AHC: Domesticated Alligators/Crocodiles

You obviously haven't tasted the glories of alligator sausage and jerky, but speaking from personal experience, their meat is quite tasty, kind of a gamier, more oily and savory chicken.

I must admit that I have only tried it in burger form. The taste wasn't bad, but it was tough and stringy. I imagine that it might made good jerky, since jerky is supposed to be tough. But I don't think it is suitable for general consumption.
 

iddt3

Donor
I must admit that I have only tried it in burger form. The taste wasn't bad, but it was tough and stringy. I imagine that it might made good jerky, since jerky is supposed to be tough. But I don't think it is suitable for general consumption.
That doesn't match up at all with my experience of it ground up into sausages. Was it ground alligator or just a whole slice of flesh?
 
dogs were used in WW1 because their heightened hearing could detect approaching artillery shells much sooner than humans, not to mention anti-tank dogs used by the soviets.

Wikipedia mentions dogs actually being used as skirmishers as early as the Roman times (yes, I googled "war dog" after you mentioned them), so I guess that's one case where true "beast warfare" at least kind of worked.

...but you raise a good point, and crocodiles can't really realistically be used in warfare

Yeah, I think dogs are a special case, because they were already domesticated for other purposes, and could be co-opted for use in war. I can't imagine something actually being domesticated specifically for war, and for nothing else.
 
Maybe the smallest species like caymans could be domesticated as guard / herd animals or to get rid of some theoretical nuisance / vermin species in a society with early advanced aquaculture, all crocodilia are predators, and that makes them competition for prime food sources for humans while making them inefficient as a source of food themselves. Nile crocodiles are huge, hungry amphibious ambush predators that are armor plated. Basically a creature that no primitively equipped human would ever even think of trying to tame outside of a dare.
 
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