Foons

A group of aquatic tentacled birds that stand out for their lack of a tentacled face, the foons have evolved away from their trademark attribute as they adapt more completely to life underwater than any trunko before them.

There are so many diverse forms of trunko birds by the late hothouse that to select just one as the most derived, the oddest or the most unique, is no easy task. Should the title go to the tiny seaskipper which runs on water and fits in a palm, or perhaps the fierce carnackles with tentacular jaws lined with hook-like teeth? There are trunkos that swim, which climb, and many that run. There are armored trunkos, gracile trunkos, and even trunkos which never come on land. Some - the lump lineage which comes from Serinaustra - have evolved wholly new manipulating appendages from the muscles over their cheeks, called the flanges. But only one clade of trunko has lost its namesake trait. Just a single group that have lost their trunks altogether. The snout-nosed snifflers, a clade descended from the ice age plump sniffler, are characterized by their extremely reduced upper lip that has become so short as to no longer qualify as a tentacle at all. No other rhyncheirid bird has reverted to such an atrophied state as these. By the late hothouse, the snout-nosed snifflers comprise just two families that are very different from each other. The more basal group is known as the rapacious snifflers, and they are restricted entirely to the Trilliontree Island region; the largest species the death sniffler - is found only on Trang Island, and is a formidable land carnivore exhibiting island gigantism. The other group, which evolved from a species that resembled the smallest rapacious snifflers still living, has reached a worldwide distribution thanks to the skill they have acquired in swimming. These are the foons, and it may well be they that are truly the most aberrant, strange, and unexpected of any trunko. They are a group that does not closely resemble any group of tentacle bird. With a fleshy snout and no beak visible with a closed mouth, a foon very broadly resembles a seal without front flippers, and the back feet of a duck. It can barely move on land, but underwater it "flies" with utmost grace. These are the fastest of all the swimming trunkos, and also include the smallest; though the largest foons are some five times as big as a human, the littlest could be held comfortably in two hands.

Foons glide through waters both fresh and salt like torpedos, propelled only by their two hind legs, now set very far back on the body and ending in huge webbed feet, unlike the lobed feet of the lump trunkos which evolved to maximize dexterity on land while also providing thrust underwater. Foons don't need to walk and only haul out next to the shore, so that they have gone all-in on growing paddles for feet with no concern for traction. They are usually social, often gregarious, always playful, but they are predators just as ruthless as the death sniffler in their focused, efficient pursuit of fish, snarks and other small water animals (or, for the huge sea tiger, quite large water animals, too.) When hunting their lips peel back from their mouth, revealing a wicked set of many-cusped jaws that resemble a set of dolfinch's keratin teeth, though are in fact all part of a single cohesive beak. The many serrations on these beaks shear together when the jaws are closed, a deadly slicing bite to catch and slice prey into manageable pieces before swallowing, and this also lets some foons savagely bite chunks from live prey even bigger than themselves.

Despite their many differences from other trunkos, foons share in common the virtually universal trait of rearing their eggs in neck pouches. Those of foons are not fully waterproof, and this requires that they do incubation out of water, a vulnerable position for them. Pairs alternate brooding duties every two to three days, with one out hunting as the other sits among many other adults in nesting colonies in relatively safe offshore islands or sea caves beneath coastal sky islands. Young can float at birth but are weak swimmers for several weeks, and adults must introduce their young to the water only gradually before the family can leave back out to the comparative safety of deep water. The nesting colonies of the white-tipped foon, native to the northerly waters off the east coast of Serinarcta, are among the largest of any foon and can number up to 6 million, mostly sharing just a few breeding grounds around the isle of Apollo and Faraway island. This species is capable of far open ocean movements and its foraging range outside the nesting season can extend as far south as Serinaustra, but like most foons favors coastal waters where prey is much more densely aggregated.

