My story follows the lives of a group of young adult friends who are all anthropomorphic animals bred to human-like intelligence by a group of scientists (a bit like what happened to Rocket of Guardians of the Galaxy). They were the first successful offspring of these experiments. They're all around the same age, because when all their scientist parents were breeding them, they decided that they would be all born around the same time. This is because they realized their brains would be wired differently than a normal human's, and as a result they probably wouldn't be able to relate very well to most of their human friends, family, and other acquaintances. Having each other to socialize with would make them feel happier in their lives and wouldn't feel as lonely. They set up some criteria for what exact species they would breed. They would be omnivorous mammals of different biological genera whose tails were almost as long as the creatures' torsos. Because the story is set in the Northeast, this narrowed it down to red foxes, raccoons, striped skunks, Virginia opossums, and coyotes (no gray foxes because they're in the same genus as red foxes). Animal experts, which animals mentioned above do you think could adapt to human cuisine?
I have no idea about opossums. Coyotes are almost exclusively carnivorous. Like most dogs, if they don't get enough protein or are forced to eat too much vegetable matter, they will get sick and die painfully. Same with foxes. Skunks and raccoons are both true omnivores and are a pain in the ass when it comes to them eating your food when you don't want to them even when they're not genetically enhanced. ETA: The allium in garlic and onions can be toxic to dogs and other animals, so I wouldn't recommend having a kindly Jewish-Ukrainian grandmother as their mentor figure.
Actually, foxes and coyotes ARE classified as omnivores. Opossums are omnivores, too. Here are my sources: www.britannica.com/science/omnivore ("Many animals generally considered carnivores are actually omnivorous, among them the red fox, which enjoys fruits and berries") www.nhptv.org/natureworks/redfox.htm ("The red fox eats a wide variety of foods. It is an omnivore and its diet includes fruits, berries and grasses. It also eats birds and small mammals like squirrels, rabbits and mice.") www.desertmuseum.org/kids/oz/long-fact-sheets/coyote.php?print=y ("Coyotes are omnivores, which means they will eat or try to eat just about anything.") www.livescience.com/27976-coyotes.html ("[Coyotes] are typically thought to be only meat eaters, but they are actually omnivores — they eat meat and vegetation.") www.creaturecontrol.net/animal-removal/opossums/ ("Although opossums are carnivorous by classification due to their teeth, they are omnivores by diet.")
True omnivores can eat either exclusively depending on availability. Canids can eat vegetation, but 90% of their diet is is meat and their bodies will start to break down if they don't get enough. Also, because they're not adapted to eating vegetation, the starches can cause bowel inflammation and various other GI tract infections like bacterial blooms that can negatively affect the animals health and will generally cause long term pancreatic problems due to the need for it to produce the unnatural amounts of amylase needed to break down these starches and cellulose. My source is a vet tech who's now going on a very angry rant about people trying to make their dogs vegan and how inhumane it is. Thanks.
Even if they are carnivores. Humans eat meat. They can just stick up their noses at the salad course.
I also forgot to mention that insects comprise most of a skunk's diet, though they do eat other stuff too. By the way, do you think the scientists could've just altered the animals' digestive systems so that they'd be more able to digest vegetation?
It's your story, so you can do what you like, but I personally would have fun with the carnivore thing. Having characters swarming around sirloins like like Ninja Turtles around pizza, acting like cranky assholes until they've had their first ham of the day, or having one character that generally tries to be right prim and civilized until they get hungry.
But if they have human-like intelligence and were raised by humans, wouldn't they act "human" for the most part? Also, I just think it would be just easier on the scientists to have them breed true omnivores like raccoons and opossums and "partial" omnivores like coyotes, foxes, and skunks. That way they don't have to change their diet as much as if they were complete carnivores like wildcats or complete herbivores like rabbits. That's just my reasoning.
I agree with Reece - there are enough human food options that these guys should be able to pick and choose exactly what they need. If you mean you want animals who have the exact same nutritional requirements as humans (like, need the same proportions of the same varieties of nutrients) I think things get trickier, but lots of humans live healthy lives without paying any attention to the food pyramid, so I'd assume your guys could too?
I'm not sure I get your question. But I think you already answered it yourself. Any omnivore because that is what man is, though some choose to be vegan. Raccoons eat anything. So do pigs. What???? What does that have to do with your question. You were smoking something when you posted this weren't you? Why not based on the premise? Like I said, I don't really get your question.
