Scansorial Scroungers of the Late Hothouse

Arboreal rhycnheirids with amazing adaptations for life in the trees, scansorial scroungers continue to thrive in the southern forests of Serinaustra in the late hothouse, 290 MPE.

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Scansorial scroungers evolved tree-climbing tendencies early in the hothouse, almost as soon as new forms of trees evolved, adapting their tentacles into hooked graspers to stabilize themselves as they pushed up tree trunks with enlarged grasping feet. By 290 million years PE, some have reached the pinnacle of specializations to a treetop lifestyle, while others have begun to return to the ground. One noteworthy lineage within the scansorial scroungers never became arboreal to begin with - the sprounce and its descendants, mostly terrestrial jumping animals, also fall within this clade, but as a basal branch, still similar to that from which all the rest evolved. Scansorial scroungers generally nest in tree holes unless otherwise stated; most species are monogamous, and rear only one or a handful of chicks at a time, for a prolonged period.

1. Spathe-crested Peepacheep, among the smallest of all scroungers, and only rivaled in this respect among all rhyncheirids by the early Ultimocene boras. These diminutive birds of northern Serinaustra's tropical forests belong to a subset of scrabblegrabbers called phantasmal scroungers, which have adapted their left and right facial tentacles into display organs, often very brightly colored. Peepacheeps' are entirely ornamental and serve no role in food collecting, nor in locomotion; in this particular species they have become shaped like spathes, the bracts that surround certain types of flowering plants, and are carried on very long, wiry cartilage 'stems'. Adapted to feed on nectar and little else, peepacheeps are characterized as well by an upper and lower tentacle that are both extremely long and narrow, and which adhere together at their edges while leaving a hollow tube between them. The peepacheep uses this as a straw to drink nectar from deep-throated blossoms, producing suction to siphon out liquids otherwise out of reach. It climbs with its feet alone, with very long grasping toes, and can even run up and down tree trunks this way, for it is very light in weight, only around 7 ounces.

2. Upender, a large scrabblegrabber native to the salt swamp, which feeds upon fish and aquatic animals. Hanging upside down from waterside tree branches, its neutrally colored plumage hides it in dappled light and shadow as it lies in wait for prey to pass below. Then, using both of its long side tentacles, it strikes into the water and hoists out its prize. Upenders are somewhat unusual among fish-eating species in being poor swimmers; they never get fully into the water if they can help it, and are still very much arboreal, navigating the forest by clambering from one branch to another, leaping if necessary, but almost never coming down to the ground. This suits them just fine in the salt swamp, where flooding regularly comes to the forests growing along waterways and brings the fish to within range. If fish are scarce, this scrounger is also a skilled hunter of small flying birds, plucking them out of the air from a hidden ambush site near their roosts at dawn and dusk.

3. Lobed Lolloper, a small species of sprounce native to the saltspray sand dunes. Just two toes remain on each of this scrounger's feet, but they exhibit large lobes, serving to disperse its weight on the sand so as not to sink. Fast moving and very agile, these animals jump everywhere they go at high speed and appear almost incapable of walking slowly, though they may very rarely do so when in close proximity to their dens. Most active at dawn and dusk, the lolloper emerges from their burrow (in which they sleep as well as rear their young) to hunt insects and small prey such as murds that emerge at the time time to forage across this miniature desert situated between the forest and the salt lake. Prey is captured with sharply hooked side tentacles and killed with a bite of the top and bottom ones, which are tipped with razor-sharp "beaks" that serve to quickly kill their victims. The actual beak is hidden, as it is in most scroungers, and is reduced in function to a small pair of crushing plates that held chew food before it is swallowed.

