Rodent and toad meat with cheese omelet...

[kunox]

I was curious. how do you guys go about making up the diets of other species.I have just used what the actual species that i based them off of eat. the problem with that is i have used deep fried rodents with nuts and seeds. in one.. and rodents in a prison scene... and affirmations rodent and toad meat cheese omelette. so I am starting to see a pattern. I have based the diets off birds and snakes.....lol. is there anything I can do here to spice things up... I don't mean in the kitchen ether... I just got to figure out this so I can not be accused of wanting to eat mice.

[MistWolf]

I asked my cat Belle her opinion and she said there's nothing wrong with wanting to eat mice.

Research what various animals eat and go from there. Rabbits are herbivores. They eat grass, hay, leaves, vegetables & fruit. They need to drink water, especially of their diet is mostly hay. Eating any animal products will make them ill.

Cats are obligate carnivores. They must get their protein from animals. They cannot digest fruits, vegetables or carbohydrates. House cats are descended of desert cats and get water to hydrate their bodies from their food.

Just two examples. It only takes a few minutes poking around the internet to see what type of animals need to eat what. Then, go from there!

So

[Theglasshouse]

Good for humor if it is your intent. But there is a sickness rats can infect humans with- a very lethal disease ( because it is toxic). Some people can die because of the fluids inside the rat's intestine. That is any wasteful fluid that gets secreted ( stepping on it barefooted). Just touching it could lead to death. In the African continent people who eat rats can remove the waste product to make sure they don't die.

To spice it up. Look up the puffer fish in Japan which some people love to eat ( Japanese). I saw it in a movie once.

[Doodah]

Kunox,

If you are writing fiction, then the sky is the limit, write whatever you wish. The real world has many examples of herbavores eating meat to supplement their diets during lean times. If you can find a good narrative to why your characters eat what they do, then experiment with your ideas and see which ones land and which ones fail.

Taking real world examples does provide the reader with familiarity. Challenging the reader on something as trivial as a meal, unless the food is a major plot point in your story, isn't necessarily something you wish to do, especially if the challenge disrupts the flow of the reading.

[Llyralen]

This is what my degrees are in. I didn’t answer you before because it’s fiction and it sounds like the flavor of your book is kind of fun and whimsical? Basically like a tea party but instead of serving coffee cake and cucumber sandwiches you’ve got nice mice pate and snake-tail-spinach omelet bites and it’s like that? Then yeah, do whatever you like! That’s so fun!

For a real world answer that I could supply it has to do with what is available but also with what people learn culturally to eat. For instance, long ago when the ice age was starting to be considered passé in France there were two different Neanderthal groups living fairly close to each other, one was vegetarian/vegan and the biggest part of their diet was mushrooms and fungi, the other group next door ate lots of mammals. In both cases, this was what was available to them in their environment. They were not almost completely marine-mammal and fish based like the circum-polar/far-North coastal American/Siberian coast groups. So the environment is important— what does that world have to offer? What’s in the landscape? If they are a predator versus the prey like cats versus rodents, then that’s going to play a part. Humans adapt well with diet to our environment, being able to cook has helped us and we can be mostly omnivorous—unless our culture kills us. But most animals (including humans) have something that is essential for them to get from their food that their body can’t shuffle something else around to make and this is due to what was available when we evolved for the most part and any thriving human group has figured out a way to get it. For instance, we humans don’t make vitamin C and are dependent on our food for it. Cats need carnitine, which they get from meat as they are very efficient killers. Well, I don’t know if this is what you needed?