Snorts of the Late Hothouse

Including the only trunkos with nostrils at the ends of their trunks like their elephant namesakes, snorts are adaptable and widespread omnivores in the late hothouse ecosystem.

The cheery snort of the diluvian divide - a low-lying landscape in northeastern Serinarcta that occasionally floods into a vast lake - is named for the shape of its cheek bones that support its trunk muscles, forming a smile-like dimple at the edge of its mouth. Large, bright eyes further the impression that this trunko is always upbeat and happy, and much of the time this descriptor rings true: it is a notably playful and social animal. Descended from the tuskbilled snort of 10 million years earlier, it has further refined that ancestor's adaptations of anatomy. Its lineage - the genus of tube-trunked snorts - now sport their nostrils at the very tip of their trunks, and highly elongated sinuses run the entire length of its face from just below the eyes to the trunk's end, like a pair of hoses. This exceptionally large nasal passage gives the cheery snort an excellent sense of smell, and it will walk with its nostrils touching the ground in order to track down its favored morsels: mud truffles, or "muffles," an underground mushroom that grows sporadically in waterlogged soils, and appears mainly after flooding.

Cheery snorts are omnivorous, of course, and in addition to this treat they will eat all types of seeds and fruits, leafy vegetables, eggs and insects. But during muffle season - which comes immediately after any time the diluvian divide experiences flooding - this becomes the sole focus of this snort's appetite. This is because unlike most fungi, a muffle is rich in calories, mainly in the form of fat. With an avocado-like consistency, it is a savory delicacy that is very much worth the snort's efforts to find it, and for as long as two weeks after the floods recede, these birds spend much of their time sniffing them out, then unearthing them by picking at the dirt with their bills and scratching away the soil with their claws. The interaction between these two species is mutually beneficial; the muffle has evolved its energy-rich fruiting body specifically to attract animals to consume it, for in doing so they disperse its spores far away, to form a new fungal colony. The reason the muffle only produces its mushrooms after floods is simple: it's the best time to ensure their offspring, grown from spores left behind in the droppings of animals like the snort, will have a chance to grow underground before another flood comes and reshapes the land, washing away the top layer of the soil.

Though the cheery snort does not appear to have many outward adaptations to survive flooding, not even webbed feet, it is in fact one of relatively few terrestrial animals that is not particularly worried when the waters rise and cover the plain. It is a strong swimmer, and can inflate those long air sacs in its nose several times their usual size, becoming a life vest to increase its buoyancy and allowing it to float for hours at a time and navigate to find dry land. By inhaling a more moderate amount of air into its snout, it can use it as a reservoir of air in order to breathe as it dives underwater and forages for food there. The pouch of the cheery snort is also watertight, and even brooding parents can dive underwater for short periods. Their chick is kept within the pouch for several weeks after hatching for its own protection. Perhaps most remarkably of all, parent snorts will link trunks with their young during sudden floods to share stored air with their offspring if they find themselves suddenly submerged underwater, giving the smaller chicks enough oxygen to hold them over long enough to swim to the surface on their own. Pairs often cooperate with others to protect offspring, and stable extended families of up to 50 snorts may be seen together, though they often break up into smaller groups and do not always stay together as a herd at all times.

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The dognose snort is a fairly uncommon trunko found across the polar plain and the crescent. It is not highly social as is its close relative the cheery snort, and rarely gathers in groups larger than a pair and their single chick, with each family living across a large territory. Shy and retiring, the dognose snort is crepuscular or nocturnal depending on the time of year and beds down in thickets during the height of the midday, emerging near dusk to forage for food. In contrast to most trunkos, it is a specialist with a narrow diet, and in its case its preferred food is colonial insects like ants and vermites, the latter being the eusocial caterpillar-like descendants of crickets. Thick and wiry feathers along the head and neck provide some protection against swarms, but equally important are small, thick keratin scales that grow on their skin in between their plumes, making it hard for ants to bite them. Few birds show a matrix of both scales and feathers over the same area of the body, though it is not rare in skuorcs. The legs are entirely featherless, protected with thick scutes as in most trunkos.

Dognose snorts only occur in well-drained upland grassland, where they feed on earthen insect nests constructed on first by pummeling a hole with their sharp bills and then by mopping up the bugs with their snouts. Lacking a long tongue, the dognose snort uses its nose for the role, secreting a thick layer of mucous from its nostrils that catches hold of hundreds of insects with every "lick" into the nest. With rapid fire speed the snort licks, shoves its nose into its mouth to wipe the insects on its tongue to be swallowed, and repeats, consuming several thousand insects at a time before it moves on; it rarely feeds heavily on any one nest, which allows its prey to recover and rebuild their colony, and so be harvested again at a later date. Dognose snorts have limited ability to digest alternative food sources because a diet of abut 60% ants - that come bathed in their own production of formic acid - has caused a reduction in their own production of stomach acid. Only around 5% of its caloric intake comes from other sources, mainly in the form of small fruit.

