Wide-eyed Whiskerwhale

Whiskerwhales are virtually fully-aquatic skuorcs evolved from the spinysnout skwimmer, now completely at home in water. Their long tails now sport a fluke, making them fast swimmers. They are larger now, reaching lengths of at least eight feet, yet their long and otter-like bodies are narrow and flexible enough to weave through shallow, vegetated waters, allowing them to access inland habitats rich in the small fish they hunt, but difficult for larger marine predators to follow. They chase fish through tangles of grassy leaves and try to corner them against shallow  shorelines, darting to snatch them in their serrated beaks. Some mollyminnows have adapted to jump from the water and onto the land when pursued in this way, in a last ditch effort to escape, landing a few feet away on the sand. Larger fish would be discouraged and leave, letting the hapless prey flip back into the river when the coast was clear. This technique does not work, though, for whiskerwhales which simply follow them up the beach, for they are still able to move over land, albeit slowly, by crawling with their flippers. These flippers retain a total of four functional claws and two vestigial ones; those which are most developed are used to hold on to a partner while mating, which occurs face to face.

The sensitive bristle scales on the snout of the skwimmer have elongated into feeling hairs in the whiskerwhales, lending their common name. They provide improved tactile investigation of the environment in dark and murky conditions, each one connecting to a nerve and serving like a cat's whiskers. Yet this is only a supplementary sense for the wide-eyed whiskerwhale, a diurnal species that prefers clear waters. These animals have only small whiskers, but have large, expressive eyes with pupils that can move to a very high degree within the eye without the need to turn the head - somewhat unusual among birds, though shared with some trunkos and scroungers. The purpose for this has as much to do with social communication as tracking prey - whiskerwhales often live in groups, and eye movements are used to convey emotional states as well as more practical uses, such as pointing to where a fish may be hiding without disturbing it, so another individual can circle around and chase it into an ambush. 

The gregarious nature of whiskerwhales, requiring communication and cooperation, is leading them to evolve larger brains than their ancestors which were solitary. With these changes come more; whiskerwhales demonstrate play behavior, especially when young, and a capacity for learning skills, rather than hunting entirely by instinct. Social bonding now exists, where individuals have preferred companions and recognize others, forming more stable groups which live together and hunt collectively rather than random aggregations of unfamiliar individuals. They also recognize their own offspring, and after migrating to safe ponds upstream to give birth, females remain and protect them from predators for as long as two weeks after birth, ensuring they are strong enough to fend for themselves before going on her way again.  Births within a group are usually synchronized, and females often are impregnated at the same time by one male, so that they take care of all of their young together, substantially improving their early survival chances. The litter size has decreased proportionally to the reduced early mortality, and now litters of six to eight young are average compared to earlier skuorcs which had more than a dozen, and sometimes more than 25 tiny young at once.