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[Alfrodo]

Nervous tissue, Cartilage, scales, feathers and chitin.

Chitin is one of the many "waste products" of turning living things into meat.

Chitin should able to be made into: (These uses are quite fanciful, as actual bug chitin isn't easy to get massive chunks of like it is in DF.)

Armor (Falmer armor anyone?)
Would be about Wood/Bone Tier, but we wouldn't really know until someone runs a pile of ticks through a vickers hardness tester.

Thread
Chitin, according to wikipedia, is made into surgical thread.

Food
Chitin is a carbohydrate, so why can't you cook it into +Giant Thrips Chitin Roasts+? Indigestible, I am stupid

Crafts
Chitin could possibly qualify as a decorative craft material. Perhaps that should be the job of the bone carver?

in the craftsdwarf menu -> Chitin (C) -> make chitin crafts (c) decorate with chitin (d) make chitin armor (a) make chitin leggings (l) make chitin gauntlets (g) make chitin high boot (b) make chitin cap (h)

Dyes
Beetles have been used for a red carmine dye, why can't some colorful bugs be made into nice colors?
(Even if it's just tick reddish-brown dye or thrips greenish-brown dye)

This is just a continuation from the making stuff out of other substances thread, I didn't want it to get derailed.

[LMeire]

It would make sense for it to have some uses. According to Dr. Wik I. Pedia, it can also be ground up and used as a fertilizer by stimulating plant defenses to keep crops healthy, though I doubt it has enough calories to be viable as a food source directly.

As for the strength of chitin armor, an ant can withstand 50 times it's own weight before it's exoskeleton buckles and breaks. Assuming a magical, giant ant has similar properties I'd say it would at least be bronze-tier if not iron.

--

Edit because I just noticed there were other things mentioned besides chitin:

Feathers seem like they'll probably be used as ink-quills for writing on books/scrolls, that's the historical use anyway. Another use could be the manufacture of feather mattresses, though that practice was reserved for the rich in most cases; it was more practical to fill a mattress with straw and use the feathers for writing since they didn't last forever and scribes/monks went through a lot of them.

Cartilage doesn't appear to have any historical uses, though I imagine it could probably be boiled for soup or tallow.

As for nervous tissue, I'm frankly just surprised that every random butcher bothers to surgically separate it out at all. Most nerves are pretty small for them to separate from the rest of the tissues with medieval technology, and it's not like they have any issues with eating the eyes or brains.

[Alfrodo]

As for the strength of chitin armor, an ant can withstand 50 times it's own weight before it's exoskeleton buckles and breaks. Assuming a magical, giant ant has similar properties I'd say it would at least be bronze-tier if not iron.

Keep in mind Bronze > Iron in DF. But we still don't know the exact properties. I don't think the nearby university will let me use their material testers on wood ticks in the name of !!SCIENCE!!

though I doubt it has enough calories to be viable as a food source directly.

It's a carbohydrate, isn't it? That means it should be have about 4 calories per gram, maybe I'm wrong.
Although, do *Celery Biscuits* have a notable number of calories either? (Celery is 0.1 - 0.15 calories per gram)

[vjmdhzgr]

As for the strength of chitin armor, an ant can withstand 50 times it's own weight before it's exoskeleton buckles and breaks. Assuming a magical, giant ant has similar properties I'd say it would at least be bronze-tier if not iron.

Keep in mind Bronze > Iron in DF. But we still don't know the exact properties. I don't think the nearby university will let me use their material testers on wood ticks in the name of !!SCIENCE!!

though I doubt it has enough calories to be viable as a food source directly.

It's a carbohydrate, isn't it? That means it should be have about 4 calories per gram, maybe I'm wrong.
Although, do *Celery Biscuits* have a notable number of calories either? (Celery is 0.1 - 0.15 calories per gram)

Bronze isn't better than iron, they're generally equivalent. There are differences, but they're minor and there's upsides and downsides with both so it's far easier to just treat them as the same. Also, grass is technically a carbohydrate, as is bark, so just because something is a carbohydrate doesn't mean humans can digest it.

[neblime]

Food
Chitin is a carbohydrate, so why can't you cook it into +Giant Thrips Chitin Roasts+?

not a carbohydrate we can use for energy though, due to chemical structure. same reasons as cellulose in plants.
although who knows how dwarf digestive systems work if they can survive on dwarven wine roasts and kitten tallow biscuits

[Alfrodo]

Okay, We'll cut out food then. Since it's just indigestible, and like eating wood or balls of cotton.

(Editing)

I guess that leaves Chitin exclusively as a clothing material. Which is fitting enough I guess, With leather being in the same boat.

The only trouble now is getting the material properties of chitin.

[LMeire]

...
The only trouble now is getting the material properties of chitin.