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Atlas foons are an uncommon, mostly solitary species of foon, known for their extreme sexual dimorphism, the most extreme of any trunko. They are thinly distributed worldwide, but never gather in large numbers. The female closely resembles such close relatives as the white-tipped foon, but the male is ballooned into a behemoth now weighing up to 850 pounds. This would be considered very large among foons as a whole, which are on average much smaller than marine animals which have been aquatic for longer, but there is one other foon which surpasses even this species in total size. The size difference between the sexes of the atlas foon is complimented by different coloration, with the mature male adding very bright shades of blue and teal to the black and white speckled pattern of the juvenile and adult female. Though the extreme difference in male versus female appearance has parallels with species like the elephant seal, it has not evolved for the same reason, which in that pinniped was to allow males to control stretches of beach territory and defend harems of mates from rival males. No, atlas foons are not large colony breeders. The atlas foon has seemingly evolved their size range to niche-partition within its own species, so that males and females don't compete for resources. Females are fast, hunting swift and nimble fish and snark prey, like the shoaling escardines that flourish in shallow near-shore waters. Males are slow but powerful; their size comes with much bigger lungs, and they are solitary deep divers, feeding far from the continental shelf in open ocean regions near the sea floor. Their prey too includes snarks, but the largest male atlas foons engage in undersea battles with prey closer to their own size, and can even feed on smaller calacarnas - snarks that are, most often, fierce predators in their own right. The female feeds on as many bony fish as gastropods, but the male's diet is totally dominated by large snarks; less than 10% of its diet differs, and that gap is mostly filled by large sea carrion, not by any other living prey. Its snark diet may be related to having comparatively small jaws for its size, only around twice as large as those of the much smaller female, and not well built to cut tough meat or bone from large vertebrates. But uniquely among trunkos, foons are capable of suction feeding, and the male atlas foon can slurp the fatty meat from these large, soft prey items that don't require strong chewing jaws to consume.

Male and female atlas foons come together only for a few months per year in the breeding season, and they form solitary pairs which go to great lengths to avoid one another. The huge size of the male is itself a defense from most predators that can reach the isolated islets and rocky coves that newly-coupled pairs select as their breeding sites, and so large colonies are not necessary to ensure survival of their young. Further, the male's larger size allows it to endure much longer periods without feeding than the dainty female, who may weigh just 180 pounds to his 800+. After mating, which occurs in water due to the ungainly size of the male who could easily crush his partner, the female lays a single egg, and assists the male in placing it into his brood pouch. Then the female departs, leaving the entire duty of incubation to the male, who must stay on land or rest in only very shallow water so as not to inundate his egg with water, which would quickly drown it. For eight weeks he must stand vigil - or rather, sit vigil - ensuring the egg is kept warm and dry. He provides protection from the many scavenging seabirds which would harass a small female and try to get her to release her egg. He could flatten most such foes if he wanted, but he does not want to move too much if he can avoid it while incubating, for his egg could risk damage if he isn't very careful. So he has evolved another defense; an enlarged air sac develops around his nostrils at maturity, letting him produce a foghorn like warning call which is deafening at close range, and which strongly discourages those pesky smaller birds from harassing him - even larger villaingulls are unwilling to risk hearing loss from being hit with this bellow point blank; a single egg is not worth it!

For just short of sixty days and nights he does not feed, tending his egg being his sole priority, and he may lose over 200 pounds in the process. But then, often just a single day before the egg will hatch, the female returns to him. She has kept track of the passing day cycles, and returned just in time. She has stayed fit and strong by hunting every day, and she carries food in her crop for the chick which soon hatches. The male's work is not quite over yet; it will be about ten more days before the chick is ready to leave his pouch, and until then the female visits every other day with more nourishment to sustain it. Then, on the tenth day, he gently disgorges it, and it follows its mother out to sea, ready to swim and begin to learn to feed itself with her close guidance. Even if it is a male, it will resemble the female for about 2 years, and until then will also eat like her, only switching to softer, larger fare once it is too big to swiftly pursue the shoaling fish. The pair now departs, perhaps never to meet again, and the male, alone again, at last can find himself something to eat. Many male trunkos are good parents, but most have males and females which look more alike and can easily alternate parental duties; this is true for every other foon species. This is the only one with such drastic dimorphism, and yet they still share responsibility equally. Where many species with extremely different sexes will have just one take on all parental care, the atlas foon use their differences to their advantage to maximize the chances of their offspring's survival through an equivalent exchange of labor in which each sex does the jobs it is best suited to, complimenting one another's abilities. Though they are only formed for a few months each year, and rarely with the same partners twice, the temporary bonds of atlas foon couples are among the most cooperative and balanced of all birds, and their young have a very high chance of survival to adulthood as a result.

