Twineshrog

The twineshrog split from its ancestor and moved inland, its range overlapping with the tyrannical Argusraptor complex. The argusraptors were a nightmare for any other creature to compete with due to their hyper-adaptability; the twineshrog, however, manages to do so as a result of its own hyper-adaptability, powered not by genetic flexibility, but by high intelligence and a very important invention.

Twine
Twine is an extremely versatile tool, and one which is very rare to see in the animal kingdom on Earth. On Sagan 4, twine has only been invented three times before, each time by a sophont. It is a tool that one would assume is far too advanced for an ordinary animal to invent. However, while shrogs are far from sophont, they’re far from ordinary either; the twineshrog in particular can be likened to a Terran orangutan, being a highly intelligent, solitary creature with exceptional instinctive tendencies towards tool use. The competitive scene created by the Argusraptor complex pushed the potential of the twineshrog further, which is directly responsible for its invention of twine. The twine-making behavior is technically learned, but it has its roots in natural behavior; it is a modification of flora-weaving behavior which is present in even the earliest tamjacks, which a few other shrogs have also expanded on with using naturally rope-like plant parts. The twineshrog differs in that it constructs twine directly, thus it does not need to spend time searching for pieces which are the right length and strength. The fibers used for twine construction are primarily the bast (or phloem) fibers of purple and black flora, usually either gathered from herbaceous plants in their environment or removed from the bark of logs. It uses this rare tool in nest construction and to hunt large prey—specifically, creatures which argusraptors would struggle to hunt successfully.

Trapping
Usually, large predators will target weak prey, such as the sick, elderly, or juvenile. The twineshrog, however, targets large, healthy individuals. It will memorize the patterns of herbivore migration and lay traps along their walking paths, or beneath the trees they feed from. These usually consist of twine stretched over a pit the Twineshrog has dug out, often filled with sharp crystals or stakes, then covered over with dirt and leaves to conceal it. Though weak prey is still sometimes caught, large healthy individuals will be closer to the leading edge of herds, causing them to be caught more often. Some large creatures, such as hagloxes and cardicrackers, can be caught without a particularly massive trap; a bad fall will shatter their limbs, leaving them unable to move. The Twineshrog has been known to eat large disabled prey like this alive, and in the case of a Westward Haglox in particular it will drive a spear through the base of the tail first to paralyze it and prevent it from striking with its thagomizer. Large kills like this can sometimes attract other twineshrogs, and it is more tolerant of its own kind in this situation because the kill is often too large for just one to consume. It will also kill and eat its competitors, such as argusraptors and flunejaws, and if no large prey is available it will also readily eat smaller fauna and test unfamiliar food sources. Though a prominent predator, the twineshrog remains an omnivore, consuming various shrooms, crystal flora, and fruit.

Nests and Tools
Like all shrogs and many non-shrog tamjacks, the twineshrog is an instinctive nest-builder capable of using experience and problem-solving to construct sturdy, complex nests. Its namesake invention, twine, allows it to build nests that make those made by its ancestor look like they’re made of paper mâché in comparison. While glue-like berries were effective at plugging holes and waterproofing, they were also extremely edible and rotted quickly when not maintained. Twine made of plant fibers, on the other hand, while not as great for waterproofing, is made mostly of cellulose, which is far more difficult for pest organisms to digest. Twine is also considerably stronger and more versatile, and its lack of waterproofing capabilities is made up for by binding wood together so tightly that water cannot easily seep through anyway. The nests are generally dome-shaped and consist of ribs similar to those of their ancestor’s boat nests with the gaps filled in by horizontal logs or planks. Twineshrog nests may also have a basement, but as it is not a natural digger, this is accomplished with tools. Nests commonly have woodyshrooms growing on them in the wooded parts of the twineshrog’s range, despite its best efforts to remove them as they sprout. In the drier open parts of its range, when a wildfire approaches their nests, twineshrogs may defend them by clearing away flora so that there is nothing in between the fire and the nest to burn.

