In Pageslipped, my ongoing giant green glass pyramid megaproject fortress, I breached the cave river and found it full of cave crocodiles. A few giant toads, olmmen, snakemen, and other assorted critters, but mostly cave crocodiles. All them had the status of "Wild Animal" on the unit list.
When I breached the cave river, I captured a few of the crocodiles in cage traps, then later killed the rest with archers. When the dungeon master showed up I had him tame them, then chained them up at the entrance to the tombs and artifact storage vaults. At this point they showed up as "Stray Cave Crocodile (Tame)" with a status of Tame on the unit list. None of them had killed any dwarves, or anything else, before being tamed.
Sometime later, their status changed to "Friendly", and they started toppling statues. When the first siege happened, they all changed to have a status of "Hostile". They still showed up as "Stray Cave Crocodile (Tame)", but were now listed as Hostile. Oddly enough they showed no aggression to my dwarves or other tame animals, but would destroy furniture, and would attack and be attacked by traders. At this point I could no longer designate them for slaughter or set them to be caged or chained, but they would trigger traps as if they were hostile, and when they were killed by traps or caravan guards I could butcher them as if they were wild animals.
Sometime later they gave birth to lots of Cave Crocodile Hatchlings. Cave crocodiles breed like mad. These showed up as "Stray Cave Crocodile Hatchling (Tame)" with a status of Tame on the unit list, and in all respects acted as tame animals - they could be designated for slaughter or chaining and would not set off weapon traps. I don't know if they would get into fights with traders or destroy furniture as this point as I was getting pretty paranoid about keeping the crocodile breeding pits isolated. Most of these hatchlings I had slaughtered, with a few chained up as further breeding stock.
Those tame cave crocodile hatchlings that I chained up later grew into adults. At some point their status changed to Hostile. They still showed up as "Stray Cave Crocodile (Tame)" and like their parents would trigger traps or attack traders but not my dwarves. I don't know if this happened before or after they grew to adulthood, or was triggered by a siege. Sometime later some of that generation gave birth, and though nearly all their hatchlings were slaughtered (I've got a lot of cave crocodile meat, tallow, and leather in my stockpiles) some were chained up and went through the exact same eventual change to hostile status as their parents.
So, what's up with this? It's not simple a matter of children inheriting their parent's status as these are all born Tame, then at some point change to being (tame) yet Hostile. It might have to do with them being "Signature creatures" associated with a local feature, but if so that status must also be inherited as the children for several generations keep showing the same behavior. I've suspected that it might have something to do with the building destroyer or pet exotic tags after seeing a caravan kill a chained tame black bear I bought from the elves, but that might have been unrelated. Any ideas?
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Topic: Captive bred tame cave crocodiles turning sort-of-hostile after a while. (Read 1884 times)