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Author Topic: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound  (Read 13907 times)

Niyazov

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #15 on: April 22, 2012, 08:09:31 pm »

I have heard it said that blue whales can lactate hard enough to break human bones. They can't just dribble fluid out, since they and their offspring are floating in water, so it has to be fairly lumpy, and squirted out with force.
Ewww....

What about small mammal milks? Like hamster, guinea pig, and rat milk? There are giant versions of each, so why not?

Not enough body mass. A hamster weighs like what, 4 ounces? As previously established a cow weighs 3/4 of a ton. You would have to milk a hell of a lot of hamsters to equal the output of a cow.
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UHaulDwarf

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #16 on: April 23, 2012, 04:05:22 pm »

If there is going to be more milk, then there should be a separate category for milk.
I know its dwarfy to keep milk with blood, but as long as blood remands useless its only a chore to sort them apart.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #17 on: April 23, 2012, 07:23:56 pm »

Not enough body mass. A hamster weighs like what, 4 ounces? As previously established a cow weighs 3/4 of a ton. You would have to milk a hell of a lot of hamsters to equal the output of a cow.

Except not - a pig gives as much milk as a cow.  All creatures give the same amount of milk at the same rate.

In fact, pigs are the only non-grazers of the bunch, so pigs are by far the best milkable animal.
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Niyazov

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #18 on: April 24, 2012, 12:56:10 pm »

Not enough body mass. A hamster weighs like what, 4 ounces? As previously established a cow weighs 3/4 of a ton. You would have to milk a hell of a lot of hamsters to equal the output of a cow.

Except not - a pig gives as much milk as a cow.  All creatures give the same amount of milk at the same rate.

In fact, pigs are the only non-grazers of the bunch, so pigs are by far the best milkable animal.

I'm talking about in real life. Despite what the Simpsons and Heather Mills might tell you, rats and pigs will never be effective dairy animals for reasons that are not directly related to their size and which are most easily explained with a somewhat outdated biological theory called r/K selection.

in essence, an animal is considered "r-selected" if if produces relatively large numbers of small, high-mortality offspring compared to another animal, and "K-selected" if it produces relatively small numbers of resource-intensive offspring that are more likely to survive to adulthood. Compared to a cow, pigs and rats are r-selected- they have big litters of small babies and in most cases most of them will die (or get eaten by mom- it happens a lot in pigs!)

All dairy animals are K-selected compared to pigs and even in some cases to meat animals of the same species; for example, dairy goats have fewer offspring than meat goats and only have two teats on their udders, compared to the 4-6 on many meat goat breeds. Fewer teats means easier to milk, period. Dairy goats have 2 teats, dairy cows have 4, and both produce milk continuously over periods of several minutes. Pigs and rats have anywhere from 12 to 18 teats, which only produce milk in brief spurts, which means more frequent and labor-intensive milkings would be necessary.

In theory you could breed a milk pig with fewer teats, but it would be tough. The immediate wild ancestors of domestic goats and cattle were K-strategists and it wasn't a big leap to make them into milk animals; for pigs it would take longer and might end up impossible. Tapirs would actually be better choices once domesticated, since they are strong K-strategists (tapir- 1 baby every two years, which is less than cows.)

Kangaroos are K-strategists, with 1 baby every 1.5 years and even better they are naturally permanently pregnant and lactating. Unfortunately as a marsupial they have evolved to suckle continuously and thus would be unsuitable for session milking, so I doubt that a kangaroos dairy could work unless you invented a pouch-portable, continuous milker.

And yes, humans are K-strategists compared to most animals, but there are a few creatures that still have us beat- whales, elephants, albatross (who might have 1 baby every 10 years), tuatara, and a number of other long-lived species.

Most fish are r-strategists- think caviar- but some sharks present an interesting and bizarre exception. Live-birthing marine animals are usually K-selected compared to egg layers; few marine species produce large eggs. Some species of sharks create many embryos in their wombs but then only give birth to a couple of live young. What happened? The fetal sharks eat each other! Natural selection in utero! Who needs a placenta when you can eat your siblings? They might be though of as r-strategists in the womb and K-strategists to the world as a whole.

Almost all invertebrates are r-selected compared to vertebrates, and most plants are r-selected compared to animals, as they produce enormous numbers of low-energy seeds. Monocots like grasses and palm trees are the most K-selected of plants; a strongly K-selected plant is the Coco de Mer, each seed of which takes 7 years to grow and another 2 to germinate. Fungi and non-vascular plants are the consummate r-strategists, since they will produce millions or billions of spores of which only a few need to survive.
« Last Edit: April 24, 2012, 01:22:56 pm by Niyazov »
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slothen

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #19 on: April 24, 2012, 02:39:14 pm »

what the fuck dude.
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Belteshazzar

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #20 on: April 24, 2012, 10:19:17 pm »

>DELICIOUS BIOLOGIES

Yyyyeessss... yesssss!

Reproductive physiology is quite interesting, covering R/K strategists right now.
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Sus

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #21 on: April 25, 2012, 12:32:42 am »

Dwarf milk.
..Dwarf breastmilk roasts??

