It's short series of illustration about yukkuri when winter is coming.
Reimu's hair is getting thicker and body become fatter in order to warm her children. This part is still similar with animals.
Then the weaker child is naturally selected out by the siblings (can't fit everyone)
Last is a reminder that in this season there are also parents who switched their child to another family, like Alice, to ensure their own child's survival.
Considering this is an abyuse oriented artist, either Alice is going to use it as a flog toy and refresh it to death or use it as distraction bait for predator types.
Do any fanons even deal with how predators manage their way though hibernation season? Predators can't pack on enough excess weight to sleep an entire season off. They can't keep livestock that would last. Hunting would be difficult with snow and natural winter camouflage (barge into the wrong hole and get eaten by a bear or something else). They don't have the mobility needed to migrate to warmer climates.
how does stealing the ko help the alice? Can't help but think she has other plans for it.
I would assume Alice is just taking the koReimu away before the mother notices the swap. A screaming/crying ko could bring her out of whatever sleep/hibernation she's in, and to let her child survive Alice has to leave with the evidence of the swap.
I feel that yukkuri would just hibernate, similar to bears. That even if they reach a very low temperature (even freezing), as long as the core remains in tact (not-broken), when winter leaves and they thaw, they would be fine.
I feel that yukkuri would just hibernate, similar to bears. That even if they reach a very low temperature (even freezing), as long as the core remains in tact (not-broken), when winter leaves and they thaw, they would be fine.
I forget who wrote the comic, but there's one that says yukkuri have three choices, basically. Hibernate and hope to wake up in spring when it warms up, gather a food hoard and stay indoors, or try to move to a warmer area. Generally they're all dangerous for them, because most aren't smart enough to do any of them right.
Do you have a link? In most stories I've read, yus need both to hibernate and to have a stockpile of food. I haven't read a hibernation story without it.
True hibernation would ensure higher survival. Yukkuri who are bad at gathering food and insulating their house get frozen relatively fast by the winter cold. They sleep, freeze and then wake up in the spring without remembering much details. They might even think that the leftover food is because they gathered enough last autumn, prolonging the myth about stockpiling food allowing survival through winter. IINM, it also have something to do with the uneasyness increasing their internal sugar concentration that helps them survive.
In the other hand, yukkuri who are good at stockpiling food can spend the winter awake, rationing their food. But like during isolation experiment for human extended space flight (such as mission to Mars), prolonged isolation with limited number of individual, brings up stress and conflict. Moreso in an environment where you got nothing to do as distraction such as yukkuri's winter burrow. They would need to eat more to relieve the stress and deplete their food faster and might die from piling up stress or worse, conflict.
The theory need polishing though. Maybe, yukkuri who have their winter hard from the beginning actually pile up smaller stress. While those who thought they will surely survive will have more stress as they see their hope crushed. Also, maybe those who freeze slowly from the early winter have better survival rate than those who freeze after running out of food in the peak of winter.
Going to hibernation is scary for yukkuri. It's like allowing yourself to die so it would have been unthinkable for yukkuri. Moreover, their culture (if you can say so) is scavenger, gatherer. Most of the time in the year, ability to gather as much food as they can is a key for survival and proof of someone's worth. Rationing skill are not as developed. They would then connect stockpiling food with survival.
Hibernation via full freeze just might be crazy enough to work. Though, any food stockpile would be fertilizer by the time they thaw out due to exposure.
True hibernation would require large fat storage they don't have. A semi-hibernation where they remain asleep until they need to feed or in a semi-daze due to the temperature drop might work. It wouldn't make sense for them to be fully alert all day unless there was an issue present (food ran out, mold, waste pit filled up too soon, so on). It would also generate too much noise in the winter.
None of this still really answers how wild predator types would handle the winter. If they somehow could brave the cold, their usual hunting grounds would be barren. Unless they could track down hibernation holes consistently, they would starve off relatively easily. They would need exceptional hearing to pick up the chatter of a failed hibernation.
I always thought of yukkuri "hibernation" as basically them sleeping through as much of the winter as possible. They still need to eat (and excrete), so they need to stockpile food. Predators do the same thing as everyone else, since they're just as vulnerable to the cold and there's no prey to hunt anyway.
Unless they're Lettys, in which case they spend the winter digging up hibernating yukkuri. I imagine Cirnos would be active in winter too, but I have no idea what they'd eat.
I actually had one story idea involving a yukkuri that was caught by an abyuser and witnessed her sister being frozen and thawed safely. She managed to escape, only to realize it was already winter, and decided to intentionally freeze herself as a last-ditch attempt at survival.
She made it, but then she was a good deal more intelligent than average. Most yukkuri would panic and get themselves killed at some point.
