Generic Space Opera Bestiary: Space Cows

 

I think few animals better exemplify the countryside than the cow. That may well be because the culture from which westerners descend, Indo-European culture, was heavily integrated with the cow. But it’s not hard to see why: cows provide meat, milk and leather, and excel at moving in vast herds across the plains, allowing a herdsman to migrate with them. They’re useful to a growing culture in many ways, and so we might expect parallels in other cultures: large, migratory herbivores that tend to naturally gather in great herds (allowing for rapid reproduction) and who produce culinary byproducts that the culture can consume, leaving the original animal untouched.

 

Alien Cows in GURPS Space

Cows are, naturally, grazing herbivores from the plains that walk.

When it comes to size, pretty much every set of stats I can find on bovines clocks them in at SM +2, which is Large! We have our first Large creature. This, it should be noted, is unsurprising for Plains life. Our mass, per GURPS Space, is about 3,000 lbs or up to about ST 30 (which is higher than most stats I can find on bovines).

Cows are typically bilateral, two limbs, a small tail, no manipulator, internal skeleton, etc. Incidentally, per GURPS Space, their average roll for skeleton would be a 10, which gives then an internal skeleton: one more point would give them a Combination skeleton.

For Skin, realistically, we expect a simple layer of fur, though it should be noted that the auroch and the bison, both more “wild” bovines, had thick fur over hide, which is more what we would expect from a large herbivore. A similar creature with skin would likely have blubber, a scaled creature would have an armored shell, a featured creature would have feathers over hide; total DR could be anywhere from 1 to 5. A domestic cow, though, would cap out (per Space) at DR 1. This hide is actually rather important, as we might imagine our space ranchers using the hide of their space cows as armor or clothing. GURPS Space even goes so far as to suggest that carbon-based life could have a kevlar-like substance in their skin, making them “naturally bulletproof,” then asks why they would need that. Being Space Opera, Psi-Wars merely chuckles at such questions and then distracts the questioner with a cool laser-sword fight.

Sex is actually very important here. What makes a cow a cow is their ability to provide secondary food products. We’ve already addressed their hide, but they need to provide milk or something similar to occupy the same niche that cows occupy for humanity. The classic cow would have two sexes, be live-bearing and likely Strong-K: they typically have one calf, and they’re focused on raising that calf well. A variation might produce eggs, but it would have to sacrifice some of its ability to migrate to stop and tend to the eggs.

When it comes to Senses, cows realistically have bad sight and limited colorblindness (they do have depth perception, it seems), which fits what GURPS Space would expect. If they have bad sight, they might have Ultrahearing (and Pizard agrees). We might expect them to have human-level touch. GURPS Space expects them to have Acute Smell; Pizard gives them Discriminatory Smell. For special senses, we might expect Peripheral Vision, given that they’re herbivores living on the plains and lacking parabolic hearing.

When it comes to Alien Minds, we probably expect alien cows to be right in the middle of “Low Intelligence” on average; they’re grazing herbivores (who don’t need to be smart), but they’re Strong-K who put a great deal of time into their young. Pizard pegs them at a very mammalian IQ 4. When it comes to breeding, I suspect we’re looking at Harem breeding (one bull, many cows; this is actually an average result for strong-k, live-bearing animals). And with organizations, I expect Large Herds (They’re at +2 for grazing and harem mating, but -1 for their size; so the average result would be pair bond or small group, but large herd isn’t out of the question, just unlikely).

This gives them a generic Psychological Profile of Chauvinism +0, Concentration -1 (Distractible), Curiosity +0, Egoism +1 or +2 (Proud (Female) or Selfish (Male)), Empathy +0, Gregariousness +0, Imagination +0 and Suspicion +0.

Generic Alien Cow Stats

Use the oxen stats on page B460, though note that Pizard has a proper dairy cow here.

Variations

Cow Chickens

I’ve not done chickens, and someone will inevitably ask “Why not?” and the short answer is “I didn’t feel like it.” But perhaps we can explore the concept a bit here, as the cow and the chicken occupy a similar niche of a herd animal that we primarily keep for their secondary products, but we might slaughter them for their meet.

