Arboreal

[Hrvatskiwi]

Hmmm. Well, it really depends on how strongly attached to trees your species is. Although I hate pessimistic people who say "It can't be done", I think that to form civilisations, your theoretical sapient is going to have to leaves trees sometime. Their dwellings can still be in the trees, and travel mainly conducted between trees, but they still need agriculture etc.

What I think would be really interesting would be an arboreal creature, which makes expeditions to the ground for agriculture/foraging, and which uses trees to ambush ground-dwelling prey. They can also use trees for defence (most animals can't climb very well) and you could possibly have them conflict with a ground-dwelling sapient species (not human).

I think that a tree-dwelling sapient species would be the dominant life-form in the canopy etc. This could lead to the extinction of several large-ish organisms in that ecosystem, like certain types of monkey, other apes (would be cool to have more species of apes too). This will make the tree-dwellers hunt ground animals more, which will stimulate these animals to become more dangerous/fearsome than before. This will mean bigger size, horns, herds, perhaps pre-emptive killings of infant tree-dwellers.

I actually would like to help with this TL, I have quite a few interesting ideas feel free to PM me.

 

[Zuvarq]

I misunderstood you: it didn't click in my mind that you were talking about a very long period of volcanism and actual tree evolution. I thought you were talking about developmental plasticity, in which a tree would grow larger as a result of changes in resource levels (in which case, the gigantism would not be genetic or heritable).

Again, I'm not sure I want to try to construct a new environment for this: it's a more interesting challenge if I try to make do with what OTL already gives me.

But, what sorts of ideas did you have in mind for the kinds of animals or plants the would encounter in a giant forest like you suggest>

The ones from OTL, just all evolved to live in gigantic trees. A large proportion of the large ones will be simian. There may be giant frogs, lizards, and snakes.

 

[DValdron]

Hmmm. Well, it really depends on how strongly attached to trees your species is. Although I hate pessimistic people who say "It can't be done", I think that to form civilisations, your theoretical sapient is going to have to leaves trees sometime. Their dwellings can still be in the trees, and travel mainly conducted between trees, but they still need agriculture etc.

What I think would be really interesting would be an arboreal creature, which makes expeditions to the ground for agriculture/foraging, and which uses trees to ambush ground-dwelling prey. They can also use trees for defence (most animals can't climb very well) and you could possibly have them conflict with a ground-dwelling sapient species (not human).

I think that a tree-dwelling sapient species would be the dominant life-form in the canopy etc. This could lead to the extinction of several large-ish organisms in that ecosystem, like certain types of monkey, other apes (would be cool to have more species of apes too). This will make the tree-dwellers hunt ground animals more, which will stimulate these animals to become more dangerous/fearsome than before. This will mean bigger size, horns, herds, perhaps pre-emptive killings of infant tree-dwellers.

I actually would like to help with this TL, I have quite a few interesting ideas feel free to PM me.

Not necessarily agriculture. You could do quite well with a silviculture economy I think, but you would require a long long time to discourage unproductive tree species and encourage productive fruit or sap trees.

You could also have a tree based pastoral economy of microlivestock, nectarvores, insectivores and sap eaters.

It would take a long time to grow the trees, but potentially, a three dimensional mature silviculture crop might actually produce a greater yield than a two dimensional agriculture crop.

But I do see ground travel and exploration a necessity for foraging raw materials. Things like placer deposits of ore, flints, clays, large bones, sinew.... most of that would only be available on the ground.

 

[Hrvatskiwi]

I agree about the silviculture, and the tree-based pastoralism. But time is somewhat limited in this TL, since if we're keeping current species, we won't have too long. And its funner to write if events get kickstarted early. I definitely wouldn't advise having them reliant on agriculture, like OTL early human societies, as that would force them to live on the groud, although grain stores could be kept in the trees to keep rodents out. I think we'd want a diversified as possible diet for this society.

 

[Sven]

Their dwellings can still be in the trees, and travel mainly conducted between trees, but they still need agriculture etc.

What I think would be really interesting would be an arboreal creature, which makes expeditions to the ground for agriculture/foraging, and which uses trees to ambush ground-dwelling prey. They can also use trees for defence (most animals can't climb very well) and you could possibly have them conflict with a ground-dwelling sapient species (not human).

I like this idea. Make them koalas and you'd have sapient dropbears. Ultimately, my ideas have gone in a different direction, but arboreal ambush hunting did briefly cross my mind once a couple weeks ago.

I actually would like to help with this TL, I have quite a few interesting ideas feel free to PM me.

I don't actually have a timeline planned right now: this thread was meant more for general discussion about the world-building aspects of the arboreal civilization concept. Maybe I'll write a timeline in the future, but, for now, my arboreal sapients (there will be three) will just be a sort of case study or thought exercise.

You're welcome to keep developing other concepts alongside mine, so don't stop here: let's see how the future dropbear society comes out. You might consider joining forces with Zuvarq on this: maybe a future volcanic period gives rise to super-forests, where omnivorous, high-canopy "dropbears" learn to use sharpened sticks to ambush low-canopy folivores and ground-dwelling browsers.

