Loafpick

The Loafpick split from its ancestor. It has shifted its focus entirely to small fauna as food, and as such it has lost its venom and no longer hunts in packs. It engages in more advanced parental care, feeding its larvae regurgitated food rather than dropping them off near carcasses. It has gained additional armor on its back as a defense against predators. Larvae can roll into defensive balls, but adults can only assume a partial defensive curl due to their legs being in the way. It uses its mobile fangs to pick apart nests so it can feed using its long sticky tongue. It will climb flora to do this, allowing it to consume arboreal creatures such as Xenobees. It will also pick at the soil to dig up burrowing creatures such as Vermees, and it can snatch other small fauna it finds crawling around with its long tongue to supplement its diet. It will especially do this in the more open parts of its range, particularly the alpine and polar scrub. It climbs using its feet and mobile fangs together, similar to some Terran birds.

The Loafpick is more intelligent than its ancestor. This is a consequence of its semi-arboreal habits and the need for problem-solving ability to access food. It has developed primitive tool use, being able to grip sticks and bones between its fangs to poke at nests it would not be able to reach otherwise. The part of its brain responsible for processing echos is greatly enlarged, as are its ears. This allows it to detect not only the external shapes of objects but also part of the interior, allowing it to determine if a nest is occupied and detect burrowing fauna as deep as 30 cm underground. Its brain is located beneath its largest shell, the “sauce”.

Despite no longer hunting in packs, the Loafpick remains a social creature. As a result of the increased complexity of its echolocation, its ability to create and distinguish complex calls has also increased. Though it has nothing quite resembling a true language, it can mimic the sounds that reflect off of specific objects, allowing for “discussion” of creatures and objects found in its environment. This ability is similar to that of Terran cetaceans, and it can use these sounds to warn its social group of specific predators being nearby. Different social groups have different dialects, where the three-dimensional shape “described” may be stylized or simplified in a variety of ways rather than being an exact realistic match to the object it was originally based on. Loafpick social groups are matriarchal, though rather than using inefficient alphas there is simply a small selection of females which are the leaders and get first pick of the males. Though higher up the social hierarchy is rather strict, lower-ranking members generally care less about hierarchy amongst themselves, though they still respect those above them. Within each rank, the females are generally considered above the males in the same rank, but not above males in higher ranks. The exact rank structure varies regionally and over time, though usually a given Loafpick can climb or drop in rank depending on its behavior and contribution to the group.

The Loafpick is ovoviviparous, like its ancestor. The eggshells have lost any actual protective features, being more like simple membranes, and as such it is actually incapable of laying unhatched eggs that can survive even if induced to lay artificially. Their small brown legless babies lack the ability to echolocate effectively and must be fed by their parents. Babies are raised communally by similar-ranked Loafpicks in the same social group as one another. When mating occurs between ranks, the rank of newly born offspring is inherited from their mother.