1. caters

    caters Active Member

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    Killing a small amount of big cats for meat and tools

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by caters, Jun 13, 2015.

    I am writing the 3rd chapter of my Rubiks World novel and so far I have an idea of one of the major discoveries in science besides ABO blood types and that is big cats.

    The 5x5 cubes that found the big cats tell the other cubes about it and say that they should get some meat and bone from some of these cats.

    The 6x6 then says "But the cheetah runs so fast at 75 mph. How are we ever going to get a cheetah?"

    The 1x1 then decides to do a race for speed and endurance. The 9x9 has the best of both worlds.

    The 9x9 would get far behind a cheetah like if it was a cheetah predator and then once it got close, chase the cheetah to exhaustion and then catch it and bring it back to the rest of the cubes.


    However I see a problem with this method.

    Even if the physical chasing to exhaustion isn't a problem the cheetah is heavy at 100-115 lbs and in the period of time that it would take for the 9x9 to get back to the rest of the cubes the cheetah might feel like running again which would require a 2nd chase to exhaustion and so on until the cheetah is exhausted and the 9x9 is home. Even then the cheetah might run around at home requiring it to be chased once again to exhaustion.

    So even though the speed and endurance are both advantages here the fact that the cheetah would have to be chased to exhaustion lots of times is a disadvantage.

    However if they can carry heavier big cats like lions home with teamwork(and teamwork is always a good method) then there is no reason that they can't do anything similar with the cheetah except for the fact that it is very fast and would want to run out of their grip like how a gazelle wants to run out of a cheetah's grip.

    Another reason why they might want cheetahs is to domesticate the cheetahs over years and years to where the cat depends so much on its owner or for something that requires very fast speed.

    So what would be a better method for these cubes to catch and carry home cheetahs for any of these reasons?
     
  2. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    Traps, can they use traps?
     
  3. caters

    caters Active Member

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    Yeah I guess they can use venison(which is closely related to gazelle) to lure cheetahs into traps.
     
  4. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    1/ Why, if they can get venison, would they want to catch a big cat?

    The reason why predators kill and eat vegetarian animals is that the Veggies have a better ratio of meat/ease of killing than, say, hunting another predator.

    2/ Why do the cubes need to bring the cheetah back with them in a condition where it could run off again? As in, why don't they kill it (after all, they can already kill deer) when they catch it?
     
  5. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    If there's any sort of concern for realism, these traps are going to attract African wild dogs and also hyenas, probably lions too. These predators are more opportunistic than cheetahs, though all predators are opportunistic to some degree. Cheetahs are precision machines and small when compared to these other animals and will be skittish.

    Agreed with the above. Why would they want a cheetah for meat and bone? Bone, sure, but meat? Cheetahs would not be a good choice. Lots of other animals on the plains of Africa with much more meat per individual and fewer teeth. Also, deer are extremely rare in Africa. There are, though, an array of other ruminants from which one can choose.

    All of this still leave the question of why the cubes are doing any of this.
     
  6. caters

    caters Active Member

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    As to why they don't kill the cheetahs right away it is because they might want to domesticate some of the cheetahs or use them for something(of course the domestication of pretty much any wild animal is going to take hundreds to thousands of years and the first few generations would be completely wild animals).

    And even though there isn't a large meat:bone ratio in a cheetah(or lots of other equal size or smaller cats) the cheetah itself is about as large as a human on all 4s(or if you want it to be in terms of prey size about the size of a gazelle). That is unless you are considering the organs to be meat and in that case it is a more reasonable ratio. In particular the heart and liver of a cheetah are both large for the size of a cheetah. The large heart makes sense since the cheetah has large lungs to provide enough oxygen for its muscles during a sprint. But why such a large liver?
     

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