Scampering Squirve

Some metamorph groups have fared poorly in the face of catastrophic global cooling. Ornimorphs, metamorph birds which evolved a highly prolonged maturation between an aquatic larva, a terrestrial juvenile and a winged adult, produced another distinct branch of aberrant birds in the late Pangeacene known as squaves. These birds matured as terrestrial quadrupeds, losing the winged adult life stage and instead competing with reptile-like tribbets as mostly cold-blooded, lizard-like animals. Even though they evolved ovoviparous live-birth ( hatching their eggs internally), they were not well adapted to survive cold. As might be expected, the sudden ice age was largely catastrophic to these creatures.

But one small group stood out as successful survivors. Some of the least specialized, earliest forms to evolve, these did not fully lose the ability to generate body heat or the genes to produce insulating plumage. Before the ice age they were never very numerous, representing a sort of living-fossil clade, similar to ancestors of the more derived, reptilian species that have since largely died out. Living as small arboreal predators, this ancestral group lived in the temperate regions of Serinarcta where seasonal temperatures could be bitter. When such a climate overtook the world, this one branch of the squave lineage survived, moving south along with the last forests.

Most of these last, cold-hardy squaves are still arboreal, animals of the coastal forests. They are now notable, for they are the only terrestrial birds living which have a long, balancing tail; a retained, neotenic artifact of their larval ancestry which once made them resemble lizards, but with their thick plumage, now lends them a mammal-like appearance. Scampering squirves, an animal resembling a mixture of a pigeon and a lemur, are common in the upper branches of the towertree taiga, where they have become much more omnivorous, adding seeds, buds, sap and virtually anything else edible to their diets to survive the cold and snowy nights- it freezes almost every night in the northern reaches of the taiga, but thaws again most days - a quirk of an ice age close to the equator, where there is little seasonal change, and seasonal temperature swings instead occur in the span of a single day. This is, though, easier to survive than a season-long winter, for the towertree taiga flora has adapted to endure the night's chill, and then to grow during the warmer days. As a result, food is available year round.

Squirves are mostly diurnal; the colder nights are less suited for foraging, as the plants close their leaves and protect their newest shoots and flowers, while insects hide away in crevices to avoid the chill. So by night, these animals too roost, seeking shelter in warm tree hollows, but they never share them. Though they may appear small, fluffy and even somewhat cute, squirves are not social animals, and they aggressively defend small territories from one another with high-pitched chattering vocalizations and, when necessary, tackling each other in physical battles in which they rip and tear with their sharp beaks and hand claws. Not even mothers care for their young; they abandon them from birth, with the precocial infants making their escape down to the forest undergrowth to flee their mother during a brief window during birth when she enters a highly relaxed, non-responsive state, and so does not immediately eat her own offspring.

Squirves are in many respects a living fossil lineage. Their genus arose 25 million years ago in the Pangeacene, and most of them have changed very little since. Their body plan is very efficient, similar to the shape of the common ancestors of both birds and mammals, and very adaptable. So far, they have remained relatively obscure, perhaps prevented from exploring other ecological niches first by the very competition Pangeacene ecosystem, and now by the rapidly cooling climate. Yet it is is not hard to imagine these generalized creatures some day expanding out from the trees, and being the founders of a new radiation of unusual megafauna. In one select group, this may already be beginning. Most squirve species are dependant on their forest homes, and would not be able to survive without their shelter. One off-shoot, though, is different. Some 5 million years ago, a population of these arboreal squirves made the leap to living nearer the ground, finding food along the shore of the productive seaway. Now those squirves have gained a new name to suit their divergent lifestyles; the squotters. They have become stronger swimmers - some are already almost fully marine. Now, even as conditions on land worsen, at least this one branch seems to be securing its future in a place less immediately vulnerable to the current climate change.

And so, perhaps, these little, oft-forgotten metamorphs will still - one day - get their day to shine.