Brindled Birdbear

One of Serina's most widespread species, this large gravedigger has colonized most of Serinarcta, from the far north to the southern sea coasts, thanks to its efficient gait, broad diet, and adaptable behavior. 

Descended from the spirepryer, the birdbears are an adaptable, diverse genus of gravediggers native to Serinarcta in the late hothouse, 290 million years PE. They are distinctive for their upright, bipedal gaits, to which they are well-adapted and able to maintain indefinitely with a human-like vertical spinal arrangement. Most, though not every, species has nearly vertical legs, like man, which reduces the strain on the hips needed to remain in this posture. These gravediggers come in a variety of species with distinct appearances and lifestyles, and which include both generalists that range widely and eat most available foods, and specialists that have more restricted ranges and diets. Most members of this genus are still able to interbreed, but only a couple can produce fertile hybrid offspring.

Brindled birdbears are the most common species of their genus, and the second largest species, reaching up to 7 feet in height and a weight of 220-350 lbs. They are indeed one of Serinarcta's widest-ranging species, native to most of its regions from the polar basin to the nightforest, through the upperglades and the soglands, and down through the savannah woodlands and to the southern sea coast. With a true super-omnivorous diet of anything from grass seeds to crested thorngrazers, and a very energy-efficient gait and a tendency to roam long distances, brindled birdbears are able to eke out a comfortable living almost anywhere they end up across the continent. Though populations in different habitats are often very differently marked with patterns so different that they would appear to be distinct species, their differences are usually skin-deep, and not reflected by significant genetic changes because dispersing juveniles often travel hundreds of miles from their mother's territory and so, over generations, even the most widely separated animals continue to share gene flow. Nightforest populations of this species are the most contrasted, being primarily black and white with little other color, while savannah animals are often a pale yellow with very little dark marking except for near their eyes.

The most common phenotype is a golden brown with a varied number of white bands across the chest, with the face paler than the body; these such animals are common over the soglands, upperglades, and around the polar basin as well as near the southern coasts, although some coastal examples are instead a very different blue-gray, often with little to no pale banding across the body as is seen in the other forms. More localized races which may be almost entirely white (leucistic), reddish (erythistic), or totally black (melanistic) are also known, and usually result from far smaller populations which become truly isolated from others, such as on islands, and which share a limited gene pool where recessive mutations circulate at high density. The brindled birdbear's primary diet varies by its habitat from mostly herbivorous to virtually entirely carnivorous, but this is primarily an environmental or cultural difference rather than a genetic one, as mothers teach their young to eat the most readily available foods they themselves are used to eating. Some forms, especially the coastal and savannah populations, are competent hunters of large vertebrate prey including loopalopes, unicorns, and burdles. The  beaks of this species are razor-sharp for shearing flesh, but this does not stop others from making a more peaceful living eating mostly vegetarian foods like seeds, fruit, and tubers that they dig up with their claws. Where these foods are available enough, there may be little need to hunt, for though meat is higher in nutrition, it is also harder and more risky to acquire.

All mother birdbears are good parents and are known for their protective instincts. Their young are born singly in a secluded den, but begin to emerge within six weeks and follow their mother, sometimes being carried in her arms as she travels. Female brindled birdbears hold only loose and changing territories, and often wander wide distances, while adult males stick to a large territory that they defend from other males while inviting passing females in to mate. Each male's territory will ideally include a variety of food resources and habitats that the females will seek out, and males do not harm the female's offspring, lest they avoid them. If females are not receptive to mate currently when they meet a new male, he will still frequently initiate amicable interactions, and even share food. These favors are remembered by the females later, and males that have been good to them will be their first choices when they do come into breeding season later on, at which time they will return to those which were kindest to them when they needed it. This give-and-take of social interaction in a species which most of the time lives singly and alone is an interesting example of the ways that even "solitary" species can have surprising complexities of interaction with each other that ultimately define their life cycles.