 

[Laplace's Demon]

Squirrels are fast buggers that like hiding in naturally defensive areas like holes in trees. They seem to do comparable, in terms of survivability, on the ground to small rabbits. So, all in all, couldn't sapient tool-wielding arboreal expand from the trees to the ground in the forests, using the natural depressions and other defensible structures, and improving on them themselves? A small people might be able to artificially develop burrowing more easily than large-scale construction. Dig out burial chambers and fire-caves with their own crude chimneys/roof-holes-for-smoke. Then, over time they could take what they've learned and apply it to the brush and undergrowth outside of the forests, or their construction skills to the hills.

Basically, size and their relation with the trees might lead them to dig more than chop down trees and construct buildings that way. Great carpentry sure, but on a smaller scale than large-scale logging and construction. And in general being the descendants of some fast, paranoid critters could lead to a sapient predilection for spotting and building up defensive structures in nature.

 

[Sven]

I agree about the silviculture, and the tree-based pastoralism. But time is somewhat limited in this TL, since if we're keeping current species, we won't have too long. And its funner to write if events get kickstarted early. I definitely wouldn't advise having them reliant on agriculture, like OTL early human societies, as that would force them to live on the groud, although grain stores could be kept in the trees to keep rodents out. I think we'd want a diversified as possible diet for this society.

I'm actually planning to develop arboreal agriculture. I'm skeptical of trees as a staple crop, because they take too long to grow. Annual plants would work better. So, I'm looking at fruiting vines and epiphytes. Of course, in order to grow these, you have to grow trees, so it doesn't alleviate the problem of trees growing too slowly. But, I think it gives a plausible start to agriculture.

For silviculture, I'm looking to bamboo. They can build trellises and scaffolding out of it, which can replace trees as a structural habitat and support fairly extensive vine-based agriculture. Bamboo also grows very fast, so they should be able to sustain high production rates. But, even so, they'll still be in the unenviable position of essentially having to build the ground they walk on.

 

[chr92]

Always one to point out the obvious, can your sapients eat insects? Honey?

 

[Sven]

Always one to point out the obvious, can your sapients eat insects? Honey?

Yes: insects are certainly going to be an abundant and useful resource. And, because an arboreal lifestyle has high energetic demands, carbohydrate-rich foods like honey would be extremely important, so I can't imagine them not eating it.

 

[Sven]

In addition to the previously mentioned ideas, DValdron has now suggested raccoons and parrots. Raccoons are an excellent idea (I haven't developed anything with them, though). I would imagine them developing a mixed arboreal/terrestrial society.

I tried to develop a parrot civilization, and tried even harder to develop a crow civilization. They're both reasonable candidates, but it's difficult trying to figure out how sapient birds might behave: they're very different from humans, so it isn't obvious how our knowledge of human society would translate into bird society. Critical considerations are the development or tools, and the implications of flight for societal structure.

I decided that I wasn't prepared for an avian society, but that developing an arboreal society using an animal that's more similar to a human might provide a good segue toward avian society.

Here is my pre-made post introducing the animals I selected to develop further:

Arboreal sapients

In developing this project, I considered several different species to have evolve into my arboreal sapients. Ultimately, I selected primates, because their relatively close evolutionary relatedness to humans would allow me to use humans as a baseline comparison for anatomical, technological and psychological considerations. However, primates are surprisingly diverse, and I was unable to make a final decision among several candidates. So, I ultimately decided to keep three species, and have them all develop sapience at essentially the same time (the odds against which, I know, are astronomically large; but this is only a thought exercise, after all). The three species were selected based on a number of criteria. I wanted to select from the most plausible candidate species because I'm heavily devoted to realism; but I also wanted to sample from different evolutionary lineages of primates, and from different continents on the planet to explore a range of possibilities and develop the project in different directions.

So, the three species I selected ended up displaying quite divergent anatomical and behavioral characteristics, and lived in three geographically distinct locations. One anatomical characteristic that I consider particularly interesting is called the intermembral index. This index expresses the length of the forelimb as a percentage of the length of the hind limb. So, for example, an intermembral index of 112 indicates that the forelimb is 112% the length of the hind limb. The intermembral index is correlated with the behavior of the animals. Primates with high intermembral indices (greater than 100) tend to be active, acrobatic, semi-bipedal creatures that swing, brachiate and hang beneath branches (however, slow-moving primates that behave and climb like sloths also have high intermembral indices). Primates with low intermembral indices (less than 100) tend to be quadrupeds that do not swing or brachiate, but generally just climb vertically and crawl on all fours across the tops of branches; they also tend to be somewhat more adaptable to life and locomotion on the ground.

So, with that, I present the three species that I will have evolve to sapience for my Arboreal project:

Ring-tailed lemur

Lemurs are certainly not the most plausible candidates for sapience, at least as far as primates go. They are not nearly the intellectual overachievers that apes and monkeys are. Nevertheless, the distinctiveness of the lemurs from the apes and monkeys makes them interesting for my thought experiment, so I'm going to special-plead them into this discussion.

The ring-tailed lemur, while on the large side for a lemur, is the smallest of the three arboreal sapients I'm proposing. Their body mass is on the same scale as a house cat (about 4-5 kg, or 8-11 lbs). However, as with all three species, I'm going to increase the mass in the sapient species by about 25-50%, and slightly increase the encephalization quotient[FONT=&quot][1][/FONT] (brain mass-to-body mass ratio) just to make a little extra room for processing power.

