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[ikachan]

I haven't been playing df for quite some time and I've just come back and I caught a giant cave spider with a trapped entrance to a cavern and I'm trying to farm silk but I noticed my spider doesn't seem to care about my dwarves.
My setup isn't really that good and I intend to add a bridge but right now I more focused on why my spider is so passive, I had it sit on the other side of a fortification from one of my miners for nearly 10 minutes and yet I got no web. Is there something I'm doing wrong? I've removed it from it's cage with a switch

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also with my trapped cavern entrance I've caught 7 elk birds, 3 trolls and 1 giant rat. Any ideas on what I should do with them?

[utunnels]

It is a bit tricky.
Maybe you can try stationing a squad near it.

[ikachan]

It is a bit tricky.
Maybe you can try stationing a squad near it.

Just tried that it worked immediately

[Skuggen]

Speaking of silk farming, these guys would probably appreciate input from the DF community:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/537301/spiders-ingest-nanotubes-then-weave-silk-reinforced-with-carbon/

Carbon nanotube silk mail shirts!

[Niddhoger]

I hear puppies on a rope work wonderfully as well.  Not sure why the spider wasn't firing at your miner, as the main condition is that the spider must be hostile to its target.  So a wild GCS will be hostile to your fort (and its animals), while a tamed GCS will need a goblin or some other wild animal.  GCS don't always attack your civilians though, so maybe you needed the military personal (or again, try a wild animal) for it to properly register as "hostile."

As for what to do about the others? I use my cavern meat as animal training-trainers.  Whenever I get too many/need some food (or bones/leather) I'll take the most trained ones to the butcher.  If you don't need the meat, you can try encouraging pet ownership.  Pasture the more tame ones in your dining room AND OVERLAY THAT PASTURE WITH AN ANIMAL TRAINING ZONE.  You also need your animal trainer(s) to have NO OTHER LABOURS.  The last thing you want is a rampaging elk bird in your dining room.  They are more than capable of killing your unarmed craftsdorfs.  That being said, if you lack military-grade metals and/or don't have a military yet... you can use them as a military force.  No, you can't have "war-elk birds," but you can "pasture" tamed elk birds in front of your fortress to greet the goblins.  I've used a menagerie of half-tamed cavern beasties to fend off early goblin attacks more than once.  Oh... about 3 elk birds, a giant toad, a pair of cave crocs, and a GCS made -very- short work out of a goblin squad without much losses. 

You cannot train the trolls at all, but they should be hostile to goblins.  They can be fodder if you place them in a cage outside your fortress, and release them as the goblins (or hippies) are passing by.  Re-capturing survivors will be its own issue.  Personally, I prefer to use the non-tameable (and thus butcherable) cavern beasties as live-training for your military.  Station your squad nearby and release the troll (usually via pitting from above) and let your dorfs get to work.  So long as you keep the squads low, they'll actually get some training in (10 dorfs make short work of a single troll), and the occasional lite injury can give your doctor something to do.  Everything is a resource in DF :p

[PatrikLundell]

I don't think puppies work, actually. For some reason, cats and some (most?) other tame animals are not attacked by untamed GCS. My favorite GCS target is an undead goblin, because they are attacked by GCS regardless of whether the GCS is trained or not, so a trained GCS that reverts (because the undead goblin scares the trainer away) will still keep firing at the goblin.
One use for captured non grazing animals is for trainer training. You can try to reach the maximum species training knowledge in as many species as possible (serves no actual point, but DF is what you make out of it). If doing that you should keep them caged, as caged animals decay training faster than pastured ones. Also, caged animals are no threat if they revert to wild status.
Trolls CAN be trained, but not in the taming sense. The can increase their military level, though, which might be marginally useful if you intend to release them to greet the undead hordes (if you're lucky, a necromancer is among the invaders and the trolls are now converted into undead super charged trolls ).

[Niddhoger]

I specifically mentioned using them as a source of experience for your animal trainer....

That being said, wild animals don't loose training faster in cages.  In fact, they are probably trained a little less inside a cage.  What is happening is that only WILD animals can be trained inside a cage.  So, if a trainer leaves an animal "trained" after this, he will ignore the animal when it reverts to semi-wild and only return to train the animal again when it falls to fully wild state.  Otherwise, training would happen when the animal hit "semi-wild," aka sooner.  Grazers left in cages will eventually starve to death as well (elk birds are grazers!), so if you try to leave them in a cage they'll just die.  However, WILD grazers will not need to eat.  The second you begin taming them, however, their hunger counters will increase.  This is mostly a problem if your animal trainers manages to increase their training level high enough that they'll starve before becoming wild again.

Leaving them in cages is mostly for safety and to use on -extremely- hard to train animals (rocs and dragons) or for a someone with no levels in animal training.  Even then, so long as your animal trainer has no other labours assigned, he'll never let an animal revert to fully wild.  If an animal hits semi-wild right as the trainer takes a break... well I usually have two trainers and have never seen this happen.  If you are still worried, keep them behind a locked door and construct some traps after they revert to wild status or just keep them on a chain.  Hilariously, even a dragon on a chain can't burn himself free unless he hits the wool rope on accident shooting at something else XD.