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The standard snort is the most common of the varied forms of tuskbilled snort of the late hothouse, which has succeeded to a level few species ever have through being an extremely generalist omnivore that can eat anything and live basically anywhere, and which is adapted to travel very long distances and so can easily reach new habitats. It has the widest range of any trunko - and among the widest of any land animal at all - occuring in most continental biomes across Serinarcta from the dry dunes of the Hyperborean Raindesert in the north to the upperglades down to the flooded slade. Moving west, it is present through uncommon across the polar plain, and abundant in the nightforest. To the east, it is very numerous across the savannah woodlands and can be found as far south as the Trilliontree Islands. This range is the result of a recent and rapid colonization, occuring within only 1.5 million years, and so the standard snort has not yet diversified into distinct species, though some 30 subspecies or local populations can be categorized that range significantly in size, color pattern, and habitat preference. An average standard snort might stand around 3 feet high and weigh about 50 lbs, but the packed ecosystems of the trilliontrees support a dwarfed form only half so large, while those which make their home on the less competitive Nottoofar Island are giants at roughly 2.5 times the weight of common mainland forms. Most mainland populations are tan to orange in color with white markings on the face that range from prominent to entirely absent; forest-adapted forms are darker than others, with reddish feathers sometimes approaching black, while desert ones can be nearly white. The trilliontree subspecies is distinct for its unusually vibrant banded plumage, while that of the slade has a characteristic green hue due to accumulated copper pigments in its feathers.

Standard snorts of all kinds are similar behaviorally. They are gregarious animals, always living in social groups that might range from a few individuals to over one hundred, depending on food resources and on the habitat type. Groups are called coveys in this species and are cooperative in locating food and caring for creches of young, with both males and females being attentive to defend their offspring from predators. It is mainly the job of the males to lead the young to food they can peck at and to share some of what they find while females look out for themselves, having expended their share of energy in laying and brooding their comparatively large eggs beforehand. Though they will consume anything plant or animal, the standard snort is most likely to forage by sniffing at the ground with its trunk, in which the nostrils have migrated all the way to the end and form a pig-like nasal pad useful to rummage in the dirt for buried insects, roots, nuts and other tidbits that can then be dug out of the soil with their protruding beaks. It can do this in sand, dry soil, mud, leaf litter, or even shallow water, but it is a jack of all trades and a master of none. More specialized species with more specific diets or habitat requirements have gradually evolved to outperform it in those particular domains, for example the cheery snort which is better at foraging in flooded conditions, and the dognosed snort which feeds on small invertebrates almost exclusively.

Standard snorts are the primitive sister branch of the Tubutruncus genus to all its other species, like the cheery and dognosed snorts, and is the most physically similar to the species all of them evolved from. The most apparent difference between it and its relatives is that among members of this genus, only the standard snort retains ankle spurs, while all of its sister species share a more recent common ancestor which lost them. This demonstrates that the standard is not their direct ancestor; the snort that did evolve into all modern species lived five million years ago on the savannah woodlands of east-central Serinarcta. The standard snort and all others of the genus they belong to form two equally distant descendant clades from it, neither more or less related than the other. Within the rest of the genus all the other species are closer related and range from 1-4 million years diverged from each other, but despite this nearer kinship they range more widely in appearance as a result of smaller, isolated ranges that usually means they don't interbreed.

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The prongnoses are a small genus of a tuskbilled snorts found across Serinarcta, mostly to the north, where a widespread and ancestral species, the painted prongnose, can be found from the nightforest in the west across the upperglades to boreal soglands in the east. Several more localized descendants of it have also evolved on various, mostly insular environments including Nottoofar Island. These trunkos are named for their uniquely forked trunks that bifurcate near their tips into two keratinized, horn-like points. Prongnoses' trunks are specialized into garden tillers, upheaving the top layer of loose, friable soil in environments like streambanks, marshes, and grasslands after heavy rain to search for their primary food source: earthworms. The two horns at the tip of the snout are immobile, but the trunk itself can move in a wide range of movement, both side to side and up and down, and the prongnose uses those horns to dig and turn over the dirt, revealing its prey that is quickly snapped up in the bill and consumed. Prongnoses are very particular about their food, and are some of the most selective of any trunko - about 95% of their diet is earthworms, the remainder being grubs and occasionally slugs. They reject plant foods entirely, even fruits and seeds, and don't regularly feed on any vertebrate prey. Due to their entirely meat diet - and furthermore meat that has neither bones nor fur or feathers to break down - prongnoses have highly reduced digestive systems, and no proper stomachs to speak of. Instead all digestion occurs within the intestines, which are short compared even to other carnivorous trunkos like foons. What might have begun as a choice to feed on a narrow range of foods has now become a rule, and these trunkos can no longer efficiently digest much else except their current, simple diet.

