Finfoot Triyena

A large foxtrotter that hunts alone but lives a surprisingly gregarious lifestyle, finfoot triyenas involve increasingly aquatic adaptations suited to life near water.

Finfoot triyenas are widespread, large (350-500 lb) foxtrotters evolved from the fishing triyena, which are now found across northern Serinarcta, throughout the polar basin and along sea coasts and along large, deep rivers. They are closely tied to water and have increased adaptations to swim, now having adapted larger lobed digits that let them swim quickly while sacrificing dexterity in their forelimbs less than with webbed toes. This is important, because while the finfoot does have a very strong jaw and impressive set of hook-like teeth, it relies on its fingers and hooking claws to snatch large aquatic prey. With huge shoulder muscles, it easily hauls animals weighing hundreds of pounds out of the water and onto the shore and dispatches them with a powerful bite to the head. The finfoot hunts either by waiting for prey to come within range and then leaping on top of it, or more often by actively swimming underwater and pursuing it, being a skilled diver. Fish are common prey, but the finfoot will eat a wide variety of animals - dolfinches aren't off the menu, neither are wide-eyed whiskerwhales; the finfoot is indeed one of the primary predators of the latter. It is better at catching relatively large prey than it is chasing down smaller and more agile animals, with highly powerful arms and an impressive bite force for its size: 2,500 lbs per square inch, more than double that of a polar bear. Its jaws are somewhat flattened, broad, and have a similar shape to a crocodile's. They have fused in a projected posture for increased strength under stress, making them very resistant to damage but unable to retract  when the mouth is closed as in other canitheres and their nearest relatives the tribbats.

While many foxtrotters naturally have blue skin, the finfoot has this trait especially prominent, with bright cyan paws, ears, and lip tissue. By pulling back its lips in a snarl, the finfoot can flare this latter skin in a threat display against rivals; the skin is fluorescent, shining brightly in low light conditions, even at night under clear planet-lit skies, and can give the illusion that the triyena's mouth glows with luminescence. 

Like the fishing tryena, the finfoot is a deceptively social animal. Individuals often hunt singly, and so may appear to prefer solitude, but share territories, den sites, and food resources equitably. They will cooperatively hunt during migrations of prey upriver and down again by forming a line and blocking the route. Child-rearing is also communal; no pair bonds are formed, and males breed only with females outsider their clan and vice-versa. While clans are generally territorial, they are not highly aggressive toward one another unless food is in short supply, and different clans can have complex social interactions, especially sharing food, which is a gesture of many roles in their society. It is done sometimes in exchange for mating opportunities, other times as a sort of child support payment, and as a display of fitness and/or good will when trying to join a new clan.

Despite generally not living in close proximity to their young, male finfoot triyenas are able to recognize their own offspring by scent, and may pay them visits by bringing additional meals if their own clan is already well fed and extra food is available. Clans are at their most basic level a group of related females and related males, and those female's offspring, but can become quite large and include of many unrelated and related individuals as additional adults may join over time. New recruits can gain membership through a gradual process that begins by bringing gifts to the other adults or their pups in the form of food that demonstrates their hunting skills and generosity. Finding a new clan may be especially important for single young females which have left their parents' group through dispersal and mated, as they will be unable to raise their cubs themselves, but will not be allowed to stay in any clan where they have bred with a resident male. Other females drive off such visiting females after coupling with their clan's males by instinct, since their own genetics stand the best chance to be passed on if they focus only their own offspring and not those of an outsider. This means that such single, pregnant females must find a third group to integrate into quickly, before their pregnancy is obvious, and so they follow the courses of rivers and in doing so ensure they will pass through several territories in a short timespan. By sharing food with them, they can gain acceptance before the new females become aware of their impending birth, and can sneak past triggering the instinctive behavior to avoid raising outsider young. If they can be accepted a few weeks before the pups are due, the clan will not remember that until recently they were an outsider, and she will be able to rely on them to help protect their young while out hunting as if they were her own relatives.

Perhaps because this species is fairly slow to mature and only bears one or two offspring every few years, it is very hampered by even limited inbreeding compared to many other animals. They not only have an extremely strong set of social behaviors that prevent this, but also the ability to recognize relatives even several degrees of separation apart. Individuals as far apart as uncles and nieces and second cousins are likely to find the scent of one another in breeding condition to be repelling and so avoid coupling. Such an acute sense of smell means that these foxtrotters can almost definitely tell, by scent, whether pups in the clan are actually those of their female relatives or not, and cause the dominant females of a clan to realize babies from a newly-joined outsider shouldn't be worth their effort to help raise. But the mothering instinct, once babies are born, is very strong in this species, and overcomes all other drives, to the point finfoot triyenas will even adopt abandoned young far older than babies, sometimes even yearlings already half their adult size. Only before any young are born, it seems, is the instinct to care for only genetic relatives applied. The social structure resulting from the intertwining of such varied instinctive and cultural behaviors is complex, but produces a fit and very healthy group at the population level, while not fully sacrificing the social cooperation which benefits all on an individual level.