Why not?  There's nothing other than weird hangups preventing humans from doing this IRL.  Hell, even men can apparently express milk with a little persistence.

Oh, ICK.

Although that would make the "milker" profession more attractive, I guess... :P (at least for dwarves that are "into" girls, that is.)
(unless the female farmers would be self-milking)

Not enough body mass. A hamster weighs like what, 4 ounces? As previously established a cow weighs 3/4 of a ton. You would have to milk a hell of a lot of hamsters to equal the output of a cow.

Except not - a pig gives as much milk as a cow.  All creatures give the same amount of milk at the same rate.

In fact, pigs are the only non-grazers of the bunch, so pigs are by far the best milkable animal.

I'm talking about in real life.
Erm... We have milkable maggots1) in DF, so the correlation to RL is tenuous at best.

And while on topic of unlikely milkable animals: pigeons, anyone?


1) Not to mention walking, talking, sentient all-bronze giant murder machines.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2012, 12:41:34 am by Sus »
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Naryar

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #22 on: April 25, 2012, 02:33:59 am »

Sphalerite must see this thread and should be the first to milk whales !

Niyazov

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #23 on: April 25, 2012, 08:11:23 am »

Dwarf milk.
..Dwarf breastmilk roasts??

Why not?  There's nothing other than weird hangups preventing humans from doing this IRL.  Hell, even men can apparently express milk with a little persistence.

Oh, ICK.

Although that would make the "milker" profession more attractive, I guess... :P (at least for dwarves that are "into" girls, that is.)
(unless the female farmers would be self-milking)

Not enough body mass. A hamster weighs like what, 4 ounces? As previously established a cow weighs 3/4 of a ton. You would have to milk a hell of a lot of hamsters to equal the output of a cow.

Except not - a pig gives as much milk as a cow.  All creatures give the same amount of milk at the same rate.

In fact, pigs are the only non-grazers of the bunch, so pigs are by far the best milkable animal.

I'm talking about in real life.
Erm... We have milkable maggots1) in DF, so the correlation to RL is tenuous at best.

And while on topic of unlikely milkable animals: pigeons, anyone?


1) Not to mention walking, talking, sentient all-bronze giant murder machines.

Purring maggots have been in DF since the beginning and were actually the first milkable creatures. They have been, aha, bugged for the entire time, something like 5 or 6 years- tame purring maggots cannot be milked. They produce a product called "dwarven cheese" that is twice as valuable as regular cheese.

Also a milkable maggot isn't all that weird, we happily eat bee vomit.

Columbiid crop milk is interesting because it evolved independently of penguin crop milk but is physiologically and functionally very similar despite doves having very different survival strategies than penguins.

Whales do not have the tags needed to be milkable so they would have to be modded in unless Toady were to add them. I'm not sure how you would handle miking an aquatic creature since I don't think dwarves will use a submerged workshop and whales have IMMOBILE_LAND, but it's worth testing.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2012, 08:19:42 am by Niyazov »
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slothen

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #24 on: April 25, 2012, 08:54:05 am »

is there currently any way to produce dwarven cheese without raw tweaks?
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Niyazov

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #25 on: April 25, 2012, 11:50:35 am »

is there currently any way to produce dwarven cheese without raw tweaks?

I'm not sure if it's still possible to catch purring maggots in the caves- I haven't bothered with traps or vermin since .40d- but the proper reactions still exist. If you can catch them, you can milk non-tame purring maggots. The problem is that hungry dwarves will come along, pull them out of the traps, and eat them; once milked, the maggots get left behind in the workshop instead of returned properly to the stockpile.

Cave vermin in general are pretty bugged; you can't catch cave fish or lobsters anymore either.
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Sadrice

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #26 on: April 25, 2012, 12:41:47 pm »

what the fuck dude.
what the fuck, dude?  This is bay 12, nerdy derails are our specialty.

As I recall, whales and other very large aquatic animals take a surprisingly long time to airdrown.  If a dwarf taking an animal to the workshop is counted as hauling, rather than the animal following the dwarf, you might be able to drain the whale tank, milk them, and refill the tank before they airdrown.  It would be awkward, and the dwarf would probably move a tile per 30 seconds, but if you build the workshop close enough to the whale, and would require you to mod in whale milk, but it might be doable.  Or just build the farmers workshop in the 3x3 whale tank, assuming the 1/7 water doesn't have to evaporate before the workshop becomes useable.

If you give whale milk a melting point above room temperature, will everything still work, or is it like lye, where it must be in liquid state to be useable in reactions?
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JackOSpades

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #27 on: April 25, 2012, 08:45:24 pm »

two words....



Goblin Milk  ;D

simonthedwarf

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #28 on: April 26, 2012, 08:15:31 pm »

I would donate for whale milk
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Hectonkhyres

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Re: More milkable creatures- let gross suggestions abound
« Reply #29 on: April 26, 2012, 08:41:32 pm »

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And now the thread is about starfish porn.
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