The painted prongnose is a primitive snort species compared to the three above; it evolved its characteristic split trunk around 6.5 million years ago, and has since changed very little. Unlike most trunkos, this one is mostly solitary, though they form temporary pairs to breed, and males provide food for reclusive females as they brood their egg in a den site located in a thicket or burrow before departing shortly after the young has hatched; chicks are then raised solely by the female. Because males court females for a short time each year while females hide in vegetation and remain quiet whilst caring for their eggs, this species is sexually dimorphic, with only the male having iridescent green plumage on the neck that makes him more visible not only to mates but also predators. Though both sexes have dark masks around their faces, females also lack the male's white crown, being more evenly speckled across their heads and so less easily seen by their enemies. On small islands with fewer predators, related species sometimes have females that share their male's more colorful patterns, but this isn't true for all other species. In the savannah woodlands - the southernmost range of any prongnose - the closely related plain prongnose has lost its brighter feathers and acquired a very subdued pattern identical to the female of its species, perhaps due to increased predator pressure and fewer places to hide. Male prongnoses use their leg spurs mainly to fight with one another, while females also use them to defend their chicks. They are shy and retiring animals, though, and given an option will usually make a run for it from danger rather than stick around to fight. They often den below ground, expanding or modifying the burrows of other animals, but may also rest in dense twiggy vegetation. In either case, they will make use of at least two escape routes from any hiding place to prevent themselves from being trapped by predators.

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The scruff, found across the polar plain, is smaller than most extant snorts at around 25 lbs, and represents a third lineage of descent from their common ancestor of ten million years ago that has shrunk in size again, though to nowhere near the scale of their earliest sniffler ancestors. Yet disregarding its height, this is probably the most alike the earliest snort, being a scrappy little omnivore that makes its home in tall grass and feeds on the many and varied things it can scrape out of the dirt with its tweezer-like beak. Much of their diet is earthworms and beetle larvae, but seeds, tubers, molodont nestlings, and birds' eggs are also taken readily. The scruff has adapted to a drier and more drained substrate typical of the grasslands of the late hothouse, and it does not depend on moist, easily turned soil to forage. Flocks of forty to over one hundred of these gregarious trunkos work together to dig feverishly through the surface layer of even hard, rocky soils to unearth food up to 60 inches below grade, where the dirt retains moisture and abounds with soft-bodied prey. Groups leave a trail of excavated craters up to 10 feet across in their wake as they travel across the plain, and these holes can prove a hazard to the legs of larger herbivore animals that may trip into them if unwary.

Scruffs are always on the move, not using permanent dens or shelters, and following a circadian rhythm that is unusually independent of the day and night cycle, or even the seasons. They awake in short periods of around three hours, and then sleep for about the same, around the clock. Thus they spend part of both day and night in energetic activity, and they usually use the holes they dig while foraging to roost in for their next nap. Reducing the length of each sleep may reduce predation risk, letting them move to a new hiding place often enough that the odds of being discovered are less than if they spent half the day in one location, especially as their hiding spots are not specifically designed to roost in and are simply makeshift and temporary. The numbers of a scruff flock are their main defense, for so many eyes mean that it's hard to sneak up on any individual, and every member of the group joins an allied front of defense if the flock is under attack.

Scruffs are small but not timid; confident in the support they have from their fellows, they raise the feathers on their backs into hackles when agitated and snap their beaks in hostility, producing a synchronized clatter that is much louder than any one could make it alone. They will bite if further provoked, and can leap upwards and slash their spurs at opponents many times their own size to protect one another - this extends beyond offspring, and even unrelated adults can have strong social bonds. If even a single member of the group is attacked, all others will immediately come to its aid, mobbing an enemy with furious abandon until they complete their rescue, at which time all of the scruffs in the flock will surround the injured individual with concerned chirps and gentle prodding, and they may groom any wounds to reduce infection risk. Only when a flock is very small will they be more wary by necessity; young groups with few members or any individual isolated from its group will be more likely to freeze when threatened to try and hide from sight than to attack. A highly intelligent species, the scruff seemingly knows when to adjust its behavior if the usual plan will not work due to their current circumstances.

Because scruffs live in very large family units yet eat such small food items, the role they play in their ecosystems is not quite paralleled by any other animal. A diet of mostly earthworms is not something any massive animal survives on to exclusion, but a flock of scruffs working together to dig up the earth and each able to catch a few small morsels lets them effectively act as one big creature that almost filter-feeds such food items out of the soil. Their social ties lend them an unusual lack of predators for an animal of their small size, and their numbers let them compete and even outcompete larger animals that fill similar, if less specialized roles in the environment. This extends as well to the larger snorts, which are uncommon wherever scruffs are established and actively avoid them where they meet, or have switched to completely different food sources to avoid overlapping in diet. Dognosed snorts, the most common species to coexist with the scruff, eat eusocial insects and only live in very small groups, both adaptations to reduce competition with it, a competition that they would likely lose. Standard snorts may be bigger and more widely distributed, but it is arguable that it is this species, the humble scruff, that is the most successful and competitive of any snort. Its social behavior is more complex, letting it more than compensate for its small stature, and its diet - though dominated by invertebrates dug out of the dirt - is no less broad in theory, for when the opportunity presents itself this species too will eat nearly anything, including stripping meat from the bodies of carcasses, occasionally of larger animals they have themselves killed in conflicts. The only limit to the scruff, it seems, is its requirement for dry land. It shuns water, avoiding lowlands where the water table is high and its normal foraging behavior produces only puddles of mud. Thus it remains isolated to the polar plain, so far reluctant to cross the wetlands that surround it on all sides. But the climate is still changing, and these barriers will not remain insurmountable forever.