Twineshrog tools are some of the most complex of any shrog. In addition to its use in constructing nests and traps, twine can also be used to attach rocks and bones to sticks to make better spears and variants thereof. Like its ancestor, the twineshrog struggles to use small tools and weaponry, however by tying them to a stick it can use them like it’s a spear. The most common is the stone-tipped spear, an effective variation of the spear which can be used repeatedly or on tougher prey without the tip breaking off. Following this is a tool analogous to a digging bar, where a small flat rock is attached to the end of a stick. This is the tool most often used for digging traps and basements, as it can rip through roots and hard dirt that the shrog would never be able to move with its claws. Rather than using a tool to remove the loosened dirt, the twineshrog will fling it out using its tail. A less common but not rare tool is something best described as a sword on a stick—a long flat stone with a sharp edge tied to a spear, which is used in territory conflicts in regions with less food available. The instinctive spear-thrusting motion is used to slice enemies from afar, rather than stab, disabling them by cutting an important muscle or, when used by an especially skilled twineshrog, sometimes even disemboweling them. This can be more effective than stabbing, as twineshrogs will instinctively attempt to prevent puncture wounds into their vital organs but may not necessarily be able to predict and react appropriately to slicing. However, these weapons do not last forever. Twineshrogs do not have the ability to figure out how to create good rocks for slicing and all the stones they use are ones they simply found that happened to be the right shape, so sword-spears will never take over as their dominant intraspecific weaponry.

The twineshrog's inability to sharpen rocks might come as a surprise, given that it and its relatives readily sharpen sticks and carve up logs. This is because of a distinction in what exactly a shrog has to do in order to accomplish these tasks. Most shrogs have a blade on their tail which is used to cut wood. This is a natural part of their body, a built-in tool of sorts, much like a claw or a tooth. This is quite unlike, say, a Terran ape, which must use an artificial constructed tool such as an ax or a saw to accomplish the same task. To the average shrog, modifying an object is something one does with part of their body. Meanwhile, no part of a shrog's body can modify a rock. The hardest material available on their body is their teeth, which would shatter or wear away if they even tried to use them on stone. While it would be mechanically easy for a twineshrog to do what a human would intuitively do, that is to sharpen the rock with another rock, it never even occurs to them to do so. It is true, of course, that the twineshrog does have the ability to use two objects together, such as tying a rock to a stick to make a better spear. However, while a human might call this a modification, to a shrog, modification and combination are two unrelated concepts. The twine does not edit the stick or the rock nor do the stick and the rock edit one another, but putting them together makes something entirely new, exactly like putting together logs to create a nest. Both of these concepts are also distinguished from using a tool to dig—though the twineshrog would be considered by a human to be modifying the environment with a constructed digging bar, which one would expect to lead into using tools to chip or sharpen rocks, to a shrog this is a variation on yet another unrelated concept. From the twineshrog's point of view, it is "getting" the dirt that's in its way by attacking and loosening it, much like a successful attack on a rival or a prey item. Thus, it does not occur to them to use tools to modify rocks either.

Territory
Every individual twineshrog has a set territory, and though twineshrogs are solitary hunters, their territories may overlap considerably if there is a lot of food available. In regions less rich in food, however, territories have strict borders and conflict is common. However, the twineshrog is only naturally uncomfortable with its own kind, not completely intolerant except out of necessity, more like, say, a cat than, say, a badger. A male’s territory will often be very large and overlap with the territories of many females, and the females will allow this because their instincts to reproduce usually overpower their discomfort. When wounded in territorial conflict, mating accident, or by other species, twineshrogs are able to recover and heal, keeping the wounds clean by licking them and avoiding exposure to dirt or irritating flora.

Reproduction
Like its ancestor, the twineshrog lacks a mating season, but it has also lost its natural monogamy because it no longer serves any purpose. It has traded its ancestor’s relatively rapid breeding for a slower breeding rate that better fits the capacity of its natural habitat, though females are still almost always pregnant, as whenever they aren’t pregnant or nursing, they will regularly mate with the male whose territory overlaps theirs. Gestation lasts 6 months, meaning that a female will be unreceptive for over half the year, which is why males have such large territories—so they have access to many females and can mate as often as possible, though this is not without flaw as often weaker males will travel along territory borders to steal mating opportunities. They have only 1-2 offspring per mating, and they stay in their mother’s pouch until they become too large, which happens very quickly for twins but may take as long as 6 months if there is only a single offspring.

