Lands of Ice and Mice: An Alternate History of the Thule
- Thread starter DirtyCommie
- Start date
- Status
This is a most excellent timeline
One question I do have, is that the Thule are building an agricultural society in a fragile enviroment, so should there not be some negative effects on their civilization because of this?
You mean like vole population explosions, water shortages, soil destruction?
Or are you thinking of something else?
Those three things. You've addressed one of those and I haven't read all of the timeline
(damn the exams to hell). Also won't there be a problem with lots of animals being hunted (even in an agricultural society, people will still hunt)? I fear for the existence of some Arctic wildlife (most notably seals)Those three things. You've addressed one of those and I haven't read all of the timeline
I've written about collapse of local megafauna and fauna populations and their relationship to the emergence of domestication.
Water issues are acknowledged, but still to be canvassed. Thule crops for the most part are relatively drough tolerant.
As for soil issues, while depletion is a potential issue, microclimate engineering by the Thule actually tends to help create or enhance poor grade arctic soils over a span of centuries.
The problems and downsides will continue to be explored.
VERMINATORS - THULE SEMI-DOMESTICATES
SNOWY OWL (Bubo scandiacus)
The snowy owl is an avian predator, approximately two feet long, with a wingspan of roughly two and a half feet. It’s weight ranges between three and seven pounds. It has thick feathers, and feathered feet for insulation. Males tend to be almost pure white, females and juveniles are often white with dark scalloping.
The Owls are primarily hunters of lemmings, voles and other small rodents. Each bird requires seven to twelve voles or lemmings a day, and can eat up to 1600 in a year. They are, however, versatile hunters, and will attack animals as large as hare and foxes, or birds as large as ptarmigan and geese, they catch prey on the ground or in the air, will snatch fish from the water and feed on carrion. Their preferred food is small rodents.
Their hunting strategy is usually wait and watch. They hunt both during days and nights. They have extreme visual acuity, and their hearing is sensitive enough to detect voles in their snow dens.
In the treeless environment of the Arctic, nesting habitat is king for Snowy Owls. In the wild, they will tend to build on top of mounds or boulders or gravel bars, they may take over an abandoned eagle nest. Proximity to hunting grounds, freedom from snow is important. The Thule habitually build nesting sites for the owls proximate to their crops, in order to lure the animals into watching over their crops. This is fairly successful, and the proliferation of good nesting sites with good hunting invariably attracts numbers of owls.
Snowy Owls are known for wandering vast distances. In one OTL experiment, owls were radar tagged in a location. One owl wound up in Alaska, another in Greenland and a third went straight to North Dakota. In the wild, the animals appear to be somewhat migratory, and in the winter when prey are scarce, some will fly south, while some remain. Although Snowy Owls are territorial, it is not clear whether those who fly south will tend to reliably return to their original territories. Thule will often feed owls in the winter, to keep them from leaving and encourage them to continue to hunt in the snow covered fields.
Snowy Owls among the Thule have become very human tolerant. They show very little distress at humans approaching within a twenty feet. They will allow caribou to approach closer. They often take advantage of caribou or human disturbance of voles and will take rodents as close as a dozen feet from a person. They demonstrate very little aggression towards caribou or humans.
Snowy Owls come closest to being full domesticates, since they have found roles in Thule society beyond simple vermin control. On special occasions, Snowy Owls or their eggs are eaten. Snowy Owls are not a typical food, but reserved to specific individuals and ceremonial occasions. Snowy Owl feathers and plumage is particularly valued as a specialty item. Harvesting a Snowy Owl or its eggs is a ceremonial activity, one of the rules being that no Snowy Owl can be killed within the site of another owl.
Snowy Owls are often though unreliably used as guardians, hunters and even messengers.
A curious bird, owls will often fly off and circle approaching strangers, giving warning of strangers from a distance. The larger the group, the more owls will be attracted. Thule Shamans claim that detailed information can be determined from the flight of the owls. For wild animals, migrating caribou, the owls fly lower. For humans, the owls will circle high. For friends, the owls will fly high but dip or dive lower. While for strangers, they keep their distance. This is somewhat unreliable, and folklore and custom attributes far more validity to the performance of this role than objective records suggest. This is considered to be innate rather than taught or trained behaviour.
This trait will often be used by some hunters, carrying owls with them, to locate or spot possible game at range. Fishermen or sealers use owls to pinpoint location of fish or seal in the water. Herdsmen will use owls to locate or track animals lost from their herd, or to spot predators.
In some cases, efforts are made to use owls as messengers. Essentially, an owl is carried from its home territory. At some point, it will be released to find its way back to its home territory. They are not terribly reliable, however, and become less so as distance increases. In general terms, over medium ranges, odds are 70% that an Owl will return to its home territory, and 50% over long distances. Tamed owls seem slightly more likely to return home. Tamed owls can be used to carry messages, but will only allow people that they know well to approach them and relieve them of messages.
Often Owls are hatched among humans and raised from birth as tamed pets. These owls are very skillful at distinguishing among humans and can be fairly intelligent birds. The most common application of Snowy Owls is as pets. There are often a few such ‘pets’ in every village.