Lemurs are prosimians, or "primitive" members of the primate clade. Their hands are not as dexterous as the hands of monkeys or apes, and the long, bushy tail is not prehensile. They also have a more developed olfactory system and an elongated, fox-like snout (which is also used as a supplementary touch/manipulatory organ). The intermembral index of the ring-tailed lemur (including my sapient version) is around 70, which is very low. This means that its forelimb is 70% of the length of its hind limb. Its long hind limbs make it an exceptionally powerful jumper, but it is not capable of the arboreal acrobatics of brachiating apes and monkeys.

The ring-tailed lemur is also semi-terrestrial, spending a quarter to a third of its time on land. It lives in relatively arid regions, where forests can often only grow along rivers (so-called "gallery forests"). They may also live in scrublands, where only bushes and shrubs grow. The lemur is also the most carnivorous of the three species, though it is still overwhelmingly frugivorous. Most of the meat in its diet comes from insects, though small vertebrates and bird eggs are also eaten with some regularity.

Finally, like all lemurs, the ring-tailed lemur lives only on the island of Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa. Specifically, it lives in the southern portions of the island, but I will have it quickly expand its range, and even reach mainland Africa relatively early in its history.

Spider monkey

I have not narrowed down this primate to a specific species yet: I continually vacillate between Geoffroy's spider monkey, the black-headed spider monkey and the red-faced spider monkey. However, I think the discussion will work equally well with any of these species, so I will simply proceed with it. If anybody wishes to voice (and defend) a preference among these species, please do so.

Spider monkeys are exceptional candidates for sapience. They are widely regarded as highly intelligent, and are thought to rival gorillas for the title of "fourth most intelligent primate" (behind humans, chimpanzees and bonobos). For this reason, I don't believe I have to defend my decision to include spider monkeys.

Anatomically, the spider monkey is the largest of the three species I've chosen. Its body mass is approximately double that of the OTL ring-tailed lemur (and the body mass of my sapient spider monkey is approximately double that of my sapient ring-tailed lemur). Spider monkeys also have a number of unique anatomical characteristics: they have a long, very prehensile tail that can hold the weight of the monkey and aid in swinging and climbing; they also lack a thumb on their forelimbs (it is either fused to the hand or absent entirely, depending on species), so I think I'll have to make their hind limbs into their primary fine-motor manipulatory appendages. Spider monkeys have extremely long limbs, with an intermembral index of around 105. This means that the forelimb is slightly longer than the hind limb, and the spider monkey is much more suited for all kinds of acrobatics and antics in the trees than the lemur: brachiation, swinging, hanging, climbing, reaching, etc. They are also respectable jumpers, though not so much as the lemurs. Brachiation, in particular, is aided by the lack of a thumb on the forelimbs, which allows the hand to act like a simple hook.

Spider monkeys belong to "New World monkeys," which are true monkeys. They live in the dense rainforests of Central and South America, from Nicaragua through the Amazon. They are obligate tree-dwellers, being almost entirely unsuited for life on the land. I suspect that they will be able to expand throughout the Mesoamerican and Amazonian rainforests with little trouble, and possibly also spread across the Caribbean and into southern Florida. Expansion beyond that, though, might take some major societal developments. As the only New World species of the three, it will obviously be isolated from the others for some time.

The diet of the spider monkey is mostly (often exclusively) frugivorous. As with the lemur, I am planning to increase the carnivory of this species to some extent, but I think it will remain the most frugivorous of the three sapients. Also, I think the spider monkey is the biggest challenge of the three, for a number of reasons that I'll get into later.

Lar gibbon

The third and final arboreal sapient will be the lar gibbon, or white-handed gibbon. This animal is an ape (not a monkey), and is more closely related to the Old World monkeys than to the New World monkeys. It lives in the tropical rainforests of the Malay Peninsula and the westernmost islands of Indonesia. These rainforests differ from the New World rainforests in being less dense, with fewer lianas (woody vines). These conditions are thought to favor gliding animals (which are quite numerous here), while the denser conditions in South America are thought to favor animals with prehensile tails (which are quite numerous there). Southeast Asia also has many more species of large herbivores than South and Central America (though the end-Pleistocene extinction may play out differently here, and minimize this difference).

Since it will essentially grow up in Southeast Asia, I suspect that the gibbon will be readily adaptable to an island lifestyle, and will be readily able to disperse across Austronesia fairly early in its history. I'm not sure at what point it will encounter the lemur, nor what will happen when it does, but I will proceed with this thought exercise as if the two remain completely isolated long enough to develop completely independent cultures and tech trees. The interspecies interaction may be an interesting topic for later.

While considered somewhat less intelligent than the spider monkey[FONT=&quot][2][/FONT], gibbons are nevertheless highly intelligent creatures, and are still reasonable candidates for sapience. They are also incredibly fun to consider, because of their exciting and charismatic behavior.

The gibbon is intermediate in size between the lemur and spider monkey. Like all apes, it completely lacks a tail, and has quite long forelimbs. The intermembral index is 129, making it a superb brachiator with its long forelimbs (in truth, its forelimbs are proportionally no longer than the spider monkey's: it simply has short hind limbs). It also has several key adaptations to the arm joints that allow it to effectively absorb or reduce stress while swinging and jumping about in the trees, so it can avoid injuries due to dislocated shoulders and such. With these characteristics, the gibbon is easily the most acrobatic and most skilled arboreal climber and brachiator of the three species, using just its two forelimbs to swing, hand-over-hand, through the canopy. However, these arboreal adaptations will somewhat compromise the fine-motor skills of the hands, which may have some minor implications for tool use and technological development.

