Mundane Flora and Fauna

[Sizzlefoot]

We see plenty of dragons, manticores, wyverns, and the like, but what about mundane plants and animals in a fantasy world? Doesn't it feel a bit off when you're slaying demons and closing planar portals and the like and the farmer is farming...cows? What kinds of animals, plants, and fungi do your mundane fantasy folks domesticate? Do they deal with wolves, or giant spiny venemous lizards?

[sandmote]

I'm rather fond of sticking in either non-European farm animals, or extinct animals that would have made reasonable farm animals.

The easiest to mention would be cormorants for races tied to rivers, capybara for jungle races, Reindeer for arctic races, and peafowl.

For extinct animals, sea sloths work well for explaining why a marine race might want to control a coastal area of land (preferably a desert environment too, which would be a nice reason they haven't been kicked out of there by land powers).

Also, it might be worth mentioning Angry GM wrote a piece that goes over good traits for farm animals while chiding something not very smart. It's here.

Spoiler: The Relevant Bit

Show

Now, a lot has been written on the subject of what makes one species domesticable over another species. And the general consensus seems to come down to six basic criteria. The single most important factor is that the animal must be willing to breed in captivity. Many animals don’t. And if you can’t get the animal to breed once it’s in your care, you don’t have replacement animals and you can’t selectively breed the animal for qualities you want. Next, the animal must develop fairly quickly once it’s born. If the animal doesn’t mature quickly, you lose a lot of time caring for the animal before it’s useful. Or else, its parents have to care for it. The animal must also have a reasonably efficient diet. That is, it can’t take too much to feed the damned thing. Herbivores are preferable here. Carnivores require other animals to be raised to feed them. And raising their food means you have to expend more resources to keep your domesticated animal alive. The animal also needs to have a generally calm disposition. If the animal is temperamental, territorial, or vicious, it will be dangerous to keep the animal around other humans. And the animal also can’t be prone to panic. They can’t fly into a rage or flee from any perceived threat or else they are hard to control. That’s why we domesticate horses but not zebras. Even horses do get panicky, but they are nothing compared to zebras. Zebras freak the f$&% out and run. And finally, the animal must be a social animal. It must live in groups and accept a basic dominance hierarchy. Otherwise, they can’t work cooperatively with other creatures and they won’t accept being dominated by other creatures.

[Zhorn]

If you're aiming for a thematic realism to your farmers, I suggest watching this:
CGP Grey: Zebra vs Horses: Animal Domestication
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo

Pick any flavor of creatures that fit your world setting, but make sure they have the right characteristics that would make them more preferable over other existing creatures in your setting. Or just re-flavor ordinary farm animals and just make them look different with different names, but are functionally the same as their real world counterparts.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I actually like the mundane to be mundane. I'll selectively add in strange things (like high elves in my setting raising giant spiders for silk, letting them wear sheer garments worth a fabulous fortune), but if everything's weird, the players/readers just tune it out. Sprinkling little pockets of fantastic things keeps it fresh and keeps them asking "what?"

It also helps me as a writer keep track of what can do what. I can look up the grazing needs of sheep. Capybara? Not as easily.

[Tvtyrant]

I like taking animals and changing their context to something different.

Tree Octopi that act like slippery spiders, including giant ones that hunt humans. Bird sized flying sheep that pretend to be clouds for protection, Bats that swim like manta rays, etc.

[Flumphburger]

Let's see, I've got:


Giant cave salamanders whose tadpoles are functionally piranhas. Sometimes used as pack beasts and guard animals by troglodytes, who are among the only beings that aren't bothered by the adult's toxic musk.

Domesticated spiders who the jungle elves breed to produce silk.

Domesticated gorillas who those same jungle elves use for unskilled labor and warfare.

Large bats who act like pilotfish, following large predators around and helping them by giving away the location of hiding prey and blinding/confusing it with their flapping wings and sharp little teeth. They get to eat the leftovers of the kill.

