRC ).

Plus they live in forests and periodically have to move because of Forrest fires. And to some extent share their ranges with Hexapumas and Peak Bears.

Domesticating animals is easier if you can keep them penned away from predators. It's harder if you have to migrate them through forests where the predators live. Plus many herbavors need access to grasses or meadows; which aren't all that safe an area for Treecats to hang out.


Domesticated meat would provide a bit more dietary stability from year to year, but it would be a huge impact on how the 'cats lived. (Plus they can probably get emergency food from Rangers if they have a real starvation year; reducing some of the life or death urgency of ranching to ensure food.

I would substitute something else (leaves? seeds? - we know that bark is eaten by bark chewers treecat name) for grasses, since there are no native grasses on Sphinx and Sphinxian herbivores are eating some sort of plants:

Baen Free Stories 2011, Honorverse Tech Bu9, Star Kingdom of Manticore Home Office Ministry of Immigration Pamphlet SKM-GR-1517-S (Excerpted) 19 July, 1517 PD (AL 58.02.22), Planetary Overview Sphinx: Manticore-A-IV, Welcome to Sphinx, Importation of Offworld Species wrote:While there are ongoing attempts to domesticate Sphinxian herbivores, these are research projects at this time, and it’s expected that the bulk of the meat eaten will be from terrestrial imports.
Of particular concern is the introduction of ground covering plants like grasses. There is a lot we don’t know about Sphinxian plant life. We do know that grasses are not native to Sphinx, and that there is nothing on Sphinx adapted to eating them natively. We also know that grasses spread across Old Earth in a geological eyeblink 66 million years ago, and that spread left profound biome disruption in its aftermath. With the exception of the pig, every terrestrial meat animal has adapted to grassland living . . . and at the very least, introduction of grasses can cause soil to dry out, and, in large areas, change rainfall patterns. Please consult with the Sphinxian Forestry Service before introducing grasses outside of controlled areas; we have a number of varieties that have been tailored to be digestible to local wildlife with minimal problems, and which have slow germination patterns so that we can keep the intrusions under control.

Boldface is my emphasis.

The only Sphixian native plant that has some similarities to grass is range barley:

Baen Free Stories 2011, Honorverse Tech Bu9, Star Kingdom of Manticore Home Office Ministry of Immigration Pamphlet SKM-GR-1517-S (Excerpted) 19 July, 1517 PD (AL 58.02.22), Planetary Overview Sphinx: Manticore-A-IV wrote:Range Barley
This woody plant is a low moisture adapted relative of the near pine, and its westernmost range creeps around the eastern mountains bordering the Tannerman Gulf region. It grows to roughly three meters in height, with a single trunk that’s roughly 3 cm in diameter, and produces very small forms of the near pine’s needles. During the fall, it produces a lighter weight seed pod at the crown of the plant; the center of the plant is a woody pulp that can be ground and used as a flour, or be made as a porridge. The seed pods are high in tannic acid and have to be blanched before they're edible, but can also be used to supplement the pulp. While the Range Barley has a number of similarities to terrestrial grasses in its growth cycle, and as an edible food source, it is not a wind-blown self-pollinating grass such as might be found on Old Earth. It is a curiousity because it appears to be a recent mutation. It is thought that tuskelopes (see below) eat range barley when they can find stands of it, but there are few areas in the Tannerman Gulf region where picketwood and range barley grow near each other.

By Honors time Terran rabbits have established themselves in the wild. They are a major prey item for the treecats. Rabbits would be relatively easy for them to take care of as a raised food source.

I think the easiest for 'Cats to do would be to encourage near-Beavers to build and maintain dams that create well stocked fishing ponds.

It would be a simple enough exercise, really. All the 'Cats would have to do is keep watch over the near-beavers and predators away from both them and the pond.

Okay with raising food animals you need to control predators or your going to just be offering said predators a buffet of easy prey and a reason to hang around. That being said, given the Treecats size and the size of Hexapumas and Peak Bears. It would be the equivalent of some idiot taking up cattle ranching with couple of T-Rex's hanging around (how successful would that be).

saber964 wrote:Okay with raising food animals you need to control predators or your going to just be offering said predators a buffet of easy prey and a reason to hang around. That being said, given the Treecats size and the size of Hexapumas and Peak Bears. It would be the equivalent of some idiot taking up cattle ranching with couple of T-Rex's hanging around (how successful would that be).

I think it was established that Hexapumas avoid the core territory of Treecat clans.