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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 06:02 pm (UTC)In regards to the infection rate - I think that if you're dealing with the "spread via bite" theory it would be 100% *but*....I don't think there'd be very many people around who ever survived a werewolf attack to worry about turning in the first place. Most of the stories I remember off hand either the person was lucky to get away or was bitten specifically to turn them.