Yukkuri eating animals

Yukkuris are essentially omnivores. You can often see them eating bugs and worms. Thrown out fish heads are not out of the question either. In some comics there are examples of owner feeding their pet yukkuri meat, and they happily eat it.

But you never see them actually hunt and eat raw larger animals, probably because they normally don't have the means to do so.

But let's imagine a hypothetical situation, where a large stray yukkuri finds a heavily injured stray cat. Cat is still alive, therefore not rotting yet so no "uneasy smell". Even if yukkuri decides to finish it off first to avoid scratches (with stick or something of sorts), it will not start to rot for a while.

Would yukkuri eat the cat in such a situation? Have not seen any examples of similar situation in comics or stories.

pool #463

EasyV said:

pool #463

Well, shit. Not sure how they were able to catch a non-wounded animal or bite through the bone, though.

I suspect they probably would, though chances are they need it dead to begin with, the "uneasy smell" is more something they experience from fellow yu's, not necessarily from other things, after all the bugs they catch and give to their children in the wild are pretty much dead but nobody blinks an eye.

So I suppose that as long as it's dead and recently, they'll try to eat it. Though probably focus on flesh and such and leave the bones, since depending of head cannon it either would be too hard for them or typical "fuck the manjuus" rule would trigger and the bone may somehow end up piercing through the yukkuri before being converted into filling.
Of course the example of the comic being more from one of the early weird incarnations that had a floaty canon, now a days that may not fly...not at least with some gold to platinum badge tier intelligence using tools.

Though there is this to consider, while omnivorous, it is clear yukkuris have a stroooooooooooong preference for easy to eat meals, so chances are they wouldn't bother with things too complex to eat.

JusticeItEasy said:

Though there is this to consider, while omnivorous, it is clear yukkuris have a stroooooooooooong preference for easy to eat meals, so chances are they wouldn't bother with things too complex to eat.

Quite often they don't have much of a choice, though.

EasyDeibu said:

Quite often they don't have much of a choice, though.

Indeed, but we tend to see that yukkuris tend to go down on the "accesible food" ladder, if flowers, wild vegetables, mushrooms, good weed and bugs aren't available, they go to trash bags if they are in the cities, if that isn't available or they are in the wilderness where that isn't available from default, they go for the "untasty" weeds as in just grass.
And this without counting going to farms to attemp raids, but that can happen at any stage, even when they have access to the normal wild food they like.

Hunting actual animals seems to be very rare, even in clans.

My first (and still unposted) yukkuri story featured a clan keeping guinea pigs as livestock (the one Smartass Iku came from).

I also had plenty of aquatic yukkuri fishing... thought that was common to other stories but now that I think about it I don't actually remember any, heh.

kind of a necro, but some yukkuri stories have them eating small animals + being smart enough to build traps. It sort of makes sense for yukkuris to be able to prey on things smaller than them in general, as they're depicted as around basketball-sized or slightly larger in most stories + having the mass of being filled with beanpaste is considerable as well.

if they can eat insects then they can eat anything its just the problem of them actually hunting it or having skills to trap it