Kaelyrs are omnivorous, but lean heavily towards herbivores. They feed primarily on plant stems, flowers, leaves, roots, grass, fruit and vegetable, mushrooms, eggs, fish, bugs and small animals similar to rodents and frogs. The food is rarely eaten raw (except for eggs that Kaelyrs often eat without cooking, and fruit), they often add mineral powders or ground eggshells to their meals to enrich their diet, and though hunting big animals is rare, it's become possible with the invention of weapons. Kaelyrs only hunt big prey when there's a scarcity of their usual meat resources. Mountain plants foraging, mushroom picking, fruit collecting and small animal hunting have been the Kaelyrs' ways of gathering food for millions of years, and they still live the same way, but they have also learned to cultivate many plants. Overall, Kaelyrs like to eat, and they eat a lot: four meals a day (morning, midday, early evening & late evening) with snacks in-between. They value delicious foods and like sweet plants and fruit, often partaking in foraging competitions of who can gather the best stuff.
Fun fact: many plants in the Kaelyrs’ diet come from the mountainous and rocky areas and grow on cliffs; for that reason, many Kaelyrian gardens and farmlands look like fancy piles of rock.
Kaelyrs don’t drink milk, but they are huge fans of tisane. They also fancy water mixed with fruit juice, flower extracts, sugar, or herbs. At some point they realized that leaving fruits for too long results in them getting sour, but adding sweet plant stems, flowers, spices and water makes for delicious drinks. Alcoholic beverages are popular in Kaelyrs’ everyday life; they usually drink light flower wine with the third meal of the day (in the early evening), and like to compete in drinking extremely strong liquids during festivals. Every big commune of every region has their own unique drink recipe, and those are kept in secret, passed through generations of trusty brewers and vintners. Loud evenings with rich foods and many types of drinks, accompanied by singing and dancing, are a common occurrence in all regions. Adults might not be showing a good example to their young, but children are prohibited from trying alcohol until they reach adolescence (it doesn’t stop them from stealing jars right from under the adults’ drunk noses).
Their close connection to plants also made Kaelyrs extremely observant when it comes to how different plants behave when damaged, cooked, burnt or processed in any other way. Through trial and error, over hundreds of thousands of years, they have compiled a collection of weeds with hallucinogenic or relaxing properties, as well as toxic ones in which the level of toxin can be lowered for a special “death dive” effect – some describe it as “floating away from life”, somewhat similar to carotid choke. Most of the plants used for their psychedelic or toxic properties are addictive and dangerous when not handled or processed properly; for that reason, those who want to engage with these plants must be very careful and ask for advice from the experienced elders. In some of the most traditional and ancient communes Kaelyrs still practice rituals where these special weeds play the role of “connectors” by “dividing the spirit from the body so it can reach the gods”.
Kaelyrs are naturally born as males or females, with respective reproductive organs, but they possess dynamic sex morphology - meaning, they can change their sex traits to the opposite ones when need arises. This ability takes root in the distant past of pre-intelligence hardcore survival, when feral Kaelyrs used all of their natural body resources to keep their kind alive. In the modern era this feature is not used for survival due to better life quality and safer planet conditions, but most individuals can change their sex if they want to, temporarily or permanently. This process, however, is extremely demanding and in most cases physically exhausting, because it's initiated by the sheer power of an individual's will instead of natural need. The transformation of the reproductive system can take up to several weeks, with mood swings and a constant uncomfortable feeling, but the overall appearance of the individual may change very slowly over years if they decide to keep their new sex, or not change at all.
Fun fact: similar to their colour palettes, the sex of Kaelyrs is often pre-determined by their adaptive systems prior to birth and depends on whether there are more males or females in their surroundings. It happens in order to balance out the natural numbers of both sexes and make them equal.
Kaelyrs carry a pregnancy for 240 days, their children are called young; usually one or two young are born, triplets are very rare and are considered a blessing. They are born live, without covers but with a powerful sense of smell that slowly degrades over time. All young are born the same colour depending on the region: reddish for the desert, brown for the mountains, grey for the forest. Their growth is slow, and for at least a year they look extremely similar, after that most children start developing their own fur colour and growing masks and covers. This process can take up to a few years until the child's fur colour and pattern settle. During this time they also shed all year round. A lot.
From birth, for about two years Kaelyr young must be fed ground food, easily digestible pre-cooked pastes and purees based on herbivore diet, eggs, insects and fatty fish. The young are usually raised in communal nurseries - places where feeders, babysitters and regular folk take care of the babies. The parents are, of course, allowed to spend time with the children and feed them, too, but usually the process of meal preparation is entrusted to the feeders, since it's their specialty. From two to six years they grow teeth and slowly start changing their diet to something more solid, after six years they are usually capable of digesting most plants, even the toxic ones. It's also after six years old that the young start speaking in more or less coherent sentences.
Kaelyrs grow and age slowly, and with time that their civilization is developing, this speed is decreasing slightly every few decades. Currently Kaelyrs are categorized by age as follows:
0-6 - toddler
6-16 - child
16-26 - adolescent
26-50 - adult
50-80 - middle age
80-120 - late adult
120-180 - old (current life expectancy)