Brightly colored beetles the size of pigeons who live in tropical wetlands. Their rainbow bio-luminescence lights up the swamp at night, and the glowing chemical they use is sometimes harvested by people for various purposes.

Domesticated sea lions who help their fisherman masters by chasing schools of fish into their nets. They've also been bred to be smaller and less athletic than their wild ancestors, to reduce the feeding costs and make it harder for them to escape into the wild.

Giant sea snakes who use sheer speed and strength to hunt rather than venom. They don't usually attack people, but they are often hunted for their extremely tough and lightweight hides, and catching one is as dangerous as it is potentially lucrative.

Eusocial crows.

Oversized, bald pigs with elephant-like skin instead of hair. They live in the mountains, where some remain wild while others are herded and ridden by various tribal societies.

Eyeless catfish that live in underground pools and rivers and feed on chemosynthetic bacteria and algae mats. Dwarves are fond of catfish, and often raise this variety in subterranean fish farms.

Leeches the size of a human arm. They typically feed on large animals like crocodiles, elephants, and hippopotamuses, but they'll also bite smaller things and stand a good chance of seriously injuring or killing them through blood loss. The numbing agent they use in their bite, however, is a highly sought after painkiller, and also used as a component in some recreational drugs. Their egg clusters are also highly nutritious, and often dug up and eaten by local humanoids.


Vase Trees. These trees have trunks that widen up at the top to form a hollow, open-topped cup that fills up with rainwater. These canopy ponds are home to small fish, algae, amphibians, insects, and many others, and used as watering holes by large flying creatures. Creatures that die in the pond sink to the bottom, where the tree digests them.

Cauldron Trees. These are like mangroves, but much taller, and have entire cave systems in their expansive, swampy roots. They get their name because they tend to grow around hot springs.

Arrow Trees. This tree species has co-evolved with warlike humanoids. They have many uniformly long and straight twigs growing in bundles off the tips of their branches, each tipped with a quartet of very rigid leaves. Pull and twist on one of these twigs once its leaves turn a ripe red color, and it will pop out of its socket on the branch, revealing its other end to be a razor sharp and weighted triangular blade. These arrows are perfectly weighted, have a natural pattern of grooves and a twist to their feather-leaves that creates a rifling effect for extra range and armor penetration, and - most importantly - secrete a deadly venom from their tips when they come in contact with warm blood. The arrow also contains a seed, which quickly consumes the corpse of whatever the arrow has killed and grows into a new sapling, and counts on the carnage of the surrounding battlefield to have fertilized the soil enough for continued growth. A forest of arrow-trees is a sure sign that a great battle was once fought here.

Oil Bushes. Originally a thorny scrubland bush that secreted a flammable oil as part of its life cycle that takes advantage of periodic natural wildfires. Has been domesticated into a thornless and hardy crop plant with thick, succulent stalks just bursting with oil, perfect for lamps and firestarter kits.

Hive Gourd. An epiphytic vine whose gourdlike bulbs are hollow, and secrete an attractive pheromone that encourages bees and wasps to build their nests inside. The insects defend the plant in exchange for a home, and the plant also provides them with sweet nectar from its flowers while the corpses of the colony's dead feed its hammock of roots below. Some human farmers plant these vines near their crops to ensure that there are plenty of pollinating bees and pest-hunting wasps around, and some even use them instead of artificial hives to raise honeybees. Elves, meanwhile, favor them as components of their eco-engineered forest homes, and sometimes also deliberately encourage especially deadly and aggressive wasps to nest in them to act as a point security system.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I guess I did add two flora to the list of common ones:

Fireweed--this sagebrush-like plant grows readily in the great plains of the Sea of Grass. When properly dried/prepared, it burns with a steady heat like a good wood fire. It's farmed/gathered and serves as fuel in the largely treeless plains.

