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Aug. 22nd, 2010 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaStarting assumptions: werewolves are humans who assume wolf shape either at will or when provoked by a stimulus (such as the full moon). That nature is contagious, usually spread by bite.
(That is: if your werewolves don't really turn into wolves, or spread via some mechanism that's not contagious, this question is irrelevant.)
Has anyone read any werewolf stories where the contagion-via-bite is true even if they bite something other than a human? That is, where a werewolf who bites a horse might create a horsewolf that shifts into a wolf at the full moon, or where a werewolf that bites a deer creates a deerwolf, or etc.?
Alternately, any stories where there's an explicit explanation for why that doesn't happen (as opposed to just assuming from the start that the only species susceptible to the contagion is humans)?
EDIT: Of course, as deer and horses presumably can't carry silver weapons or whatever else one does to avoid werewolves if one is a human, this might result in there being a ton of horsewolves and deerwolves and whatever, any animal large enough to survive a werewolf bite, roaming around. Which would make an interesting story, I think: a world in which any animal might theoretically turn into a contagious wolf monster by night, in which humans survive in isolated enclaves with rigorously-protected livestock...
...sort of like in JRPGs, in fact, where dangerous beasts lurk to destroy you as soon as you leave town.
(That is: if your werewolves don't really turn into wolves, or spread via some mechanism that's not contagious, this question is irrelevant.)
Has anyone read any werewolf stories where the contagion-via-bite is true even if they bite something other than a human? That is, where a werewolf who bites a horse might create a horsewolf that shifts into a wolf at the full moon, or where a werewolf that bites a deer creates a deerwolf, or etc.?
Alternately, any stories where there's an explicit explanation for why that doesn't happen (as opposed to just assuming from the start that the only species susceptible to the contagion is humans)?
EDIT: Of course, as deer and horses presumably can't carry silver weapons or whatever else one does to avoid werewolves if one is a human, this might result in there being a ton of horsewolves and deerwolves and whatever, any animal large enough to survive a werewolf bite, roaming around. Which would make an interesting story, I think: a world in which any animal might theoretically turn into a contagious wolf monster by night, in which humans survive in isolated enclaves with rigorously-protected livestock...
...sort of like in JRPGs, in fact, where dangerous beasts lurk to destroy you as soon as you leave town.
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Date: 2010-08-23 09:19 pm (UTC)This could definitely work. I would *love* to read a story about this.
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Date: 2010-08-23 09:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, sufficiently small creatures would be unlikely to survive; I was thinking of things like horses and deer and goats and similar things at that scale because they can, at least theoretically, fight off and survive a wolf attack. (Especially depending on whether wolf-beasts are physically tougher than normal animals and, if so, how long after infection that toughness kicks in.) Mousewolves and squirrelwolves, not so much.
Although there is the question of whether they're contagious in all forms, or just when in wolf shape. It doesn't come up much with werewolves on account of humans not biting one another very often, but if one rare lone squirrel got infected somehow and then nipped or bit other animals in squirrel-form... would they get the wolfness? If so, it could readily spread to smaller animals from just one vector.
:D I think this would be a lot of fun to play with.