Jumpo Wumpo

This guest entry was written and illustrated by Troll Man.

In the time after the ice age, the island wumpo has become one of the most successful of the larger grazers, and after the extinction of potential competitors like the herbivorous antlears and the related boomerbeards, radiated into numerous distinct species over several million years as they spread over every corner of the northern continent, adapting to better inhabit the varying biomes of this new warm world. In the comparatively drier uplands where the soil remains compacted and drained, there lives one of the most numerous descendants of the island wumpo, with huge flocks racing across the prairies and grasslands. This the slender and monochrome jumpo wumpo (or just jumpo for short), a speedy crane-like trunko that usually measures between 170 and 150 centimetres in height and up to one-hundred pounds, and which is well-adapted to this environment.

Herds of jumpos are often hundreds, or even thousands strong, usually made up of numerous familial “clans” congregating together for safety and socialization. Social interactions within each clan tend to be stronger, but it’s still common for jumpos to groom, play, or feed alongside members of unrelated clans. The jumpos are most active around twilight or night, and so minimize competition with coexisting thorngrazers and encounters with daytime predators. During the day, jumpos usually sleep sheltered within tall grass, which hides their location, while a small number of sentries keep watch as the herd rests. Comparatively large, light-sensitive eyes and keen hearing allow the jumpos to spot out predators in darkness, while their contrasting black-and-white feathery bodies make picking out their outlines difficult, but their greatest asset is their exceptional speed and agility, driven by huge and powerful leg muscles. At full sprint, an adult jumpo can reach speeds in excess of eighty kilometres (fifty miles) an hour, leaving nearly all potential predators in the dust.

Jumpos themselves are opportunistic and omnivorous; most of their diet is comprised of young shoots, leaves, and grasses, which are easier to digest, and they will dig up the more nutritious roots and tubers in the soil; because of their adaptations towards a lightweight, speedy body design, they cannot afford development of a more complex ruminating stomach, and so avoid the older, more fibrous vegetation that are more indigestible. They also consume insects and other small animals if they can find them, including burrowing poppits and small snifflers. Their great agility also extends to their jumping abilities; they are able to spring over eight feet vertically in the air, a feat which is normally used to peer above areas with towering grass, but is also useful for snatching small birds and flying insects right out of the air, or browsing from the vegetation that grows atop the tall glacial boulders scattered throughout the landscape.

Jumpos are generally monogamous, but rearing of young is communal, with brothers, grandparents, older siblings, and even strangers assisting. Occasionally, if herds grow too large, a number of subadult individuals from each clan can choose to leave and establish their own herd, or join with another herd, discouraging inbreeding. Both sexes possess a feathery crest which is usually hidden, pressed against the back of the neck, but can be sprung open to reveal a bright flush of triangular red. This is used for a variety of communicative signals, but plays a big role in mate selection. Bachelor males attempt to impress females with the colour of this crest, and bonds are renewed each year with a ritual courtship dance between pairs before copulation.This courtship ritual helps prevent outbreeding with non-jumpos, but interbreeding between the jumpos and other wumpo species does still occur periodically regardless, and is particularly common with the much more solitary, soglands-dwelling swamp wumpo.

The range of the two wumpo species only overlaps a little, due to the preference for moister lowland environments for the swamp wumpo, but wandering adolescent males, newly independent of their parents, often venture into foreign regions attempting to establish themselves, and, eager to begin attracting female as soon as possible, try their luck on the closely related jumpos. Surprisingly, this actually works much of the time; the red dewlap of the swamp wumpo resembles the red crest of the jumpos (at least to the jumpos), but its much larger size (even the underdeveloped flap of a young adult male) makes them attractive to jumpos to a supernormal degree, more so than even males of their own species. The mating dance that follows is where many swamp wumpos falter, since there are numerous differences between the courtship dance of the two species, but enough female jumpos tolerate a mediocre dance if the male is that physically attractive to them to allow for periodic hybridization.

The jumpos generally do not care about individuals that take up another species as their mate, as they regularly intermingle with other trunko species anyway. A swamp wumpo is usually accepted quickly into a clan and any resulting offspring from this odd mixture is treated no differently than one from a pairing of two jumpos; many herds contain a few obvious hybrids of jumpo and some other wumpo species. However, the male swamp wumpos usually do not last very long due to their polygamous instincts; once a male reaches full sexual maturity, he starts getting possessive of other jumpo females and is inevitably ousted from the jumpo herd for aggressive behaviour and trying to pick fights with male jumpos repeatedly. Nonetheless, the fertile offspring from pairings with other wumpo species, such as the swamp wumpos, contribute a non-insignificant portion of their genes to a large portion of the jumpo population.