Nossum

The Nossum has replaced its ancestor in the Flisch Taiga region. In this region, the norat had two problems: tough competition with scavengundi and chunky pipent and predation from the taigashroot. The Nossum is the result of both these pressures.

The nossum has solved these problems by changing it’s diet and where it lives. Some norats, in their search for food, found that individual scavengundi workers were easily picked off. Because of the success of the scavengundi, these norats started to change their diet to eating mainly the scavengundi workers. They evolved much sharper front teeth that pull the worker further into the mouth and kill it in one blow. In the warmer times of the year, nossums also add flowers to their diets. The petals and nectar supply much needed calories and eat as much of them as they can before the colder months. In these harsher times, they rely completely on finding scavengundi nests.

To protect them from the danger of the taigashroot, Nossums are nocturnal and are a black colour to blend into the shadows. They also sleep in the fluffytree's high branches. The nossums claws have evolved a slight retractable ability, meaning that when walking their long claws will not get broken whilst hunting but in the night they can dig their claws into the branches and trunks of the fluffytrees, ensuring they will not fall in the night.

The nossums family structure is more tightly bound than its ancestor. During the day, a family will huddle together in the fluffytrees. At night, all adults will descend and split up to search for food. On the nossums breathing ‘pipe’ there are many small glands that secrete a strong smell. When a family member find a scavengundi nest, it will roll over and mark the ground. The other members will eventually smell this signal and head towards the smell, marking their own smell as they go. This invites others of the family that may be further away and shows them which direction the food is. Each family has its own particular smell.

Nossum families fiercely defend their area but as there isn’t much time to mark out their territories, boundaries are sketchy and constantly changing. This means that family groups frequently meet. If two members from different families meet, they both rub the ground with their scent pipes secreting a different smell, immediately telling the other family members about the rival group. To prevent fights every time, families will face each other across a distance and chatter loudly. The loudest chatter usually wins and normally prevents unwanted violence unless both families are equally matched. In this scenario, the groups will attack each other till one retreats. These battles are deadly and can often result in a few members losing their lives.

When a group becomes too large, new offspring will start to leave the group to join another or start their own. A group of nossums is collectively known as a ‘clan of nossums’.