4. Pendupelicus, a descendant of the lolligolugo whose common name is also its species name, translated from Latin and meaning "the hanging skin." This is an apt description of this most bizarre scrounger species, which is considerably bigger than its precursor and spends most of its life suspended with its belly facing the canopy, hanging from extraordinarily flexible legs with hip and ankle joints that can rotate almost 360 degrees in their sockets. It is utterly covered in loose skin, which falls around its face, neck, and limbs like unfolded blankets, loosely covered in soft, very short hair-like olive green to brown plumage. This skin serves to obscure its shape so as to hide it from enemies, making it hard to discern from a leafy backdrop. The pendupelicus feeds in the tallest trees of the saltswamp, mainly after dark, and eats just one thing, leaves. It efficiently strips foliage with comb-like tentacle teeth, leaving naked branches in its wake, and it travels at a slow pace, always suspended upside down, for its muscles are now too weak when operating the other way to bear its weight upright. Hooked claws naturally lock into a closed position when at rest and require force to open, allowing this strange animal to sleep this way, too. Only very rarely does the pendupelicus reveal the true, and most important function of all that loose skin; when the tree it has been living in has been stripped of too many leaves for the animal to still hide from danger as it rests, or if chased by a predator, the pendupelicus lets go off the branch and rights itself. Then, spreading its legs completely to the sides, all of its skin folds catch the air: they are gliding membranes, among the largest of any living animal. This species has enlarged them with additional supports; a cartilage rod runs on either side of the torso, where the front arms would be in other birds, stiffening the membrane in flight, while a bone spur on either wrist increases its "wingspan" by over a foot. From a sufficiently tall starting point, in good conditions, the pendupelicus can cover over 500 feet between two perches, using next to no energy to do so. Uniquely among scroungers, the pendupelicus rears its chick attached to itself, clinging to the mother's belly by its legs from the time it is just a few days old, after which the female leaves the tree hole she incubated her egg in and never returns to it. When hanging upside down, the baby is cradled on her belly, but even when she glides, and it is thrust upside itself, it maintains a tight grip. It is dependent for a very long time due to the low nutritional quality of the mother's diet, and is not independent for an entire year, by which time it is still only around half grown.

5. Dazzlescrabble, a relatively large phantasmal scrounger, and among the most basal of this clade. Adapted to feed on small fruits as well as seeds high in the rainforests of northern Serinaustra, its upper and lower tentacles come together neatly to pick up small food objects, while the actual beak hidden beneath them crushes them before swallowing. As in the peepacheeps the side tentacles are adapted as display structures, but in this species the trait is less extreme and present only in the male; this species also has a featherless head covered in a fleshy pad of brightly iridescent skin in both sexes. Though these tentacles are enlarged at their tips into a petal-like display structure in the male, they retain claws and are still functional appendages for climbing, holding food, and grooming. Males of this species gather in leks to attract females, and perform enthusiastic bouncing displays while clinging to the sides of trees with their feet, swinging their tentacles around and emitting loud piercing calls.

6. Dancing Jester, a very decorated species of phantasmal scrounger that falls between the two other species so far seen. Small and arboreal, it uses a narrow set of tentacles as a beak to collect fruit while its side tentacles are extremely elaborate display structures in the male (in females, they are vestigial.) Displaying males gather in leks high in the canopy, hanging from thin branches, often upside down. When performing they puff up their chests, extend feather crests above each eye, and raise their heads upwards relative to the rest of their body, peering downward (or upward, if hanging inverted) at potentially interested females. Already a strange perspective, they make the show all the weirder by holding their pink, leaf-shaped tentacle tips in an arc up and over the sides of their head and shaking them at high speed so that they appear to be rotating like small fans. So strange does this display appear from the front, that it can be quite difficult to discern what kind of animal the dancer even is until it turns its head to the side.

7. Hawk-billed Kak, a species of kak (which are, themselves, within the scrabblegrabber clade) that often, but not always, can be found on the ground. It is a predator, using its short but robust clawed tentacles to catch and kill both large insects and vertebrates of up to half its size. Weighing 30 pounds, it is a better runner than any other kak and is less inclined to cling to trees except to quickly flee a larger foe. It spends most of its time on the forest floor, scratching through the leaf litter to unearth food, which includes seeds and some leaves in addition to meat. Hawk-billed kaks are very quiet and rarely make any calls; they are also very patient, and may sneak up on feeding animals for as long as half an hour, getting closer without being spotted before striking and ambushing their target. At night, however, they roost up trees for their own safety, hardly being the toughest thing around.

