So basically, this is a sci-fi fantasy world with intelligent/sapient animals. Not anthros like in Zootopia, just regular animals that can all talk to each other, form societies, and develop science and technology. Obviously, predation is a massive, central issue to this world, being that it was the primary driving force of all animals for most of their history. However, they have now progressed enough technologically where even obligate carnivores like cats can get all their required nutrients without needing to eat other animals, with sufficient help from their biochemistry and chemical manufacturing prowess. Obviously, this does not mean every single species who historically did eat meat stop overnight. Actually, some would argue that the journey toward abolishing predation, a journey marked by revolution, war, and death for both sides, is almost as bloody and violent as predation itself (this is a massive logical fallacy yes, but it is an opinion held by many in-universe and I explore that in my plot).
First, some context: I will be using the terms Carnivore and Herbivore, to refer to the biochemical characteristics of animals. In their universe, those designations, when capitalized as proper nouns, have fairly straight forward definitions: A carnivore is any animal that, without access to science or technology, is incapable of deriving their complete nutritional requirements without eating meat, they cannot subsist on raw plants alone without processing and/or taking synthetic supplements. A cat is a carnivore, so is a dog, so is a ferret, so is a fox, so are humans technically but they disappeared from the planet millions of years ago. By contrast, a herbivore is any animal that can subsist on raw plants alone, like mice, rabbits, horses, and deer. This definition is purely biochemical, as in do you have the enzymes and gut structure to do it, and by design does not take into account things like preference, behaviour, culture/religion, or how practical it would be (if there was only plant that can sustain you and literally nothing else other than meat, it still counts), because, again, they have the technology to allow basically every animal to subsist on plants, comfortably at that, minus it not tasting the same. You’re either one or the other, if you’re not sure, then Carnivore is the catch-all term unless your ability to subsist on raw plants is verifiable. Omnivore isn’t really as a term in this world since pretty much every animal is technically an omnivore, as in they can eat and digest both meat and plants, including nearly every “Herbivore.” Likewise, terms like predator and prey imply behaviour and ecology, not biochemistry, and most animals fell into both categories historically, but with their technology those terms have become so fluid as to be essentially meaningless.
Which brings me to the in-universe opinions that I have come up with, they relate to both predation and interspecies coexistence in general, since those kind of go paw to paw. Note that these are super generalized and are in no particular order.
Carnivores:
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“It’s my right to eat my prey, no matter how much suffering it causes! I don’t care what technologies are available, predation is the natural order of things and should never be challenged! The role of a predator is to dominate and rule their prey. Maybe the prey would suffer less if they just accepted and made peace with their place on the food chain!” (This is called Trophism.)
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“Predation is both barbaric and totally obsolete in our current technological landscape. It is unbecoming of an intelligent, sapient species with complete control over our primitive instincts. Every species is equal, we should all live in peace as comrades and work together to take care of and benefit everyone!” (This is called Unitism.)
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“Look, I’ll concede that we shouldn’t be eating other animals and actively making them suffer. But I just can’t agree to this interspecies cooperation nonsense. My only responsibility to my own species (or taxon, which is a group of related species), no one else. I won’t hunt my prey but I won’t be helping them without benefit to myself either.”
Herbivores
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“Even though I’m low on the food chain, it is still my place. I don’t want to be eaten and will try to avoid it to the best of my ability, but if that’s what it comes to, then so be it.” (Trophism)
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“I don’t want you to eat me, in fact I want to be your friend and ally! I think every species is equal and that your evolutionary history does not define an intelligent animal, and as long as we all commit to being nice to each other, there is no reason every species can’t live in harmony!” (Unitism)
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“Those savages hunted us for generations! I don’t care if they don’t do that anymore, I don’t care how long not a single member of their species has even so much as mildly hurt another animal! Not only do I not want to ally with them, I think it’s the duty of my species or taxon, as the prey, to rise up and destroy my predators! No amount of peacemaking now can undo nature and I’d turn the tables and kill every single one of them if I could!”
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“Hey, it’s nice that you’re not eating prey anymore and all, and though I don’t harbour any active ill will toward you, I still don’t trust you and just want to be left alone with my own species or taxon. You don’t interact with me if you don’t need to and I don’t interact with you if I don’t need to, cool?”
What are your thoughts? Are there any more sides to this issue that you can come up with? And personally, which one would you most agree with if you were in this world?
One I’ve thought about for Carnivores:
- “Predation is obsolete and barbaric, but our reliance on government-produced pharmaceuticals is a bit concerning in the case that a hostile fringe group manages to take power. We need a more openly-producible alternative in case our allied government turns against us and decides to weaponize the supplements we’re given.”
Definitely something to be concerned about and collective and community-based production of critical supplements would certainly be ideal in a Unitist society, like thousands of small worker co-ops producing at regional scales. Some, mainly ones for non-obligate carnivores like dogs and foxes, can be made by individuals with the right chemistry skills and fairly common equipment, though this is not common due to economies of scale and concerns about quality of the final product. But others, namely the ones for obligate carnivores like cats, represent the absolute bleeding edge in biochemistry so while the majority of the supplements are “open source” in that their composition and production workflow are publicly available and technically anyone can make them if they had the means to, they require crazy industrial processes and machinery to make that is inaccessible by pretty much anyone but the government.
In that case, I could see some of them wanting a synthetic protein enriched meat substitute, or possibly vat-grown meat. Although the latter would bring up other ethical questions.
They have all the plant based meat replacements that we have and then some, think Beyond Meat, and they also have something called “synthetic meat” that is essentially a generalized animal tissue with the exact same proteins, fats, vitamins, and other nutrients found in natural meat, but all synthesized artificially and minus the cellular structure. Resembles something like pâté. Though, it’s not that common as it’s difficult to produce, and is only really used by carnivores who due to medical conditions cannot take any nutrient or enzyme supplemts.
Lab grown meat isn’t present at all in places that ban predation, because that is technically still animal tissue and would fall under the legal definition of predation, and would also significantly complicate enforcement of the predation ban as it would be hard to distinguish from “real” meat from live prey, which would also potentially give animals that eat live prey plausible deniability, and they really just want to distance themselves from predation as much as they can. It would also just be really awkward, imagine you’re a cat, your coworker is a mouse, not the best thing for team dynamics if you ate lab grown mouse meat right in front of them.
