What can I do with animals in cages in Dwarf fortress?

Question

I bought some animals from a caravan because I thought "oh cool, animals!" but I don't really know what I can do with them. I guess the dwarves would like a bit of jaguar meat, but that seems a waste. I tried using my kennel to train wardogs (acording to the wiki, this will actually train other animals too) and train hunting dogs (ditto), but it told me there were no animals available.

So I tried moving the caged animals from the stockpile to somewhere else and tried again. Still no luck.

The animals were tame, so I tried releasing them from their cages and trying again. Still no luck.

Have I just been unlucky in buying, like, six animals none of which I can train, or am I doing it wrong?

[P.S. If I wanted to put animals that are roaming around the fortress back in cages, is there a way to be selective, or should I just put traps near my food supply and hope the right ones wander in...]

Answer 1

To train exotic animals you need a dungeon master. Once you have a Dungeon Master you can tame exotic animals. Once the animal is tame you can then train it as a beast of war.

In version .31 and upwards the dungeon master has been removed. He is no longer needed to train large animals in .34, in .31 he was. But there was a bug that prevented him from showing up.

Answer 2

You can still use them for zoos and pets, right?

Answer 3

I like to have a cage of rabig dogs right outside my gate so when the goblins decide to invade, they are greeted by 50 hungry dogs.

Release the hounds!

Seriously though you can easily hook up a mechanism to a cage so you can literally let them loose whenever.