Steelsilk--this fiber is a total pain to gather (large thorns and grows all entangled on itself) and requires alchemical treatment, but makes a form of silk-like cloth that can be made diaphanous while still retaining strength. It costs exorbitant amounts and is only produced in a single region. There are several noble houses that make their entire living off of a single steelsilk plantation.

[sandmote]

Am I the only who uses silkworms for silk? Sure they're giant silkworms, but still. You've got a giant orchard of mulberry trees, and farm animals that convert the leaves into silk. It explains food and clothing.

Still, converting table scraps to giant flies to giant spiders to spider silk isn't bad. I haven't actually found many good replacements for when pigs don't reasonably fit.

I rather like the eyeless catfish idea. I've been using "dwarven manna," (based on the mythological food) and "flying onions," (ie. walking onions) to explain how the mountain dwarves feed themselves. The lore is that both plants were domesticated from ancestors with seeds light enough to float from mountain to mountain, but I think it helps give different places a distinct feel when they eat or wear something specific.

[Flumphburger]

Am I the only who uses silkworms for silk? Sure they're giant silkworms, but still. You've got a giant orchard of mulberry trees, and farm animals that convert the leaves into silk. It explains food and clothing.

Still, converting table scraps to giant flies to giant spiders to spider silk isn't bad. I haven't actually found many good replacements for when pigs don't reasonably fit.

I rather like the eyeless catfish idea. I've been using "dwarven manna," (based on the mythological food) and "flying onions," (ie. walking onions) to explain how the mountain dwarves feed themselves. The lore is that both plants were domesticated from ancestors with seeds light enough to float from mountain to mountain, but I think it helps give different places a distinct feel when they eat or wear something specific.

Caterpillar silk is still very much a thing in my setting. It just has a different purpose. Caterpillar silk is for high quality fabrics and bandages. Spider silk is a building material, and also used to make nets, string, and silkweave armor.

If you want a food animal that can take the place of pigs, try dire rats. Rats have a lot of traits in common with pigs, including the rapid life cycle and ability to live in almost any environment and eat almost anything that made pigs appealing to real life Neolithic herdsman as a cheap meat source. Rat is going to be stringier and less tasty than pork, but some selective breeding might be able to fix that. Only problem is that rats, regardless of size, or going to be harder to contain than pigs.

[Tvtyrant]

Dwarf food: In one of my older settings the underdark was fed by methane pockets that were digested by bacteria held in the bellies of really gross worms. Dwarves were humans who adapted to living in the underdark by raising and harvesting the worms, they made a drink they call ale but which is actually a toxin that allows them to digest methane.

A dwarf without ale would quickly die in the underdark, and they lose their resistance to it if they don't drink it regularly. Surface dwarves literally can't go home except to visit, the food would kill them.

The underdark in that setting was very much based on cold seeps and deep sea vents, with crabs, vent worms and carnivorous clams.

[Sizzlefoot]

Caterpillar silk is still very much a thing in my setting. It just has a different purpose. Caterpillar silk is for high quality fabrics and bandages. Spider silk is a building material, and also used to make nets, string, and silkweave armor.

If you want a food animal that can take the place of pigs, try dire rats. Rats have a lot of traits in common with pigs, including the rapid life cycle and ability to live in almost any environment and eat almost anything that made pigs appealing to real life Neolithic herdsman as a cheap meat source. Rat is going to be stringier and less tasty than pork, but some selective breeding might be able to fix that. Only problem is that rats, regardless of size, or going to be harder to contain than pigs.

Aren't hippos related to pigs? I've been contemplating small(ish) domesticated hippos.

[Xania]

Aren't hippos related to pigs? I've been contemplating small(ish) domesticated hippos.

They were thought to be related to pigs, but they are actually related to whales and dolphins, they even make similar calls underwater.

Sadly my imagination is dead and have to use things i saw somewhere, like banthas or outdated terror birds reconstructions as mounts.

[Mechalich]

Aren't hippos related to pigs? I've been contemplating small(ish) domesticated hippos.

