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[Ancalagon_TB]

Hello

So I have this new fort and a hunter migrant, and he's doing his thing and being pretty decent at it (which was good, food was a bit low for a moment).  I started paying more attention to the wildlife to see what he was hunting. 

First he got a moose.  I check the wiki for a moose, and it says they give 10-12 meat.  Pretty decent, and comparable to a cow (10-14), which made sense to me.   Next animal was a wild boar.  Wiki says 8-9 meat, sweet (I later captured some and started breeding them, they don't need a pasture!). 

So eventually he catches a wombat.  I figured "well it's a bit tubby, but it's smaller than a boar and a lot smaller than a moose.  Let's see how much meat this give me".  I load the wiki and it gives me... 12 meat, ie equal or more than a moose, and comparable to a cow.

12 meat?!?  For an animal with 25 000 size!!!  A moose is freaking half a million!   While my dwarves are enjoying the delicious, delicious wombat, the player can't help but wonder if perhaps wombats have a quantum meat stockpile inside of them or something...

[MDFification]

Each unit of meat has equal calories. Therefore, wombat meat is the most dense meat of all - rich, heavy, saturated in fat and incredibly tough to chew.

[HmH]

Not surprising. Wombats are mostly composed of thick skin on top of muscle on top of some more muscle.

Also, they're famous for shitting dice. Literally. Their excretions are cubic in shape.

[Thisfox]

They don't call wombats diff crackers for nothin', mate.

I live in Australia, and in wombat country. I am not kidding when I say that if your car hits a wombat (approximately the size of a largeish fox terrier) your car will never drive again. If a bus hits the wombat, the bus will never drive again either. I've seen a metre deep divot dug into the front of a jeep. It looked for all the world like it had been wrapped around a tree, then removed from the tree.
"What happened?"
"Hit a wombat."
"Struth! Where's the wombat?"
"It walked away, don't know where it went."

Their droppings are indeed cubes. I have seen them. The droppings are also black, and dense, like little cubical stones.

And if you put a fence post in a place they don't want the fence post, they will smash the fence post to matchsticks. By fence post, I mean a lump of hardwood six foot long, half a foot square, dug two or three foot into the ground. This they will splinter to matchsticks in a single night, I've seen it happen.

Never. Ever. Pick a fight. With a wombat. They are DENSE, and we joke that they are made of the dark matter of the universe. They are definitely made of unobtanium, and someone once called the beast "natural tank" and I don't disagree.

Thank god they only eat plants.

[Ancalagon_TB]

I've been looking around and it's not the only example of relatively small animals providing amounts of meat comparable to cows...  I also noted beavers, capybara (the normal sized one, not the rip your arm off and beat you with it one). I'm sure there are other ones.

If you think hitting a wombat is bad for your car, try hitting a moose...

[Thisfox]

Do moose crack the differential in your car? Are their skulls harder than steel? Also, moose don't wander off after a hit to the head. Wombats are known to knock down houses, one stump at a time...

Wombats aren't the armoured vehicle of the animal world, more there's nothing but armour, they're pure meatshield beasts. There's just more meat in a much smaller volume.

(edited: Grammar.)

[Aslandus]

Wow, I have wombats at my current fortress, but never checked the amount they give back... I'm glad I kept them for breed stock instead of immediately slaughtering them like I thought I should at first... Now my two wombats have turned into eight...

[Ancalagon_TB]

speaking of wild animals...

Well I had captured wild boars for breeding and such, but 2 of them reverted to wild status and it started a bit of a scuffle, lost a dog. 

... So I butchered the whole lot of them and expanded my pig holding area instead.  Stupid boars.

[Aslandus]

speaking of wild animals...

Well I had captured wild boars for breeding and such, but 2 of them reverted to wild status and it started a bit of a scuffle, lost a dog. 

... So I butchered the whole lot of them and expanded my pig holding area instead.  Stupid boars.

This is why I don't let the non-tame animals wander around freely, they stay in their cages unless I want to breed them, in which case they go onto restriants... then you just order the babies to be tamed and you have a stock of animals that will never betray you... and a supply of meat from slaughtering the parents...

[Ancalagon_TB]

I think, upon further thought, I know what happened.  There was no animal training zone overlapping the wild board holding area.  Perhaps this is what caused their training to be lost?

Ah well, I have pigs, and a pretty busy hunter so I'm good for meat.  I've also laid about half a dozen cage traps sprinkled around my fort.  Surprisingly effective at catching random animals.  My dwarves get to enjoy eagle and badger meat too!

[smeeprocket]

Does the animal need to be stabled in a training zone to get trained? I was under the impression that they would be taken there if they turned semi-wild and retrained.

I currently have a giant bat that has reverted halfway, it is a pet of someone and I'm not too keen on having to kill it.

[Larix]

Do moose crack the differential in your car?

They total your car and crush you to death. While moose typically die in a collision, there are usually several fatalities a year suffered by motorists who have a half ton or more of moose crashing through their windscreens.

The wombat sounds to be the robuster of the two animals, tending to the defensive strategy of the rhinoceros - being so thick-skinned and mean-spirited that few carnivores dare tackle them. Good to know that this also makes them somewhat car-resistant.

[scriver]

A better comparison would be wild boars. You don't ever crash into a boar, they always crash into you.

[Aslandus]

Does the animal need to be stabled in a training zone to get trained? I was under the impression that they would be taken there if they turned semi-wild and retrained.

I currently have a giant bat that has reverted halfway, it is a pet of someone and I'm not too keen on having to kill it.

I don't think they "need" a training zone to be kept from going wild, but they should at least be in a pasture or restrained to keep them where your animal trainers can reach them... and make sure that there is someone available to train them at any given point if they are in a pasture, otherwise if they lose tameness they'll become uncapturable...

I usually keep all trained animals available to any trainer, and at least two of the trainers don't have many other jobs to distract them, and if I have a flying creature, I would definitely keep it on a restraint in a roofed area to make sure it didn't fly off into the ionosphere when it gets close to reverting... though personally, I keep them in cages where they have no chance of escape until I have a breeding pair (except for grazers, for obvious reasons) so even if I don't get a breeding pair I at least get my dwarves to learn how to train the species more effectively...

[Tacomagic]

If you want a crazy meat industry, check out Giant Snails.  They are immediately adults upon birth and can have litters.

Getting a mated pair is phenomenally hard, in fact I've only successfully done it once, but once you get that pair, you're set with Snail roasts for the life of your fort..