====== Takma diet and agriculture ======
The "natural" behavior of the [[takma:|takmar]] can sometimes be difficult to characterize, overlaid as it is with learned and cultural behaviors that cannot be meaningfully separated from them or from each other. 

===== Diet =====
Takmar are versatile feeders. Although a strong and ingrained preference for meat is found across almost all takma cultures, and therefore could cause them to be considered [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facultative|facultative]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore|carnivores]], they are capable of subsisting entirely without it, and indeed where meat is scarce, restricted, or absent, will do so without undue inconvenience. Even when meat is plentiful, hunter-gatherer clans will often eat plants or fungi if they are within easy reach.

Takmar are not, generally speaking, restricted to feeding on a particular type of meat. Historically, the targets of their consumption have consisted of a wide variety of aquatic and semiaquatic animals based in the numerous rivers, lakes, and marshes of the Cerulean Tangle - fish, wading [[species:clade:draconiform|draconiforms]], amphibians, and others - but are generally willing to catch and eat whatever vertebrates available and large enough to be worth the time, though they tend to disdain invertebrates. Nonetheless, fish is almost universally considered desirable, even a staple, and those cultures without regular and frequent access to it will tend to consider it a delicacy.

Although capable of consuming plant material, takmar must discriminate between different //types// of material. In particular, neither their teeth nor their digestive systems are well-adapted for consuming leaves or stems, due to their high cellulose content and resulting toughness; nor does either material provide much energy for a takma's active metabolism. Although certain types of leafy vegetables can be made palatable by cooking, particularly stewing, they are generally a minor component of the takma diet, except when used as herbs or flavoring. The takmar diet places far more importance on more digestible and higher-energy parts of the plant, such as fruits, nuts, tubers and other root crops, pulses, and grains. Some types of fungus are edible to takmar as well; those that are perceived as having a "meaty" taste are favored foods.

===== Agriculture =====


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