Afte reading the original we can say that, without being scum, Trash or Shitheads, the poor fellas were able to trigger so many death flags it's not even funny or fair, like triggering every trap ever and expecting a good outcome from that.
They may had fared better with a WAY smaller family and without moving from home at all.
JusticeItEasy said: Afte reading the original we can say that, without being scum, Trash or Shitheads, the poor fellas were able to trigger so many death flags it's not even funny or fair, like triggering every trap ever and expecting a good outcome from that.
It really depends on the story, in this one? Yeah, but I had seen others on which the kids don't give such vibe, neither the "twisted" feel that some anon have.
Large families help a family line survive into breeding age when there is a high mortality rate. It also would protect against being forced out by other yukkuri. This family lives in the woods so we could assume that human children are not a usually part of the ecological balance. Mechanisms that were developed to defend against other predators may be counterproductive when humans are introduced.
Their reproductive strenght comes from being able to have babies "often" not by having "LOADS" of babies each time, if anything they combine it with a reasonable number that can be both big and still manageable like 6 or in the worse case 8. 10+ babies is asking for problems, and problems always happen.
Families of this size are counter productive both for themselves and for the enviroment, it just doesn't work for a creature of the yukkuri's size to have such big families, the need of space, food, etc. makes it a death wish and to make matters worse their voracious nature combined by their ability to convert everything to filling (seeds includeds) would just ruin the enviroment as much as letting a clan of wild yu's grow "too big" (we had stories showing this). And all this while moving away to some place close enough to human settlements (school kids and trash dumps don't magically appear in forests, and no, magical danmaku firing lolis don't count!.)
Again this poor fellas trigger every death flag available in the scenario.
Putting ankos aside, yukkuri can have large familys but so do many other animals.
Rabbits for example go into heat every month or so and gestation is about a month. Each litter are usually between 4 to 12 kits and those kits are ready to breed in about 6 months.
Cats go into heat every two weeks and have a gestation period of about two months. Litters are between 3 to 6 kittens and they are ready to breed in about 6 months.
I'll agree that large family groups are counterproductive against apex predators but they are useful against other yukkuri, lower order predators, and disease and mishap.