These applications of Snowy Owls are not terribly common, occurring regularly enough to be acknowledged but hardly commonplace. This may relate to the inherent difficulties in raising an avian predator. In Thule language, Owl masters are known as ‘three fingered men’ and often visually depicted with an eye patch.
ARCTIC FOX (Vulpes Lagopus)
An arctic fox can live up to fifteen years. In the wild, most die before six months of age, and few live past two years.
Unlike the Snowy Owl, the Arctic Fox doesn’t have the luxury of flying thousands of miles to new hunting grounds. They’re local animals in an environment where local conditions are ruthless, food is hard to come by, and death is a constant companion.
Like their food, the lemmings and voles, the Arctic Fox’s survival strategy is to breed early and breed big. Arctic Fox reach sexual maturity at about ten months of age, the gestation period is fifty two days, and they wean within three weeks. Litter sized range between two and twenty-five, with six to twelve being the norm. They have the largest litters of any canid.
Most foxes mate for life, but the Arctic is too harsh for that, Arctic Foxes can only afford to be monogamous for a single season, but will often select the same mates from season to season.
In the wild, the Arctic Fox goes through boom and bust population cycles, swelling as the population of lemmings and voles grows even faster, and crashing with those population crashes. The lemming population my leap ten to twentyfold from one year to the next, but during a crash is subject to a hundredfold drop. This usually leaves far too many foxes with practically no pray, and the choices are starvation, being eaten by other starving predators or migrating long distances.
Extremely long distances in some cases. The Arctic fox is the only native mammal in Iceland, and one of only four native mammals in Svalbard, having wandered across hundreds of miles of sea ice to those locations.
Arctic Foxes establish dens for breeding purposes, and will return to them season after season. In many cases, dens are inhabited by generation after generation for centuries, and can be inhabited by several families of foxes simultaneously. An established Den will have four to twelve openings, a clear sign that other, bigger predators are interested in the Arctic Fox. Very old dens will have up to one hundred openings and can appear as mounds twelve feet high rising out of the Arctic tundra. Although social for breeding, the Arctic fox generally do not hunt cooperatively or in packs, at most, mated couples may work in pairs.
The Arctic Fox is a voracious predator. It’s primary food are voles and lemmings, and it has highly acute hearing to locate them in their dens under the snow. A successful family of foxes can consume dozens of rodents a day.
But it will attack and eat any small animal or bird, up to the size of owls and hares and seal pups. It is also skilled at finding and eating birds eggs (the lack of trees make bird nests more accessible). It will eat seaweed and berries, carrion, and will scavenge the kills of larger predators or eat their feces. If it has a food surplus, it will bury the surplus and return to it later. In turn, the Arctic Fox and its kits are themselves prey for Owls, Wolves and Polar bears.
Thule have turned out to be very good for the Arctic Fox. Thule Agriculture produces a plentiful year round supply of rodents, and even where the rodent population crashes or becomes scarce, the Thule will feed the foxes to maintain their numbers. The humans have a vested interest in a stable Fox population, a fox population that crashes leaves too few predators to control the rising rodent population, and although the fox population can rise quickly, it doesn’t rise fast enough. By maintaining a stable fox population, the Thule try to ensure that the rodents are never able to get out completely out of hand.
In addition to vermin control, the Foxes have become adept, along with dogs, at scavenging human leavings, and frequently nose around garbage sites. Foxes have learned to follow humans fishing, hunting or herding, and feast on the leftover of kills.
Almost as important, humans offer protection from other predators. Polar bears and wolves will tend to avoid human sites. The Thule are careful to train their dogs not to pursue or eat Foxes by feeding young dogs poisoned carcasses, a period of agonized retching gets the message across.
The only real threat to the Foxes are humans themselves who, while intent on keeping the population from starving, are also careful to keep it from exploding. Young foxes, in their first year of maturity are frequently trapped for fur and meat. Older foxes are left alone. If a Fox survives its first year or two among the Thule, it can generally rely on living to a reasonable old age.
Some fox kits are taken and raised up in Thule households as pets. But for the most part, the Arctic fox is at best semi-domesticated. Their primary role is doing what comes natural - being vermin catchers. Beyond meat, fur and pets there is very little secondary utility to Foxes.
The Foxes have come to be very human tolerant, and many will allow a human to approach very closely, or will themselves approach closer. In times of starvation, they will beg humans for food.
Interestingly, the foxes get along very well with dogs. They’re often seen playing with dogs. Some of them creep in and sleep in dog piles. Some foxes will bond with dogs, usually of the opposite sex and become constant companions. Often a fox will bond so strongly with dogs it will accompany a dogsled team. In turn, dogs have been known to protect or defend Foxes and their kits.
The downside of Foxes is that they often pose a danger to ptarmigans and ptarmigan eggs, and have proven quite resourceful at sneaking into human storage silos. Careful measures have to be taken to protect these resources, and these are where most foxes are killed. Foxes pose little threat to humans, dogs or owls, but sometimes attack owl eggs and chicks, and occasionally prey on Ermine.
