Weeping Blood-Wyverns
-
A solitary carnivorous species of Weeping Wyvern found in the Mountain Islands of Scourge's Middle Zone.
Physique
Weeping Blood-Wyverns were one of the first large fauna we encountered in Scourge and one of the most widespread large carnivores in Scourge's Middle Zone. They are sexually dimorphic in size and build, with females having wingspans of up to 25 meters while males generally only reach 16-20 meters.
Like most Scourgian wyverns, they are built for quadrupedal travel using their wings as forelimbs. Their body type is relatively stocky with thick, muscular limbs, chest and neck, causing them to weigh as much as Crested Wyverns despite being much smaller in length measurements. Their wing and hind digits exhibit broad, flat claws efficient both for supporting their weight and for inflicting blunt damage as opposed to tearing. Roughly 30% of their non-skin surface area is exoskeletal, with an exoskeletal skull and plating across their back, belly, hands, feet, and tail end. The scales between these plated areas are rectangular and alligator-like. Their head is smooth and blunt with a short rod-like crest extending behind it, beneath which is a large round gland which serves an unknown purpose. Their teeth are exoskeletal and short but sharp, with jaw strength capable of crushing bone and armor. Their eyes are large, round and frequently leaking a dark black fluid for which Weeping Wyverns are named, which is suspected to exist to clean the eyes of the thorny spores which frequent Scourge's atmosphere.
Coloration
They are entirely red in color with alternating stripes of deeper and brighter shades. They typically have darker gradients along their exoskeletal areas. A few male individuals have been observed with faint bright markings on the outer fin of their wings, likely a vestigial remnant of ancestors who used brightly-colored wings for impressing. Within their native environment of Mountain Islands, these colors provide efficient camouflage.
Distribution
Weeping Blood-Wyverns are widespread throughout the Mountain Islands of the Middle Zone. They prefer Mountain Islands as a habitat, though on fringe occasions have been seen surviving in neighboring Jungle Islands, likely out of desperation for territory. An island will only host a single individual or pair of individuals with their offspring, and they are fiercely territorial of their entire home island regardless of its size.
Lifestyle
They are fiercely solitary creatures, living territorial asocial lives over a single island on which they reign. Both genders will claim an island to claim as home territory in which they will spend the majority or all of their lives, sharing it with no one except potential mates and their young offspring.
They enjoy the spoils of being an apex predator, with little threats except each other. Time not spent hunting is spent patrolling or lazing around on open rocky surfaces. Males tend to sleep anywhere that offers comfortable shelter and will have multiple resting locations across his island, while females will typically have a single den site that she returns to for rest.
Territorial Behavior
Much of their lives is defined by their territorial nature. Males often spend time patrolling the edges of their home island, both in observation of nearby islands to investigate and to ensure that no intruders are within their turf. They have no strategies of marking their territory save for loud, bellowing roars which can be heard for up to several kilometers away.
When two wyverns contest over a territory, they will announce this intention with a chattering hiss. Challenges are carried out on the ground in an open area where they will strut in front of each other and attempt to intimidate using physical display of size, lifting their heads and spreading their wings. Should this tactic fail--and it usually will between adults of equal size--they will abandon it and transition to outright combat. They utilize brute force by slamming their weight into each other, pummeling each other with their heads, claws, and broad tail spikes. Injuries retained are usually those of blunt trauma with little actual breaks to their thick armored surfaces. These battles rarely end directly in death as the loser is chased out of the area, though the loser may later die of internal bleeding or starvation due to debilitating musculoskeletal injuries and lack of territory.
Hunting & Feeding Behavior
Weeping Blood-Wyverns hunt the largest of herbivorous prey on their islands, making meals out of Boar-Gliders and Surelk. They will glide over wide expanses in search of a herd and then land atop nearby cluerke roots. These prey items usually respond to the sound of wyvern wing beats with stealth, merely hoping that they were not seen while the wyvern simultaneously hides himself behind the bodies of roots. It will creep closely to its prey before diving down and tackling them from above, using its superior weight to knock its prey to the ground. Little biting or tearing is used with the wyvern's blunt claws; rather, it will attempt to use its brute strength to topple and pin its prey before biting down on the underside of the neck to inflict suffocation.
They will drag the bodies of their prey into nearby leafy bushes to attempt to hide it and will likely remain near it for as long as it is edible. A single corpse of a large glider can feed a wyvern for up to 2 weeks and they are capable of consuming almost all parts of the body, even crushing bones and exoskeletal plating to consume the marrow within.
They are opportunistic when it comes to carrion and will consume any corpse they discover. They are no strangers to cannibalization and will consume wyverns who are already deceased or nearing death, though they will not actively hunt healthy individuals of their own kind.