8. Printher, the only living descendant of the ripper. The most basal of all scansorial scroungers, the printher has survived where its relatives have been displaced by the evolution of more efficient griffon predators which usurped their ancestor's early experiment in becoming a climbing predator, only because it has entirely abandoned its arboreal origins. To avoid griffons like the fanguar entirely, printhers have become terrestrial and now hunt only in isolated open grasslands, especially near the clearview mountains region. Now favoring open settings with good visibility, the printher has specialized remarkably for very high speed, but short distance hunting of nimble prey like lumpelopes. Its nostrils are very large, to take in lots of oxygen as well as to cool itself when running. Its long legs, stretched out to the maximum and bearing their weight on only a single large toe, can carry it to speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour, but for only a few short moments, as it has little endurance, meaning it has the most success if it can creep up as close to its prey as possible before pouncing. Prey is first gripped with the tentacles and then quickly struck with a large sickle claw on the inner toe. Repeated blows, hitting the throat or the belly, either cut an artery and cause death by blood loss or disembowel the target, causing death from shock. Printhers have to eat as fast as they run, as if confronted by anything larger than themselves - or more coordinated, like a troop of squabgoblins - they are rarely able to defend their meal successfully, and are forced to flee. A strong, inborn fear of the latter enemy has kept the printher alive even in an age where many similar predators have been hunted to extinction. But though printhers can outrun this enemy in a sprint, squabgoblins are endurance runners; if they really want their rival taken out, they can eventually catch up. For these reasons, printhers avoid these scroungers completely, and will not even enter territories where scent marks indicate they have been even two weeks earlier. Though adult printhers can outrun most other dangers, their chicks, born in a nest in tall grass, are very vulnerable; the mother can carry only one at a time in her grasp to transport them to safety if danger threatens, and so though as many as four may hatch, it is very rare for any more than a single child to reach independence.

9. Baneful kak, a terrestrial scrabblegrabber of the longdark swamp, which is poisonous to all predators and so wanders the forest floor with disregard for danger. Baneful kaks feed on a varied diet of fallen fruit and mushrooms, in addition occasionally to small vertebrates and other odds and odds they might come across. This diet might seem typical and generic, but for this kak, it provides the ingredients for a deadly cocktail of cyanides, produced by several species of fungus, and as a defensive chemical in the seeds of many fruiting plants. This kak has become immune to high doses of a normal fatal compound due to gradually acquiring a diet based on food rich in it. Its liver process cyanides into thiocyanate, a much less harmful salt, almost as soon as it is digested. But rather than being excreted and lost in the animal's waste afterward, the baneful kak's body stores the thiocynate salts, transporting them to the skin glands. Here, a different set of enzymes convert it back into its deadly form, cyanide, which it now concentrates and excretes from its body through the oil of its preen gland. This has the effect of turning its plumage into a deadly barrier against the jaws of predators whenever it preens itself, dispersing this oil across its feathers. If this were not enough, the kak's stiff tail feathers, no longer needed to prop itself up clinging to tree trunks, have become hollow quills. An enemy does not even have to bite the kak, now, to be exposed to this poison - a sufficiently agitated kak will run backwards and stick its foe with these quills, delivering the toxic oil into the bloodstream. One bite, or just one injected quill, can kill an animal as large as a human being in just a few minutes. To the kak itself, the oil is harmless; any incidentally ingested by itself when grooming simply goes through the process again, being detoxicified in the liver, then oxidated back into a deadlier chemical as it is excreted outside the body. Brightly colored skin on its face and bold white spotting over its body tells all comers a clear warning message: stay away from this scrounger if they want to live.