rambling about slugcats
I’m probably not the first to notice this but I personally haven’t seen anyone else bring it up so I wanna talk about it.
I realized that as the timeline progresses, the slugcats become progressively less carnivorous.
While spearmaster has a different way of eating, they mostly feed off of the energy of other living animals, with the exception of popcorn plants.
Both artificer and hunter are technically able to eat plants as well as small insects, though they much prefer the meat of other larger creatures. Artificer, who is earlier in the timeline, also has the maul ability, which likely means that it has stronger sharper teeth. While inv isn’t canon, it also fits in its place between arti and hunter here, sharing the maul ability with artificer.
Gourmand gains less nutrition from other larger animals than hunter or artificer do, though in return they are more adapted to eating plants and smaller insects.
Survivor, monk and rivulet eat only plants and insects. While monk could be considered more passive than rivulet, this is probably just the nature of monk as a character rather than an evolutionary thing, especially as survivor and monk are around at basically the same time. Rivulet is however more equipped to simply flee any encounter with a threat rather than engage in combat.
Saint is fully vegetarian (just don’t tell them about bluefruit). Their digestive system does not tolerate meat at all. Attempting to eat a smaller creature like a batfly will cause them to collapse while trying to eat a centipede will result in instant death.
Of course some of these cats can be described as anomalies in their own right, either due to being purposefully created by iterators or whatever is going on with saint, but when it comes to food, this progression does look to be quite linear.
It’s very possible that slugcats were previously a fully carnivorous species, but then evolved to be mainly insectivorous, while also growing more adapted to plants.
I just thought this was neat and wanted to share. Anyone is free to give their own input on this as well
yeah this is exactly what ive been thinking
even if we ignore all slugcats that are made by iterators/have unknown origins then we're still left with arti, gourmand, survivor and monk
and those gradually become less carnivourous with time and loose their combat abilities
