Boat Trolls planning thread! (full of spoilers, non-players enter at your own risk)

foxes aren't pack hunters, but partners have sometimes been seen hunting together. foxes are clever enough that whatever the behavior, some of them exhibit it somewhere. i bet the girl would follow bel around for entertainment, then catch on quickly if he started flushing game out for her or something.

 

foxes and coyotes don't have anywhere near a 100% success rate with mice, btw, and that's the guys who are lifelong practitioners of the sport. also, interestingly, red foxes learn to jump along a fixed direction, for some reason.

Červený spent over two years studying wild red foxes in the Czech Republic, with the help of a 23-strong team of wildlife biologists and experienced hunters. The team recorded almost 600 mousing jumps, performed by 84 foxes at a wide variety of locations and times.

They found that foxes strongly prefer to jump in a north-easterly direction, around 20 degrees off from magnetic north. This fixed heading was important for their success as hunters. They were more likely to make a kill if they jumped along their preferred axis, particularly if their prey was hidden by high cover or snow. If they pounced to the north-east, they killed on 73% of their attacks; if they jumped in the opposite direction, they success rate stayed at 60%. In all other directions, only 18% of their pounces were successful.
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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/n...tic-field-as-a-targeting-system/#.V3bMEjkrKqA
http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwic...l-eat-you-anyway-secrets-of-snow-diving-foxes
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/red-foxs-secret-hunting-weapon-revealed


also i think that erskin's portion of human intelligence has led him to be accomplished at a much wider range of hunting and scavenging techniques than any single regular canid would be, and especially more than one wolf would be. even in the years where he's lived as a wordless animal, he'd still be deliberately learning new things by watching non-wolf animals. for instance, learning to hunt mice with a fox's pounce, or learning to cache his big food in trees like a leopard. his capacity for abstract reasoning like math and writing and too much forethought is limited, but he definitely knows how to get a meal in like a hundred different ways.

the ways that bel and pancho would disapprove of are extra fun to play, too. at some point he's gonna get a shot at eating roadkill and he will be REAL MAD if bel wants him to pass it up.

 

what would they even do on a human date, would erskin just bitch about everything the whole way through or would bel buy a bag of popcorn chicken and just feed them to him at strategic intervals

 

i was looking up pictures of wolves with big winter coats and look at this springtime woofer

 

yup!

<-- erskin looks like this right now, in coloration and build and probably general fluffiness level.



since red wolves are southern, they don't get barrel-shaped the way northern wolves would, though erskin might get fluffier than usual since he's pushing steadily north.


<-- this is what erskin probably WANTS to look like, but won't, because he's not a fuck-off huge timberwolf that could eat gaston for lunch. better luck next rp, erskin.

 

i spent awhile on the north dakota fish and wildlife website to see what kind of prey they'd be turning up. they're in the eastern part, a semi-agricultural area, so there'd be badgers, grouse and partridge, some fox and coyote, and plenty of whitetail deer.

 

i think it would be cute if helen notices that bel's still functioning on a human level the night before the full moon and puts him through some intelligence/concentration tests. then like, marks the results down in a private 'hire this guy' notebook.

would bel be like 'but can't everyone do this?' because having him perform alongside erskin would be funny. like, erskin could fail most of the tests, pancho could do as well or a little better than expected, and bel could blow through all of them due to his skill/aptitude for focusing past mental static and tiredness.

i would still expect even a full-moon werewolf in this universe to pass all dog intelligence tests, though. like, put a treat under the cup, see if the dog will push the cup over. put a blanket over the dog, see how fast the dog can get out. put a treat behind a fence, see if the dog knows how to go around the fence. erskin could certainly do all those, probably even concussed. werewolves are still always going to be a bit smarter than regular wolves and dogs.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/05/whos-socially-smarter-dog-or-wolf
http://www.livescience.com/5672-wolves-beat-dogs-logic-test.html

 

imagine the sulking of a roomful of furry mathemagician secret agents who were working on something really cool this month.

imagine the sulking if they were actually getting something done and then an asshole from another department walked in holding a box of warm chicken nuggets, stood there for ten seconds, then walked out again, giggling.