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The fireback foon is one of the stranger species, and one of very few in which females greatly outsize males. It is a shallow-water oceanic feeder that mainly takes shelled molluscs and slow-moving benthic snarks, and its range is very restricted: it is only known to nest on the three eggs islands off western Serinarcta - an island group much better known for their diverse variety of chamarmotoo inhabitants - and it feeds along their coasts within a few hundred miles of land. Placed in a genus apart from the majority of species seen thus far, these trunkos still have relatively long trunks that overhang their lower lips, but they are not any more primitive than other foon species. Both sexes of fireback foon are colorful with warm hues different from other genera, the male being marked over head and back with a splash of orange while the female's hue is a lemon yellow. Both sexes have blue feet and white toes, slightly brighter in the female. Black markings contrast the brighter colors, with the tail and underbelly stark white in the typical countershaded manner of oceanic animals.

Females in this species are up to three times the weight of males and can weigh up to 500 lbs, though 350 is more typical. This is unlike most foons, in which either sexes are similar or it is the male that is bigger. The fireback foon and its near relatives in the same genus exhibit a reversal of expectations in this regard because unlike other foons and most trunkos in general, they have evolved to produce large clutches of up to six eggs - and a single female will court several much smaller males, each one hoping to fertilize at least one of them. Females move inland up to two miles after mating to begin laying their eggs and to do all incubation, their large size protecting them from predators as in the similar atlas foon, in which the male does the same. It is an exertion for her, a journey taken in slow flops on her belly. But the smaller males can make the trip much more easily, and up to six of them will tend her as she broods her young, alternating taking food to her each day to keep her fed and hydrated for the lengthy two and a half months her staggered egg clutches will take to all hatch. During this time the female lays in place, sleeps most of the day, and hardly moves, and her sedentary habit is the key to letting her brood so many eggs at a time, as she must be careful not to jostle the eggs together and crack them. Her yellow color may be useful to hide her form among the island's abundant flameflower vegetation, which she may utilize to deter other animals from bothering her. Very thick, almost scaly skin on her underside provides protection from more than mild burns in the event she rolls over some of the leaves by mistake.

Each of her eggs will hatch up to a week apart, in the order it was laid, and she will carefully eject the chick from the pouch as soon as she feels movement; it will immediately be taken by whichever male visits her next, put in his own pouch, and carried back to the sea. A male does not distinguish whether an offspring is his own or not, and once he is saddled with a child, he will cease to tend the female and devote his full attention to its care from then on. When all eggs are hatched, the female herself will return to the sea and from then on will leave all parenting to the chicks' many fathers. If fewer eggs hatch than there are males to raise them, leftover males will assist other males in rearing chicks. In the much more rare event that more chicks are born than males are present to raise them individually, the mother may simply abandon the last ones to hatch, viewing them as unnecessary spares. If they are left at the nest site inland, their chances are negligible, but most females will at least make the minimum effort to release them when they return to the ocean, where other males may come across and adopt them. Males will not usually raise more than one chick at a time, but those without any young to raise are often eager foster parents, and as females mature, they begin to select mates into their harems primarily based on their past parenting skills, so that even raising a chick unrelated to a male now can result in a chance to raise his own offspring later on.

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Foons are diverse in niche, size, and appearance. Some foons are very small, and some do not live in the ocean at all. A tiny, largely solitary freshwater foon, the 30 lb shellsplitter colonized interior Serinaustra through the west fork of Split River around 1.5 million years ago and is today widespread through the waterway which cuts across the continent west to east, through a range of biomes including the longdark swamp and the stormveld; it is especially common in the fast-flowing waters where rivers meet the Auroral Sea, as these sites support the highest density of its food source. It descends from a group of foons which are predators of molluscs, including reef-building species, many of which are adapted to remove them from their shells by powerful suction feeding. The shellsplitter's genus however favors bivalves rather than snails and the more tightly sealed shells of these animals are harder to crack; they have evolved blunt cusps on their bills to crack through, similar to extinct aquatic molodonts of the ocean age and the contemporary shellshuck scarreots of more coastal waters. Because they navigate shallow streams and vegetated waterways, shellsplitters are now the smallest species in their group, many of which are called (slightly erroneously) nutcracker foons for their powerful tooth-like bills.

