Yagakit: Grounded Walkers

Basic Information

Anatomy

Yagakit have six legs, each with immense muscular power, whose feet use a combination of suction, grappling, and serrated claws to keep the yagakit close to the ground. For all this, Yagakit are smaller than most other beasts of burden, roughly one or two cubits tall, and can be picked up by the back, assuming that they're willing to let go of the soil.

Additional Information

Domestication

The common beast of burden is the cow, the horse, or the weroiki. However, often these creatures are too stupid and/or stubborn to be effective for long amounts of time; rather, they need to be "broken" for effective employment. Yagakit are significantly smarter and so significantly easier to train, to the point where they can be purchased or captured a few days prior to a harvest and employed during the harvest. Their submissiveness also ensures that they won't wander off from curiosity or their own stupidity.

There are several reasons, then, why yagakit haven't monopolized the beast-of-burden market. For one, yagakit can pull a surprising amount but still not the same load as their larger counterparts. Three or four are required to pull a medium-sized wagon, for example. This adds to the feeding and purchase costs, making yagakit more expensive in the short run and comparable in the long run. For another, the body of the yagakit is not suited to slinging items on or over its back like a horse or cow could offer. Special harnesses are needed to rig a pack of yagakit to a wagon, as compared to the loose collections of rope, wood, and/or metal required for the others. Yagakit are further rather slow in comparison to the horse, and can't produce meat or milk like the cow, making their primary function as a pulling mechanism. Even so, they are the best animals for the job on that front.

Average Intelligence

Yagakit can understand stimuli acutely well. It's been said that yagakit are the smartest non-sapient species in Wouraiya, though recent evidence implies that they might be sapient. They have passed the Mirror Test, and they can mimic actions made by sapient life. Some domesticated yagakit have also been toilet-trained.

Even so, yagakit seem to lack the impetus to act on their own intelligence. Once domesticated, they rarely leave their owner's care, with the exception of the owner's death, extreme maltreatment, or extreme neglect.