Vultrus

One of the savannah's least welcoming animals - and that is saying a lot - the vultrus makes a comfortable living by demonstrating such terrible behavior that it make others give it a wide berth... even the largest creatures among them.

The dreadful vultrus stalks the savannahs on long legs, peering far above the tall grass in search of a meal. A large natatory scrounger descended from the castacrane, this species has become more solitary, more aggressive and especially more carnivorous. It is an eager scavenger, finding kills by scent and ripping into the carcass with its hook-tipped tentacles, avoiding soiling its plumage by having lost much of it - its head is entirely bald, so that flesh and entrails are more easily washed off after feeding. Even badly rotten meat is edible to the vultrus, which has evolved an iron stomach acidic enough to cook virtually all pathogens. This scrounger is not a heavyweight, but it punches above its weight by virtue of being very unpleasant to deal with. It can push its way into a feeding frenzy of larger predators by throwing up a revolting secretion of liquid, semi-digested spoiled meat stored in its crop into the faces of its competitors, and if this somehow does not work, it can emit a rattling scream at over 100 decibels. Many animals could kill the vultrus, but find its behavior so intense and threatening that they are frightened by it, and choose to retreat when it approaches.

The vultrus, though opportunistic by nature, is also a willing and capable killer in its own right, and will hunt when carrion does not present itself. While most scroungers have small parrot-like beaks hidden within their tentacle nets, the vultrus's tentacles part to reveal the longest beak of any scrounger, an elongated dagger-like bill that it uses to grab or spear smaller vertebrate animals, including other scroungers, as well as trunkos such as snoots and smaller wumpos. The vultrus is a fast runner, and well-adapted to travel over the hot grasslands for a long time without tiring, for it radiates extra heat easily from its featherless skin. It often runs faster prey to exhaustion before subduing it, as it can continue to pursue them by scent even if they escape out of its line of sight, and catch up to them each time they try to rest.

This scrounger is normally indifferent to its own kind; neither social nor territorial, they typically hunt singly, but will reluctantly share carcasses with minimal serious fighting if there is enough to go around, though this is a loud and still very unfriendly affair, involving a great racket as each one screams and hisses at its fellows to make sure they do not come too close. Females raise their chicks, one to three of them most typically, on their own while males go their own way when the female begins brooding her eggs. Mothers with dependent young are even more hostile to deal with than at other times, and will not allow anything to approach their young without a fight, so they have few predators. Their confidence and their horrible projectile vomiting - which is often aimed into the eyes and mouth of an enemy- can cause even a giant cygnosaur to reevaluate its choices and retreat.