Beach Cheekhorn

The beach cheekhorns split from their ancestors and have since moved to the beaches of Jaydoh. They have developed a rupicoline lifestyle, inhabiting the various rocky cliffs and coastal dunes that make up much of the coastlines they call home. To facilitate this transition in habitats, their feet have evolved wider hooves with rough pads underneath them, traits that make them better adapted to climbing steep slopes and similar surfaces.Their quills are significantly thinner and more needle-like compared to those of their ancestors, as the result of a general lack of active predation in the region they inhabit. Without many predators to worry about, the need to spend extra resources on larger, more thorn-like quills has decreased, and as such they have not been selected for. Despite their more fragile appearance, the quills are still quite capable of serving as painful deterrents should the need arise. One of the few actual threats to them, the predatory waxfaces, are one such reason to retain these quills, though such encounters with them are rare. Cheekhorns tend to avoid venturing into waxface territories, and even when they do, the waxfaces tend to prefer different prey, and will only hunt cheekhorns on quite rare, opportunistic hunts. They are now a more generalized herbivores, feeding on the various shrubs and other flora that grow upon the cliffs and rocks, typically out of reach for most other non-flying species. They supplement this diet by licking the very rock bluffs themselves, attaining a source of salt as they climb up them. The instinct to climb has become so strong in them that they will readily scale up any available surface their feet can gain purchase on, be it rocky outcropping or a small tree, all in the pursuit of food, minerals, and if threatened, safety from danger.

Consuming a variety of low-growing vegetation and ground fruit, as well as the occasional fallen nut of one of the many kack towers that dot the coastlines, the beach cheeckhorn has inadvertently managed to help spread the more indigestible nuts and seeds that manage to survive the trip through their gastrointestinal tract. In particular, the hardy nuts of the kack tree have benefited the most by this method of dispersal, and have since become quite plentiful on Jaydoh Island. Nowadays thick patches of kack tower forests can be found wherever beeah cheekhorns thrive. In return, the cheekhorns benefit as well, as the trees provide them with sources of shade, freshwater in the form of dew, as well more nuts for them to feed upon.

Like the long-horned quilltail, young cheekhorns are born without hooves, instead bearing milking claws that give them somewhat of a resemblance to their distant ancestor the quilltail. With these milking claws, young cheekhorns will grip onto the backsides of their mothers, holding onto them tightly as they go about grazing upon the cliffside vegetation. Their hooves begin to come in around 6 months after birth. Once they have fully come in and they have reached a sufficiently large size to walk on their own, they will begin to climb the cliffs and such themselves, though will continue to nurse from their mothers until they are about a year old.

Cheekhorns are crepuscular, being active mostly during the dawn and twilight hours, during which they can take advantage of the cooler air. When sleeping in the shade during the day, one member of the herd is always awake in order to keep guard, a task that is rotated amongst the members from time to time. They are still quite social and will travel in large herds across the deserts and beaches. Males will fight over females by knocking their cheek horns into each others sides or swiping their tails at one another. Most the time, however, they don't actual hit each other and instead the whole display is mostly for show.