I'd just take some measurements of various arthropods and scale everything up proportionally; since giant insects are the most plentiful source of chitin and none of them should realistically exist without magical interference anyway. Just assume that whatever magic is keeping the giant bugs from being crushed under their own weight also applies to anything made from their remains.

[AceSV]

Chitin is part of fungus and insect skin, but those things are not pure chitin.  Hard exoskeletons are combinations of chitin and minerals, similar to the way vertebrates use minerals like calcium to make bone.  Calling a lump of insect skin "chitin" is like calling a pile of wood "cellulose". 

I'm also not sure if scaled up insect exoskeleton would be particularly strong.  Ants are physically strong because gravity doesn't scale, humans would also seem super strong if they were ant sized.  Also, hollow tubes are mechanically stronger than full cylinders, so an exoskeleton would be stronger than a bone of similar volume, but that has nothing to do with material properties.  The best I can get are that chitin seems to be mechanically similar to keratin, the material that makes up hair, horn, claw and some of the skin in vertebrates. 

I know giant bugs are the main chitin providers now, but if chitin were more useful, we could lobby for more chitin providers like the Crabbus Harryhausenus:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzFLvR4TaOI  (Those guys are clearly playing dwarf fortress) or the terrifying and totally legit coconut crab / robber crab:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z54da6-fz94 

[NW_Kohaku]

As the coconut crab implies, you can have fairly large creatures with exoskeletons, larger than most modern insects. 

The main reason why we don't have "giant insects" in real life isn't the limitation on exoskeleton size, as most people suspect, but the fact that insects have no lungs.  They rely upon tiny holes in their exoskeletons to basically vent their internal organs directly into the atmosphere in order to "breathe".  Hence, an ant will start drowning if it falls into a single raindrop for even just a second or two.  Giant insects (as in the size of your arm, not the size of a rhino the way that DF has giant insects) used to exist, but became extinct as atmospheric oxygen levels dropped globally.  (Although there was an underwater insect predator that was like an 8-foot centipede...)

Also, remember the square-cube law.  To support its mass, an elephant's thick legs are almost entirely made of bone, and it's impossible to support more mass than an elephant terrestrially unless it were made of materials with a better structural support-to-weight ratio than bone.  A giant insect would have a very thick exoskeleton just to support its weight, which would likely make it slow, clumsy, and largely inflexible for the same reason crabs and turtles are rarely known for their grace.

[MDFification]

Okay, We'll cut out food then. Since it's just indigestible, and like eating wood or balls of cotton.

(Editing)

I guess that leaves Chitin exclusively as a clothing material. Which is fitting enough I guess, With leather being in the same boat.

The only trouble now is getting the material properties of chitin.

Chitin isn't indigestible. There's two enzymes in most mammalian stomachs that can break it down.
Chitin being one of the primary structural ingredients in mushrooms, odds are that you, personally, have already digested chitin.

[BoredVirulence]

As the coconut crab implies, you can have fairly large creatures with exoskeletons, larger than most modern insects. 

The main reason why we don't have "giant insects" in real life isn't the limitation on exoskeleton size, as most people suspect, but the fact that insects have no lungs...

Book lungs. Arachnids have book lungs, which are usually passive and operate similarly to insects. Some species do require muscular movement, which suggests they force air into the book lungs. This would scale up better than insects, and indeed there are some spiders a size insects could probably never achieve.

If we accept the premise that giant arachnids and insects exist, I think we need to accept the premise that their bodies are move evolved than our real world analogs. In this case, I propose large book lungs that can expand and contract.

As for the limit in size because of the square-cube law, either we modify gravity, we propose alternate physics that bypasses it, or we make the exoskeletons much stronger than they should be. And that sounds good enough for me, make the chitin more on par with iron or bronze, forget to do the math, and call it a solution (It probably wouldn't quite work, but it would also make them more dangerous, which I like, and consider an acceptable compromise).

[NW_Kohaku]

Book lungs. Arachnids have book lungs, which are usually passive and operate similarly to insects. Some species do require muscular movement, which suggests they force air into the book lungs. This would scale up better than insects, and indeed there are some spiders a size insects could probably never achieve.

If we accept the premise that giant arachnids and insects exist, I think we need to accept the premise that their bodies are move evolved than our real world analogs. In this case, I propose large book lungs that can expand and contract. As for the limit in size because of the square-cube law, either we modify gravity, we propose alternate physics that bypasses it, or we make the exoskeletons much stronger than they should be. And that sounds good enough for me, make the chitin more on par with iron or bronze, forget to do the math, and call it a solution (It probably wouldn't quite work, but it would also make them more dangerous, which I like, and consider an acceptable compromise).

