An Interesting Question

Keep our community informed! This forum is for discussing and sharing vore-related information. Post any relevant material and/or links here, and engage in conversations!
Forum rules
This is for general discussion, if you found something you want to post, please use one of the upload forum, if you made something and want to share them, please use the work to be shared forum!

An Interesting Question

Postby shaggyman4921 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 5:58 am

I keep thinking of a scenario and I don't really know why, but the scenario is that vore has been a thing in real life now since the dawn of humanity, as a kind of emergency tactic for getting food. Since a person swallowing another would probably be traumatic for both parties, somehow natural selection has played its role and made humans attracted to being eaten or eating other people. And just like sex, humans now abuse this since we aren't put into types of situations where we need to eat other people to survive. For simplicity let's say that we have also figured out how to make this something that doesn't involve death, so maybe the predator can throw up the person or the prey can climb out. With this whole situation painted, the question that always pops up into my head is that in this world only one sex can be a predator while the other being only prey.

Examples: Predator-Male and Prey-Female or Predator-Female and Prey-Male

Given our biology and what we do, which one would be which? Would women eat men to help with feeding her children while pregnant? Would men eat the women to stay alive longer and try to help the family overall? Does it have to do anything with Men being larger overall or how Women already have parts of men going inside then for reproduction or how they already grow humans inside them?

I don't expect there to be a correct answer, because this is a made up scenario and it would probably be impossible to tell which one would be which, so tell me which one you think would be which and why.
User avatar
shaggyman4921
New to the forum
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2018 10:35 pm

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby PatricksPrivate7 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 6:06 am

I think, if there was only one role, it would be females for the reason you mentioned, child rearing. Give them all the extra energy to bring new life into the world.

However, if it was real I wouldn't mind either way really.
User avatar
PatricksPrivate7
Been posting for a bit
 
Posts: 30
Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 7:31 pm

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby coop500 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 7:57 am

Oh not this topic again... females will always win because it's going to be the more popular choice.
Writer of wholesome fandom M/F vore.
Current character focus: Chris Redfield!
User avatar
coop500
???
 
Posts: 2834
Joined: Thu Jun 27, 2013 12:21 am

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby IvesBentonEaton » Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:33 am

I don't think asking questions like this is all that useful, since it only deals with a tiny fraction of the problems it raises, not the least of which is that, without considerable magic or technology indistinguishable from it, one human being isn't ever going to swallow another whole. That's why vore is fantasy, and most of us are happy to keep it that way. The physical, biochemical, dietary, and even entropical problems with this scenario far outweigh the "'oo eats 'oo" question.
Come and hear the Tales of a Visceral Voyager
If you don’t, Zōēā’s poor snake will go hungry.
You wouldn’t want that, would you? :(
User avatar
IvesBentonEaton
Intermediate Vorarephile
 
Posts: 457
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2017 9:26 pm
Location: The world of Āen. My world—and welcome to it…

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby EnderDracolich » Wed Sep 12, 2018 12:15 pm

shaggyman4921 wrote:Given our biology and what we do, which one would be which?

I don't expect there to be a correct answer, because this is a made up scenario and it would probably be impossible to tell which one would be which, so tell me which one you think would be which and why.


Oh, it would be very possible to tell which one was which. If you are talking about realism, that is! Different people have different fetishes, of course, but as a though experiment? The predator would have to be female. The differential reproductive value of males and females in mammals cannot be understated. A single female is dozens of times more reproductivel important to the group than a single male. If a species even remotely similar to humans had sexual cannibalism where the male eats the female, it would go extinct within a generation or two.

That's not to say that you can't fantasize about such a species, but you need magic or something else to make it plausible, or to seriously suspend your disbelief. Natual selection simply wouldn't create a species where the child-bearing sex was frequently killed by the disposable, child-siring sex. One man and 20 women can repopulate a village, one woman and 20 men cannot.
User avatar
EnderDracolich
Advanced Vorarephile
 
Posts: 665
Joined: Sun Aug 20, 2017 8:58 pm
Location: Nagaloka

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby EnderDracolich » Wed Sep 12, 2018 12:17 pm

coop500 wrote:Oh not this topic again... females will always win because it's going to be the more popular choice.


