Monday, October 18, 2004
***Culture on food and story ideas***
Hmmm. I caught on the Discovery Channel yesterday a brief snippet about killer whales. Scientists have been puzzled why the animals don't attack humans with the frequency like sharks. Snorklers, for example, would look like floating seals from under the ocean's surface (which, scientists believe, sharks attack humans). Yet there are various excursion groups that can safely float above feeding wild killer whales.
A theory, based on captive whales like Shamu, is that killer whales--wild or captive--have a culture developed around their food source. It's been observed that whales that hunt fish have a different "culture" than those who hunt seals and the two tribes don't interbreed. Killer whales (again, like Shamu) whose primary source of food is fish won't attack their human trainers because they're not fish. Seems at first a bit ridiculous (meat is meat, right?) even for an animal, but humans exhibit similar behavior. A human culture that primarly eats fish, for example, would have different hunting techniques and even equipment than a culture that hunts deer.
I had read in one of the Traveler role-playing game supplements about an alien culture that was partially based on where they found their food in their alien oceans and thought the concept intriguing and original. Now I discover (no pun intended) the authors idea may have been based on the killer whale or other animals exhibiting similar behaviors. Regardless, there are some cool ideas for stories in either source (see private writing journals. You think I'm actually going to share them with you hacks? ;) ).
And people wonder where writers get their ideas. For myself, it's not getting them that's the issue.
