They grow millet and sorghum as staples and raise cattle, sheep, and goats on a small scale.
Their normal domestic unit is the polygamous joint family of a man and his sons (and sometimes grandsons) with their wives and unmarried daughters.
It is considered essential for a man to have a son if he is to achieve fulfillment and be venerated as an ancestor after his death.
The resulting ambivalence between father and son plays an important role in Tallensi rituals and taboos.
A tribal elder, carrying the dead man's bow, ritually guides the son to his father's granary and shows him the inside.
After his father's death the son is considered a mature man for the purposes of ritual, and it is his responsibility to make sacrifices to the ancestors, chief among them being his own father, who being recently dead is held to act as an intermediary between those still living and the more remote ancestors.