I always thought of yukkuri "hibernation" as basically them sleeping through as much of the winter as possible. They still need to eat (and excrete), so they need to stockpile food. Predators do the same thing as everyone else, since they're just as vulnerable to the cold and there's no prey to hunt anyway.
Unless they're Lettys, in which case they spend the winter digging up hibernating yukkuri. I imagine Cirnos would be active in winter too, but I have no idea what they'd eat.
I actually had one story idea involving a yukkuri that was caught by an abyuser and witnessed her sister being frozen and thawed safely. She managed to escape, only to realize it was already winter, and decided to intentionally freeze herself as a last-ditch attempt at survival.
She made it, but then she was a good deal more intelligent than average. Most yukkuri would panic and get themselves killed at some point.
I always figured Cirno could live off of eating snow or ice, considering her filling is some kind of ice cream/shaved ice anyway. I haven't seen her used much, though, so I'm just spitballing.
Hibernation via full freeze just might be crazy enough to work. Though, any food stockpile would be fertilizer by the time they thaw out due to exposure.
True hibernation would require large fat storage they don't have. A semi-hibernation where they remain asleep until they need to feed or in a semi-daze due to the temperature drop might work. It wouldn't make sense for them to be fully alert all day unless there was an issue present (food ran out, mold, waste pit filled up too soon, so on). It would also generate too much noise in the winter.
None of this still really answers how wild predator types would handle the winter. If they somehow could brave the cold, their usual hunting grounds would be barren. Unless they could track down hibernation holes consistently, they would starve off relatively easily. They would need exceptional hearing to pick up the chatter of a failed hibernation.
I'm too much a rationalist for letting "because magic" excuse exceptional occurrences when yus are still subject to physics. So, this is my take on hibernation.
Sugar lowers the freezing point of foods, so conceivably a yu might not hibernate if their filling is very sweet, they have a burrow and the sub-freezing temps aren't prolonged. So Yeah, sickly Patchouli is gonna die pretty quick-and so would the Scarlet sisters. However, if a yu was ever frozen, they'd suffer molecular damage even if not frozen solid (stick a grape in a freezer for a while to see). Yus would split apart. Cirno and Letty have fillings that already adapt them to the cold, at the expense of enduring heat. Gaining weight (like this mother Reimu did) might mean hours difference, not days.
So, I don't see them effectively hibernating for extended periods. And there's no effective migration; how far can a yu travel in a day, especially when their attention is constantly diverted. My idea is most simply have lots of spawn to beat the odds. Uncommon/rare-types and exceptional common yus simply build better homes and don't breed in colder periods. That way they don't have to hoard huge amounts of food (which is never enough, anyway).
Possible scenario for predators is by keeping yukkuri as material converter. Gluttony seems to be more of a problem for common yukkuri, so I assume predators are rare types would be better in rationing their food.
They can catch and disable juvenile yukkuri in their nest and take the paste slowly while force feeding it with grass or just any matter they gathered. In good condition, they might even be able to catch more than one yukkuri so they don't overburden a single livestock.
Yukkuri gathering food for themselves would prefer delicious food, but predators can gather just anything, grass or leaves, to force feed their livestock. The victim have no right to refuse. The livestock would be really weakened, but they won't overeat. So they would barely survive through the winter.
MTMoose said:
I always figured Cirno could live off of eating snow or ice, considering her filling is some kind of ice cream/shaved ice anyway. I haven't seen her used much, though, so I'm just spitballing.
Most likely so for the ice yukkuri. The old specimen of yukkuri (when they're still cute most of the time rather than abyuse oriented) feeds on taiyaki because the filling are bean paste like they are. So yukkuri probably love eating the same material as their filling, after all they don't need to spend energy to convert it.
Keeping livestock yus might work for predators but with the way you described it, yus would get uneasy sickness and puke or eat up due to the following: -Paralysis -Paste drainage/skin loss -Predator presence/fear instinct -Trash food -Uneasiness contagion from any other wailing livestock The low grade food would probably cause them to fail faster since that is one of their main sources of easy. Predators would need a sizable stock of superior food and even then it would be high risk with the amount of uneasy still at play.
Well, maybe I'm a little late but after I re-read this, I noticed that Reimyu didn't have her bigger accessory while Awishe had an unusual red spot which looked like a ribbon on her head. So this ensures that at least when Reimyu's former family woke up, they wouldn't kill Awishe on the spot because now she looked like a Reimyu to them.
Once in a while, it's also the season when the Yu’s are occasionally brood-parasitized (raised by another)
Brood parasitism is a subclass of parasitism and phenomenon and behavioural pattern of certain animals, brood parasites, that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds, insects and fish.