Strange Creatures of The Forest

While grasslands and open steppes are the most common habitats across the world, mixed forests of evergreen and deciduous trees still run a nearly complete circle around the entire continent.

Animals live at higher densities here than anywhere else on Earth with a rich diversity of bushes, shrubs, ferns, herbs, nuts, and berries going along with the variety of trees during a short but bountiful summer.

Winters are still bitterly cold across most of their range seeing a large amount of snow and temperatures in the -20s/30s similar to modern Canada or Northern Europe.

An exception to this is the forests of the coastal highlands. Located near the equator and coasts and shielded by the coastal mountains, climates here are far milder with hot summers and relatively wet warm winters similar to Perth in Australia.

In these warmer forests, one can find the largest of all Squid Rodents.

The Giant Squangaroo is a towering browser standing 10 feet tall and weighing 800 pounds. So big that they can no longer hop instead walking in a somewhat awkward shuffle. It has evolved to fill the roles of other browsers like the Strideraptors and Schalicos (which they convergently look very similar to) in an environment where both are absent or less common. With Strideraptors isolated on the east coast and Schalicos preferring denser forests.

They are not as specialized as the other browsers, their lineage having less time to specialize for it. They use their arms to rip branches off trees (like Schalicos) but with less specialized beak dentition than those of the Cephalopes to strip the leaves off branches (like Strideraptors)

Despite their large size, their life stages are much more like the other Squangaroos, giving birth to up to 12 precocial young not much bigger than their ancestors with mature females giving birth as many as 4 times a year.

Most of these young will be picked off before they reach sexual maturity but the few that reach adult size are almost entirely ignored by predators, their long dangerous arms and strange body proportions make them unappealing to try and tackle.

Further to the east along the east coast, the Strideraptors continue to diversify.

This has culminated in the Crowned Strideraptor, the largest land Ichthyopteran that has ever lived. It is 20 feet from head to tail, 15 feet tall and almost 3000 pounds, half a ton heavier than the Moa Blish of the Cryptoland Islands.

Weighing as much as a Rhino has shifted its center of mass towards the center of its body, causing it to walk with its tail and neck much more straightened out than the more upright posture of their ancestors.

They are found in dense mixed forests that are too thick for the Parade Squid to enter. They are by far the tallest animals in their environment, enjoying exclusive rights to the more tender leaves in needles at the tops of trees.

A long, flexible tongue inherent to all Blish allows them to pull leaves into a broad goose-like bill.

At their size, healthy adults are invulnerable to predators, but like other Strideraptors, they start off as small baseball-sized eggs.

Despite efforts from the adults, many eggs will be lost to nest raiders, and of those that hatch into chicken-sized hatchlings, very few will survive predators long enough to become the biggest Ichthyopterans on the planet.

However, the most numerous high browsers of the woodlands are the Schalicos. Adapted for a slower-moving lifestyle, they

use their hooked front limbs primarily to pull down branches but also for defense, with their horns being simple protrusions coming out of the head.

Like other browsers, they’ve seen an increase in size, and this trend has culminated in the Greater Schalico, a massive 11-foot-tall, 4-ton browser that is the largest of the Cephalopes.

They're incredibly slow, lumbering their way through the woods at a glacial pace. Their greater size means that healthy adults are practically immune to predation, while their long, strong arms and sharp claws let them cut down trees taller than themselves to feed on the higher branches, a powerful beak inside the head letting them process tree branches and all.

In this way, they are important to the functioning of the ecosystem, clearing away older growth and preventing its buildup that leads to out-of-control wildfires, and allowing space for new plant growth.

Unusual for Eqsquid line Cephalopes, they are very colorful animals adorned with many white stripes along the body and a head colored in several shades of brown, black, and orange.

An even more colorful relative is the Regal Schalico.

A smaller species at only a ton, it has much more to fear from predators and is much more aggressive than its larger relative to defend itself and its calves.

Their forelimbs, used for stripping leaves and tree bark, can be balled into a fist that they can employ to punch with the same force as a horse kicks.

Their punches are strong enough to break the jaws of predators if they fully connect and can still cause severe bruising from a sideswipe, so many predators are wary of hunting adults.

Their punches can also be employed on each other. Males will box each other in the fall for mating rights, their upper bodies reinforced by cartilage around the muscles to soften blows.

Of course, anywhere that there is prey, there are predators to hunt them.

Many Kraken Cats are found here, as well as other previously established species like the Qwolves, Sqbears, and many smaller predatory Terra Squid and Blish.

One species endemic to woodlands is the Sqhole descendant from the Qwolve genus Caniteuthis. Shorter-legged than other species at waist height and averaging 50 pounds, adapted for dense woodlands, hunting forest Cephalopes.

Like other canid-like squids, they are highly social animals, communicating in a high-pitched whistle. Most of the canid-like Terra Squid communicate with whistling noises, but Sqholes are particularly good at it due to their large, loose social groups that can number as high as 100.

The Brown Squear is a common thief of the Sqholes kills and frequently draws the outrage of their conspecifics.

Although it is equipped with a strong set of jaws, it really hunts large prey on its own, mostly Cephalopes calves in the spring, but is very willing to steal kills from other predators as well as indulge in a variety of fish and invertebrates, and high-nutrient fruits, nuts, and berries.

This broad diet, like other members of their genus, has allowed the Brown Squear to spread across a wide range of habitats and from dry scrubland to dense forest.

However, the Brown Squares’ larger size and often aggressive disposition allow them to dominate other Squares in their environment, making them a real contender for the most common large carnivore in the late ice age.