The gibbon is also an obligate tree-dweller, though it is slightly less so than the spider monkey. Its diet is almost entirely frugivorous, but the sapient form will be quite omnivorous. It's very active lifestyle will also put large energetic demands on its diet.


[FONT=&quot][1][/FONT] I'm a bit skeptical of the importance of the encephalization quotient, so this is really just lip service.

[FONT=&quot][2][/FONT] Note that I do not intend to carry over this sort of intellectual hierarchy onto my sapient forms: all three intelligent species will be essentially identical in capacity for intelligence.

 

[Sven]

Squirrels are fast buggers that like hiding in naturally defensive areas like holes in trees. They seem to do comparable, in terms of survivability, on the ground to small rabbits. So, all in all, couldn't sapient tool-wielding arboreal expand from the trees to the ground in the forests, using the natural depressions and other defensible structures, and improving on them themselves? A small people might be able to artificially develop burrowing more easily than large-scale construction. Dig out burial chambers and fire-caves with their own crude chimneys/roof-holes-for-smoke. Then, over time they could take what they've learned and apply it to the brush and undergrowth outside of the forests, or their construction skills to the hills.

Basically, size and their relation with the trees might lead them to dig more than chop down trees and construct buildings that way. Great carpentry sure, but on a smaller scale than large-scale logging and construction. And in general being the descendants of some fast, paranoid critters could lead to a sapient predilection for spotting and building up defensive structures in nature.

I hadn't considered burrowing at all: thanks for the new idea! Burrowing would certainly empower them to some degree on land: they could develop terrestrial agriculture (with better growing possibilities than silviculture), and maintain burrows around their fields as temporary escape routes. And it would lead naturally to a metalworking industry in the future, with "fire-caves" and excavation tools: this might give them a route out of the "Stick Age."

Still, I think the inevitable stick-based tool tradition will lead naturally to a timber-based construction tradition, especially since "timber" for these guys basically means "sticks." But, I think burrowing might be a good addition to an arboreal society that makes extensive use of the forest floor (like my lemurs or Hrvatskiwi's "dropbears"). Burrows might even work as stables for terrestrial domesticates.

And, I also didn't consider sapient squirrels: I toyed with the idea of domesticated squirrels, but not sapient squirrels.

 

[DValdron]

In terms of silviculture, assuming you're going for fruit trees, then you can count on the fruit tree producing an annual crop every year of its life. So once grown past a certain point, there's a lot of productivity.

But a species which has developed a silviculture based economy probably has a lot more flexible concepts and operates on different time scales.

In some ways, large scale human endeavours - canal building or construction of large buildings, may take place on the same time scales as tree cultivation. So its not out of the question.

But a culture whose food staple is tree fruits will have a lot less 'flexibility', expanding only at the rate food trees are planted and come on line. Would this lead to more warfare or competition, since there's less flex?

 

[DValdron]

One word - Bonsai.

Hmmm. Is that two words? No, its one. Its a foreign word though.

You take my meaning?

 

[Sven]

In terms of silviculture, assuming you're going for fruit trees, then you can count on the fruit tree producing an annual crop every year of its life. So once grown past a certain point, there's a lot of productivity.

But a species which has developed a silviculture based economy probably has a lot more flexible concepts and operates on different time scales.

In some ways, large scale human endeavours - canal building or construction of large buildings, may take place on the same time scales as tree cultivation. So its not out of the question.

But a culture whose food staple is tree fruits will have a lot less 'flexibility', expanding only at the rate food trees are planted and come on line. Would this lead to more warfare or competition, since there's less flex?

You're thinking along the same lines as I was when I came to my conclusion. The biggest problems with silviculture/arboriculture will be in starting up new settlements or expanding into new territory. Homesteading and frontiersmanship will be a major challenge, because the pioneers would either have to clear a section of jungle or irrigate a section of grassland, then dedicate two or three years of work to an orchard before you can start to use it for food. That's a lot of work for a frontier family of tiny primates, and a long time to be without a staple crop.

Of course, they could always survive on annual crops or bushmeat until the trees come into production, but that would be extra work on top of irrigating and maintaining an orchard, so they may need more than just a single family to work the farm. I would expect a slower expansion than humans, driven not by nomadic wandering, but by population pressures and collaborative ventures. That would make it likely that planned communities would be more the norm for arboreal sapients. Perhaps, socio-politically, they would lean toward collectivistic/communistic systems?

But, having just read a little more into fruit production, I think I may have jumped to a conclusion too quickly. Fruit production isn't as inefficient as I imagined: you can actually produce huge amounts of fruit in a very small area, despite the large amount of resources the tree has to divert into producing inedible biomass (wood). Actually, human staple crops are extremely inefficient (for example, apples produce 3-4 times as much food mass per acre as wheat does), so efficiency isn't necessarily going to be the limiting factor, as I was assuming. Breadfruit and bananas are used as staple crops by some human societies, so there's even precedent for tree-dominated agriculture in OTL.

My remaining concern is that wild foraging monkeys tend to wander from tree to tree, and usually consume all the fruit in a single patch of forest at a single visit (usually just a day or two) before moving on. This doesn't seem like a situation that's very likely to develop into a sedentary, agrarian system. I'm not sure how to get over this hump: perhaps visual mapping and an early emergence of trade would be the way to go. This might help them learn about how plants grow and expand, and provide them the means to learn how to cultivate plants.

Thoughts, anyone?

 

[Sven]

One word - Bonsai.