Hey, that's reductive. You shouldn't assume that people pick things because it's what they like. We aren't all dumb and simple minded, you know. There's actual logic involved in answering this question, and even if that logic doesn't result in the answer you prefer, that doesn't render it less logical.
User avatar
EnderDracolich
Advanced Vorarephile
 
Posts: 665
Joined: Sun Aug 20, 2017 8:58 pm
Location: Nagaloka

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby EnderDracolich » Wed Sep 12, 2018 12:30 pm

IvesBentonEaton wrote:I don't think asking questions like this is all that useful, since it only deals with a tiny fraction of the problems it raises, not the least of which is that, without considerable magic or technology indistinguishable from it, one human being isn't ever going to swallow another whole. That's why vore is fantasy, and most of us are happy to keep it that way. The physical, biochemical, dietary, and even entropical problems with this scenario far outweigh the "'oo eats 'oo" question.


Humans could never eat other humans whole, but there are some species where the sexual metamorphism could allow for that. It's not "physical, biochemical, dietary, and even entropically" problematic. Look at anglerfish, and how different the males and females are within that species; they could *easily* swallow the males if they wanted.

They don't do so because they have an odd reproductive strategy, that prevents them from doing so for obvious reasons (seeing how they can only get pregnant if the males latch onto them like blood sucking parasites). However, if they practiced more conventional sexual reproduction, sexual cannibalism would be an option for them; it wouldn't have to be, most species don't do sexual cannibalism, but it is a real thing, not some fantastical impossibility like you make it out to be.

Take these two axioms, and you get a logical conclusion;

A) In some species, females are larger than males by an order of magnitude or more.

B) In some species, females eat males after mating, because they've served their reproductive purpose, and it's more beneficial for the species if they serve as food for the soon-to-be-gestating next generation.

Now, there is no species where females eat males *whole* but that's simply because A is so rare in nature. High levels of sexual dimorphism take strong selective pressures and lots of mutations to produce. However, there is no "physical, biochemical, dietary, or entropical" reason why a species where both A and B were true could not exist under the right ecological conditions. In such a species, the male would likely be eaten whole, by simple virtue of the fact that huge things tend to eat much smaller things whole. Would such a species resemble humans? Not closely, but it could still have some of the same basic characteristics, such as a opposable digits, a complex brain, high mobility, and suitable biology for a diverse range of climates.

If such a species did exist; one where the fundamental prerequisites of sapience where present, and where extreme sexual dimorphism and sexual cannibalism were also present, then a social structure and culture could emerge much like the OP suggests.

Humans aren't going to magically start eating each other, but as a though experiment about an alternative evolutionary pathway for another sapient species, which might closely resemble humans in regards to their behavior and intellect, it seems totally plausible to me. Life is incredibly diverse, and stranger species have existed, do exist, and will someday exist, than the one I've described above.
User avatar
EnderDracolich
Advanced Vorarephile
 
Posts: 665
Joined: Sun Aug 20, 2017 8:58 pm
Location: Nagaloka

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby coop500 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 12:30 pm

EnderDracolich wrote:
coop500 wrote:Oh not this topic again... females will always win because it's going to be the more popular choice.


Hey, that's reductive. You shouldn't assume that people pick things because it's what they like. We aren't all dumb and simple minded, you know. There's actual logic involved in answering this question, and even if that logic doesn't result in the answer you prefer, that doesn't render it less logical.


We had a thread very much like this one a year ago, it resulted in a lot of rude answers from all sides, people can't help but sell their preferences as better than someone else's, it's human nature, crappy human nature but it is what it is. I seen it happen and nothing is going to change in a mere year.

Vore and Logic shouldn't even be in the same sentence anyway, bringing logic into this is still going to just be used to belittle the 'less realistic' side as people can't help themselves.
Writer of wholesome fandom M/F vore.
Current character focus: Chris Redfield!
User avatar
coop500
???
 
Posts: 2834
Joined: Thu Jun 27, 2013 12:21 am

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby Jayezox » Wed Sep 12, 2018 2:00 pm

There is a natural reason men see combat in war or otherwise more than women. Women were more valued than men in the ancient world to keep a tribe's numbers up. In a primal survival of the fittest scenario it would start with female predators. The only way I can think of this being logical is if cannibalism was only temporary and periodic like a particularly harsh drought every 10 years or something that would cause famine. Obviously a species cannot survive completely off of itself and needs another food source.

