Worldbuilding 101: Animals and human interaction
Animals are fun! There are are so many different ones! Big docile one, medium skittish ones, medium aggressive ones, medium docile, small skittish, small docile, small confused, the list is endless in behaviors and sizes! As much as we worldbuilders (conworlders), which includes us writers, love to imagine various animals and how they behave, their behaviors and position in life are not entirely independent. Small things are not always afraid, big things are not always brave. So I am making this to give guidelines on general behavior for animals and where they are in life. And how they interact with humans like us (or any substitution for it, but I will use human throughout this post).
First off, for creatures that are meant to be eldritch, monstrous and in general go against our expectations in order to increase the fear factor of the humans and such, none of the things I say will be valid for your creature. This is because what I am going to say will put creatures more into the understandable category which reduces their fear factor which is contrary to your desired goal. With that I will also say that if what is said here goes contrary to design goals you have, it is perfectly fine to break them! Story and sense of the world is more important than absolute adherence to how natural things are, but as the saying goes, “Before you break the rules, know the rules". I’ll be running down a list of general traits and explain why they are that way and how it translates to their interaction with humans. I will not go into how domesticated animals behave after the domestication, that will be for another blog post.
To define the terms (loosely).
By “Docile” I mean the creature in question is unwilling in general to attack unless provoked and generally ignores you.
By “Aggressive”, I mean they will attack you unprovoked in hopes of food (in general)
By “Skittish”, I mean that if they detect you, they quickly react and generally run away.
Sufficiently similar to us
By sufficiently similar I mean we are within the same branch of evolution. Think like vertebrates that humans are part of and how vertebrates move and behave in general. There are a lot of similarities and things we can predict from one another despite being very distant in our branches.
Big docile herbivores
These beings are big, humongously huge things that towers above a person, think elephant or bigger. They are generally slow and wanders the lands undeterred by anything. Why, one might ask? Because of their huge size. When you are that big and muscular there is generally nothing that can harm you and thus nigh everything leave them be. They have therefore no desire or need to be aggressive toward anything as they generally perceive them as not a threat, and on top of it acting aggressive will invite other creatures to harm them which no living thing wants. That is what makes them what we perceive as “Docile”. But oh boy! Do not let their seeming docile nature fool you! If these beasts are familiar with humans, a species that hunts in packs and use magical sticks that fly through the air and hurts like balls, then they will turn aggressive toward humans! Or very skittish and start running away! It is usually one or the other. The moment they get used to our mannerisms, their behavior will change quickly to either avoid us or attack so hard that we cannot hope to attack their herd enough to be viable. So think about this relationship, what are they used too?
Medium Docile
These are in many ways quite dangerous. You might ask, why? Well, if they are “medium”, they are at large dog size or antelope sized. If they are capable to be docile and walk around without a care. Think about it. If you see something about your size or even slightly smaller walking around without a seeming care in the world. What is there? Something, something is up there. Are they venomous? Poisonous? You do not know. But the behavior is eery and signals there is something more to things than you see at face value. If a creature that is unknown to you about your size or slightly less, and seems to not care about your presence, be very aware as there is more to what is showing. These however can prove quite useful to domesticate if you are willing to take a risk! As long as they are not too skittish.
Medium Aggressive
This is where most predators in our modern world will be, (we are ignoring pre-avian dinosaurs as the scales were different back then but the general sentiment applies). They are tiger sized, human sized on four legs or slightly bigger. They are aggressive, hunt, and want meat. Nothing too unusual there in terms of biology but here is the thing that can differ a lot. How used are they to humans? In the old world (Afroeurasia), everything in this category has one thing in common (with one exception). When they see humans, it is a giant “NOPE!” and they run off. They do not want to deal with us. I have heard so many say “Oh but humans are so weak!”, yes, yes we are, but you know what else we are? Not alone. When one human is attacked the rest quickly comes. So an attack on us means the rest of the entire group starts getting up and in arms. Spears, Rocks, other throwy things! TO ARMS! To animals that cannot throw, this is like pure magic. How can they make things fly through the air like that? Pure magic to them! That is why throwing things scares the shit out of them. Our abilities scare them.
So you can broadly divide it into two categories, those that are used to us and just “Nope” the fuck out of the place the moment they see us, and the others that do not and learn the problems that come dealing with humans. It takes a great deal of effort to deal with humans. We are not a friendly creature and those familiar know we are not something to deal with. Easier prey exists. And most importantly, all intelligent predators (which most are, mind you), learn through evolution and more that humans easily hold a grudge and thus killing one will bring the rest to kill your entire pack, and that is why those familiar just wanna stay away beyond pure desperation (at which point nothing matters anymore).
In short, they stay the fuck away if they know us, but may attack when we are alone if desperate, and if they are unfamiliar with us they will attack even if we are smaller groups (generally to their detriment).
Keep in mind when I speak “know us”, I mean we have had contact for at least 10 thousand years or beyond, give or take.
