I'm very afraid of the fact that not a single bunny has been killed by the lions yet ... I might be wrong, but I'm getting breeding camp vibes.

Better to farm an animal than just slaughter it.

Oh dang i didnt think about that until i read your comment.

Dracula the Impaler, only its not turks but bunnies. and impaling is done by dicks.
sad.

I meant they are going to force the rabbits to breed with each other so that the lions can eat the resulting spawn.

force to breed sounds tricky.
esp considering 95% antro characters are gayyy

I don't think that would fit in with the rest of the story. There's no suggestion of sex of any sort anywhere else. They might keep some alive if they have more than they can eat in one meal.

I had quite the cognitive dissonance there until I realised that "lions" refers to "mountain lions" — hence, of course, the strangeness of pack tactics.

Also, am I the only one getting a restless feeling about the expressions of the pair in the last panel foreground? :)

So it looks the arms race has already begun.

When you're not the smartest thing in the woods.

I get the feeling that they weren't killed quickly.

So others were forging tools, and if some of the comments are accurate, making livestock. Definitely a darker concept when all parties are fully sapient.

Both groups compete…

Both groups evolve, create new tactics and tricks.

Herbivores needed weapons to fend off carnivores.
Carnivores needed ways to get more food, easier, thus traps and tactics.


Over'farming' an area is bad. That is why you either fatten up the food, or ensure enough breeding happens for new population.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh nooo no no no no

POOMS!!! They are so cute and smart! And totally not evil, just trying to survive like everyone else.

...now that I think of it, we haven't seen oren's people use rope

Oh lord have mercy, well I can understand how her deep hatred of predators is now completely justified.

Oh it gets so much worse.

I bet

Care to elaborate?

The pages on Patreon are further along than this. I won't spoil it either, but needless to say it gets darker. Like, "Watership Down" or "The Animals of Farthing Wood" dark.

Not yet. Right now we've justified fear. She's seen them do things she couldn't comprehend. Fear is the logical reaction. To justify hate you need anger. Fear is only the first step. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Hemlock is suffering, but we haven't justified her suffering, yet.

clever cats..

That's very much what I would like to see. I tend to sympathize more with predators, which is hard when pretty much all media makes them out to be evil. While I understand how hard it is to intuitively see a creature that chases down and devours another as worth sympathy, I don't really care for the idea of a fox or a wolf slowly starving to death while the adorable bunnies can eat whatever they find growing outside their burrow.

In a natural environment, carnivores don't really have a choice. They can't just abstain from it when it suits them. They either hunt, or they die. Life is harder for a predator because they have to work harder to get their food. Fight their food. Overpower it and kill their food.

What we see here isn't a natural environment, so I don't doubt we'll see some bizarre alternatives being offered. And I do like how it's been at least hinted that each side in this has positive and negative exemplars. So hopefully some mutual balance will be created. And I personally would like one that doesn't involve all the carnivores becoming vegetarians or insectivores.

Yes, the first paragraph of your response is pretty much what I was saying in the final one of mine. This isn't a natural environment where rabbits and foxes are driven only by instinct. They can think and reason and come up with alternatives beyond their instincts (if they bother to look for them). Unnecessarily drawing out the suffering of your prey (or outright torturing them) when you have the ability to do otherwise is undeniably cruel, even if you think of your prey as inferior.

The artist plainly intends us to judge these characters by human morals. Whether or not that is a fair standard will depend on how "human" these characters are made to be.

As omnivores, human have the option of surviving (mostly) healthily on non-meat items. If that's an option for the predators in this world, then we can say it would be more moral to prioritize non-meat over sentient-meat. That may not always be practical in this world, but the argument could certainly be made (just like cruelty-free vegetarians have a good claim to moral superiority in our universe).

But it may just be that Mountain Lions in this world can't survive eating berries and insects. The biology of certain predator species may make vegetarianism impractical, uncomfortable, or downright deadly. In which case, it would be a noble species indeed that allowed themselves to collectively starve to death just so they didn't have to take the life of another creature (imagine Jainism on steroids), but I'm not sure I would call that moral.

I doubt the artist will make this a zero-sum contest like that, however. As I think someone else said, what we are likely witnessing is the first attempt at an organized, rationalized society among creatures that, so far, have relied only on their instincts and selfish desires to direct their intellect.

Pleased to see her side of the story. Was always bummed to see people speaking against her and I'm like 8U THEIR PAIN, ANGER, AND CONCERN IS JUSTIFIED.

You can just feel the terror they’re going through.

awesome

This is the first indication of any tool use outside the sanctuary at all. These people are below stone age tech, with rare exceptions. When forged weapon tech gets into common use there is going to be a bloodbath.

Oooooo coolies, are we going to see the bunnies geting slaughtered or enslaved and farmed ? =D

whoa...so they're all evolving o.o