Hmmm. Is that two words? No, its one. Its a foreign word though.

You take my meaning?

That was actually my first thought, before I hit upon the bamboo jungle-gym idea. Bonsai architecture would certainly be a useful idea, and one that could naturally develop in the early "Stick Age," when the arboreal sapients first learn about how trees grow. And it will certainly add a very unique twist to the field of architecture.

My ongoing concern is the idea that the trees are the equivalent of the "ground beneath their feet" for these arboreal sapients. For them, the "ground beneath their feet" is a living thing, and they either have to wait for it to grow before they can settle in an area, or they have to find a way to build a substitute. For us as modern humans, that's not such a big deal: we generally have to pave and sod areas before we can move in, so it's not that different. But, it's going to be like this for arboreal sapients, not just in modern times, but from their prehistory: effectively, they're going to have to find a way to invent the societal equivalent of roads and pavement during their equivalent of the Neolithic Era.

In my mind, the bamboo jungle-gym can be put in place a lot faster than an equivalent network of bonsai trees (though with a larger workforce required), so I think the bamboo jungle-gym is going to win out in the end. Of course, bamboo is itself amenable to bonsai growing techniques, and they could certainly make custom-shaped bamboo logs via bonsai techniques. And, there will probably always be a niche for non-bamboo bonsai architecture: it may be a prestige thing, a form of art, or even a way to slowly grow a structure or community with a minimal work force. Of course, unlike Madagascar and Southeast Asia, the New World isn't really known for its bamboo, so bonsai architecture may have a more central role to play in my spider monkey society.

 

[chr92]

My remaining concern is that wild foraging monkeys tend to wander from tree to tree, and usually consume all the fruit in a single patch of forest at a single visit (usually just a day or two) before moving on. This doesn't seem like a situation that's very likely to develop into a sedentary, agrarian system.
Thoughts, anyone?

That does sound like human slash-and-burn, which can support some level of culture, and seems to have developed into a sedentary system more than once.

Later edit: and even more like our hunter-gatherers, who often also exhausted their nearby resources, and had to move a regular route.

 

[Sven]

Here's a bit I wrote up on plant domestication a week ago: some of it has already been rendered obsolete by this discussion, and some of it is redundant to things that have been posted, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

Plant domestication in arboreal societies

Agriculture is absolutely critical for the development of an advanced society. The ability to control one's own food supply is what ultimately unlocks most other social and technological developments. Domesticated plants are arguably more foundational than domesticated animals, since they allow more economical food production and promote sedentary lifestyles, which increase the social interactions that catalyze the development and transmission of technology and culture.

Some of the most important crops in human history have been cereal grains, which are grasses with edible seeds. These have been the staple of most societies' diets throughout human history. Wheat, corn and rice are particularly important. Aside from cereal grains, tubers, legumes and chenopods have also been important staple crops in some societies. In general, all of these staple crops in human societies are annuals. This is important in maintaining production to feed the society, and also aids in the rapid settlement of new areas. Vegetables and fruits are generally supplementary foods, used to complement the staple crops by providing vitamins and nutrients that the staple crop doesn't provide.

However, forest plants tend to be relatively slow-growing perennials. In particular, fruit trees usually take several years before reaching full productivity, and the lags involved in their growth may make them extremely difficult to exploit for use as staple foods. Since our arboreal sapients are going to be ancestrally frugivorous, this is problematic. The long time periods involved in orchard growing are likely to hamper the development of new settlements, and may even preempt the initial emergence of agriculture. Invariably, the first agricultural crops would have to be faster-developing plants. Vine fruits, such as cucurbits and legumes, may be very good options here, because they can be grown quickly on an already-existing tree, and are tolerant of the shady conditions of forests. Many are annuals, which would allow rapid, large-scale production comparable to that of cereal grains. Perhaps agriculture would originate from early arboreal sapients finding ways to promote the growth of vines on the trees the visit on a cyclical basis. Epiphytes, such as bromeliads and orchids, which can be grown as annuals on existing trees, could likewise be easily accessible early on.

Interestingly, vines and epiphytes will be grown in entirely different ways from human staple crops. Neither can really be grown in large farms, because the space necessary for this isn't going to be available in a forest. So, crops will be grown in small patches, wherever a convenient nook can be found (tree trunks, the crotch of tree limbs, etc.). This might severely hamper mass agricultural production, but small-scale gardening will be possible. Also, because different crops may complement each other in space use, forest agriculture could easily take on a multi-cropping character, with small gardens of many different types of crop (similar to the famous Three Sisters technique of the Native Americans) to maximize space use and production. This is commonly a more efficient way to grow crops in the tropics anyway.

I doubt that their agriculture would be entirely fruit-based, though. Invariably, there will be some leaf crops and flower crops, as well. Leaves can probably be grown more efficiently than fruits (most plants produce a lot more leaves, and continue producing leaves for longer periods of time, than fruits). However, an arboreal lifestyle is a highly energetic lifestyle, and these arboreal sapients will require a very large caloric intake. Leaves are a very poor source of calories, so fruits will thus be indispensible, and will probably be the staple crops in arboreal societies. Leaves would be used for supplementary nutrition: vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc. I'm not sure what nutritional value flowers have, but primates are apparently known to eat them with some regularity, so flower crops probably aren't out of the question. Their energetic lifestyle may also make nectar crops economical.

