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[soulsource]

Hi!

I'm wondering how to get dwarfs to adopt tame small animals. Should I move them to a cage in a often frequented area, or keep them within their traps in the main general stuff stockpile? Do they need to be dumped/released (what would probably attract the attention of a cat...)?

Thanks in advance!

[Akura]

Good question, since the wiki has no information on that for vermin pets. Or for that matter, non-vermin in regards to whether or not they can be caged or not. Some science might be required for this, since I can't remember the last time I tried to get pets adopted. I would think that having them in cages in popular idling spots would work, though.

[Skullsploder]

This is anecdotal, but my animal tamer adopted a fire snake once. It sat on his shoulder and set him on fire. I can't remember if I killed all the cats and dumped all the tame vermin in the dining hall before or after this happened though, and this was in 34

[soulsource]

It seems that keeping them in traps is good enough.
While my trapped fluffy wambler and green tree frog were stored in the stockpile for years and nobody cared about them, my just freshly tamed creepy crawler got adopted from there nearly immediately, directly out of the trap. Regarding the wambler and the frog, I also tried to put them in a cage in the dining room for some months, without any effect.

[Akura]

Check the adopting dwarf's preferences to see if they adore that particular vermin. That may or may not be a requirement for adoption.

[taptap]

They adopt tame vermin if it suits their preferences, they take it out of a cage/trap as well if memory serves - although any other dwarf might put it back into the cage if you don't unassign. With the often weird preferences, you have to be pretty lucky for it to work out, anyway. In the wiki it says, dwarves wear vermin pets like items, when I tried in 40.13 instead the pet walked behind (it was flying squirrels and a dwarf child) and rapidly died to a door. Since then I don't bother. If you get it to work in the long(er) run please tell more.

[wierd]

I am recalling an (ancient) post from a previous version, where somebody added [can_learn] and a few other tags to bugbats, so that they could be trained as war animals, and directly assigned.

The post was part of an experiment to see how effective the tiny things would be as combat animals-- turns out that they were vicious little things.

i'll see if I can find the post.  Regardless, you could probably add the appropriate tags to your vermin creatures, train them as hunting animals, then assign them directly.

EDIT

Found it!
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=97299.0

[Thisfox]

Another anecdote:

I set up a vermin cage (A rat mistakenly bought from the elves) in an unused room and assigned it to a dwarf child. The child then promptly threw a party in the "room" this cage created, and I had all my dwarfchildren in one basket almost immediately. Rat eventually escaped from the cage (the cage was, after all, an elf cage made of wood) but I always kept it in the back of my head as "childbait". The dwarf child had no special preferences for rats.

[Grim Portent]

I once modded cave spiders (the little kind) to be available at embark and brought about 20 with me to an aboveground fort so we could have a silk industry.

My eventual mayor adopted all of them from their cages (she liked spiders) and wandered around with them on her shoulders and head. Occasionally one would get separated and start spinning webs before she went and picked it up.



The only way to guarantee a vermin gets adopted is to have a dwarf who likes that vermin in your fort. They'll adopt them like mad.