Bloody Nose Cotingo

The bloody nose cotingo split from its ancestor and has migrated to Elerd Temperate Beach. There are many new smells on the beach, so the cotingo needed a better olfactory system. To keep its sensory neurons at peak efficiency, it is now warm blooded to some extent. The blood warms or cools the neurons depending on the weather, and to maximize this affect there are now four times as many capillaries on the horns. The cotingo also now uses these capillaries as a main site for gas exchange. A primitive heart made out of 2 pumps powered by peristalsis can be found within the shell.

To be warm blooded is taxing on the body’s energy supply, so the cotingo has a high-protein diet to compensate. Its horns are now tuned to taste glutamic acid to find protein sources more easily. It mainly eats filter currybugs and cadovermi because they are an easy catch and have sufficient amounts of protein. Its feet are longer and more prehensile to help it strangle its prey. Their lips have microscopic rasps that help it pull off the meat of fleshy animals. They travel in packs of 10-20 to take down prey more easily.

If the cotingo pack is too weak to find its own prey, it will try to steal prey from another predator. The pack will approach a feeding predator and the majority of individuals will increase its blood pressure, causing their horn-cappilaries to burst. This will hopefully scare away the predator, giving them an easy meal. This effect is enhanced by large amounts of methanethiol in the cotingos bloodstream. Methanethiol is a terrible smelling chemical that deters almost whatever creature that can smell it. The cotingo has smell receptors for this chemical, but the sense is numbed due to olfactory fatigue. This also makes the animal taste bad, so not many predators eat it.