The shellsplitter uses both sight and touch to find food in waters which are usually very cloudy with sediment from the surrounding land and further which may be dark for half the polar year. It has long, bristle-like whisker plumes along its face which are larger relative to its size than those of other foons; these connect to nerves and provide excellent tactile sense, and are the only feathers still present on most foons' bodies. Its eyes are very large with expanding pupils that can range from a narrow vertical slit in bright conditions to a vast black circle covering the entire eye in darkness. Diving often to hunt for its food in the sand and mud beneath the areas of flowing water that its filter-feeding prey tend to aggregate in, the shellspitter is territorial and once it finds a good place to hunt will remain there, often for its life. Though the species as a whole is widespread, dispersal only occurs in juveniles and adults are sedentary. This species rarely occurs in more than a pair, and such couples tend to chase away rivals that would otherwise compete for the food in their area which they rely on and force them to find a new feeding ground. Unlike most foons the shellsplitter often floats at the surface of the water, sometimes on its back, and it regularly rests on land, logs or other raised areas out of water. In this species the female does all brooding of the egg while being fed by the male, after which both parents will care for the chick which can swim shortly after its birth but will frequently rest on the adult's near the surface until they are stronger and less prone to tire quickly. Juveniles stay with their parents for only around six months after which the pair will lay another egg and swiftly drive off their older offspring, now a competitor to the next one. This lower level of sociality and reduced period of parental care likely has to do with relatively limited food and space in freshwater habitats - especially small river territories - versus the virtually limitless ocean where animals can wander long distances to find all they need.

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The ruby-nosed foon is another freshwater foon that is not found in oceanic regions. This species reaches a weight of up to 65 lbs and is found widely in vegetated freshwater habitats across the polar basin's drainages. They are monogamous, with couples forming early in life, and are somewhat unique in that they are territorial, defending nesting sites during the breeding season that they situate on rafts of floating branches, soil, and plant material carried away by seasonal floods. Females use these as platforms to haul out and incubate their eggs, while males provide defense against predators and share food with her during this time. Even outside nesting, they very rarely socialize in groups larger than two, and males in particular are aggressive to other males, while females are less so, so that very occasionally throuples may come to be, though these have reduced reproductive success. Males are decorated with a pair of nasal crests that can be swelled to triple their size with blood when excited, both when courting a mate and challenging a rival. Females have small yellow nares that do not change size. Though bonds in this species can be life-long, they are reaffirmed periodically with elaborately synchronized display movements, a courtship dance which is refined over time and becomes unique to every pair. Younger couples are much less in sync than older ones, and the longer they spend together the more alike their movements will become until they can swim together as if two halves of a mirror image, completely matching one another at every step.

Ruby-nosed foons are omnivorous, which is not typical of their clade as a whole. Though they still show the sharp cusped beaks of all foons which are best suited to catch small prey like fish and molluscs, this animal also consumes fruit and various water plants which it chews only a little and mainly swallows whole in mouthfuls to be broken down in its gut. For this reason, it consumes pebbles and mollusc shells to use as grit to help crush up this component of its diet. Plants can make up around 40% of its diet. During floods, pairs will seek out trees that are either uprooted or submerged so that their crowns are accessible, and will swim through the branches to find fruit still attached, one of their favorite meals. When water levels are low they gravitate away from flowing rivers and tend to inhabit slow-moving, deep lakes. The animal component of the diet is mainly made up of slow-moving benthic species which it captures by diving; this foon is not as fast as some others and does not usually chase fish in open water. When feeding on vegetation however it will often be seen right at the surface, laying low in the water with only its head emerged as it gobbles down its leafy fare, occasionally supplementing this with small prey like the chicks of other water birds that swim too near.

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The meridian sea tiger is the largest foon, reaching a weight of 1,000 pounds and a length of 12 feet. It is an ocean-going, apex predator of the seamount for which it is named. While the next largest foon, the male atlas, has a weak bite and thus favors soft-bodied food, the sea tiger is a specialist carnivore with strong jaws and an especially powerful cusped beak that is highly suited to dismembering large vertebrate prey. Sea tigers are solitary ambush hunters that favor shallow vegetated water, even just a couple of feet deep. They glide quietly through the seamount's dense meadows of sea puffgrass with occasional broad strokes of their webbed feet, or sometimes kick along the sand to slide on their bellies in barely enough water to cover themselves. They are methodical, relaxed, and appear almost lazy. They are experts at conserving energy until they come close to a potential meal. Then everything changes. With a flash of energy and an explosive push off the sand, a sea tiger gives chase. It hunts anything it can grab and bite apart, or bludgeon, or drown, including sawphins, whelicans, and other foons which come to the shallows to feed, breed, or be picked free of parasites by cleaner fish that advertise their services near where the seamount drops off into the dark ocean beyond. Ruthless in its attack once prey is grabbed, it has only a few short moments to chase down an animal before it loses the element of surprise and is outpaced in open water where many can outrun it. Despite its ferocity, like most large carnivores, more hunts fail than succeed. But there is always another chance, and its large size lets it store extra calories from successful kills as a layer of body fat around itself so that it can comfortably wait a few days between meals, no harm done.

