Razorcrest

290 Million Years Post-Establishment

The razorcrest is a mid-sized giraffowl native to the everdant forest of Serinaustra, where it occurs always in groups. They feed preferentially on fruit, traveling long distances through the jungle to follow the scent of ripening trees, though they feed on leaves, flowers, and fungi when this is not available. Standing to 15 feet high at the head, another 2-3 feet is added from the vertical, blade-shaped bill crest which rises starkly up from the tip of the beak in both the male and female. Unlike in the more derived skybreaker giraffowl and their relatives, the razorcrest's beak horn does not branch, and is not delicate. This is a basal species, the sister group to the skreehonk lineage of Serinarcta. And in these birds, the beak is a solid bone structure, held up by a muscular neck. While the larger giraffowl use it for show, razorcrests wield it as tool, and so both sexes share it in equal size. They swipe side to side through the vegetation as they travel, the leading edge of the crest narrowing into a sharp machete to clear their way. The keratin of the beak is serrated on a microscopic level, and is self-sharpening; as flakes of the bill shed away from the beak's distal edge as it grows, they reveal a new serrated layer just beneath. The shape of the bill - narrow at the front and top, but broad at its base - also protects the razocrest from the dangers posed by falling branches and fruit, which roll down its length and are deflected harmlessly off to the sides of its head as it feeds. Razorcrests are almost always trailed by smaller ground animals as they wander, which take advantage of the trails they make in the forest, and the fallen fruit they leave behind. The razorcrest is a keystone species of the everdant forest, shaping this ecosystem in ways which increase its ability to support life. They are also extremely important seed dispersers, for they clear gaps in the forest where sunlight can penetrate and leave their droppings along the way in the perfect site for them to take root and grow into new trees.

But razorcrests are not necessarily gentle giants. They are tolerant of most smaller animals, for any additional eyes are welcome to spot danger, and such creatures are not competing with them for food, rather only eating what they drop and could not reach anyway. But the razorcrest is the most aggressive of all the large browsing giraffowl when it comes to predators. When a large predator such as an atrocious crossjaw appears, most animals hightail it to safety. Not the razorcrest. Always found in numbers, herds quickly bunch together at the first whiff of this foul beast, pushing their hind ends together to shelter juveniles among them which lack the fully developed crests. The adults, as many as twenty of them which have until this moment traveled the forest in single file lines, now form a protective array around the vulnerable and ally themselves together in the face of what may seem certain death. They lower their heads, meeting the crossjaw's head height, and sway their necks back and forth while emitting deep, booming alarm calls. Individually, none could stand up to such a deadly foe, but as a community they produce a writhing wall of large, striking knives against a soundtrack as loud as thunder. They make it very difficult for the predator to bite at any one target without being severely wounded by the others around it - a single strike could lacerate a face down the bone, and a dozen could kill even a crossjaw - and their united show of force unnerves even the fiercest enemies. The predator usually gives up after circling a few times and failing to find a weak point to get into the herd, and these relatively small but highly mighty giraffowl carry on to live another day. Though the infant razorcrests are small flying birds and leave their mother's pouches once they pupate, this giraffowl is one of only a few which actively protects the juveniles once they return to the ground and become flightless in a couple of years, even though they are still much smaller than the adults at that time. Parents cannot recognize their own young after so long, and all adults instead provide shelter to the young regardless of relation. In doing so they recruit new allies for the herd once those young grow up, who will protect them in turn later on when they are older and may need the additional support. Razorcrest herds are stable and cohesive units, whereas those of most giraffowl change over time with few strong bonds, and individuals come to know all others in their groups well over time. This familiarity increases their success in cooperating to defend themselves from enemies, as each individual can compensate for each other's weaknesses, and combine their strengths.

A diet high in tree foliage and which includes unripe fruit means that the razorcrest can accumulate defensive plant chemicals in its body which at high concentrations can make it ill. It is one of many animals of such a diet that seeks out clay licks, eating clay-rich soil along riverbanks, which binds to certain toxins in their stomach, and prevents their absorption into the body. Razorcrests also have a high requirement for sodium in their diets, as this mineral is very scarce in their diet of plants high above the ground, and they are one of the numerous species which often make long detours away from their usual feeding grounds to the shores of the great blue salt lake to drink the saline water, toxic in large quanitites, and yet life-giving as an occasional mineral supplement. Herds of razorcrests may visit this lake several times a year, traveling hundreds of miles to reach it and spending just a few days in its vicinity. Sodium is stored in the blood, and more blood is produced in the body at these times of gorging in order to accommodate this mineral and then stored through the body, but particularly in the kidneys, which also increase in size at this time by as much as double their weight. As the stores deplete over several months, the razorcrests will return and refill their needs, avoiding life-threatening deficiencies.