If a tribe were to start that way and advance to no longer need to cannibalize female predators would be the norm. I could be called biased because of my preferences, but I am basing my theory off of what I know about how civilizations came to be. There could be a plethora of reasons it would swing toward one gender or another, but valuing women over men will keep a tribe's population higher and female predators would do just that.
User avatar
Jayezox
---
 
Posts: 1371
Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2015 11:08 pm
Location: United States

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby Ghrelin » Wed Sep 12, 2018 2:21 pm

while i vastly prefer female prey myself, if we're going purely on a "realistic" biological basis here, i agree that females being the predators is the only thing that would make sense (assuming we suspend disbelief to get to that point, and are forced to choose only one gender to have that ability, yadda yadda). because in nature, and also reflected within society as a result, males are more "disposable" for reasons EnderDracolich already explained, so i get to be lazy and just go "yep".

wouldn't want to live in a world like that, but i see no harm in answering the question for the sake of discussion. i do at least think the concept of humans evolving in some way to be cannibalistic is pretty neat, though i'd have gone a different direction and had gender be irrelevant, just making predators rarer instead. but that's not the point of the question. *shrug* :silly:
User avatar
Ghrelin
Intermediate Vorarephile
 
Posts: 522
Joined: Fri Dec 25, 2015 6:56 pm

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby EnderDracolich » Wed Sep 12, 2018 4:00 pm

coop500 wrote:Vore and Logic shouldn't even be in the same sentence anyway, bringing logic into this is still going to just be used to belittle the 'less realistic' side as people can't help themselves.


I happen to fall on the far side of realism myself. I'm not trying to belittle anyone!

However, I do think there is a place for thought experiments like this here on Ekas. Where *else* are Voreraphiles going to have debates and discussion about hypothetical, logic based scenarios? You have to remember that we are outcasts pretty much everywhere else on the web; if we can't discuss it here, we can't discuss it anywhere.

I think that "could a species of sapient, civilized beings evolve in such a way that one sex consumes the other whole? If so, which sex would it be?" is an interesting question to answer. It doesn't imply that the answer one reaches is "better" or any such thing, and the answer doesn't have to align with one's sexual preferences in vore. It's merely a hypothetical though experiment that allows you to think about various elements of what we consider Vore, and how those elements can make sense and be internally logically consistent in a fictionalized scenario.

Quite frankly, such experiments can help writers and roleplayers who want to create immersive, believable settings. Even if you want to write about a story with *male* predators, it's still a useful discussion because it can help you understand some of the logical problems that might pose, so you can better *subvert* them and write around them in your story.

Nobody HAS to comply with real world logic or reasoning. It's something that some people enjoy doing, however, and I don't see how it's harmful to those who prefer to opt out of such discussions for others to carry on with them.
User avatar
EnderDracolich
Advanced Vorarephile
 
Posts: 665
Joined: Sun Aug 20, 2017 8:58 pm
Location: Nagaloka

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby coop500 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 4:17 pm

EnderDracolich wrote:
coop500 wrote:Vore and Logic shouldn't even be in the same sentence anyway, bringing logic into this is still going to just be used to belittle the 'less realistic' side as people can't help themselves.


I happen to fall on the far side of realism myself. I'm not trying to belittle anyone!

However, I do think there is a place for thought experiments like this here on Ekas. Where *else* are Voreraphiles going to have debates and discussion about hypothetical, logic based scenarios? You have to remember that we are outcasts pretty much everywhere else on the web; if we can't discuss it here, we can't discuss it anywhere.

I think that "could a species of sapient, civilized beings evolve in such a way that one sex consumes the other whole? If so, which sex would it be?" is an interesting question to answer. It doesn't imply that the answer one reaches is "better" or any such thing, and the answer doesn't have to align with one's sexual preferences in vore. It's merely a hypothetical though experiment that allows you to think about various elements of what we consider Vore, and how those elements can make sense and be internally logically consistent in a fictionalized scenario.

Quite frankly, such experiments can help writers and roleplayers who want to create immersive, believable settings. Even if you want to write about a story with *male* predators, it's still a useful discussion because it can help you understand some of the logical problems that might pose, so you can better *subvert* them and write around them in your story.

Nobody HAS to comply with real world logic or reasoning. It's something that some people enjoy doing, however, and I don't see how it's harmful to those who prefer to opt out of such discussions for others to carry on with them.


In a perfect world that may be true and I wouldn't be upset if this was the first time this question came up, problem is this is actually a fairly common question and the result is the same. Female pred fans get to see that their prefs make more sense, male pred fans are screwed, get pissy, turn rude and nasty about their protests.