Another particularly important consideration for plant domestication by arboreal sapients is the fact that they live on giant plants: so, their very habitat might very well be a domestic "crop." Even with vine crops or other forest fruits, our arboreal sapients will be dependent on trees, which, due to their slow growth rates, will put major restrictions on the ability of the sapients to settle and develop new areas. Additionally, they will need trees not only for their food resources, but also as a basic habitat to live on and build on. Trees will have to grow for a particularly long time before they are very useful for this purpose. In order to ameliorate this restriction, it would be helpful if the arboreal sapients could build some sort of trellis or scaffolding to fill their structural needs so that they don't have to wait decades for a large tree to grow. This would allow them to immediately establish settlements outside of the forest, and to live on vine fruits while they wait for their orchards to grow. It would also allow them to grow vines and epiphytes in larger plots.

Bamboo would be an absolutely perfect material for this purpose: it grows extremely fast, and produces high-quality, lightweight timber. Giant bamboos can produce copious amounts of solid, high-quality timber in 100-ft culms within five or six years. While that is already incredibly fast, such massive culms may not be necessary: the narrow poles produced by smaller, faster-growing bamboos, such as the canes, may be sufficiently sturdy to support these lightweight sapients and most of their vine crops. These smaller bamboos can produce useable culms in one or two years, which is an obvious advantage. So, our arboreal sapients may grow large stands of bamboo (both giant and cane types) in or near most of their settlements to build and maintain large trellises, ladders, bridges, scaffoldings and jungle gyms. Additionally, bamboo and other materials, such as rattan, can be used to make wicker mats, from which our arboreal sapients can make hammocks, curtains, baskets, floors, beds, awnings, etc., to use in the construction of tree houses and settlement infrastructure. And leftover bamboo scraps can be used for tools, toys and musical instruments, which may leave an important impact on the recreational and musical traditions of these arboreal societies.

I am by no means a plant expert, so I am interested in hearing other people's ideas about which plants could be useful for fruit production, timber production, leaf production, etc. I'm also interested in people generating more unique ideas, such as flower crops or nectar crops. If we wanted to go really nutty, we could even talk about pitcher-plant vines (they are called "monkey cups" for a reason, after all).

 

[Sven]

And here's a bit I wrote up on animal domestication, which is a favorite topic of mine. I hope it's enough to start up the discussion here.


Animal domestication in arboreal societies

In the grasslands and open woodlands that humans evolved in and typically occupy, the most visible types of prey animals are ungulates and other grazers. Early human societies derived a substantial proportion of their meat consumption from these animals. Some of the salient characteristics of ungulate grazers are their relatively large body size, herding tendencies, and their remarkable efficiency at processing plants, such as grasses, that humans cannot readily exploit directly. Additionally, many of these animals provide useful secondary products, such as milk, fiber and labor.

In arboreal habitats, the ecological equivalent of a grazer is a folivore. However, there are some stark differences here. While foliage in general (including grass foliage) is a poor source of nutrition, tree leaves are exceptionally poor, and are usually protected heavily by trees with unpalatable and indigestible chemistry. This means that arboreal folivores have a much harder time deriving nutrition from their food source than terrestrial grazers. Consequently, most folivores have unusually low metabolisms and unusually slow growth and reproduction. They also tend to be quite solitary and sometimes even territorial. So, these animals would make very poor domesticates, having low productivity and being difficult to maintain in concentrated groups. They also don't seem very likely to produce useful amounts of secondary products, and are not anatomically suited for labor.

So, in short, an arboreal sapient will either have to turn to terrestrial grazers as its predominant form of domesticate, or utilize an entirely different fundamental paradigm for domestication. Since the goal of this project is to create a truly arboreal society, I am going to largely disqualify terrestrial ungulates from consideration. A combination of body-size comparisons, dietary characteristics, lifestyle characteristics and habitat characteristics lead me to conclude that terrestrial ungulates would have a difficult time integrating with an arboreal society, anyway. I thus am forced to attempt to devise what sort of different domestication paradigm might be more plausible for an arboreal sapient.

First, we must examine the diet, ecology and behavior of the arboreal sapient. Their direct, non-sapient ancestors were primarily frugivores, with folivory and carnivory being supplementary feeding strategies. However, for the sake of argument, I will assert that the emergence of sapience in these arboreal creatures will follow an increase in carnivory, simply because the increased complexity of skills and techniques involved in foraging for animals will tend to make extreme levels of intelligence more plausible. Even so, the arboreal sapients will still have a fruit-heavy diet: they will need all those carbohydrates to fuel their active, arboreal lifestyle. Additionally, the meats they will eat are not going to be large ungulates: as small-bodied, arboreal animals, they will doubtlessly be hunting small-bodied, arboreal prey, such as insects, lizards, rodents, birds and bats. It doesn't seem too much of a stretch to suggest that the bulk of their domesticates will come from this group of animals.

As a side note, the lack of a big-game hunting paradigm in arboreal sapient societies is going to drive a number of very interesting divergences from human history. For example, I suspect that they may be noticeably less intrepid in their interactions with potential predators (of which there will be many). Also, I suspect that the megafauna will experience significantly lower levels of extinction at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, but that small arboreal animals, such as primates, songbirds and rodents, will experience significantly elevated levels of extinction. I expect particularly high attrition among the primates.

