The Qwolf
An adaptable and social predatory Tera Squid
An adaptable and social predatory Tera Squid
The Qwolf is a funnily enough large wolf-sized Scissor Mouth. As social animals with adaptable diets, they take prey of any size from small Squid Rodents to anything larger outside of the Brute Grazers.
There extremely cursorial since most of their prey are generally fast runners and they like the beak strength of Neck Snares to kill swiftly.
This has led to something rarely seen in carnivore Tetrapods the development of hooves.
As monodactyles it's easy for running Tera Squid to develop a hoof by overgrowing the chitin nail like the Horned Tera Squids did and their leg bones have converged nearly identically on the same design.
The leg of the Qwolf or cursorial Cephalope compared to a Squid Rodents leg. What would be close to the ancestral form of crown Terateuthia (the last common ancestor of Stalked-Eyed and Tentacle Tera Squid excluding older transitional forums within the larger clade Enantiteuthia)
Their hunting strategy is similar to wolves with groups working together to drive prey together to be brought down.
In many places, their most common prey are Cephalopes larger than them which requires multiple members restraining the prey with their mouth hooks which lock together to forum something like a spiked glove, slowing it down enough for one to bite the prey's neck.
This pack hunting is the biggest part of their success like canids these packs are families of two parents and siblings since for most of them it’s easier to stay and raise related younger siblings nieces and nephews still related to them than to strike out on their own. Coordinated groups allow for the hunting of large prey and stealing or dominating carcasses as larger predatory Tera Squids want to avoid injury over dealing with so many enemies and packs can keep scavenging Blish away from their own kills.
Qwolves also possess multiple color morphs the most common being a gray underline with tan patches with other colors ranging from white, brown, red, green-gray, to black.