Spotted Song Snoot

The snoots are an often overlooked ice age survivor taxon which has persisted throughout the hothouse. This is not because snoots aren't widespread, but because with only a few exceptions, they are among the least changed hothouse animals from earlier ancestors. While skuorcs exploded into every imaginable shape and size after the great thaw, and thorngrazers did almost the same relative to their less malleable anatomy, snoots  - perhaps the most basic, regular form of trunko - long ago found an efficient, successful niche, and have stuck with it ever since. Most snoots are shorter than waist high, mostly herbivorous omnivores that live in social groups, and run and hide from predators. More species than not are still classified in the original snow snoot's genus, and remain close enough genetically that hybridization is possible and occurs with regularity in many overlapping wild populations - a factor that, like in wumpos, contributes to keeping the species similar to one another over time. Where snoots tend to differ from each other most is in behavior and specific, often narrow habitat preferences, rather than broader form or function.

Spotted song snoots are a species which arose ten million years ago, and has changed physically almost not at all since. They are one of the largest living snoots, which really shows just how conservative this trunko clade is, for this 'giant' is only 4.5 feet high and weighs just around 70 pounds. This species evolved to inhabit early spire forests, developing a piebald feather coat which served to match the light brown tree trunks and to vanish in mixed shadows and spots of dappled sunlight coming in through the tree's leafy canopies. Males, but not females, show a bare, bright blue face and trunk, and the intensity of its color is valued when females are looking for the fittest, healthiest partner around. In the middle hothouse, the spotted song snoot was abundant over most of the continent. But the spire forest itself evolved over this era, and in response to the evolution of bigger and more threatening browsing animals, they became sky islands - huge, dense aggregations of cementrees growing on the remnants of older ones - and true spire forests, representing the earliest stage of sky island formation, have now become rare. Spotted song snoots cannot climb to the safety of sky island summits, but rely on open forests adjacent to grasslands, feeding on plants, seeds, and insects in open plains but retreating quickly to thick cover to avoid their own predators. This snoot requires a specific age of spire forest to shelter in most effectively, one neither too young that it provides insufficient density of trees to keep out larger predators, but not one too old that the spires begin to fuse into larger formations and fill up the gaps between trees that the snoot needs to hide in. This means that it is not only restricted to the few places in south and central Serinarcta where spire forests like this can still be found, but that it must migrate to new territory as a given patch of forest outgrows their needs. The spotted song snoot, which seems unable or unwilling to take to a new sort of habitat, is a species that is growing rarer in an ever-changing world. Unlike trunkos, which are very diverse in their habitat choices, even individually, snoots are much more selective in where they will live, and quickly become endemic to specific biomes to a much greater extent. Though this can produce speciation more quickly than in trunkos, the fact that few biomes last long over the hothouse means most species go extinct within only a few million years. A handful of generalists remain, repeating the process again and again, so that snoots as a whole seem almost stuck in stasis as other lineages evolve quickly around them.

The spotted song snoot's story is thus not a new one. It is just another snoot species slowly dwindling over time, the conditions it was used to changing too fast for it to keep up. Yet sometimes these slow declines and unfortunate situations can produce unexpected new behaviors, even in a group so conservative as these. This snoot species gets its name from its plumage, of course, but also from its melodious vocalizations, complex calls that have evolved only recently, as a way to communicate with other song snoots at greater distances as their habitat becomes fragmented, and to guide each other to new suitable homes, for as long as any still remain. These birds sing in choruses at night, when there is less competition and their songs carry the furthest. Entire flocks join together in haunting, slow, warbling melodies. Their songs are sung in two frequencies; a high, audible one carries through the air. The purpose of this frequency is more to encourage social bonding within a single group, drawing all of the individual in a single patch of forest to come together - it dissipates within several miles in the air.

But the lower notes of the song are too low for human ears - they travel as rumbles through the ground for distances of up to 20 miles. By working together as a group, a flock of snoots calling together  can emulate the very low, far-reaching infrasonic calls of much bigger animals like Earth's elephants. And these calls are heard by other flocks, in other isolated spire forests, in a radius of as many miles all around. The more birds in a group are calling together, the louder their low-frequency song becomes, and the more easily it can be heard at a distance. Not every night, but several times a month, isolated snoot flocks gather to talk to others living far away. They seem to pass information through subtle variations in their calls that resemble morse code: patterns of long or short notes, which may be a culturally learned animal language. Flocks describe the conditions of their own patch of habitat, whether it is good or bad, and with this information groups can make migrations from patches of forest that are closing up and becoming less suitable for them, following directions given by other fellows in better habitat. Long-distance calls in the spotted song snoot even allow networking: any single herd of snoots can hear and speak to other herds in a 20 mile radius, including snoots from opposite directions who are too far away to hear each other. Groups in between others can pass on information they are told to an even greater distance, allowing a degree of communication over distances of not only 20, but 40, 80, or even 100 miles, letting animals disperse to new suitable places to live at distances they could never find on their own except by chance. A very social animal with virtually no territorial aggression, snoots welcome all new members who come from far off into their herds with great enthusiasm. Spotted song snoots have only begun to collectively perform long-distance calls within the last one million years, making this a new, innovative behavior. By networking in this way, and cooperating together, the species has now found a way to delay what would have been an inevitable extinction, even as their habitat of choice is becoming more isolated, and harder to find.