The big changes I would see would be that they would be feathered, lay eggs and be bipedal. The evolution of dinosaurs is an interesting thing to explore and it highlights quite how much of the evolution of the dinosauria clade, especially theropods, invested in bipedalism and birds descend from that. It might be possible to have quadrupedal feathered cows, but let’s focus on something a little more familiar to our terrestrial eyes. What we end up with might be more like an ostrich than a large chicken: a heavy beak for defense (and grazing), sturdy legs for migratory journeys (which large herds of giant chickens need, to not overgraze the land). and a tall stance and long neck to look for enemies far away. Given that they’re egg layers, we might expect them to have an “egg season” which isn’t particularly handy for our herdsmen. Domesticated breeds might have stubbier legs, less need to migrate and a longer egg-laying season (and more infertile or even “trophic” eggs) but that would mean food would need to be brought to them, or they’d have a need to abandon their eggs (which might be handy for other reasons). Incidentally, ostriches have red meat, just like cows, though it tends to be very low fat, making it a very healthy, protein-rich diet source.

We can keep the oxen stats, but we’d need totally different traits.

Lens (Chicken-Cows): Replace Traits with Domestic Animal, Enhanced Ground Move 0.5 (Ground Speed 6); No Fine Manipulators; Sharp Beak; Weak Bite.

Dino Cows

Speaking of dinosauria, why not use dinosaur stats? Ceratopsians might make excellent cow analogs (probably closer to rhinoceroses, but we can adjust slightly as necessary). Protoceratops is probably the easiest to keep tame, styracosaurus is probably the closest to cows in actual size, but people recognize the elephant-sized triceratops. See Lands Out of Time page 24 and 25 for inspiration.

Bull Frogs

If we’re going to look at feathered cows, why not amphibious cows? Why not giant salamanders or toads that occupy pools or swamps in great herds. Rather than provide milk, they provide trophic eggs. Amphibians will often do this: lay a lot of unfertilized eggs that their young will eat. This is a sort of “cannibalistic young” but the young aren’t actually eating one another, but eggs set aside for their consumption. Which means humans could consume them too.

If we wanted to keep them cow-like, we might let them remain quadrupedal. Amphibians don’t have hair so no horns, but might have a “horny” hide, like certain toads. If they’re quadrupedal, we might also give them long tails, which they can use to swim or they can use to defend themselves.

Lens (Bull Frogs): Remove Enhanced Move, and impaling strikers. Replace DR 2 (Skull Only) with DR 4 (Tough Skin). Amphibious and Crushing Striker (Tail).

Kevlar Cow

As noted in space pigs, it’s possible to have an animal with pretty sturdy hide, all the way up to proper kevlar. Large herbivores are the most likely to do this, and while you can overstate its effectiveness, we often use layered cow leather as armor. Other animals, such as rhinos, have even better armor. We might expect an alien space cow to have even better armor, and be kept not just for its milk, but its wonderful, durable hide. Given that similar material may well make it into the horns, we could treat the horns as “fine” or “very fine.”

Lens (Kevlar Cow): Increase DR to 12/5 (higher DR vs piercing and cutting). Increase striker damage by +2.

Honeypot Cows

So far, we’ve looked at eggs as a replacement for milk in our strange cow-like animals. We might assume insectile “cows” would also be exploited for eggs, but let me suggest a different domestication strategy. Insects produce more edible byproducts than just eggs. They also produce honey. But rather than discuss giant, cow-sized honey-bees, consider the honeypot ant. These ants have a certain sort of worker that gorges on food and the additional foods swells in their abdomen as they create this sweet, honey-like nectar. They are then used by the other ants as a sort of living larder.

This strategy could make for a very solid migration strategy. If we imagine much larger ant (cow-sized is probably pushing things, though), they might traverse the plains of their world, consuming as they go, with some of the ants having the capacity to eat too much, and becoming these “living larders,” especially to tend to the young. This world might have a lot of seasonality or stretches of badlands interspersed with stretches of rich lands, so the migratory ants might reach an area, graze it clean, fill their “larders” and then cross a badlands or endure the harsh winter or summer (I lean towards summer) while on the move (carrying their “larders” ants with them). When anyone needs food, they have the larder ants for that.