Still, on a net basis, Arctic Foxes are valuable enough in their roles that a Thule community will go out of its way to relocate foxes to their areas, and to build rockpiles or habitats that the foxes will use for dens.
ERMINE (Mustela Erminea)
Also known as the stoat or short tailed weasel, is a small animal, weighing between three and fifteen ounces, and twelve and eighteen inches, including tail. Like other Arctic animals, hare, ptarmigan and foxes, its colouration changes seasonally, brown in the summer, white in the winter.
They have an average life span of four to seven years. The gestation period lasts 280 days, and they give birth to a litter of 3 to 13 babies per year. The young are born blind, hairless and toothless, and unable to regulate their temperature. After four weeks weaning begins, lactation ends within twelve weeks.
Males reach reproductive maturity in about ten months. Females reach reproductive maturity as early as two to three weeks, or as late as two months, becoming ready to mate sometimes while they are blind and hairless but almost always before being fully weaned, and may become pregnant while still juvenile, which is unspeakably creepy.
Ermines are active hunters, and can and will kill animals larger than themselves, like rabbits or ptarmigan. They’re voracious consumers of vole and lemming, and when snow cover comes are small enough to invade lemming and vole burrows. Ermine are able diggers, but do not dig their own burrows. Instead, they take over rodent burrows, lining it with the skins and fur of animals that they’ve killed. Their metabolisms are highly charged, they need to eat approximately 25% of their body weight each day. They are opportunistic hunters, killing whenever and wherever they can, even if not hungry. This is known as ‘surplus kill.’ Excess food is sometimes cached.
They are ruthless predators and solitary hunters, and while not normally preying on their own species, will behave aggressively towards each other, with stronger individuals stealing kills or driving weaker individuals from dens.
The great thing about Ermine is that they’re small little critters. In a larger size, their combination of pseudo-pedophile biology, high metabolism and rapacious bloodlust and aggression would be terrifying. It’s like they were designed by the family from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Ermine are occasionally raised or tamed as house pets. They’re often trapped for fur, and the bodies are sometimes eaten, but it is never sought solely for meat. Ermine are sometimes hunted and killed by foxes, owls and occasionally vole dogs. In turn, they prey on owl eggs and fox kits.
VOLE DOGS
Vole Dogs are a dwarf breed of the Thule sled dogs, specializing in hunting Vole and lemming.
Basically, they started off as ‘runts’ of the litter. Sled dogs who were smaller and weaker than the usual run ended up being left behind and becoming fairly useful. After a while, dogs that would normally have been culled were left to survive, and the more effective rodent hunters were left to reproduce. Vole Dogs have established as a separate breed, roughly one half to two thirds the size of normal sled dogs.
Vole dogs, like full sized Thule dogs, are highly social and will form packs, but this is usually a hindrance to feeding activities. Occasionally they are raised as pets, and some Vole Dogs are actually arranged as teams for children’s sleds.
The Thule are careful to keep Vole Dogs away from Sled dogs and discourage mating, not wanting backbreeding into either line. Relations between Sled Dogs and Vole Dogs vary, a tightly organized pack of Sled Dogs will automatically kill any strange Vole Dog. However, in many cases, individual Vole Dogs will mix readily with Sled Dog packs.
Vole Dogs are also known to suckle milk from Caribou and Musk Ox, a unique behaviour.
Individual dogs will sometimes bond with foxes and hunt cooperatively, the fox’s more acute hearing locating rodent dens under the snow and the dogs heavy muscle power tearing right through the snow.
The Vole Dogs are the apex predator of the Thule fields, and despite the aversion therapy of the Thule, in times of scarcity, will readily kill and devour Foxes, Ermine and even given opportunity, Owls. Most of the time, however, when eating is good, they will avoid or ignore the semi-domesticates.
SNOWY OWL (Bubo scandiacus)
The snowy owl is an avian predator, approximately two feet long, with a wingspan of roughly two and a half feet. It’s weight ranges between three and seven pounds. It has thick feathers, and feathered feet for insulation. Males tend to be almost pure white, females and juveniles are often white with dark scalloping.
The Owls are primarily hunters of lemmings, voles and other small rodents. Each bird requires seven to twelve voles or lemmings a day, and can eat up to 1600 in a year. They are, however, versatile hunters, and will attack animals as large as hare and foxes, or birds as large as ptarmigan and geese, they catch prey on the ground or in the air, will snatch fish from the water and feed on carrion. Their preferred food is small rodents.
Their hunting strategy is usually wait and watch. They hunt both during days and nights. They have extreme visual acuity, and their hearing is sensitive enough to detect voles in their snow dens.
In the treeless environment of the Arctic, nesting habitat is king for Snowy Owls. In the wild, they will tend to build on top of mounds or boulders or gravel bars, they may take over an abandoned eagle nest. Proximity to hunting grounds, freedom from snow is important. The Thule habitually build nesting sites for the owls proximate to their crops, in order to lure the animals into watching over their crops. This is fairly successful, and the proliferation of good nesting sites with good hunting invariably attracts numbers of owls.