While primarily carnivorous, cravings of certain nutrients may lead to the consumption of small, leafy plants or roots.
Relationship with Reptipods
Though they rarely get the opportunity, wyverns will also hunt Reptipods as prey. If desperate for food, a particularly hungry individual may resort to raiding a Reptipod colony by entering its tunnels. Reptipod eggs and young make quick meals if the wyvern is able to locate them deep within the colony, or it will take any other corpse which it is capable of acquiring. These events are ones which Reptipods are wary of and prepared to face; their defenses can pose a dangerous threat to the wyvern, and so it will not spend much time beneath the ground before fleeing.
Despite the threat they pose, Reptipods generally consider Weeping Blood-Wyverns to be too dangerous to be worth hunting. Killing one that is actively invading the colony is seen as a great act of prowess, but attempting to hunt one outdoors is seen as foolish and will likely only result in Reptipod deaths. Alternatively, wyvern eggs make vulnerable targets and Reptipods will actively attempt to destroy wyvern eggs if they suspect a resident female has any. If an island has no safely unreachable places to lay eggs and this results in the repeated destruction of her clutches, she may leave to find new territory.
Lifecycle
Their populations are disproportionately male with a general ratio of 2:1. Females will spend their entire lives in their home island, only leaving if chased out or if the territory ceases providing for them. Alternatively, males will frequently visit neighboring islands even when they have an established territory in search of a potential mate. He will emit loud bellows when he arrives at a new island and hope that the responder is a female; if he has wandered into the territory of a fellow male while only seeking for a mate, he will flee quickly and not endanger himself in a territorial challenge.
When a male encounters a female, he will land before her and put on a display similar to an aggressive territorial threat. He will announce his presence to her as he would to a male in a territorial contest while she will merely watch. If she seems amused by his antics instead of driving him away, he will then attack her outright. He does not actually intend on winning considering the female's size; rather he is merely trying to impress her with his strength, and if he is not deemed worthy he will be killed and consumed.
Males typically return to their solitary lives, but occasionally they may resort to cooperative parenting by attempting to remain with the female should her territory be large enough to sustain them both. The presence of 2 parents protecting the children improves their survival rates, but causes the male to lose his home territory as the islands drift apart and is only possible on particularly large, fruitful islands. Should food ever become a risk, the female will drive the male away.
Within 30 days 2-3 eggs are laid in a nest built out of twigs and dead leaves by the female. She will remain with them for their first few hours, but eventually returns to an almost normal life while returning to the den only to sleep or if she detects danger.
Eggs and young are threatened by predatorial apods, other wyverns, and Reptipods who seek to drive the resident female away by making it impossible to rear young on the island. Both parents will patrol the densite to ensure protection of the offspring.
Within 3 weeks the young will hatch into small stubby babies that remain in the nest for several weeks more as they rely on their mother (and/or father, if he's hung around) to bring food to them. The male will ensure that the densite is clean of rotting material, protect the young from predators, and assist in hunting for the female while the female will deliver regurgitated meat to the young and take upon any duty not covered by the father.
At 30 days of age the young are developed enough to learn flight, and from here to sub-adulthood they will share their mothers' island. The mother will cease actively delivering food to them, but they will follow her around, feed on her kills and learn to hunt through observation. They gradually become more independent as they age, spending less time around their mother and venturing around on their own more often, though they still depend on her kills for food until they are large enough to hunt for themselves. At this time the help of their father is no longer appreciated and he will be chased out if he hasn't been already; soon enough the subadult young will also be seen as competition and chased from her island. The young may stay grouped for some time as they travel and share findings of carrion with each other, but soon enough will grow tired of each others' presences as scuffles over food and personal space eventually culminate in the assumption of their solitary adult behavior. They will likely never see individuals of blood relation ever again as they settle onto scattered drifting islands.
Threats, Diseases & Ailments
External Parasites: Common flea-like parasites living between their scales and exoskeletal plates can damper an individuals' health, especially if they are immunocompromised for any other reason. Regular dust baths and basking in exposure to Red Crystals can cull these parasites.
Internal Parasites: Various species of intestinal worm can be ingested from the flesh of prey. While these are rarely severe enough to cause acute death, they will slowly damper an individual's quality of life and make them weaker in combat, eventually indirectly resulting in a young death due to being driven out of their territory.
Starvation: Wyverns are rarely killed as a direct result of age & injury. Rather, an individual who is old and/or weak is usually driven away from an island by a younger, stronger counterpart. It will spend weeks traveling for new territory, but will eventually die from a lack of resources. The most common cause of death for an adult wyvern is starvation from a lack of fruitful territory, which also makes them more susceptible to parasites and other infections.
Infanticide: Eggs and juveniles are threatened by Reptipods and by competing males.