As far as domestication goes, perhaps we shouldn't expect these arboreal sapients to go for big, meat-and-labor animals like cattle and horses. They'll take their meat in considerably smaller quantities. A useful comparison might be poultry: small, fast-growing, prolific animals domesticated by humans for meat and secondary products (eggs and feathers). The domestication paradigm here is not so much one of humans learning to "tame" a giant beast, but one of humans learning to protect and manage a small, vulnerable animal, such that it benefits from associating with them. Such an animal could feasibly be domesticated via a "birdhouse" technique: providing a shelter in close proximity to sapient habitations that allows the sapient to protect the animal's nest and, while exploiting it to some extent, ensuring that at least some of its offspring will survive to adulthood. An arboreal sapient could very likely use just such a strategy to domesticate arboreal birds.

Which birds might be potential candidates for this strategy? Well, hypothetically, any number of songbirds could be domesticated this way, but a few stick out as particularly interesting to me.

Doves are a good option. They are commonly found in the tropical forests our arboreal sapients will be inhabiting, and they are often quite sociable, making it easy to keep them in large numbers. Their flight muscles are characteristically quite large, providing a substantial amount of choice white meat. And, finally, there is a precedent in the rock dove, which was domesticated by humans in exactly the manner I propose here.

Swallows are another interesting option. Many species of swallows will readily utilize birdhouses, and many are colonial nesters. Additionally, many species of swallows live along rivers and streams, which, as explained previously, are very likely places for arboreal societies to coalesce. Swallows may also provide services to the arboreal sapients by consuming large numbers of mosquitoes, which may encourage communities of arboreal sapients to keep them around. The relatively small amount of meat a swallow produces is a potential downside, but I don't think it will be fatal to swallow domestication (the arboreal sapients are small creatures with modest meat requirements, after all).

Also note that bats (specifically, microbats) share many of these same characteristics with swallows, so, by extension, bats may also be plausible candidates for domestication. Bats will also potentially provide leather and guano, though they will obviously not provide eggs. Fruit bats would produce more meat, but, since they would eat the fruits our arboreal sapients rely on, they are more likely to be regarded as vermin worthy of extermination than as a viable form of livestock.

Other colony-nesting songbirds that might be relatively readily domesticated include the weavers (Ploceidae) of sub-Saharan Africa, and the oropendolas and caciques (Icteridae) of South America. Corvids, though sociable, seem rather unlikely candidates, given that their cleverness and their extreme omnivory would make them hard to manage.

Insects would likely be an important food source, and arguably the most likely domesticate. However, insects can often be relatively sustainably harvested from the wild (cf. South Africa's mopane worm), so domestication may be unnecessary. Nevertheless, as our arboreal sapients slowly expand their range, they will undoubtedly encounter situations in which the supply of preferred insect foods to certain areas will be insufficient without farming, so I suspect that insect farming will occur at some level. Certainly caterpillars could be farmed successfully, and various orthopterous insects (locusts, crickets, katydids, etc.) may also be farmed. The arboreal sapients will likely breed for plumpness, which will also decrease mobility and make the animals easier to catch and corral. I'll also go ahead and stipulate that the honeybee is another likely candidate for domestication, because of the precedent in human history, and because of the inevitably high demand for carbohydrate-rich foods to fuel the highly-active, arboreal lifestyle of these sapients.

There are other potential domesticates, but, for various reasons, I consider them less likely than those mentioned above. The arboreal habitat, in general, doesn't seem to be particularly suited to producing intriguing potential domesticates (though it seems great for producing wacky, wild, outlandish possibilities that seem fun, but highly improbable).

Other primates might potentially be domesticable because of their social habits, but they tend to require large home ranges to support their demands for fruit, which the arboreal sapients probably will not want to share with them anyway. So, I think a more likely fate for the world's primates is mass extinction, with a shockingly small percentage of them surviving to the present.

Tree squirrels could potentially be domesticated for meat and fur, and they feed mostly on hard nuts, so their diets wouldn't conflict too much with the arboreal sapients'. But, they tend to be non-social and territorial. However, if Wikipedia is to be believed, the Northern flying squirrel is facultatively sociable—and wouldn't it be awesome to have a domesticated gliding animal? On that note, sugar gliders are noticeably more sociable, and the successful pet trade in sugar gliders by humans speaks to their behavioral suitability for domestication. Frankly, I find that idea a little too awesome to dismiss.

Lizards could be domesticated, and the green iguana is actually a very promising possibility that is being seriously developed for human farming in Latin America right now. However, I worry about its dietary overlap with the arboreal sapients (though that shouldn't be too difficult to overcome). They are also slow-growing animals that may be less than economical in the long run. Still, the idea is too intriguing to pass up, and, as far as arboreal animals go, I'm not sure that the economics get any better than iguanas.

Snails and slugs will certainly be an important food source. I'm not sure that domestication would be particularly warranted though: relatively sustainable wild harvest is a very real possibility here. I'm also having a little difficulty finding a snail farm credible.

While I lambasted folivores above, it's important to note that there are exceptions. Marsupials tend to be short-lived compared with their placental equivalents, and marsupial folivores (koalas and possums) may have a somewhat faster generation turnaround. However, they still don't compare with songbirds and bats for fecundity, so their meat production rate will still be low. Furthermore, none of the arboreal sapients lives in the vicinity of these folivorous marsupials (except the gibbon, which is only several Indonesian islands away from several species of possum, cuscus and tree-kangaroo).