Snowy Owls are known for wandering vast distances. In one OTL experiment, owls were radar tagged in a location. One owl wound up in Alaska, another in Greenland and a third went straight to North Dakota. In the wild, the animals appear to be somewhat migratory, and in the winter when prey are scarce, some will fly south, while some remain. Although Snowy Owls are territorial, it is not clear whether those who fly south will tend to reliably return to their original territories. Thule will often feed owls in the winter, to keep them from leaving and encourage them to continue to hunt in the snow covered fields.
Snowy Owls among the Thule have become very human tolerant. They show very little distress at humans approaching within a twenty feet. They will allow caribou to approach closer. They often take advantage of caribou or human disturbance of voles and will take rodents as close as a dozen feet from a person. They demonstrate very little aggression towards caribou or humans.
Snowy Owls come closest to being full domesticates, since they have found roles in Thule society beyond simple vermin control. On special occasions, Snowy Owls or their eggs are eaten. Snowy Owls are not a typical food, but reserved to specific individuals and ceremonial occasions. Snowy Owl feathers and plumage is particularly valued as a specialty item. Harvesting a Snowy Owl or its eggs is a ceremonial activity, one of the rules being that no Snowy Owl can be killed within the site of another owl.
Snowy Owls are often though unreliably used as guardians, hunters and even messengers.
A curious bird, owls will often fly off and circle approaching strangers, giving warning of strangers from a distance. The larger the group, the more owls will be attracted. Thule Shamans claim that detailed information can be determined from the flight of the owls. For wild animals, migrating caribou, the owls fly lower. For humans, the owls will circle high. For friends, the owls will fly high but dip or dive lower. While for strangers, they keep their distance. This is somewhat unreliable, and folklore and custom attributes far more validity to the performance of this role than objective records suggest. This is considered to be innate rather than taught or trained behaviour.
This trait will often be used by some hunters, carrying owls with them, to locate or spot possible game at range. Fishermen or sealers use owls to pinpoint location of fish or seal in the water. Herdsmen will use owls to locate or track animals lost from their herd, or to spot predators.
In some cases, efforts are made to use owls as messengers. Essentially, an owl is carried from its home territory. At some point, it will be released to find its way back to its home territory. They are not terribly reliable, however, and become less so as distance increases. In general terms, over medium ranges, odds are 70% that an Owl will return to its home territory, and 50% over long distances. Tamed owls seem slightly more likely to return home. Tamed owls can be used to carry messages, but will only allow people that they know well to approach them and relieve them of messages.
Often Owls are hatched among humans and raised from birth as tamed pets. These owls are very skillful at distinguishing among humans and can be fairly intelligent birds. The most common application of Snowy Owls is as pets. There are often a few such ‘pets’ in every village.
These applications of Snowy Owls are not terribly common, occurring regularly enough to be acknowledged but hardly commonplace. This may relate to the inherent difficulties in raising an avian predator. In Thule language, Owl masters are known as ‘three fingered men’ and often visually depicted with an eye patch.
ARCTIC FOX (Vulpes Lagopus)
An arctic fox can live up to fifteen years. In the wild, most die before six months of age, and few live past two years.
Unlike the Snowy Owl, the Arctic Fox doesn’t have the luxury of flying thousands of miles to new hunting grounds. They’re local animals in an environment where local conditions are ruthless, food is hard to come by, and death is a constant companion.
Like their food, the lemmings and voles, the Arctic Fox’s survival strategy is to breed early and breed big. Arctic Fox reach sexual maturity at about ten months of age, the gestation period is fifty two days, and they wean within three weeks. Litter sized range between two and twenty-five, with six to twelve being the norm. They have the largest litters of any canid.
Most foxes mate for life, but the Arctic is too harsh for that, Arctic Foxes can only afford to be monogamous for a single season, but will often select the same mates from season to season.
In the wild, the Arctic Fox goes through boom and bust population cycles, swelling as the population of lemmings and voles grows even faster, and crashing with those population crashes. The lemming population my leap ten to twentyfold from one year to the next, but during a crash is subject to a hundredfold drop. This usually leaves far too many foxes with practically no pray, and the choices are starvation, being eaten by other starving predators or migrating long distances.
Extremely long distances in some cases. The Arctic fox is the only native mammal in Iceland, and one of only four native mammals in Svalbard, having wandered across hundreds of miles of sea ice to those locations.
Arctic Foxes establish dens for breeding purposes, and will return to them season after season. In many cases, dens are inhabited by generation after generation for centuries, and can be inhabited by several families of foxes simultaneously. An established Den will have four to twelve openings, a clear sign that other, bigger predators are interested in the Arctic Fox. Very old dens will have up to one hundred openings and can appear as mounds twelve feet high rising out of the Arctic tundra. Although social for breeding, the Arctic fox generally do not hunt cooperatively or in packs, at most, mated couples may work in pairs.