The domesticated version would obviously strongly favor the honeypot specialization over everything else. But it might be helpful to have some normal worker ants, and you can’t get away from a queen. Thus a herdsman would have to deal with an entire hive, rather than just the honeypot variant. It would be a lot of work, but it might be worth it.

ST: 11	Basic Speed: 5	SM: -5
DX: 8	Basic Move: 4
IQ: 1	Perception: 9
HT: 12	Will: 10	DR: 3

Traits: Bad Sight; Cold-Blooded; Discriminatory Smell; Domestic Animal; Gregarious; Numb (Not on feelers); Peripheral Vision.

Bite (8): 1d-2 impaling, Reach C

Sacred Cow

It doesn’t really impact their stats, and likely has little place in science fiction beyond anthropology, it should be noted that multiple cultures have found the cow sacred at one time or another. Sure, everyone knows that the Indians find the cow sacred, but the sacred nature of the cow seems to spread across all Indo-European culture: the Greeks would sacrifice their cows to the gods, for example. The Minoans often featured cows and bulls in imagery, and the Egyptians (who were Semitic, not Indo-European) held the Apis Bull to be sacred.

Your alien space cows don’t have to be sacred, but it might be worth considering what space animals your culture considers to be sacred, and why. The cow seems to have attracted a lot of veneration because of the centrality of dairy to the lives of the Indo-European herdsmen. Perhaps whatever giving animal might contribute to the mythology of its people, such as the sacred eggs of the chicken-cows, or the religious importance of consuming honeypot honey during a major religious festival.

What Does Space Cow Milk Taste Like?

As with alien meat, alien milk can probably taste like whatever you like. It tends to be calorie rich and easily digestible, at least for the young, as it is intended to provide nutrition for their young.

The sweetness in milk comes from sugar. The sugar in cow milk is lactose, which is made up of a glucose and a galactose molecule. Some people have trouble breaking this down, leading to lactose intolerance. It’s not very “sweet on the tongue” with about a third of the sweetness of sucrose. A simpler alien milk might skip the lactose step and simply directly produce glucose and galactose. These are both about twice as sweet as lactose: galactose can be found in avocado or sugar beats, and glucose is the primary sugar in honey. Other sugars, such as fruity fructose, savory maltose or table-sugar sucrose, might be possible, but they tend to be produced by plants rather than animals.

The other major ingredient is, of course, fat. And as with animal meat, fat is your primary flavor carrier as many flavors will dissolve in the lipids of the milk. Thus, the diet of the animal might affect the flavor of its milk: alien cows that primarily eat nuts might have a “nutty” notes, a grazer might have more “grassy” notes, and a predator might have more savory “umami” flavors. Again, any flavorful fat could be potentially found in an alien milk, though it’s less likely to have deliberately offensive flavors (such as an intense, spicy flavor) as the intent of the milk is to be consumed by another.

Finally, it should be noted that bacteria often have interesting relationships with dairy products. For example, yogurt is created with bacteria breaking down lactose. A symbiotic relationship may exist between the alien cow and “udder fauna” that break down more complex sugars into simpler ones and may produce additional byproducts that flavor the milk. This might create a more sour “buttermilk” flavor. It could also produce a rancid, unpleasant flavor (this happens with real cows, sometimes), but it’s unlikely to be intentional and also unlikely to happen often with alien cows kept specifically for milk.

Milk doesn’t have to come from an udder or nipple. Monotremes (like the echidna) produce milk from their sweat glands, which means milk coats their skin. Some birds, such as doves and flamingos produce a milk in their throat, called crop milk, that looks more like a cottage cheese than milk.

Alien mothers produce lots of things for their children that a farmer might seek to exploit. Eggs provide nourishment for a growing fetus, and an unfertilized egg is quite a resource for a farmer. Some animals deliberately lay excess unfertilized eggs called trophic eggs that the hatched young then consume. Some fish produce a nutritious mucus on their body that their young will feed from, a sort of slimier milk. Finally, some animals consume food partially process it in some way and then regurgitate it for their young or for later consumption. This can simply be a case of a bird pre-chewing a worm for its young all the way to the rich honey of honeybees.