Humans are human, but there's enough variety of diet across cultures that travelers are often shocked by what is and is not on the menu. Imagine a Hindu who grew up isolated from global culture looking for a quick meal in America. Tony Bourdain ate grubs and porcupine in China, and I had grilled sheep's testicles in Istanbul. Didn't know what they were going in, and I probably would have turned my nose up at them had I known, but there's more than enough room for creatures to be shocked by food choices that seem "normal" to large populations of humans.
They didn't include species in the same genus because that way they wouldn't be able to reproduce with each other. They figured that if the red fox and gray fox could have babies together (infertile babies, but still), then their friends the raccoon, Virginia opossum, striped skunk, and coyote would feel bad that they couldn't have babies with each other. In order to level the playing field for the group, they decided that none of them should be able to have babies with each other instead of some being able to and others not. That way they're all in the same boat reproduction-wise, and none of them would feel left out.
Nonsense. That's not true for domestic dogs at all: "Wolves and dogs parted ways 15,000 years ago, and while the carnivore, omnivore debate rages on, dogs have evolved to essentially forage off human waste rather than kill their prey." -- https://www.vetbabble.com/dogs/food-and-diet-dogs/balanced-diet/ It's not true for coyotes either. Though not domesticated, they too have evolved to profit from mankind's presence. And it's not a meat/no-meat thing anyway, it's an issue of what amino acids they can and cannot synthesize. Cats, for example, cannot synthesize taurine and therefore must get sufficient taurine from their food. Dogs, on the other hand, can synthesize taurine and as far as I know all the other amino acids from other nutrients.
So you're saying that you'd rather believe a website that's trying to sell you something and provides no references to back up it's claims over someone that's spent years in college training for this very thing simply because it coincides with your preconceived ideas?
That was just the first website I found with the info. Originally, I got this from a professor at the college my wife got her degree in livestock management from. He was a PhD from Cornell who specialized in canine behavior. That's a far more authoritative source than your anonymous "vet tech." Plus, we have Encyclopedia Britannica and LiveScience, as quoted by the OP here. EB says dogs are omnivores, and that's different from "carnivores that also eat plants on occasion" (which almost all carnoivores do). By comparison, you have nothing but unsupported hearsay from someone with a DeVry two-year degree -- if even that. "Vet tech" -- exactly what education does that person have in animal nutrition? Probably far less than my wife.
The basic is a three year, with more if you're going into wildlife rehabilitation and management like she did. Maybe your wife could also tell you that 15,000 years is not a long amount of time on the evolutionary time scale. Native Americans diverged from their European/Asian counterparts around 45-15,000 years ago. By your math they'd technically be no longer human.
Go find an authoritative source for your nonsense "90% meat or their bodies break down" claim, or just go away. I don't expect you to ever admit you were wrong, based on past interactions. You don't know half the things you think you know. 15,000 years is actually a long time for evolution. Moth coloration patterns, for example, have been observed to radically change in mere decades in response to pollution-engendered changes to their habitat. 3,000 generations of dogs is a lot of generations. Go look at the Russian studies on breeding domesticated foxes; inherited behavioral traits were radically altered in less than a human lifetime.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I thought you wanted to know which of the animals you mentioned could have a same diet as humans. Which btw I don't know why you are asking as you can write the story however you want. What are you going to do, dude, write about their menus? If I remember my evolutionary biology correctly, genus has nothing to do with breeding, it's the species that counts. Only members of the same species can reproduce. So, we are Homo Sapiens (homo is the genus) but if Homo Australopithecus was still around we would not be able to mate with it because it is a different species (but same genus).
Exactly. In just a few millenia of domestication, the root dog stock has become everything from toy poodles to St. Bernards, with an incredible range of size, strength, and intelligence. Dogs have an incredible amount of plasticity in their genome.
Excellent point! Scientists who could increase a fox's intelligence to human level could certainly throw in whatever genes were needed so they could live off just cheese pizza and beer.
Good point. The OP needs to get a dog. My dog eats anything that the rest of the family is having, including chocolate which I have heard they aren't supposed to have. My dog has eaten plenty of dropped snickers bars and is doing just fine.