Behavioral Limitations
The twineshrog undeniably has what one might call "sophont aesthetic", in that it looks like a sophont when it is not. It is not the first or only shrog to fall into the "sophont aesthetic" category (the drakeshrog famously managed to fool aliens which had been watching over the planet), and one could argue that tamjacks as a whole have this to some extent (the extinct tamustel in particular is even described as living in villages). But the twineshrog's technological advances might make it difficult to see it as an animal, and one would not be shamed for assuming it to be smarter than stated after seeing everything it can accomplish. But tool use is not the only component to personhood, and the twineshrog is actually missing some very important pieces which prevent it from advancing.

The most important missing piece is the complete lack of a language, written or spoken. The twineshrog communicates entirely using instinctive vocalization and body language. Like other shrogs it is capable of attaching meanings to the communication of other species, and it is able to memorize a large number of these, but it cannot reproduce them or comprehend the full complexity of true language. In lab settings it can learn to use a soundboard, but this is a completely unnatural behavior which could never occur in the wild. This means that its ability to communicate ideas is limited to what can be shown, such as the process of making a spear; it is completely locked out of stories or cultural ideas as a result, and without the ability to share and build on old ideas from a variety of sources, knowledge cannot accumulate. This limitation is the primary factor keeping twineshrogs more or less locked in place both technologically and culturally. The only reason they have gotten as far as they have at all is because of their instinctive nest-building, which had been forced into its current state by the need for their ancestors to build large hollow nests sturdy enough to float in the open ocean for months or even years while being constantly battered by storms and oceanic megafauna.

Even in their "hypertrophied" state nearly comparable to the tool use instincts of the Terran human, the nest-making and tool use abilities of twineshrogs still fall short of those of true sophonts. Twineshrogs, and shrogs as a whole, are generally locked into limited, instinctive ways of thinking about their nests and tools, which is most visible in the fact that most shrogs can only use one or two general types of tool and all shrog nests are radially symmetric even across millions of years of separation. They have an instinctive concept of newness, much like humans and cetaceans, which allows innovation to exist, but this is just as instinctively limited to making their existing nests and tools as sturdy and useful as possible without deviating from instinctive blueprints, as in their seafaring ancestors deviating too far from the instinctive nest design could be fatal. Given that the ancestors of shrogs first started making floating nests 35 million years before the Twineshrog evolved, the restrictive instincts have been enforced and reinforced to the point that it may be very difficult, if not impossible, for any shrog to ever gain the ability to intentionally experiment with the shapes of their nests and tools. In a sense, such deviations where they occur are just as much an evolutionary trait as changes to their own flesh. Even the twineshrog's biggest innovation outside of twine, trap-making, has its roots in modified nest-building and food storage instincts.

Outside of the limitations of the characteristics which give twineshrogs their "sophont aesthetic", they also generally fail cognitive tests that a sophont would pass. Being largely solitary, twineshrogs struggle to pass several tests related to recognizing and thinking about themselves and others. Their ability to feel empathy is inconsistent at best across their population, and passing the mirror test is more difficult for them than for more social shrogs. Strangely for a solitary creature, twineshrogs actually do pass some theory of mind tests, such as the false belief test; this is related to their trapping behavior, as they need to trick an organism into not believing there to be a trap by camouflaging it.

Other Information
On the twineshrog’s appearance, it has lost most of its osteoderms due to it not having very many predators further inland, though it retains facial spikes because it still finds these attractive; females are more likely to settle in a region if the local males have prominent facial spikes, and the males likewise will be more likely to claim territory that contains females with prominent facial spikes. The twineshrog varies somewhat in color across its range. Populations in more open habitats tend towards a golden color matching Darwin’s naturally yellow soils or off-white matching Dixon, while those in the forests are often melanistic, having jet black fur with only small hints of yellow. Though the twineshrog is not a cat, it is large enough and its appearance is sufficiently cat-like that such melanistic individuals may resemble and even be incorrectly referred to as black panthers.

The twineshrog has caused the spread of the cleaner borvermid and the false cleaner borvermid across its entire range. It defecates outside away from its nest and does a good job of removing rotting food to avoid attracting scavengers, so it does not have a symbiotic shailnitor descendant by its side to clean its nest.