Jumping Jaggedjaw

The jumping jaggedjaw is the only species of the rasp genus to live in the southern hemisphere. A denizen of the longdark swamp on the bottom of the hothouse world, it could not live any further from its nightforest relatives if it tried. The many thousands of miles that separate the jaggedjaw from its kin were crossed a little more than four million years ago by the flying juveniles of their common ancestors, perhaps lost in a large continent-spanning storm that carried them far beyond their normal range. It forms a sister lineage to both other rasp species, and while it would feasibly still be close enough related to hybridize with them, these two branches of the genus no longer live anywhere near enough to each other to allow it.

The jumping jaggedjaw's isolation from its fellows for so long has changed its appearance from the northern rasps. It has no red plumage and no crests of feathers. Rather, its whole body is covered in a sparse, oily black plumage with no distinct markings, save for off-white cheek feathers. The northern and southern rasps increased in size separately and convergently from a smaller species; it is smaller than the ruffed rasp and comparable in size to the red, averaging 60-80 lbs, standing around 4 feet high. Loss of flight occurred in both lineages separately, and adaptation from insectivory to full carnivory occurred in both the jaggedjaw and the ruffed rasp independently, with the red rasp being the most behaviorally primitive species. Jumping jaggedjaws are very fast and athletic predators which leap from branch to branch as far as 30 feet, holding on with sharp talons, grasping digits, and hard, spike-like wrist scales that are unique to this species, giving it additional traction while climbing.

The jaggedjaw's namesake serrated beak is the longest relative to its skull of all the rasps, and is used like a hook; the flexibility of the upper jaw allows this predator to swing its flexible neck and elongated beak forward to snag animals that may try to avoid capture by standing out on thin branches too thin to support the hunter's weight. Prey taken by the jaggedjaw is usually smaller than itself and easily dispatched, though in the summer, the species descends lower into the swamp to avoid the bright sunlight, and there may ambush larger terrestrial prey such as sealumps, dropping on them much like the ruffed rasp does its thorngrazer prey, and then strangulating them with a clasping bite to the throat. The only rasp in its environment, the behaviorally flexible and adaptable jaggedjaw can monopolize the many levels of the forest from ground to treetops in a way that the more specialized northern rasps cannot.

Jaggedjaws lack the bright colors of their cousins that serve as signals to their own kind to keep their distance. This may be because they are less solitary; males and females usually share a home range and will sometimes hunt together cooperatively to catch and corner prey, which also gives them an advantage in taking down big game relative to any other rasp. Males of the jaggedjaw uniquely practice parental care. This is necessary because the young larvae of these more basal rasps are not parasites, but still live outside the body of a host, in a tree hole nest, and require regular provisions of food from the adults. The female lays her clutch of minuscule eggs within a fresh carcass that she hides in a tree hole, and it develops there for a period of weeks while the adults guard it from predators. As the chicks grow, the strongest eat the weakest in a manner common among flickbills, until just one grub remains. For the next three months or so both parents bring back kills to the nest, usually whole carcasses which their surviving young repeatedly burrows into to feed over a matter of several days, demonstrating the precursory behaviors to full-fledged parasitism seen in other rasps. Eventually it pupates in the den; the parents leave just before it emerges in another four weeks as a flighted, independent juvenile that leaves the nest shortly thereafter and goes on to live its own life without ever seeing its caretakers; until pupation, nearly all skewers are blind. Young juveniles are insectivores, like the young of red rasps, but become increasingly predatory with age.