This animal's nearest relative to another similar species called the pelagic sea tiger, a smaller animal reaching around 650 lbs, and the meridian species evolved from it only 1 million years ago. Pelagic sea tigers are faster and more agile, still hunting along coastal waters but normally miles from land, and their prey range is smaller, though they will also hunt other foons. To be more agile while chasing food quickly at an increasingly large size, sea tigers evolved a unique work-around to their lack of front limbs to turn into flippers. They habitually let water into their brood pouches and tighten or relax the muscles on each side of the pouch to form a fin-like shape to help it brake and turn, effectively using their pouch as additional limbs and the pressure of the water held inside it as a supportive hydrostatic skeleton. The meridian sea tiger retains this trait, which let its ancestors reach the isolated seamount in the first place, though now its specialization to shallow water hunting renders it less necessary. Meridian sea tigers have grown so large because their isolated habitat is effectively an island in the sea, merely one with most if its land still just barely submerged below the surface. An example of island gigantism, it has been able to come to rule this insular habitat by specializing to hunt in low, weedy waters that most pelagic predators that could reach it still struggle to navigate.

The sea tiger could only colonize this region recently, however, because until around 1 million years ago the seamount had no land and would offer nowhere for a foon to breed. Unable to brood their young in water like some other aquatic trunkos, foons require sheltered shorelines to rest unbothered by land predators and incubate their eggs. Only once this prerequisite was recently fulfilled by the appearance of three small sandy islands out of the waves could the sea tiger come to live here year-round and evolve to fully exploit the unique habitats and challenges the region offered. Now too specialized to leave these shallows, Meridian sea tigers are endemic here. Their presence guarding the edges of the islands discourages many other predators from staking a claim to compete with them, and the only other swimming hunters which now manage to do so are either much smaller and just as much faster, or especially sly and sneaky enough to slip by their radar.

In water, the meridian sea tiger is death itself and feared by everything. It can menace smaller relatives that nest on the islands, trying to catch parents that must run the gauntlet of tigers each time they travel into the open sea to find food for their mates, and later when the young must return to the water. Yet when it is nesting and vulnerable on dry land, the sea tiger has predators of its own to worry about: giant birds. Skystalkers don't cross open seas and so aren't a threat here, but hellicans do, and they know just when to make the trek to take advantage of foon pups as well as the young of seademon colonies that share with them the sandbars of Meridia. Only begrudingly social itself, a sea tiger forms a temporary pair bond in order to raise their young, which depends on one parent finding food while the other tends the egg and then the chick, with the parents trading off every other day. They require large territories just to feed themselves, and any more than two adults could quickly overhunt their food supply, so that each pair nests miles apart. But on land, they need more eyes for safety. As powerful as it may be in water, on land a sea tiger is so large and awkward that it can barely move, and it fears the hellicans which may try and peck at its eyes to get it to abandon its egg so it can steal it. So a most uneasy truce is formed: sea tigers will nest within colonies of smaller foons to benefit from their collective defensive capabilities; thousands of snapping beaks are more imposing to a hellican than only one or two. In return for inviting themselves into their prey's nursery, the sea tigers will not hunt near where their own young are being raised; they travel miles away to hunt, ignoring even vulnerable young foons they could easily steal away with. They also try to keep away other sea tigers, keeping the other foons safer from predators than if they were not around. Though they will always - and rightly - fear them in water, other foons quickly grow used to the presence of sea tigers on land and will ally with them against their shared enemies. The truce lasts only until the seatiger's own young returns to the water, and after that the deal's terms expire. Yet this takes longer on average than for the smaller foon species by about three weeks, so that most potentially edible juveniles will have become competent swimmers by the time the danger returns, and will stand a good chance at avoiding ending up on their former neighbor's menu.