However like I said, in a perfect world people may use it as a educational moment, problem is this isn't a perfect world. The OP already answered the question within the post and everyone with any understanding of how nature works will know the 'correct' answer. Some of these responses even look familiar word use wise/copy pasted from previous threads.
Writer of wholesome fandom M/F vore.
Current character focus: Chris Redfield!
User avatar
coop500
???
 
Posts: 2834
Joined: Thu Jun 27, 2013 12:21 am

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby coop500 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 4:25 pm

Erastus wrote:while i vastly prefer female prey myself, if we're going purely on a "realistic" biological basis here, i agree that females being the predators is the only thing that would make sense (assuming we suspend disbelief to get to that point, and are forced to choose only one gender to have that ability, yadda yadda). because in nature, and also reflected within society as a result, males are more "disposable" for reasons EnderDracolich already explained, so i get to be lazy and just go "yep".

wouldn't want to live in a world like that, but i see no harm in answering the question for the sake of discussion. i do at least think the concept of humans evolving in some way to be cannibalistic is pretty neat, though i'd have gone a different direction and had gender be irrelevant, just making predators rarer instead. but that's not the point of the question. *shrug* :silly:


This post is a perfect example, although I know Erastus means no harm, if you don't agree with the 'realistic' choice then everyone WILL belittle you and tear apart any other answer you give to this question, especially if it's in favor of male predators.
Writer of wholesome fandom M/F vore.
Current character focus: Chris Redfield!
User avatar
coop500
???
 
Posts: 2834
Joined: Thu Jun 27, 2013 12:21 am

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby Eka » Wed Sep 12, 2018 7:43 pm

coop500 wrote:In a perfect world that may be true and I wouldn't be upset if this was the first time this question came up, problem is this is actually a fairly common question and the result is the same. Female pred fans get to see that their prefs make more sense, male pred fans are screwed, get pissy, turn rude and nasty about their protests.


Just because "Female pred fans get to see that their prefs make more sense" doesn't mean "male pred fans are screwed, get pissy, turn rude and nasty about their protests". This isn't about preference verse preference.

Long as we don't treat it as a popularity contest and measure anything based on popularity, I think we will be fine!

However like I said, in a perfect world people may use it as a educational moment, problem is this isn't a perfect world. The OP already answered the question within the post and everyone with any understanding of how nature works will know the 'correct' answer. Some of these responses even look familiar word use wise/copy pasted from previous threads.


I don't think this is meant to be an educational moment at all. It just some folks exploring their fantasy. So what if it is not educational, really?
User avatar
Eka
Administrator
 
Posts: 4492
Joined: Fri May 13, 2005 10:59 pm
Location: Canada

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby Sydney » Thu Sep 13, 2018 12:09 pm

The thing to remember here is that evolution does not necessarily do "what makes the most sense" to a human mind. It just goes with whatever accident happens to work at the time and place in which it occurred. A lot of people here are acting like it's an open and shut case on the basis that females are the ones that gestate offspring, but that's operating under the potentially erroneous assumption that you WANT a lot more offspring in the first place, (it all depends on the ecological niche that organism fills and how many offspring the environment can even support and with just about any predator species, the answer is often "not many") and frankly, that's not entirely relevant anyway considering how many species die in childbirth yet still manage to exist.

For example: Let's look at the giant panda. It survives on nutrient-poor food that it can't digest well and so it needs a ton of it to survive. Pandas have 1-2 cubs and if there's a second, the mother usually lets it die. Why? She can't meet the nutritional needs of two cubs. She's already starving herself in a cave, living off fat reserves just to protect the one. The point is: their survival strategy isn't efficient and wouldn't make any sense to a hypothetical designer, but it works because of the panda's environment (adapting to an easy-to-obtain and abundant food source even though they're bears and their digestive systems weren't well adapted to it). If pandas reproduced more or had more offspring at a time, there may no longer be enough food to support the entire population because they need to eat so much of it. They evolved to do things in a very specific and, in some ways inefficient way, and they were fine until mankind came along and began ravaging their environment and actively killing them.

