Poll: do orcs eat humans?

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do orcs eat humans?

orcs never eat human meat
4
6%
orcs eat human meat only if there is no other food
16
22%
orcs occasionally eat human meat, but prefer animal meat
24
33%
orcs treat human and animal meat the same way
21
29%
orcs like human meat more than animal meat
7
10%
 
Total votes: 72

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lhybrideur
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by lhybrideur »

Vegetarian diet complete the lack of nutrients coming from meat with a carefully balanced diet to get those nutrients from other foods.
If you can't replace the meat with something containing the same nutrients you will be malnourished.
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Celtic_Minstrel
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Mathel wrote: December 5th, 2019, 9:03 am "We're talking about the species, not individuals."
Indeed, I saw that, but it didn't seem relevant in the least. I mean, the species is made up of individuals, so it's basically the same thing, right?
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

Tell that to the Sumatran Rhino. At some point there are not enough individuals to make the species viable.

Your using bad logic though. From research we learn high (species) intelligence implies the consumption of meat. That does not mean meat eating implies high intelligence.

The issue, though, is the particular source of meat. I take Orc as a species of Human and since all species of Human are known to consume all species of Human (on occasion), I take it as, at least, highly probably that Orc does as well.

The question, then, should be: is Human a significant portion of their diet? To that, I'd say "no". For the (species') caloric requirement, I'd suggest that Humans (of any species) are too hard to hunt, and do not take well the domestication as a food stock; other species are far more efficient a food source. That's not to say you won't find some individual Orcs raising a stock of Elf or Man as food, just that it would be quite rare.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Mathel »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote: December 5th, 2019, 1:56 pm
Mathel wrote: December 5th, 2019, 9:03 am "We're talking about the species, not individuals."
Indeed, I saw that, but it didn't seem relevant in the least. I mean, the species is made up of individuals, so it's basically the same thing, right?
It is not the same thing.
A species is only viable, if it's mortality is not greater than it's birth rate. A few individuals, who would not be viable (sterile, maimed, too stupid, etc...) do not matter.
It is be possible to support a big brain without meat (though vegetarians still eat milk products and eggs).
But the question should be:
Is it possible to evolve it without meat on a species scale?
I do not think so. There would likely be lower birth rate and higher mortality. Especialy if you consider that there was no nutritional science or global trade. Most of human history, not only would a vegetarian not know what to eat instead of meat, they would not have acces to it.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by AOW »

Pentarctagon wrote: December 5th, 2019, 3:49 am If you're going to argue about whether meat eating and intelligence are related though, I believe this is something that's been fairly heavily researched, so sources to cite should abound.
There's not much to do with them,But biological evolution does involve proteins and nucleic acids.

And I agree with Mathel.
Last edited by AOW on December 6th, 2019, 5:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Tad_Carlucci wrote: December 5th, 2019, 2:07 pm From research we learn high (species) intelligence implies the consumption of meat.
If you can't link specific sources I'm going to assume the sources you have in mind are either poorly-conceived, badly-done, or highly-speculative; because the premise itself is highly questionable. There's no good reason to believe that eating meat provides any particular nutritional advantage that would be required to either evolve or maintain intelligence.
Mathel wrote: December 5th, 2019, 7:17 pm It is be possible to support a big brain without meat (though vegetarians still eat milk products and eggs).
But the question should be:
Is it possible to evolve it without meat on a species scale?
I do not think so. There would likely be lower birth rate and higher mortality. Especialy if you consider that there was no nutritional science or global trade. Most of human history, not only would a vegetarian not know what to eat instead of meat, they would not have acces to it.
Two issues here.
  1. The assumption that "big brain = intelligence" is itself flawed.
  2. Goats.
…wait.
Mathel wrote: December 5th, 2019, 7:17 pm Most of human history, not only would a vegetarian not know what to eat instead of meat, they would not have acces to it.
Are you serious? Humans have always been omnivorous, and plant-based food is available everywhere. It's possible they might not have had access to plant-based foods that can fill the holes a lack of meat leaves in their diet, but it's not at all far-fetched to suppose they could have had access to it.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by AOW »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote: December 6th, 2019, 1:00 am
Mathel wrote: December 5th, 2019, 7:17 pm Most of human history, not only would a vegetarian not know what to eat instead of meat, they would not have acces to it.
Are you serious? Humans have always been omnivorous, and plant-based food is available everywhere. It's possible they might not have had access to plant=based foods that can fill the holes a lack of meat leaves in their diet, but it's not at all far-fetched to suppose they could have had access to it.
OK, it sounds like a stupid food war.

Why did early humans focus on the art of hunting and attacking with spears? think about it.
Random harvesting of wild fruit and farming of crops are two distinct social forms.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I think you're ascribing a bit more intent to early humans than they really deserve… it's not like gathering wild plant food is hard or anything. It's probably easier than hunting to be honest. It's not something that would be random, either. They would learn where and when they can find particular types of food. And at least plant food doesn't move around quite so much, or run away when you attack it.

Why did they focus on hunting with spears, you ask? Isn't that the wrong question? How do you know they focused on hunting? For that matter, did they really focus on hunting? I doubt they really focused on either activity, hunting or gathering. They were just trying to get food by whatever means they could, most likely.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

I'm a mathematician and programmer, not an evolotionary biologist, but I remember reading articles long ago along the lines of this one I found after 5 or 10 minutes with Google:

Brain evolution, the determinates of food choice, and the carnivore's dilema.

It's not precisely on point but points out that cooking made things pre-digested, and that meat is more nutrient dense; both increasing nutritional health. Also that the rise of industrial argiculture has actually reduced the nutritional health of much of the world population. This was from NIH so I'm not surprised they spend a lot more time in that last area.

Along the way to finding this I ran across a couple articles on primate brain size development. One posits that the development of societal behavior is the trigger. The other, more recent, rebuts that with good evidence that diet, in particular being a carnivore or omnivore, is more important in the evolution of brain size in primates. Yet another article pointed out that brain size and intelligence are not well corelated in carnivores. And another I skipped discussed how the evolution of increased brain size necessitated the evolution of larger bodies. All interesting but not what I was looking for.

I've not found the article I remember from long ago. It was probably not a scientific paper but someplace like Scientific American or National Geographic since it was, most likely, before the advent of the www. I'm confident that if I spend a few hours at it I could come up with more, possibly even better, articles but it doesn't seem worth the effort.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Mathel »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote: December 6th, 2019, 1:00 am Are you serious? Humans have always been omnivorous, and plant-based food is available everywhere. It's possible they might not have had access to plant=based foods that can fill the holes a lack of meat leaves in their diet, but it's not at all far-fetched to suppose they could have had access to it.
Yes, humans are and have been omnivorous. What I mean is, that certain nutrients are difficult to find in plants. I found vitamin B12 and DHA when searching right now.
Eating only meat would probably be bad for similar reasons.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I was aware of that deficiency, yes. But I think ancient humans likely would have had access to seaweeds (the primary non-meat source of those nutrients), though of course they probably got them mainly from meat nonetheless.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by AOW »

As always, I don't care about the intentions of early humans, it's not humanities logic.

Animals learned to live in groups before homo sapiens even existed, and cooperation among primates is surprisingly common. The development of the brain is gradual, just as the primitive man knew that wild fruit would only be seen in the autumn of the year, that storing too much food would also go bad, and that using tools (yep, especially sharp stone spears) would help him challenge even more fearsome animals to ensure steady population growth

Do orcs eat humans? I have already given my answer
The answer about humans eating meat and orcs eating meat? No, thanks.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by lhybrideur »

As requested, Tad_Carlucci posted a link to a study. Celtic_Minstrel, have you read it ?

I google scholared a few more. Haven't read them so can't say if they are directly related :
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epd ... 0.CO%3B2-7
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16990
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 8216000100
https://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&lr= ... mo&f=false
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

I fail to see how primates on the western and central plains of Africa would have access to seaweed in the quantities needed to avoid general malnutrition through the population. But, whatever. I'm sure that some individuals may well have gathered a bit of seaweed here, or there, and could even accept that it's possible managed to actually digest it without the large industries we presently use to extract the nutrients needed.
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Re: Poll: do orcs eat humans?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I wasn't suggesting they had access to large quantities, nor was I suggesting that they relied upon it for nutrition.

Re: the posted studies

All three of the studies I looked at (only the abstract though) clearly made out the relationship between meat and brain size / cognitive ability to be hypothetical. In fact I didn't get the impression Tad's article was even going that far. (I looked at Tad's, the Nature article, and the Science Direct article.) I'm pretty sure I can't access the full text of any of these articles from home, so you'll have to make do with my impression from the abstract.
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