The Arctic Fox is a voracious predator. It’s primary food are voles and lemmings, and it has highly acute hearing to locate them in their dens under the snow. A successful family of foxes can consume dozens of rodents a day.
But it will attack and eat any small animal or bird, up to the size of owls and hares and seal pups. It is also skilled at finding and eating birds eggs (the lack of trees make bird nests more accessible). It will eat seaweed and berries, carrion, and will scavenge the kills of larger predators or eat their feces. If it has a food surplus, it will bury the surplus and return to it later. In turn, the Arctic Fox and its kits are themselves prey for Owls, Wolves and Polar bears.
Thule have turned out to be very good for the Arctic Fox. Thule Agriculture produces a plentiful year round supply of rodents, and even where the rodent population crashes or becomes scarce, the Thule will feed the foxes to maintain their numbers. The humans have a vested interest in a stable Fox population, a fox population that crashes leaves too few predators to control the rising rodent population, and although the fox population can rise quickly, it doesn’t rise fast enough. By maintaining a stable fox population, the Thule try to ensure that the rodents are never able to get out completely out of hand.
In addition to vermin control, the Foxes have become adept, along with dogs, at scavenging human leavings, and frequently nose around garbage sites. Foxes have learned to follow humans fishing, hunting or herding, and feast on the leftover of kills.
Almost as important, humans offer protection from other predators. Polar bears and wolves will tend to avoid human sites. The Thule are careful to train their dogs not to pursue or eat Foxes by feeding young dogs poisoned carcasses, a period of agonized retching gets the message across.
The only real threat to the Foxes are humans themselves who, while intent on keeping the population from starving, are also careful to keep it from exploding. Young foxes, in their first year of maturity are frequently trapped for fur and meat. Older foxes are left alone. If a Fox survives its first year or two among the Thule, it can generally rely on living to a reasonable old age.
Some fox kits are taken and raised up in Thule households as pets. But for the most part, the Arctic fox is at best semi-domesticated. Their primary role is doing what comes natural - being vermin catchers. Beyond meat, fur and pets there is very little secondary utility to Foxes.
The Foxes have come to be very human tolerant, and many will allow a human to approach very closely, or will themselves approach closer. In times of starvation, they will beg humans for food.
Interestingly, the foxes get along very well with dogs. They’re often seen playing with dogs. Some of them creep in and sleep in dog piles. Some foxes will bond with dogs, usually of the opposite sex and become constant companions. Often a fox will bond so strongly with dogs it will accompany a dogsled team. In turn, dogs have been known to protect or defend Foxes and their kits.
The downside of Foxes is that they often pose a danger to ptarmigans and ptarmigan eggs, and have proven quite resourceful at sneaking into human storage silos. Careful measures have to be taken to protect these resources, and these are where most foxes are killed. Foxes pose little threat to humans, dogs or owls, but sometimes attack owl eggs and chicks, and occasionally prey on Ermine.
Still, on a net basis, Arctic Foxes are valuable enough in their roles that a Thule community will go out of its way to relocate foxes to their areas, and to build rockpiles or habitats that the foxes will use for dens.
ERMINE (Mustela Erminea)
Also known as the stoat or short tailed weasel, is a small animal, weighing between three and fifteen ounces, and twelve and eighteen inches, including tail. Like other Arctic animals, hare, ptarmigan and foxes, its colouration changes seasonally, brown in the summer, white in the winter.
They have an average life span of four to seven years. The gestation period lasts 280 days, and they give birth to a litter of 3 to 13 babies per year. The young are born blind, hairless and toothless, and unable to regulate their temperature. After four weeks weaning begins, lactation ends within twelve weeks.
Males reach reproductive maturity in about ten months. Females reach reproductive maturity as early as two to three weeks, or as late as two months, becoming ready to mate sometimes while they are blind and hairless but almost always before being fully weaned, and may become pregnant while still juvenile, which is unspeakably creepy.
Ermines are active hunters, and can and will kill animals larger than themselves, like rabbits or ptarmigan. They’re voracious consumers of vole and lemming, and when snow cover comes are small enough to invade lemming and vole burrows. Ermine are able diggers, but do not dig their own burrows. Instead, they take over rodent burrows, lining it with the skins and fur of animals that they’ve killed. Their metabolisms are highly charged, they need to eat approximately 25% of their body weight each day. They are opportunistic hunters, killing whenever and wherever they can, even if not hungry. This is known as ‘surplus kill.’ Excess food is sometimes cached.
They are ruthless predators and solitary hunters, and while not normally preying on their own species, will behave aggressively towards each other, with stronger individuals stealing kills or driving weaker individuals from dens.
The great thing about Ermine is that they’re small little critters. In a larger size, their combination of pseudo-pedophile biology, high metabolism and rapacious bloodlust and aggression would be terrifying. It’s like they were designed by the family from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Ermine are occasionally raised or tamed as house pets. They’re often trapped for fur, and the bodies are sometimes eaten, but it is never sought solely for meat. Ermine are sometimes hunted and killed by foxes, owls and occasionally vole dogs. In turn, they prey on owl eggs and fox kits.
