Toratoddle

A featherless biped, but do not be fooled! The toratoddle is not a man.

Native to the warm tropical forests of northern Serinaustra, the toratoddle is a fully terrestrial burdle related to, though not descended from, the seastrider, and shares with this earlier species a mostly plant-based diet. The common early hothouse ancestor of both lineages was mostly predatory, as were all ice age burdles, but were adaptable enough to begin supplementing this diet with vegetation as soon as the climate on Serinaustra warmed, first with more digestible fruit or seed and then with increasing quantities of leaves as their stomachs became larger and better able to proces them. While seastriders moved nearly immediately back into aquatic habitats, the ancestor of the toratoddle moved deeper inland. They grew bigger, with longer necks and limbs to reach higher leaves in wooded habitats, rearing up to access those still out of reach. Toratoddles are uniquely capable of prolonged bipedal walking, not just brief sprinting, due to specializations in the muscles in their hind legs and backs that reduce tiring. This allows them to easily browse low trees and to keep watch for enemies, as well as frees their sharp arm claws for purposes of active defense against predators. In addition they can climb trees to take refuge off the ground when confronted by hostile animals too large or numerous to defend in claw to claw combat.

Toratoddles are highly herbivorous, and the shearing hooked beak of their ancestors ten million years prior have become blunt, broad and suited to cut vegetation. Yet they do still feed on animals that cannot easily escape them, predating bird's nests and insects, and sometimes commandeering the kills of small predators and rapturously gobbling up the meat, as if they have not yet forgotten their killing roots. Generally solitary, toratoddles dislike close company, and their survival is best when they do not mingle too closely to one another and attract unwanted attention. When alone they move deliberately and quietly, and can blend into their surroundings by standing motionless when alarmed, only raising their claws to fight or fleeing for the trees if they are spotted and approached more closely. Juveniles are faster and flightier and spend most of their first year in the trees where they have fewer predators to worry about, coming down to the ground as they become larger and less mobile through the narrow canopy branches. Adults can always climb, but become less adept at it the heavier they become, and while young ones can jump nimbly from branch to branch, fully mature individuals can do little more than cling to the trunk of sturdier trees and await for danger below to pass before they clumsily stumble back down to the ground.