What monsters eat (or, how filling is a caravan?)

You can also play around with metabolism. Crocodiles, Snakes and Arachnids [that I know of] can go for weeks even several months and then apparently leap in to action. Who is to say that your Monsters can't do even better?

 

Who says they need to eat to stay alive and evolve? If you have magic in your world, who's to say that for every time magic is used (either directly or indirectly at the monster) they feed. Obviously you would need to work more on that, but it is an alternative to them actually needing to eat.

 

my setting is post-apocalyptic, well, I like to think of it as post-post apocalyptic, only instead of the classic Australian-outback post apocalypse, life thrived. The magical radiation caused the plants and animals to grow dramatically. So now most of the world consists of small isolated towns surrounded by large swaths of dangerous wilderness.

Like people have already mentioned in this thread, there IS plenty of food around for the monsters, animals, plants, other monsters and so on. They aren't evil, the other sentient races are just another source of prey to them. However, even with all the food, there is plenty of magical radiation filling the landscape that they can feed on if times are tough.

 

I like this idea of feeding off magic rather than physical 'food'.

As a variant, the creatures could feed of a prey's 'inherent energy', with the result that the prey being fed from goes to sleep, or is unusually drowsy. If the prey is a human, this may have interesting consequences depending on when the feeding occurs. Just an idea you can ignore or play with .

And I too love the four food groups of a dragon: Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue

 

Hi all,

I'm not sure that this is such an issue, unless a monster is truly fastidious in what he eats, i.e. only humans. I mean why can't your dragons spend most of the time eating cows, only really eating people when they come at them in their own little tin suits with their pointy sticks? And if they attack a village maybe its not for food but simply to drive a threat away from their nests. This doesn't make them any less a monster. And lets be honest, wolves weren't hunted to near extinction because they ate people. It was because they ate sheep and farmers didn't like that.

Also most man eating big cats are only man eaters because they can't hunt other prey. People are easier to hunt if you have a wounded leg etc.

And Cup Of Joe mentioned metabolism. What he's getting at is the difference between warm blooded and cold. It takes a lot of energy to maintain a body at a constant warm temperature. But dragons, wyverns etc could all be cold blooded. So they warm up by basking in the sun and only have to eat once a month or so.

Lastly the biomass thing. Not an issue. Yes there is only so much biomass out there, but the issue is solved because at each level of the food chain there are less creatures. So there are far less wolves than sheep. Far less sheep than grass etc.

By the way Aelowan, you might want to read up on the nutritional value of blood. I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that it's not good and for a vamp to get his regular three thousand calories a day he' have to drink an awful lot of it.

Cheers, Greg.

 

I'm with Aelowan - my shape-shifters also need to eat a lot more than humans due to metabolism. It makes sense to me, as they use a lot of energy to change shapes and due to lifestyle. If my world was overrun by shape-shifters, large active dragons and dinosaurs, the food chain would collapse. For a shape-shifter living in a human world, this is a serious disadvantage because the shape-shifter probably can't obtain enough food unless he or she hunts regularly, or has money to buy lots of food and eat twice as good as a King.

I think monsters/large animals would have to be few and far between. If you look at food chains, the lowest part has the highest number of organisms. That's where the highest amount of energy is.

Your monsters and dragons could use a sort of photosynthesis. They could feed on the sun's energy or thermal energy or wind energy (etc). Maggie Fury, if I recall rightly, had a dragon race which sunbathed. I've used the concept a few times in stories, and I've seen it done elsewhere a bit. Dragons are a good candidate for that, though any monster can work. It might just be part of a varied diet.

So instead of (for example, a dragon): Sun -> grass -> caterpillar -> songbird -> eagle -> cat

It would be sun -> beastie

 

How about using "tiger coefficient"?

Google knowledge:

The average weight of males is 221.2 kg (488 lb).

It means that an average bengal tiger eats about (70/488)*100=14,3% of its body mass at one time. If you monster has the same kind of metabolism you can use this value. Anyway you can adjust this coefficient depending on how slow/fast is your monster.

 

Good evening aelowan,

there are a few of us 'detail psychos' around. I too like to pay attention to the details and enjoy a story where the author has paid attention to details. I like the concept of calorie requirements depending on activity level and type (vampire, shape shifter, etc.). Is this from a single work, or part of a series? Is sounds like it could be quite interesting.

 

I never thought about herbivores. My shape-shifters have generally been omnivores (wolves, cats, birds etc), because they are still human some of the time. Mine also need a high calorie intake, so they have evolved to be opportunists, and their bodies are a lot better at getting energy and use from food than human bodies. For my shifters it's quite expensive to fulfill their needs so many need to live in areas where they can forage and hunt. It also means being an opportunist is an easier way to live.

Do you think yours could also be omnivores, as in, able to process human food in human form, even if they can't in animal form? That may not solve their needs when they've just transformed, though, and need to consume food fast. I imagine a rabbit would need to gather plants to eat every time it shifted...I suppose it would influence where they lived? Then again what if they feasted before they shifted each time, and only needed a bit to eat just afterwards?

Alternatively, look into vegetarian and vegan diets. You'd be so surprised how filling that sort of food can be.

I think too much.

 

While I was reading through this thread a thought struck me. If an animal's food-source was a race of sentient, walking plants would they be herbivores, carnivores or omnivores? Maybe it's a stupid question, but what would you call it if you ate Animal-Plant-Hybrids?

But back to the topic, it would vary depending on size and speed. Giants, say, could be extremely large, however they are often slow moving. Though this probably make up for the energy needed to support their large bodies, it is certainly a factor. Other animals, meanwhile, may subsist on a diet of both general food and magic. Possibly both simultaneously, ie. a plant that has been imbued with magic to allow it to contain sufficient energy for the species in question to feed off it in small enough quantities for both to survive.

 

That's fair enough. It would seem strange, writing a deer or rabbit shifter who ate a fat steak in human shape!

 

Haha! Awesome thread and good point. So if a monster has flesh of a human then they must need something of a human diet. Flesh of an animal, flesh of an elf, and so forth. The only monster that wouldn't need food would have to be one that isn't from our planet correct? If it's ancestry comes from any folklore that originated on earth then earth substance rules would apply in my line of thinking. Super fun to think about.