VOLE DOGS
Vole Dogs are a dwarf breed of the Thule sled dogs, specializing in hunting Vole and lemming.
Basically, they started off as ‘runts’ of the litter. Sled dogs who were smaller and weaker than the usual run ended up being left behind and becoming fairly useful. After a while, dogs that would normally have been culled were left to survive, and the more effective rodent hunters were left to reproduce. Vole Dogs have established as a separate breed, roughly one half to two thirds the size of normal sled dogs.
Vole dogs, like full sized Thule dogs, are highly social and will form packs, but this is usually a hindrance to feeding activities. Occasionally they are raised as pets, and some Vole Dogs are actually arranged as teams for children’s sleds.
The Thule are careful to keep Vole Dogs away from Sled dogs and discourage mating, not wanting backbreeding into either line. Relations between Sled Dogs and Vole Dogs vary, a tightly organized pack of Sled Dogs will automatically kill any strange Vole Dog. However, in many cases, individual Vole Dogs will mix readily with Sled Dog packs.
Vole Dogs are also known to suckle milk from Caribou and Musk Ox, a unique behaviour.
Individual dogs will sometimes bond with foxes and hunt cooperatively, the fox’s more acute hearing locating rodent dens under the snow and the dogs heavy muscle power tearing right through the snow.
The Vole Dogs are the apex predator of the Thule fields, and despite the aversion therapy of the Thule, in times of scarcity, will readily kill and devour Foxes, Ermine and even given opportunity, Owls. Most of the time, however, when eating is good, they will avoid or ignore the semi-domesticates.
A shame that the recessive blue foxes didin't get adopted as a breed of high status pets, but you can't have everything.
Likewise that the Thule didn't adopt falconry, as owls have been used of it successfully.
An interesting consideration, which the Thule may or not notice, is that Snow Geese have vastly greater reproductive success when nesting near owl nest sites, and so there is a tendency for them to associate. Geese also aren't competitors for the same habitat as the Thule, as they eat the roots of marsh grasses. The increased numbers of owls, along with any general climatic changes to make the summers slightly warmer, would seem to substantially help them.
Of course, as migratory birds, the Thule are unlikely to domesticate them, but they may well serve as a useful additional source of protein in some areas - assuming they aren't hunted to extinction.
Likewise that the Thule didn't adopt falconry, as owls have been used of it successfully.
An interesting consideration, which the Thule may or not notice, is that Snow Geese have vastly greater reproductive success when nesting near owl nest sites, and so there is a tendency for them to associate. Geese also aren't competitors for the same habitat as the Thule, as they eat the roots of marsh grasses. The increased numbers of owls, along with any general climatic changes to make the summers slightly warmer, would seem to substantially help them.
Of course, as migratory birds, the Thule are unlikely to domesticate them, but they may well serve as a useful additional source of protein in some areas - assuming they aren't hunted to extinction.
Who knows what the long term will bring. A couple of the semi-domesticates may be very high value furs in Europe, so there may be some further economic usage after 1700.
It's an aristocracy fluke thing. The Thule aristocracy just didn't go that way. I thought people might be pushing for Owls to be used as messengers, and some Thule do make that effort. The thing is, of course that while the Snowy Owl is migratory, there's little to suggest its a pinpointer like a homing position. And getting a message off the leg of a large dangerous predator bird is going to be its own challenge.
There'll definitely be hunting pressure.
Mainly, the semi-domesticates evolve as parts of Thule Agriculture for the express purpose of controlling rodents. Collaterals may occur over time, but mostly the animals are left wild to do their jobs. Think of them as independent contractors, while full domesticates are employees.
One of these days, very soon, I'll be finished describing the evolution of the Thule agricultural package.
Last edited:
Not necessarily. Economic falconry by low status individuals certainly existed amongst the Bedouin, as a protein supplement over the winter months.
Given how deprived the Thule are of protein sources, then it would seem they have similar pressures.
humans approaching within a twenty feet. P: within twenty
are never able to get out completely out of hand. P: get completely
It seems like falconry would be easy to develop, since it's mentioned hunters do sometimes take them out to at least locate prey.
are never able to get out completely out of hand. P: get completely
It seems like falconry would be easy to develop, since it's mentioned hunters do sometimes take them out to at least locate prey.
Would pairings like that have better success compared to a single fox or dog hunting alone, enough to be encouraged? Perhaps raising kits and pups together, or actively training them somehow to work as a team?
Last edited:
The reliability is pretty iffy. Enough for enthusiasts to stick with it. Not enough for it to be adopted and established generally in society. Basically, its the three fingered mans hobby. It might be that with a few hundred years of dedicated effort, something might come out of it. But for the most part, they're far more valuable hunting vole.
Nobody is putting that much thought into it. Dogs are naturally social animals, so they'll bond readily. Foxes on the other hand, don't have a lot of history in cooperative hunting. Coop hunting is usually to take down bigger game, and foxes are small game critters. But the advantages to the Fox when a bond does occur tend to become apparent. There's a certain interspecies romance angle to it, fox/dog pairings are usually of members of the opposite sex. So it occurs in the field, but the Thule don't really pay a lot of attention. It's mildly bemusing to see a fox and a dog pairing up, but they're not really perceiving any tangible benefit. The animals themselves may eat better, but really, they're the only ones who see it.