And, finally, I also dismissed terrestrial herbivores before, and, while I stand by my conclusion, my philosophy is that there are always exceptions to the rules. We derive this sort of alternate history challenge from pure rationalism, but rationalism is limited by our knowledge of the facts (which is always in question). Invariably, any newly-discovered world is going to produce a few surprises. So, properly realistic world-building requires a willingness to do a few nutty, outlandish things.

So, if arboreal sapients were to domesticate terrestrial herbivores, what could we expect? "Horse" and "cow" analogs, size-wise, would likely not be well-suited — physically or behaviorally — for labor, so they'd have a tough time making a working animal out of a gazelle or goat. Any useful working animals might be the size of small cows — effectively the size of a elephant for these little sapients. This might be quite favorable for them: not only could they have a proportionally elephantine beast of burden, but it will have the generation time of a cow or horse, so, unlike humans, arboreal sapients could truly domesticate their "elephants." But, they won't domesticate cows or horses: these are grassland animals. Unfortunately, comparably-sized forest animals tend to be less social, so their behavioral suitability is questionable. Nevertheless, let's consider a few: tapirs, anoas (dwarf water buffalo), pygmy hippos, babirusas, peccaries, kudus and bongos. The first three are solitary, while the peccaries are rather small for a working animal.

 

[DValdron]

You're thinking along the same lines as I was when I came to my conclusion. The biggest problems with silviculture/arboriculture will be in starting up new settlements or expanding into new territory. Homesteading and frontiersmanship will be a major challenge, because the pioneers would either have to clear a section of jungle or irrigate a section of grassland, then dedicate two or three years of work to an orchard before you can start to use it for food. That's a lot of work for a frontier family of tiny primates, and a long time to be without a staple crop.

Unless they are actively stopped, forests will tend to grow and grow.

What stops forests? Big herbivores. Elephants pushing down trees. Herds of Bison or other animals that devour or destroy immature trees.

It seems to me that your silviculture arboreals first steps would probably be to encourage the growth and sustenance of useful fruit trees in the forest - easy enough, just spread the seeds around.

And discourage the survival of non-fruit trees. Also easy enough. Strip the leaves off relentlessly, tear off branches, strip away bark, the embattled tree becomes less and less competitive with its rivals, grows less slowly, eventually dies. It's place in the tree canopy is taken up by fruit trees.

Its a slow process, but after a while, you slowly change the composition of the forest to nothing but various kinds of useful or edible producing species.

To expand the forest, just keep killing or driving off the herbivores that destroy immature growing seedlings. If you can make even a 5% difference, then within a few centuries, North America is a forest from one end to the other.

Of course, they could always survive on annual crops or bushmeat until the trees come into production, but that would be extra work on top of irrigating and maintaining an orchard, so they may need more than just a single family to work the farm. I would expect a slower expansion than humans, driven not by nomadic wandering, but by population pressures and collaborative ventures. That would make it likely that planned communities would be more the norm for arboreal sapients. Perhaps, socio-politically, they would lean toward collectivistic/communistic systems?

Quite possibly. And warlike as hell. When there are population pressures, you can't just plant new croplands, it will never mature in time. The only solution is to kill your neighbors and take their trees.

My remaining concern is that wild foraging monkeys tend to wander from tree to tree, and usually consume all the fruit in a single patch of forest at a single visit (usually just a day or two) before moving on. This doesn't seem like a situation that's very likely to develop into a sedentary, agrarian system. I'm not sure how to get over this hump: perhaps visual mapping and an early emergence of trade would be the way to go. This might help them learn about how plants grow and expand, and provide them the means to learn how to cultivate plants.

Ah, but that's the key to intelligence. Not every tree is productive. Not every productive tree is productive at a given time - most aren't. Intelligence is required to know which tree to seek out to harvest and when.

Monkeys and similar arboreal animals, because of the complexity of their feeding lifestyles, are extremely territorial.

Stop thinking in terms of ground based critters. Work from the bottom up.

 

[Simreeve]

A period of very slowly increasing volcanic activity, resulting in a subsequent very gradual buildup of volcanic gases, occurs in a forested region.

The trees are forced to become thicker, especially at the bottom, and grow higher.

And gradually, most animal life moves up into the trees, or becomes taller and taller.

This period ends, but in the region there are still a lot of different kinds of animals with different behaviors that live and interact in the trees. And the trees are very tall and thick.

There are 'mechanical' limits to the height and canopy-width of trees, due to the problem of getting enough water up to where it's needed, and it's been calculated that the tallest/broadest trees currently existing IOTL are pretty close to -- if not actually at -- the limits for Earth (or at any rate a basically Earth-like world).

It seems to me that your silviculture arboreals first steps would probably be to encourage the growth and sustenance of useful fruit trees in the forest - easy enough, just spread the seeds around.

And discourage the survival of non-fruit trees. Also easy enough. Strip the leaves off relentlessly, tear off branches, strip away bark, the embattled tree becomes less and less competitive with its rivals, grows less slowly, eventually dies. It's place in the tree canopy is taken up by fruit trees.

Its a slow process, but after a while, you slowly change the composition of the forest to nothing but various kinds of useful or edible producing species.

However the ecological complexity of tropical rainforest systems means that getting high concentrations of a single species to survive and thrive, in place of the natural more varied mixture, can be difficult. Bananas, coconut palms, rubber trees and some other species do accept such conditions, okay, but some others -- such as brazil nut trees, for example -- don't... and the only way to find out is by trial-&-error...