The pygmy hippopotamus already exists, as do a number of extinct dwarf hippo species and their extinct relatives the Anthracotheres. Pigs are in fact not closely related to hippos or most other artiodactyls, having diverged fairly early in the evolution of that clade.

More generally, you can pick pretty much any large-bodied mammal you want that is alive today and dial back the clock 10-20 million years and come up with a whole bunch of relatives that are both larger or smaller or weirder as you need. You can even replace whole faunas in this way. For example, the modern large-bodied grazer niche is dominated by bovids, but in North America it used to be dominated by Antilocaprids instead.

[sandmote]

Caterpillar silk is still very much a thing in my setting. It just has a different purpose. Caterpillar silk is for high quality fabrics and bandages. Spider silk is a building material, and also used to make nets, string, and silkweave armor.

If you want a food animal that can take the place of pigs, try dire rats. Rats have a lot of traits in common with pigs, including the rapid life cycle and ability to live in almost any environment and eat almost anything that made pigs appealing to real life Neolithic herdsman as a cheap meat source. Rat is going to be stringier and less tasty than pork, but some selective breeding might be able to fix that. Only problem is that rats, regardless of size, or going to be harder to contain than pigs.

Yeah, I did rather overreact to the mention of spiders.

Rats would be reasonable, particularly for underground races. The main issue is any place you can show the rats is a place the rats will escape from shortly, as you mentioned.

Megapodes (like Australian brushturkey) might work; omnivorous, unlikely to panic, reach adulthood very fast, and an existing structure for controlling them (the nest).

Aren't hippos related to pigs? I've been contemplating small(ish) domesticated hippos.

If you're looking for slightly more realistic representation, farming them would be about halfway between pigs and cattle. They either graze or forage (depending on what living hippos you compare them to) and probably won't take to recycling your waste. If they forage, however, you'd likely be able to feed them fine in a forest or jungle.

if you've got African animals around your jungle or swamp, farming them might not be the worst idea in your fantasy world. Probably one of the worst IRL though.

More generally, you can pick pretty much any large-bodied mammal you want that is alive today and dial back the clock 10-20 million years and come up with a whole bunch of relatives that are both larger or smaller or weirder as you need.

If you do this, just be careful what you use has a reasonable description. "It is related to a giraffe, but looks like an elk with funky antlers," might as well be a living ungulate for game play purposes.

[Aniikinis]

In one of my settings, I have a few different types of spiders that are grown by goblins under an avowed named Zhaka Raakta(ʒɑk-a rɑk-ta).

Template:
Common name(Actual name)

• Basic description including size category and important bits
• Food required
• Extra Info

Silk-Cows(Bovilatoa):

• A large spider that acts similar to a cow.
• It is omnivorous.
• It is ranched for tender, albeit stringy, meat and sturdy chitinous plates.
• Milked for both foundation silk and a soup-like substance similar in texture to milk, nearly tasteless, and made from digested food.
• The silk is primarily made into rope and the chitin is typically made into plating for armour and blades for tools.

Jump-cats(Zhikkita):

• Tiny, non-poisonous, easily breedable, hunting spiders with multiple uses.
• Carnivorous.
• They are primarily used as pest control, but functionally replace cats within the village.

Spinnerlings(Porrak-ta):

• Tiny, non-poisonous, easily breedable, weaving spiders that are mostly abdomen and have enlarged spinnerets.
• Carnivorous, but don't require a lot of food.
• They are milked for all kinds of silk, which are used mostly for traps, lures, clothes, ropes, and medicinal uses.

Zhaka's Oxen(L'oktay Porlah)

• Huge, poisonous, hunting spiders used as mounts by large sized creatures (typically ogres).
• Omnivorous but prefer meat.
• Easily trainable, and exclusively female.
• Sexual dimorphism similar to anglerfish.

Zhaka's Horses(L'oktay Rak)

• Large, poisonous, hunting spiders used as mounts by medium sized creatures (typically bugbears).
• Omnivorous, but prefer meat.
• Easily trainable and exclusively female, the males are Jump-Cats.