Remember. Moving target. The early agricultural period had a bit of a protein bottleneck as increasingly dense populations hunted out the local animal life.
With the emergence of draft labour domesticates, and microlivestock, the protein situation got a lot better. By the end of the Agricultural revolution, the Thule had two big meat animals - Caribou and Musk Ox, two small meat animals, ptarmigan and hare, and a whole list of useful animals hanging about who could or would be eaten occasionally - Dogs, Foxes, Owls, Ermines and vole.
The Owl found a fairly effective niche within Thule society, and there's continuing experimenting and some cultural folklore regarding other uses. As I said, they're much closer to full domesticates than Fox or Ermine.
But they're also highly acute, dangerous killer birds with razor talons.
Wait, come to think of it, their antlers were also 'hobbled', or 'leashed', IIRC... and honestly it would probably be *easier* to just have someone else there holding them
Sorry, it's been a solid two decades now... And I honestly don't remember what it tasted like. Raw milk, I guess? Nothing that stuck in my memory, obviously!
Just as a note, I'm not sure the eyepatch and "three-fingered men" thing makes sense for owl-keepers. Darren Naish recently said on Tetrapod Zoology that he's been bitten by owls many times, and they have a quite weak and painless bite. All the power in owls is in their legs, which they use to crush their prey to death. They don't even rend flesh like birds of prey - they swallow their prey whole. I'm sure a ill-tempered owl could do some dreadful things with their talons, but I don't think they could take out eyes or sever fingers, given the logistics.
Maybe another thing they wind up picking up from Europeans? Early modern Arctic explorers are particularly likely to be some kind of aristocrat; some might have learned some falconry and after a long stay among the Thule offer to train up an owl or two as a flattering gift to some high lord--the first ones had better go to the top chief in whatever polity they're operating in.
Or Inuit could go visiting Europe and guesting on some country estate.
For some reason I think of falconry as a British sort of thing but I suppose there was a lot of it in France too, probably Germany and among European aristocrats in general.
Well the Wiki article says that it probably reached its peak among Europeans in the 17th century, then declined a lot due to the new fashion of hunting with guns; however the British did revive the art in the 19th century, which is where I get my impression I guess.
Before the eclipse of the art by guns, it was widespread all across Eurasia, the article noting the Mongols in particular as enthusiasts, and mentioning a book by a Russian Tsar on the subject. So various Thule groups have many many chances to meet falconers; the period of first (second, counting the Vikings) contact of Thule and Europeans would be right around the zenith of the art.
All of DValdron's essays on Thule cultivation refer purely to the pre-contact period; only heaven, he and DirtyCommie know what baroque cultural hybrids might arise out of that!
Snow Owl falconry seems like a very likely example, at least for Thule aristocrats. It shouldn't be necessary as a means of subsistence.
Or Inuit could go visiting Europe and guesting on some country estate.
For some reason I think of falconry as a British sort of thing but I suppose there was a lot of it in France too, probably Germany and among European aristocrats in general.
Well the Wiki article says that it probably reached its peak among Europeans in the 17th century, then declined a lot due to the new fashion of hunting with guns; however the British did revive the art in the 19th century, which is where I get my impression I guess.
Before the eclipse of the art by guns, it was widespread all across Eurasia, the article noting the Mongols in particular as enthusiasts, and mentioning a book by a Russian Tsar on the subject. So various Thule groups have many many chances to meet falconers; the period of first (second, counting the Vikings) contact of Thule and Europeans would be right around the zenith of the art.
All of DValdron's essays on Thule cultivation refer purely to the pre-contact period; only heaven, he and DirtyCommie know what baroque cultural hybrids might arise out of that!
Snow Owl falconry seems like a very likely example, at least for Thule aristocrats. It shouldn't be necessary as a means of subsistence.
Probably true. The Thule have it wrong. Not the first time a culture's gotten some foolish myths about common animals.
A very good summer.... and then they freeze to death in the winter?
Actually, it appears that Cats were domesticated by the Norse between 1000 and 1200 CE, so they may well have been imported to Greenland. If they were, however, they don't seem to have survived.
It may have been that the Thule of Greenland encountered cats, and might have even adopted a few as exotic novelty pets. However they probably didn't cope well with winters, and failed to thrive. They likely faced very stiff competition from the other semi-domesticates. Both foxes and owl, in particular, might prey on them, and Ermine would go after kittens.
Hostile environment, too many competitors and semi-predators, not enough coddling, they'd probably have a hard time of it. I think that by 1700, the southern tip of Greenland would see a few cats as semi-domesticates, but that would be it. They'd have trouble expanding north, and unable to cross into the rest of the Thule world.
As far as falconry goes, apparently the Norse were big into falcons, and the Greenland colony was known for exporting quite a few of them.