Now there are also plenty of animals out there that frequently, or in some cases always, die in childbirth, including humans in the former category. From BBC Earth: "The World Health Organization estimates that about 830 women die every day because of complications during pregnancy and childbirth – and that statistic is actually a 44% reduction on the 1990 level." (Source: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161221 ... -dangerous ) It's only recently and only in developed countries that women do any better and yet we're still overpopulated as all hell. Then there are animals like the giant octopus which lay their eggs and guard them until they hatch, thus starving to death in the process. There are also a handful of species of animals that go a step further and eat their mothers as they're born ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriphagy ). My point is that despite these practices, the species survive just fine and their populations aren't threatened by guaranteed maternal death upon mating.

So given such precedent in nature, I don't see why it's implausible to have a species in which the males evolve to be cannibalistic. There are multiple ways it could go down:

In a hypothetical species we'll call "alpha," the males eat each other during mating season. Why? To ensure that there are more females for them to breed with, of course! Less competition means more females can carry one supremely powerful individual's genes to ensure a stronger next generation than what the weaker males currently resting in the king's belly could create. They're basically just a vore themed version of other animals that actively try to kill off their mating competition, like Dawson's bees for example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_ne ... 354788.stm

In another hypothetical species we'll call "beta," the males eat the females after they give birth. The female is weak and her body is irreparably damaged from gestation and birth and the male is hungry from guarding her nest at all times. Once she has completed her job and given birth, he devours her to regain his strength and, fully rejuvenated, he goes out to hunt to bring back food for his newly born offspring who are tiny and well-camouflaged enough to survive while he's away. There are, afterall, numerous precedents in the animal kingdom for the male doing the child-rearing as is the case with seahorses, certain penguins, and, in an especially vore-tinged example, paternal mouthbrooding fish like arowana and some cichlids.

Species "gamma" is similar to mouthbrooders, but is more extreme. Like species beta, gestation is very taxing for gammas and their environment doesn't provide them with a lot of food. The male hunts and builds up his fat reserves while the females gestate their young. Before a female can give birth, the male swallows her whole. She provides him with one last meal before his long fast. As her body breaks down and feeds him, the offspring survive in his stomach due to their as of yet, still malleable skeletal structure and a thick coating a mucus they secrete to protect themselves from their father's digestive juices. From here on, the male will not eat for months lest he risk harming his children and for his efforts, they are protected from any would-be predators or nest invaders by having the father serve as a mobile fortress of sorts until the children are mature enough. At such a time, he will regurgitate them and leave them to fend for themselves.


My point with all of these examples isn't to try and disprove what anyone else said about the possibilities of females adapting to be predators in this scenario. That's plausible too. I'm only here to provide a counterargument against those who say "This is the only way it makes sense," because that just isn't true. Nature doesn't care what you think is the best way to do things. Evolution is random and sometimes borderline nonsensical. Any solution to the problems of life doesn't need to be brilliant or ideal, it only has to work just well enough to ensure a continuous population.
User avatar
Sydney
Somewhat familiar
 
Posts: 118
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2012 1:15 pm

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby Speedyblupi » Thu Sep 13, 2018 5:41 pm

Sydney wrote:Now there are also plenty of animals out there that frequently, or in some cases always, die in childbirth, including humans in the former category. From BBC Earth: "The World Health Organization estimates that about 830 women die every day because of complications during pregnancy and childbirth – and that statistic is actually a 44% reduction on the 1990 level." (Source: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161221 ... -dangerous ) It's only recently and only in developed countries that women do any better and yet we're still overpopulated as all hell.


I'm actually very surprised that it's not higher than that. That's barely 1 in 500 births. I wouldn't describe that as "frequently", though I guess it depends which species you compare it to.
Speedyblupi
Participator
 
Posts: 253
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2015 7:45 am

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby IvesBentonEaton » Thu Sep 13, 2018 6:28 pm

I wasn't all that long ago in human history that one in eight women could expect to have her cause of death stem from complications of childbirth. Any improvement is welcome.
Come and hear the Tales of a Visceral Voyager
If you don’t, Zōēā’s poor snake will go hungry.
You wouldn’t want that, would you? :(
User avatar
IvesBentonEaton
Intermediate Vorarephile
 
Posts: 457
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2017 9:26 pm
Location: The world of Āen. My world—and welcome to it…

Re: An Interesting Question

Postby Cobbly » Fri Sep 14, 2018 5:17 pm

In the wild, cannibalism can happen for a few ways. If one gender eats the other, it's usually the females eating the males.
User avatar
Cobbly
Somewhat familiar
 
Posts: 91
Joined: Wed Jun 01, 2016 2:28 pm


Return to General Vore Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bowyer2, Dage, gogopopo, MadEnough, Magtar