5
$\begingroup$

In my world I need to feed a colony of Kobolds. I'm modeling my Kobolds' dietary requirements on humans. My question is whether or not the following foodstuffs would meet the dietary needs of human adults.

  • My world has a thermal fed small geyser (think 'Old Faithful') that heat-feeds a colony of Brown Mold, which in turn feeds a herd of cold-immune miniature (St. Bernard sized) Rothe. For the purposes of this question, assume that Rothe, despite the size I indicated, are dietarily similar to real-world bison.

  • The scalding water runs off into a small lake that sustains extremophile bacterium or Algae which are eaten by blind cave fish that live in the deeper/colder waters, and the humidity helps to grow a mushroom field on the far side of the lake.

  • Rothe migrate away from geyser to feed at the mushroom/fungal fields at regular eruption times (avoid getting parboiled) and provide fertilizer for continual mushroom growth.

Would a diet of Rothe, fish and mushrooms as described provide a wide enough dietary base to avoid common food deficiencies in humans?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
8
  • $\begingroup$ I'd buy the idea, what problems do you see with it? $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Commented Mar 12 at 21:32
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ The only viable answer is yes. Your problem is that no one knows the dietary needs of fictional creatures like Kobolds. In other words, the answer is yes if you want it to and no if you don't. Do you have a reason to believe your choice won't be suitable for your needs? Do you believe the other players/readers/participants will reject your idea or find it foolish? $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Mar 12 at 21:41
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ What's the mineral content of the water? You decide what's deficient or not. Re. vitamins, symbiotic bacteria in their gut can make up for the rest. Presumably they're adapted to find the amino-acid profile present in their diet acceptable. (Maybe add the occasional bit of "they eat the corpses of any creature that dies there" for a bit of extra grist). $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Commented Mar 12 at 21:48
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ OK, I edited your question to improve its presentation. If you don't like what I did, you can roll it back or simply edit it further. (a) I'm no longer focusing on Kobolds. (b) I've used links to help people understand words they might not have encountered before. (c) I re-defined "Rothe" (a fictional creature we know nothing about) as Bison. Change that if you'd prefer (e.g.) cows. How you ask a question is very important on this Stack. Never assume anyone has any idea what you're talking about. Be very clear and specific about your needs and goals. Cheers. +1 $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Mar 12 at 23:34
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ There are many diet tracking tools (including free ones, like Cronometer). If a diet matches real-world food, you could easily type your diet into such a tool and see if there are things missing. Although since you have a fictional universe, you could probably trivially say the things they eat actually just contain the missing nutrients (especially given that you have a mix of plants, meat and fish). If you want to be specific about what contains what, in a realistic way, that may require more work. $\endgroup$
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Mar 13 at 11:27

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
11
$\begingroup$

You are fine there are real world cultures with a less varied diet.

the native mongolians come to mind. Eating the rothe will be enough so long as they eat ALL of it, maybe some milk and cheese. The mushrooms and fish are just bonus. Volcanic geysers will mean little risk of mineral deficiency. The real issue is how many can it support. You would need hundreds of rothe just a to feed a handful and relying on mold means you need huge amounts of mold for each rothe. Also keep in mind humans suffer from a few dietary concerns kobolds should not have worry about, Not being able to make vitamin C is pretty much just an ape thing. Even if they could not eating a lot of organ meat will work as long as it is not cooked. Or you can say the mushrooms are high in vitamin C, there are some mushrooms that is true of.

Note the rothe are not migrating away from the geysers eruptions are very unpredictable and very fast. But geysers usually feed large hotwater pools so the rothe don't need to get within fallout range.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
11
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Are there dietary negatives to geysers? I remember visiting Old Faithful as a child and it seemed you could smell the sulfur from miles away. Would that produce a mineral build-up that would hurt humans? $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Mar 13 at 0:04
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ @JBH teeth, such water is very bad for enamel on teeth. I lived in a hotspring town in Wyoming for a while and enamel-less teeth was very common in adults. Thankfully it took years to manifest. Luckily unlike humans, kobolds can just growing new teeth. Limited numbers of teeth is only a mammal thing. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Mar 13 at 0:08
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ geysers are often found in regions with a lot of volcanic activity. And while soils derivied from volcanic ash can be high in minerals, they can also hav esome quite specific deficiencies. For example, selenium deficiency in the volcanic plateau region of New Zealand. That can also cause deficiency diseases $\endgroup$
    – Penguino
    Commented Mar 13 at 0:28
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Perfect! I figure the OP can use the negatives as well as the positives so he can incorporate solutions for the weaknesses. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Mar 13 at 1:33
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @MichaelW. that's not evolution that eating uncooked organ meat, which is not an easy thing to figure out how to do safely. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Mar 13 at 22:27
2
$\begingroup$

Most likely, you could not 'avoid common food deficiencies in humans' with a diet of meat, fish, amd fungus. Unless the fungus contains vitamin C, you would probably suffer from scurvy. The brown mould is unlikely to have significant quantities of vitamin C, but it is possible that the extremophile algae does. So if you ate the stomach contents of the fish, you $might$ avoid vitamin C deficiency diseases.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
9
  • 7
    $\begingroup$ you can get vitamin C from raw, well acid cooked, organ meat, that's how the Mongols did it. plus some mushrooms can be high in Vitamin C, others are quite lacking so that is up to the OP. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Mar 13 at 0:14
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @john That is a possibility, but it would depend on the animal you ate. Certainly didn't work for sailors, antarctic explorers. If the OP wants to avoid the risk of readers expecting vitamin deficiency, it might be useful for them to spell out why they dont. $\endgroup$
    – Penguino
    Commented Mar 13 at 0:23
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ While he's basing the kobolds off of humans, there are mammals that produce their own vitamin C. Pigs for example do, and cannot get scurvy. In such an environment it wouldn't be surprising to find natural adaptations in the kobold species to have a similar mutation. Also, it's not vitamin C specifically that fights scurvy, but antioxidants. Omega 3 fatty acids also fight scurvy, so eating raw fish would also fight it. $\endgroup$
    – Chthonic One
    Commented Mar 13 at 17:17
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Upon some research, it's not the fish themselves that produce vitamin C or omega-3, but their food supply. Unless the brown mold produces some sort of antioxidant, it seems that this entire population is doomed without some sort of biological mutation somewhere to produce some antioxidants to sustain it. It could be either ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) in mammals, or Omega-3 in the fish, most likely in the form of a krill food supply. $\endgroup$
    – Chthonic One
    Commented Mar 13 at 17:38
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ @Penguino: It worked fine for indigenous populations in arctic areas — there is plenty of vitamin C in most fresh meat, especially but not only organ meat. The problem for early modern sailors and (ant)arctic explorers was that their diet did not generally include fresh meat, but was based on temperate European diets, adapted to their expeditions by fairly crude preservation techniques, which mostly destroyed vitamin C. idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm $\endgroup$
    – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine
    Commented Mar 13 at 18:29

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .