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+--- Thread: Whump research (/showthread.php?tid=40633)
Whump research - Memory - April 05, 2020
So Memory is about to take a pretty heavy whump. I've been looking at photos of horrible injuries all morning for research but I have a few questions.
1. How quickly would a severe laceration heal without stiches? I've seen wolves with ears missing and even limbs missing so I assume they stop bleeding quickly.
2. How would a wolf avoid infection in a punctured eye?
3. How soon would a wolf be able to eat again after a devastating mouth injury?
4. How bad of body condition would a wolf be in after starving for 3-6 weeks (I assume how long it would take to be healed enough to eat again.)
RE: Whump research - Reiko - April 05, 2020
This site is a semi-realistic so I'd imagine some wiggle room with a lot of these within a reasonable doubt. There are a few good healers on-site you can search for within-or outside of your pack; search for allies, MSP might be able to help Memory or he can look for other packs! Reiko might be willing to help too since RE and I think KO doesn't know what NW are like.
With that being said, let's get to the numbers.
1. Depending on the healer, severe lacerations are often shut in someway, Reiko uses honey when necessary so the time of the year is good for that! (AKA not winter where there's no honey lmao).
I worked as a vet tech, and with stitches, a 'severe' laceration with stitches take usually around 2 weeks if kept clean and dry and the individual is relatively healthy and young. So I'd imagine Memory would be stuck, not moving a lot, with a healing companion to look after him and feed him during this time. I'd imagine the wound without stitches taking about 3-4 weeks before he can move around, in my opinion, depending on the severity you decide.
2. Punctured eyes are almost guaranteed to get infected since punctures impregnate the tissue with bacteria and all kinds of disgusting things. I'd say he'll realistically lose his eye if not his life from going septic while the injury is close to his brain. Laceration would make the eye more realistically plausible to heal without killing him from infection. Rosencrantz lost his eye completely from a fire, and thankfully fires are not full of bacteria AND cauterize. So my suggestion for this is a laceration and not a puncture - but hey, everyone here has different opinions.
3. Mouths heal pretty quickly surprisingly enough, so long as he doesn't strain it and keeps his mouth fairly clean (this is stretching the semi-realistic thing of the site since wild wolves would most likely have some gingivitis, but since their diet lacks sugar and all that junk in dog diets, I would say their mouths aren't that like that of a domestic dog). If you look around, you can see wolves teeth are pretty good other than wear and tear, they don't usually die from gum disease but instead of fractures in the teeth which cause infection, so i'd say wolf mouths are pretty clean (all things considered...)!
So I would say, depending on the wound and where it is, it's plausible for about a week without food in general (he might lose his appetite anyway from a sore mouth) and the second week on soft, pre-chewed food, then week 3 he should be able to eat more solid food again.
4. Dead. Wild wolves could possibly go only 2 weeks and longer if prey is scarce (this is also assuming that with other weather coming, his metabolism will get a boost too, unlike arctic wolves who can fast for months in colder weather). Longer than 2 weeks is assuming they are getting very small portions of food and not completely food-less. So 3 - 6 weeks without any food, in my opinion, would be a dead wolf. Wild wolves rely heavily on their pack, even recovering wolves! I'd suggest him eating very small portions like in a famine, mice, rats, little bites of food every now and then and once the time allotted is up he's probably skin and bones - again depending on how much food he's getting. If he's just laying there and being fed, his muscles are probably atrophied too, which means he will barely be able to walk after 6 weeks and would need to rebuild.
ALL OF THE ABOVE IS PURELY MY OPINION AND CAN BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT. ALL SUGGESTIONS COME FROM MY EXPERIENCE AS A VET TECH AND READING UP ON WILD WOLVES - NATURALLY I CAN GET SOME THINGS WRONG, BUT THIS IS ALSO BY INCORPORATING THE SEMI-REALISTIC PART THAT WOLF-RPG IS.
RE: Whump research - Arcturus - April 05, 2020
1. How quickly would a severe laceration heal without stiches?
Depends on the laceration site, the depth of injury, and the amount of motility in the surrounding structures. For a non-mobile site, a good guess for full wound closure is probably five weeks for a wound that needed stitches but got none. Most lacerations heal from the inside out. ROM will impact how quickly a wound closes, as will how vascular the tissue is. Something on the leg will have a slower healing time than something on the neck or head, for instance. Then there are also other complications at play such as the type of connective tissue lacerated - in general skin heals quite rapidly, tendons slower, and ligaments slowest of all.
2. How would a wolf avoid infection in a punctured eye?
Any sort of puncture in the wild usually comes with some sort of infection. In the wild, punctured tissue can have a good prognosis, but punctured joints (IE joint puncture of the stifle, hock, etc) are almost always fatal. Eyes are very fragile and are likely to become infected once punctured, and tend to develop ulcers if left untreated; generally prognosis is good for survival, but not visibility in the punctured eye.
3. How soon would a wolf be able to eat again after a devastating mouth injury?
Depends on location and injury type. Face injuries heal fairly rapidly due to the highly vascular nature of the head.
4. How bad of body condition would a wolf be in after starving for 3-6 weeks?
Wolves are 'feast or famine' predators - they can go 2+ weeks without food without extreme loss of body condition. A good rule of thumb is to use a body conditon scale, and detract one level on the scale for every 2 weeks they go without food. Most wild animals fall within 4-5 on the BCS, with very few outliers at 6+ and many more at 4 or lower.