"Dragon amongst the sheep" How could a dragon avoid other animals registering him as a threat?
So, one of the less know abilities of dragons here is anivoice.
Anivoice allows dragons to communicate with birds, mammals, reptiles, dinosaurs and pterosaurs.
Of course, the information, relayed by them, is vague and (depending on the animal) more or less useless/obvious.
Using voice mimicry, the dragon can still get birds to use his horn as a perch which does make his larger-than-a-horse carnivore form a little cuter. He can also use it spook hunting dogs and even destrier horses from a distance.
So, here comes the problem: Animals, affected by anivoice, have roughly the same architecture, but their instruction sets differ from species to species (per-specimen for house cats) AND from peripheral to peripheral. In general, animals have very small instruction sets for interpreting each other's vocalizations, as it usually reveals their position to the enemy.
They have much larger instruction sets and libraries to process visual cues (body language, color, etc), which is where the dragon is lacking. Even if he wears a flower crown, has all kinds of birds perch on him, he'll still be an apex predator (as long as there aren't any humans around). So, he needs a way to get the animals to "listen to him" instead of running away.
How can a dragon prevent the animals from registering him as a threat? And just to be clear, these animals are identical to the ones on Earth and didn't evolve to instinctively consider dragons an ally. Also, while anivoice does make taming easier, the dragon doesn't have the time to do that, plus that wouldn't fall under the definition of the ability
Note: I'm not sure why people are Voting to close as off-topic, so:
It's not story-based. I said it, an effective anivoice (communication with animals) has to cover multiple senses, since only a few animals use vocalization as their primary way of conveying information. The prerequisite to being able to employ body language is being in a situation/context, where an animal would "listen".
The question's purpose is to find a reproducible way for an intelligent predator to be able to get the specified animals to listen.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/167512. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
How can a dragon prevent the animals from registering him as a threat?
Don't act threatening.
Animals aren't stupid, and running away takes energy. I believe many/most prey animals will allow a predator to get within at least range that the dragon can (loudly) announce his benign intentions without spooking, if the dragon clearly isn't stalking them. (Once he can shout 'no threat!', hopefully they'll let him get closer... again, as long as he doesn't spook them!)
The trick is to look non-threatening. Approach at a casual pace from an angle or maybe circle around so that he doesn't seem to be approaching them deliberately. Avoid any pretense of stealth; make sure the animals know he's coming and know where he is, and make it clear he isn't trying to hide. Keep his head up and avoid looking directly at them. If they look like they're about to bolt, stop and wait for them to calm down. Try to look smaller without crouching. Absolutely under no circumstances open his wings. Etc. (Also, avoid leaving abruptly after an encounter; walk/trot a good distance away, calmly, before running or flying.)
Even better would be to get just close enough that they know he's there, announce himself and his desire to talk, and then let them be the ones to approach. If possible, lie down somewhere where he can still be easily seen (because he really wants to avoid any appearance of trying to hide).
I don't have any sources offhand to back this up, but I'm pretty sure this works in real life. (It definitely works with predatory animals that are less likely to think of themselves as prey, but even strong, healthy prey species that are less worried about being run down and/or overpowered easily should be approachable.)
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