Zhaka's Ponies(L'oktay Narl)

• Medium, poisonous, hunting spiders used as mounts by small sized creatures (typically goblins).
• Carnivorous, but can be enchanted to eat some forms of plant matter.
• Easily trainable with males and females almost identical save for slight size difference.
• These were the original breed that were used by Zhaka to create the other mounts and the jump-cats.

[the_david]

In one of my settings, I have a few different types of spiders that are grown by goblins under an avowed named Zhaka Raakta(ʒɑk-a rɑk-ta).

Silk-Cows(Bovilatoa):

• A large spider that acts similar to a cow.
• It is omnivorous.
• It is ranched for tender, albeit stringy, meat and sturdy chitinous plates.
• Milked for both foundation silk and a soup-like substance similar in texture to milk, nearly tasteless, and made from digested food.
• The silk is primarily made into rope and the chitin is typically made into plating for armour and blades for tools.

I thought spiders injected a paralyzing digestive fluid into their prey, causing them to stay alive while they slowly turn into a goo that's edible for spiders. If there's anything that should be considered as spider milk, it's that goo.

Edit: Nevermind. I should learn to read.

[Aniikinis]

I thought spiders injected a paralyzing digestive fluid into their prey, causing them to stay alive while they slowly turn into a goo that's edible for spiders. If there's anything that should be considered as spider milk, it's that goo.

Edit: Nevermind. I should learn to read.

No, you're pretty much right. I'll put up a small spoiler after this explanation with what small diagrams I could find that work as well as a simpler explanation.

Spiders typically eat food in two ways: liquefaction or dousing followed by shredding.

Liquefaction works exactly as you're familiar with. The injection of a digestive fluid into their prey to liquefy the insides to slurp it up by exerting pressure from their chelicerae(chell-ih-sair-eye) and directly into the mouth. The prey may or may not be webbed up before the slurping begins depending on the species of spider but typically they are.

Dousing and shredding, however, is one that most people don't really think about. The spider covers their prey in digestive juices and very carefully and slowly, nibbles bits off. Since they lack mandibles, they cannot chew their food as would be expected on first guess. Rather, most spiders have small teeth lining their chelicerae which they use, in conjunction with hydraulic pressure from the chelicerae and what little movement available, to crush and shear the material into digestible bits while orienting the foodstuffs towards the mouth correctly with their labrum and labium. Some spiders cannot do this, however, either by being too small or lacking the cheliceral teeth needed.

Spoiler: Spider mouth anatomy and simpler explanation

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Image of Chelicerae with specific parts noted and large, spike-like teeth beneath sensory hairs


Molted chelicerae with small, spike-like teeth


Image of a tarantula oral area with areas marked

Simpler explanation: here

In this case, the spider-cows have an adapted form of cheliceral teeth that allow the grinding and shearing of plant fibers as well as the shredding of meat. Additionally, there is in fact precedent for this sort of thing in our world. Bagheera kiplingi is a species of Salticidae Dendryphantinae (New World Jumping Spiders) that has a primarily herbivorous diet.

Although, the milking for food thing is more of a quirk I stole from ants.

[DuctTapeKatar]

Has anyone ever thought of an alternative to wheat or rice for a fantasy story?

I did have this idea for "Serpent Grain," a type of wheat whose grains grew loose in long clusters that would rattle in the wind, and the blades of grass were beaten into the raw fibers so that they could be made into rope, but was also kinda weak without adhesive to bind it.

[KarlMarx]

Has anyone ever thought of an alternative to wheat or rice for a fantasy story?

I did have this idea for "Serpent Grain," a type of wheat whose grains grew loose in long clusters that would rattle in the wind, and the blades of grass were beaten into the raw fibers so that they could be made into rope, but was also kinda weak without adhesive to bind it.

