Molodonts of the Uplands

While the thorngrazer is the most visible herbivore that lives on the open grasslands of Serinarcta's upland plain, 275 million years post-establishment, it is not the most numerous one. No, both in total population and in impact on the landscape, the most important animals that shape this habitat are much, much smaller. Molodonts such as seedsnatchers, poppits, and smols outnumber their relatives the thorngrazers greatly. An estimated 30 billion of them - just counting from these three groups - live across Serinarcta, yet most of them are rarely seen, for they are small and very good at hiding. Most, but not all, live underground - even those whose ancestors hailed from forests now must live near it, as the trees are scarce here and were entirely absent for several million years. All of them feed on the grasses, be it directly on their shoots and leaves, on their seed, or on their roots below the soil, and collectively it is they which really dominate this landscape, consuming more plant matter here than all other land vertebrates combined. 

If we refer to only the small molodonts - and so exclude the circuagodonts and thorngrazers - the largest remaining are the poppits. This group is the most visible on the plains, with an average representative being around the same size and shape as a rabbit (but significant outliers such as the tribbybara of the soglands, already discussed, do exist.) Poppits such as dashrats are easier to see than many other molodonts, for they are better adapted to live out in the open. These small grazers live in complex warrens in the soil, but feed on surface vegetation, and so constantly peer out of their holes with their raised-up eyes and colorful, twitching ears to spot for danger before scurrying out, cutting as much grass as they can fit in their jaws with their sharp teeth, and then dashing back underground to eat in relative security. These animals live cooperatively, single colonies sometimes encompassing over 1,000 members, all of whom help protect the warren from predators and take turns standing guard while their fellows forage, emitting a variety of harsh alarm cries and brightly flashing their ears if enemies are spotted. They are incredibly fecund, able to bear up to eight fully-developed young every six to eight weeks, which like the tribbybara are born with their teeth already in place and need little parental attention beyond protection from hunters. The common dashrat is the most numerous single molodont species found on the plains, and its colonies are ubiquitous, their tunnels running under virtually every footstep of the thorngrazer herds - and occasionally tripping them up as they step into a tunnel entrance. A single individual eats up to a pound and a half of grass per day; multiplied by their numbers (roughly 5.5 billion of this species alone), and these small herbivores really influence their ecology. Their burrows are shallow, often under 3 feet deep, and so disturb roots and can cause the ground to collapse and erode when they are too abundant, so that their populations swing in cycles. Heavy predation by animals such as the lashlip carnackle help keep them in check; with few defenses except to run and hide, once a warren is broken into - and being so close to the surface, it isn't very hard - nearly an entire colony can be slaughtered in one sitting by a pack of larger predators. But it takes just a few survivors to repopulate it, and there is always a nearby colony that will take over a vacated territory, so that even with rapid turnover of individuals, as a population these fecund animals remain extremely common. 

Harder to spot, due to their more seclusive habits and far smaller size are the molomice (singular: molomus.) There are more than 350 species of these animals, which range in size from less than an ounce to about 5 pounds. Like their name suggests, the majority are mouse- or rat-like seed-eaters, and they are the most morphologically primitive molodonts, little changed from the first species that arose in the Pangeacene and gave rise to the cirguaodonts, sawjaws, and thorngrazers. They are also the only tribbets left which have the full array of seven unmodified fingers on their forelegs (tribbats also have seven digits, but 5 have specialized into rod-like supports for their wing membranes; all other lineages have lost between one and three fingers.) Molomice evolved from seedsnatchers as they were forced to descend to the ground in the ice age, which makes them - in some ways - more similar to ground squirrels like chipmunks than to mice. Species such as the 2 ounce meadow molomus have remained all but the same ever since, making small nests in thick grass tussocks to raise their helpless but fast-growing young, and only living in small social groups. Unlike poppits, newborn molomice are blind, hairless, and completely dependent on their mother, but they grow up rapidly on a diet of regurgitated food and are weaned in as little as 21 days; like birds, the pups of many molomice have exaggerated gape markings in or around their mouths that help their mother (and sometimes father as well) to easily find their mouth and feed them in the dark of the nest. These tiny tribbetheres are mostly nocturnal, leaving their hiding places in the relative safety of the night to gather seeds from grassland plants and take them back to store for later, supplementing their diet with insects and anything else they might find. Being much smaller and more widely distributed than poppits, their predators are usually smaller too, and hunt alone. Moonbeasts, kittyhawks, and a newly-diverged group of night-flying chatterravens are their most pressing enemies.

The most reclusive of all molodonts are those that spend their entire lifetimes underground, only leaving it in emergency situations. Smols are the most specialized of the three groups presented here, being a descendant lineage of early poppits that has lost their eyesight completely after millions of years underground. Characterized by a total lack of eyes - yet still, amusingly, a skull that still shows clearly raised orbits like their sighted relatives - and by their recumbent lower jaws, these animals are broad omnivores that use their lower tooth to dig their tunnels rather than their claws as in other poppits. Though these animals - which mostly eat plant roots and invertebrates like earthworms - are difficult to observe, they seem surprisingly intelligent, and are able to solve complex problems and innovate solutions to the challenges posed by life underground. Just as their relatives live in communities for protection, so too do smols like the jutjaw like company, living in gregarious clans which cooperate to collect and store food resources. The food sources taken by these animals are most common just below the surface, and here the jutjaw maintains a labrynth of tunnels used for harvesting food; in addition to feeding as they dig and come across new roots, they return every few days to graze partially-eaten roots that spout again and grow back into their tunnels, almost like harvesting a crop. These shallow tunnels are not inhabited however; smols are seemingly wiser than dashrats to the risks associated with above-ground predators - or perhaps are actively conflict with other poppits over this near-surface real-estate - and so their living quarters are made much deeper down - up to 30 feet underground, where no predators nor rivals can follow them, as they chew through even solid stone to make them. Such a deep warren can easily become anoxic and lose oxygen, so to ventilate their deep burrow complexes, some species of smol construct hollow towers of mud above the ground from their subsurface feeding tunnels, which open upwards like a chimney. During the day, the burrow is much cooler than the mound under the beating sun, and warm, oxygenated air is pulled downward through this vented shaft into the warren. At night, the sun no longer hits the chimney, and body heat from the colony raises the temperature of the burrow system so that stagnant interior air begins to flow upwards into the cooler night. In this way, the system is kept well-ventilated throughout the day.