Technological development without fire.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Well "harder" isn't the same as "hard". Meats are so much more easily digested than plants (which tend to keep their nutrients inside cellulose armored cell walls) in the first place that it's probably a negligible difference for anybody with a functional gut. Almost anything that can live on plants can digest raw animal tissue more easily, and humans can live on plants, so....

So much so that many obligate herbivores have been seen to eat carrion in the wild. Hidden night vision cameras are showing just how common this is.

White tailed deer will eat eggs and nestlings whenever found. Some herds of sheep will eat rodents after intentional stomping. One cow loved to eat live chickens.

Of course, the more closely related food is to the eater the more likely it is to harbor dangerous diseases.
I'm really unlikely to catch "late blight" from my mashed potatoes no matter how undercooked.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by DCB

...As evidence, noted that when chimpanzees get access to (raw) meat, they spend a long time chewing it very thoroughly, and even so they pass undigested bits of the meat in their feces...

There's always undigested materials in feces. Poop odor always tells what you ate, unless something's very wrong. Urine too, to a usually lesser degree. Sweat too, but to an even lesser degree.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

There's always undigested materials in feces. Poop odor always tells what you ate, unless something's very wrong. Urine too, to a usually lesser degree. Sweat too, but to an even lesser degree.

Dude, your sense of smell is a curse and a blessing.

[dcarson]

Went out to where my niece kept her horse to see it one time. Had run through a drive thru on the way and sat the unwrapped burger on top of a fence post. The horse ate it while I was talking to my niece.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Dude, your sense of smell is a curse and a blessing.

Diabetes took it out and lacking it is also a curse and blessing. Not always being inside the biochemistry of others when merely within a few feet has helped quite a bit with my social anxiety.
But studies show that most people have far more acute senses of smell than they think. It's often a case of lack of training and automatically giving FAR more attention and focus on vision and hearing.

I just read about an interesting experiement involving blindfolded college students tracking a chocolate oil trail across the ground.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Went out to where my niece kept her horse to see it one time. Had run through a drive thru on the way and sat the unwrapped burger on top of a fence post. The horse ate it while I was talking to my niece.

Smell is a very weird sense. Odor doesn't follow straight/refracted lines like light or complex but predictable waves like sound. It does whatever the heck it wants; lingering/disappearing, swirling in columns/vortices, separating/merging/decaying all willy nilly.

And more evidence that herbivores would eat you if you just stood still long enough and weren't so chewy.

[Flyndaran]

Trips to magical lands of fire.
Magical fire isn't common destructive "evil" fire.
Convince the spirits of materials to let go and flow as if under extreme heat.

[Ashtagon]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

And wouldn't be a divergent tech tree. It would just be TL 2 (TL x in biology). Nobody from our tech would look at their stuff and say "What the heck is that?"

Among gamers, true, since we can imagine pretty much any that exists in the game (by definition). Among non-gamers, that depends on how literate they are. In a TL5 society, they'd probably marvel at crops that can survive roundup.

This could be TL 0 (TL8 in biology). It could just as easily be TL0 (TL0+8 in biology).

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Among gamers, true, since we can imagine pretty much any that exists in the game (by definition). Among non-gamers, that depends on how literate they are. In a TL5 society, they'd probably marvel at crops that can survive roundup.

This could be TL 0 (TL8 in biology). It could just as easily be TL0 (TL0+8 in biology).

I would think TL 5 people would ask, "what the heck is that?" about Roundup, the trademarked insecticide. ;)

But even primitives understand breeding for unique beneficial traits. Sure, it's not transgenic modification. but that's merely boosting effectiveness more than a completely different subject.

Lots of things proven over a century ago, or even longer are marveled at or disbelieved by large chunks of people today. We can't limit ourselves to what realistic setting biased NPCs think.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Among gamers, true, since we can imagine pretty much any that exists in the game (by definition). Among non-gamers, that depends on how literate they are. In a TL5 society, they'd probably marvel at crops that can survive roundup.

This could be TL 0 (TL8 in biology). It could just as easily be TL0 (TL0+8 in biology).

"more advanced" is not "divergent"