I often go with root vegetables when I want a distinctive food crop for a society. They are heavily varied and domesticated around the world before any fantasy elements come into play, and it's a bit easier to create a distinctive/memorable root vegetable than grain both in terms of appearance and preparation.

[sandmote]

Has anyone ever thought of an alternative to wheat or rice for a fantasy story?

I did have this idea for "Serpent Grain," a type of wheat whose grains grew loose in long clusters that would rattle in the wind, and the blades of grass were beaten into the raw fibers so that they could be made into rope, but was also kinda weak without adhesive to bind it.

If you're set on a grain, look up amaranth. It's best known for being purple, but comes in other colors. Millet and sorghum can also work. If you want something more distinct from wheat, taro was the main food source on some pacific islands (notably Hawaii).

I often go with root vegetables when I want a distinctive food crop for a society. They are heavily varied and domesticated around the world before any fantasy elements come into play, and it's a bit easier to create a distinctive/memorable root vegetable than grain both in terms of appearance and preparation.

Berries, tree fruit, and meats often vary across the world too. And of course giving the party mushrooms; are they poisonous or not?

[Aniikinis]

Has anyone ever thought of an alternative to wheat or rice for a fantasy story?

I did have this idea for "Serpent Grain," a type of wheat whose grains grew loose in long clusters that would rattle in the wind, and the blades of grass were beaten into the raw fibers so that they could be made into rope, but was also kinda weak without adhesive to bind it.

The way that I see it, if you're gonna have a weird grain, it'd better be easy to cultivate, packed with energy and/or able to be made into a variety of foodstuffs, and have additional usage outside of basic subsistence. Or you could go the rye path: the plant was accidentally domesticated and used in a similar way to a different grain.

Serpent grain would be cool, but also keep in mind what would happen if people had to listen to the rattling grains year after year after year. Additionally, it'd probably also probably lead to lots of superstition or cause unease in travelers, which would lead to less trade or rumors cropping up around the area.

[Lleban]

Has anyone ever thought of an alternative to wheat or rice for a fantasy story?

I did have this idea for "Serpent Grain," a type of wheat whose grains grew loose in long clusters that would rattle in the wind, and the blades of grass were beaten into the raw fibers so that they could be made into rope, but was also kinda weak without adhesive to bind it.

I've used, yams, potatoes, corn, sorghum, and quinoa.

I love using extinct fauna, or even unusual mundane animals, to spice up a setting. Terrestrial crocodiles, terror birds, and Enteledonts can be an interesting departure from the usual tigers lions and bears.

One setting i have in particular used hardosaur like dino's as beasts of burden which kinda works since they grow really fast, have social structures humans can co-opt and they grow fairly quickly.

[jqavins]

If you're aiming for a thematic realism to your farmers, I suggest watching this:
CGP Grey: Zebra vs Horses: Animal Domestication
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo

Pick any flavor of creatures that fit your world setting, but make sure they have the right characteristics that would make them more preferable over other existing creatures in your setting. Or just re-flavor ordinary farm animals and just make them look different with different names, but are functionally the same as their real world counterparts.

I actually like the mundane to be mundane. I'll selectively add in strange things (like high elves in my setting raising giant spiders for silk, letting them wear sheer garments worth a fabulous fortune), but if everything's weird, the players/readers just tune it out. Sprinkling little pockets of fantastic things keeps it fresh and keeps them asking "what?"

Hear hear. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, calling it a gleep doesn't add to the setting, and can detract. And, if it fills the roll of a cow, it probably needs to look a whole lot like cow, so it might as well be one.

If you use the usual model of most people living ordinary lives while adventurers and powerful NPCs and the like deal with the bizarre and monstrous, it's best IMHO to keep the mundane mundane. And that's best accomplished by keeping the mundane familiar to the players, mostly.

[Sizzlefoot]

In a world were necromancy is common, undead mounts and beasts of burden could be more common than living ones- they never tire, after all, though they do eventually rot.