The larger the creature, generally speaking, the more "evolved" they are.  Simple structures work well for insects, but you need more complex lungs dissolving oxygen into blood pumped by a heart if you have a large creature.  Warm blood is a liability in a small creature, since square-cube law means you have relatively large amounts of surface area that bleeds heat, but a large creature is more likely having trouble keeping cool than warm.  Insects are tiny, but mice are about as small as a mammal gets. 

If you want to look at a non-magical creature with an exoskeleton, you should probably be thinking more "giant tortise" than "really big ant".  Complex internal organs and maybe even bones which are integrated with exoskeleton. 

As for exoskeletons reinforced with high iron content, keep in mind that if we're talking about EATING any of this, having aluminum-reinforced exoskeletons on a bauxite-eating giant enemy crab makes it pretty friggin' inedible.  (Might be a useful source of ore, however...)

[AceSV]

Well keep in mind, the square-cube-law has resulted in creatures like the Ankylosaurs and the Glyptodonts:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/images/species/a/ankylosaurus-size.jpg

Although when comparing ankylosaurs, popular theory is that dinosaurs could grow to humongous sizes because they had the same super efficient lungs that birds do.  However, the point is that the square-cube-law itself should not rule out arthropod megafauna. 

Since we mentioned arachnids specifically, spiders do not have leg muscles, instead they extend their legs with hydraulic pressure.  The tiny jumping spider can move huge distances with this method, but large spiders like tarantulas move by swiveling their legs allegedly because hydraulic pressure is inefficient for that kind of locomotion.  But, prepare to be horrified, tarantulas can still jump pretty far and pretty fast:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an9aG7_f89s 

[BoredVirulence]

The larger the creature, generally speaking, the more "evolved" they are.  Simple structures work well for insects, but you need more complex lungs dissolving oxygen into blood pumped by a heart if you have a large creature.  Warm blood is a liability in a small creature, since square-cube law means you have relatively large amounts of surface area that bleeds heat, but a large creature is more likely having trouble keeping cool than warm.  Insects are tiny, but mice are about as small as a mammal gets. 

If you want to look at a non-magical creature with an exoskeleton, you should probably be thinking more "giant tortise" than "really big ant".  Complex internal organs and maybe even bones which are integrated with exoskeleton. 

As for exoskeletons reinforced with high iron content, keep in mind that if we're talking about EATING any of this, having aluminum-reinforced exoskeletons on a bauxite-eating giant enemy crab makes it pretty friggin' inedible.  (Might be a useful source of ore, however...)

I don't think the giant tourtise is really a good analog. Sure, its internal structure is, but the exoskeleton doesn't function anywhere near the same. Yes, giant insects and arachnids need to have more evolved internal organs. Thats what I proposed. Warm blood isn't necessary, there were a number of giant lizards that were passively heated by the sun. A central nervous system wouldn't even be necessary, though a more complex circulatory system would be. I already mentioned an active respitory system. These were points either made or implied.

I would argue against trying to make it edible. At least the exoskeleton. There is no reason (well, other than dietary) that the internal muscles and organs need to be any less edible than they are now. The exoskeleton needs to be beefed up, and a trade off of making it inedible just makes it more useful for other tasks (since it remains a waste product). How often do you eat the shell of a turtle?

[NW_Kohaku]

I think turtle shells are used as flavoring in turtle soup sometimes, but not actually eaten.

Warm blood isn't necessary, but there's a reason a lot of creatures that are large tend to have it: Spending large amounts of time having to sun yourself to keep your body temperature up, rather than hunting for food or socializing with others of your species is evolutionarily more of a liability than having to eat a relatively marginal greater amount of food to regulate heat internally.  And anyway, the point was more along the lines of full lungs and heart.

As for Anklosaurs, I'm not saying humans are the largest of terrestrial species by any stretch, but that there is so much cost in just supporting your body that it's not really worth it.  Large aquatic creatures like whales and the spinosaurus were and are much larger than the largest terrestrial animals since it's easier to support that mass in water. 

There's a cost associated with strengthening one's bones or exoskeleton with unusual mineral ratios.  It means that they need access to a different diet, or need to eat a greater amount of food to reach adulthood. (Which means a smaller proportion of their young do not starve on the path to adulthood...)  It also tends to have an impact on social structure, as insects tend to just fire off thousands of eggs and abandon them to their fates.  Larger creatures with larger babies, especially babies with complex organs that cannot be miniaturized so easily, or with warm blood that may die of hypothermia if born as a too-tiny infant, tend towards strategies of parents caring for the young until adulthood while having fewer and fewer children as they grow in complexity.  Humans are an extreme in terms of how long it takes to reach "adulthood", but not in terms of how much focus there is on raising a single child at a time - look at how penguins raise their children. 

Of course, all that matters only so long as we actually believe physics matters.  We're playing a game with magma crabs that eat rocks and have magma machine gun spittle.