Medium and skittish, usually herbivores
We have all seen these: antelope, zebras, reindeer, deer, and more. They are, generally speaking, herbivores and are the prey of one thing or many things. They are constantly on the look out because they can easily, when alone, be taken out. This is why many of them tend to live and breed in herds. It makes an individual hard to stand out, and once one notices a threat, everyone panics and runs off like mad men from the mad clan McMad. There are however species that are more solitary that are still skittish, but it only makes them more skittish. They generally view humans, and anything not them, as inherently dangerous no matter what, so approaching us is out of the question for them and if we approach, they run like mad. These creatures however may be domesticatable and tameable as long as they cannot jump too high, since tall fences are difficult to build for early people. It is hard work and is one reason why many such species have been left alone. But a lot of former Medium skittish herbivores have been domesticated by us because we could.
Small and aggressive
These are exceedingly rare, primarily because toward a bigger foe, being aggressive is never good as a quick stomp and you’re dead. That is unless you have a lot, and I mean, a lot, of backup. Think like army ants. They are hyper aggressive and will not stop for anything. If you are that many, that replaceable, your aggressiveness will not be an issue as anything you do will be amplified by your comrades soon approaching. This however generally makes them entirely impossible to interact with humans. They are generally single minded and their deaths will mean little to nothing. A hundred dead, a thousand dead, means nothing as the food you provide by being dead will feed enough to compensate for it. This is why army ants are said to have a “100% success rate at hunting”: they sacrifice loads of individuals for the collective and that is what is required for a small or tiny creature to be willing to be aggressive. Keep in mind “Defending the nest” does not constitute as aggressive.
Small and skittish
This is a lot of small creatures; they know that they are easy prey and a lot of bigger things easily want to eat them. So regardless of how familiar they are to us , they will run away at the slightest hint at having been seen as they are then easy prey. There are some animals that are small to smallish that have been domesticated however. Rats as pets are an example. They are however semi-domesticated in general only. Rabbits are another and any owner of them can tell that it doesn’t necessarily take much for them to suddenly attack if you do not know what they consider threatening. They can however learn that the big creature (humans) is generally friendly, but their baseline instincts take a long time to get rid off, and they are, like all life, a product of their evolution. The skittishness and fear is hard to be rid of.
Small and docile
These generally do not exist because when you are small, you are instantly edible by everything else. Though exceptions do exist of creatures that are small and docile, who do not mind being handled and much else, it is because they generally contain poison or venom that makes them unappealing to eat or harm. So they instinctually know that if you try to harm them or eat them, you are the bigger loser.
Tiny
I am lumping everything tiny into a singular category here, think like insects compared to us. They all follow the small category but are generally amplified tens to a thousand times in all behaviours.
We are utterly alien to them.
This is a big category and in some ways, you could easily call arthropods (spiders, scorpions, insects etc, all with exoskeletons) into this category and yes, you are true. They are in many ways utterly alien to us in how they move and behave and similarly we are to them. But the reason I chose to exclude them here is because, look out. What do you see? Spiders? Insects? Centipedes? You see all kinds of those arthropods constantly and they see us, we are strange and alien in our structures to one another, but we constantly encounter each other. That reduces the alienness to each other. This is important through evolution and general interaction, since we have become quite accustomed to one another and thus the alienness is heavily reduced. They learn through evolution and experience what to expect and so do we of them, even if it freaks us out. Something something reduced xenophobia?
But what about something that never really experiences us? Never has had to deal with us or it is so rare that evolutionary, it is meaningless? Imagine yourself: you see a thing, it is the size of your fist. It has legs, you can see some eyes, it isn’t where you want them to be. It has legs, you think at least they are legs? But you have no clue how they will bend or react. Can it smell? Can it hear? Can it sense vibration? What if it senses the electricity of your nervous system? It is unlike anything you have ever experienced. You are curious of course! Who wouldn’t be! But you are also a bit scared. You cannot tell what it can do. What if its limbs suddenly move and it leaps off the rock you found it on onto your face and from the mouth on its belly, you think it is a mouth? and its belly?, it spews out acid that starts dissolving your face! Or maybe it doesn’t do that. You do not know! It might pose such a great threat despite its tiny size, but you have no clue because you have never once in your life seen it! Our evolved brains have no concept of what to expect from it, so our learned behaviour has none either. The thing on the rock is a huge box of unknown.
This is why a lot of deep sea creatures, especially octopi and squids, even if they encounter humans, generally ignore us as creatures. To them, we are this box of unknown. They do not know what we can do, maybe we are poisonous, maybe we are venomous. Maybe we have things they cannot see, they do not know! It is therefore better to leave us alone and look for things that are known.
This is why things avoid what they do not know, why we seek out what is known. Curiosity might make us prod, but when it is life or death, unknown is always death. They know it, we know it, this is an evolved trait since long ago that all life shares, and this is also why ignoring all rules I have given makes for great, terrifying creatures.
The one unifying fear of all life, is the fear of the unknown.
Summa Summarum
These are just general tendencies for sizes and behaviours to consider. I will go into greater details in the future, so take it all with a grain of salt! But always remember
In the unknown, horrors are waiting for you
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