[Steel Mirror]

I like putting ecosystems in the sky. In one of my (incredibly shortlived) games, massive floating islands that drifted above the clouds were actually basically giant aerial jellyfish which drew water from the clouds and soaked up sunlight to power themselves. Some mosses and plants in turn grew on them, and species of drake nested on them in huge colonies, travelling to the lands below to hunt and returning to their nests to sleep. They pooped on the jellies' backs, which in turn provided nutrients to the floating island and so on.

The jellyfish reproduced by creating tiny little spawn which were basically bugs, only with radial symmetry, no heads, and tentacles instead of legs. Kind of like those floating jelly-like things in the movie Avatar. People in the world just considered the little things pests and had no idea their connection to sky islands. The spawn were released in huge clouds by the floating islands, and fed upon by sky whales, which were themselves hunted for airship materials. There were also sky kraken, but I never got to use them.

What can I say, I really just wanted sky critters and it sort of got out of control.

I also had one setting with massive trees so large that people would build entire towns at the crown of the tree which was hundreds of feet above the ground. Basically these guys scaled up an order of magnitude:

Spoiler: Baobab

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[Yora]

I think of my setting as being in a hypothetical "D&D universe", but being an alien planet within it. Morrowind, Barsoom, and Dark Sun are awesome settings, and I want something like that.

In that setting, most large animals are reptiles, and there is also a large number of very big insects and other arthropods. One of the first things was to exclude what to a European feels like generic European animals: Dogs, cows, sheep, pigs, bears. I kept great cats because tigers and smilodons are awesome, and I am slightly reflavoring goats and deers as more antelope-like animals.
For birds, I keep eagles, hawks, owls, vultures, pheasants, and seaguls. Seaguls feel very generically familiar to me, but I just can't imagine the feeling of coasts and sea without them.

With the reptiles, I have crocodiles, snakes, and giant lizards and a couple of dinosaurs like brontosaurus, triceratops, and hadrosaurus. The later two are reskinned elephants and camels, as they are both being used as pack animals in the same way. I also reskinned a boar as lystrosaurus, a giant wolf as gorgonops, and a rhinoceros as a prehistoric rhinoceros.

I have giant lobsters, giant ants, giant crab-spider-scorpion hybrids that are all simple reskins, but no regular spiders and scorpions.

In all, I think I have stats for some 50 animals, 40 of which are noy curently found on Earth.

[Sizzlefoot]

Maybe Mongol-style guys are the only ones to use horses. Others prefer giant arthropods or rodents.

[jqavins]

Seaguls feel very generically familiar to me, but I just can't imagine the feeling of coasts and sea without them.

Despite my post above, and in keeping with its last word: "mostly," if you want to focus heavily on reptiles then you could reskin seagulls as flying reptiles. While I don't generally prefer "mundane with a twist" I have to admit it has its place sometimes, and perhaps this is it.

I often find myself disappointed in the lack of mundane animals in the WoTC published books. I once made myself a spreadsheet of felines, using size and mass from web sources, and interpolating HD and attack damage based on weight and the few entries that the MM has. It went from kitties to lions and tigers, with bobcats, panthers, and others in between. I got started on the project because my DM was allowing me a bobcat familiar. Problem: I seem to have lost it.

Edit: Off topic. I saw only the title of an old thread and forgot what the focus was supposed to be.

[Flumphburger]

Going back to alternative food animals, maybe something like a capybara that's been selectively bred to cow size?

Or, to address the underground livestock question, maybe the dwarves or drow or somebody have bred a large, flightless bat? Preferably a frugivorous one, to make feeding it easier.

[Blackhawk748]

In my Post Apocalyptic setting I have River Lurkers (giant 10ft catfish that have lungfish traits and shoot lighting at prey) and Pirahna Frogs which are exactly what they sound like.

I'm fond of Axebeaks as alternate mounts as well as having trilobytes be a thing, as those are some Hardy critters. In my current setting I have an island nation semi domesticate large crabs.