I'm very skeptical about Falconry extending to owl and owlculture. Just because they can do it, doesn't mean that the Thule will. There's all sorts of aspects of Norse culture that they borrow, but most of it they don't. They'll probably, after 1700 pick up some European customs and traditions, but there's a great deal that they won't. I'd put Falconry into the category of funny and quirky Euro hobbies that the Thule don't really bother with.
Actually, it appears that Cats were domesticated by the Norse between 1000 and 1200 CE, so they may well have been imported to Greenland. If they were, however, they don't seem to have survived.
It may have been that the Thule of Greenland encountered cats, and might have even adopted a few as exotic novelty pets. However they probably didn't cope well with winters, and failed to thrive. They likely faced very stiff competition from the other semi-domesticates. Both foxes and owl, in particular, might prey on them, and Ermine would go after kittens.
Hostile environment, too many competitors and semi-predators, not enough coddling, they'd probably have a hard time of it. I think that by 1700, the southern tip of Greenland would see a few cats as semi-domesticates, but that would be it. They'd have trouble expanding north, and unable to cross into the rest of the Thule world.
As far as falconry goes, apparently the Norse were big into falcons, and the Greenland colony was known for exporting quite a few of them.
I'm very skeptical about Falconry extending to owl and owlculture. Just because they can do it, doesn't mean that the Thule will. There's all sorts of aspects of Norse culture that they borrow, but most of it they don't. They'll probably, after 1700 pick up some European customs and traditions, but there's a great deal that they won't. I'd put Falconry into the category of funny and quirky Euro hobbies that the Thule don't really bother with.
Except that there are at least two (The Main Coon and the Scandinavian Forest Cat) and possibly five (the Russian Archanglesk, the Angora of the Caucasus and the Pallas Cat of the Himalayas) natural breeds of domestic cats that can/could have survived the harsh Arctic winter. (And all except the Russian breed are quite big {fit males average 13 lbs, females 10.})
Maybe they'd have to be introduced in the Seventeenth Century when European Contact re-emerges, but they have the advantage over ferrets of being cute and charming to humans even after their childhood is over, and their pelts, being so alergenic, are nowhere near as much a potential luxury.
The big question is whether Voles are closer to mice or rats.
Maybe they'd have to be introduced in the Seventeenth Century when European Contact re-emerges, but they have the advantage over ferrets of being cute and charming to humans even after their childhood is over, and their pelts, being so alergenic, are nowhere near as much a potential luxury.
The big question is whether Voles are closer to mice or rats.
Voles are much closer to mice. They're tiny little things.
I guess the question is, did feral cats survive as an indigenous animal in Greenland after the Norse died/left? I don't think so.
Now, the Thule of this time line who replace the Norse in Greenland are a different bunch. They've got higher population densities, an agricultural package, and a vested interest in having verminators around. So I'm still thinking that some of the Norse cats may have a better chance of hanging around.
But the Thule didn't invest a lot of energy in domesticating their Verminators. They were semi-domestics, occasionally fed to keep their numbers high and make sure that voles and lemming didn't steal a march in the population cycle. So its a question of how much investment in Cats would be needed to keep them viable in this territory.
I'm sure that on the mainland, there are reaches of Thule territory, particularly in the south, where semi-feral cats might do okay. But don't underestimate how inhospitable the arctic is. Even the animals that are adapted to it struggle.
Ptarmigan, Hare, Vole, Lemmings, Fox and Owl all have extreme adaptations designed to keep them alive in the Arctic winter. Despite that, for most of them, mortality rates are extremely high, reproduction rates are through the roof, and they're all damned near omnivorous - hare and vole will eat meat, the foxes will eat vegetation.
Now, if the animals that actually live there and have adaptations to it are having that much trouble.... well, not good for cats. Sorry, but there you have it.
I am willing to concede the possibility of a south greenland cat population hanging on.
But the trouble is that to get out of Greenland, the route is to go all the way to the northernmost corner, 1500 miles straight north, and then jump over to Ellesmere Island through a difficult Ice strait, which puts you at the top of the other northernmost Island in the world, and then go 2000 miles straight south before you get to the Thule mainland.
Tough. The Greenland bottleneck is going to be a barrier to a lot of stuff.
In terms of post 17th century introductions - possible. I could see ships cats getting out in Hudson Bay. Also possible rats showing up.
How well cats would compete with the indigenous verminators? Open question. Would they have unappealing downsides? Dunno. The Thule might not take it kindly if they start raiding ptarmigans or hare as preferred meals.
Don't get me wrong. Cats are, all else being equal, superlative small animal predators, and thousands of years of cat/human history establishes their credentials.
On the other hand, the Thule landscape is very very extreme, the prey/vermin is very specific, and the rival predators are extremely well adapted to the environment and highly specialized to the prey.
So my read is that they'll more than hold their own. Cats will have their hands full.
On the other hand, the Thule landscape is very very extreme, the prey/vermin is very specific, and the rival predators are extremely well adapted to the environment and highly specialized to the prey.
So my read is that they'll more than hold their own. Cats will have their hands full.
- Status