Drakeshrog

The Drakeshrog split from its ancestor and moved inland into Drake. There, it encountered and co-evolved with the Bannertail—a social predator without ears. Bannertails initially saw the Drakeshrog as a potential competitor and would combat it as such, but the Drakeshrog’s high intelligence allowed it to gain some rudimentary understanding of Bannertail language and respond to it—something the Bannertails also took notice of. Though the Drakeshrog cannot speak and could not even begin to communicate in the same manner as the deaf bioluminescent Bannertails, their mutual high intelligence allowed some level of understanding to develop between the two species—particularly because one Drakeshrog figured out that its white underbelly reminded the Bannertails of their own warning “call”, leading to it warning them of danger they could not hear by rolling over in exchange for food and defense. The relationship soon developed further, and before long Drakeshrogs were regarded as packmates by the Bannertails and used their superior senses to assist in hunts. The Drakeshrog has also shared its architectural capabilities, assisting the Bannertail in conquering cold montane habitats by constructing insulated nests for the pack. Like its ancestor, the Drakeshrog hunts with spears, these being made from the chitin-wood which supports the native crystal flora; unlike cellulose wood, chitin-wood is stiff and not prone to snapping, making it very useful for taking down large prey.

Compared to its ancestor, the Drakeshrog’s nests are upside-down—instead of half-sphere boats with a deck, they are dome-shaped huts with wooden floors. The entrance is on the side rather than on top, but a hole in the middle of the floor is still present. The middle of the hole has a tall tree trunk placed in it which serves as a central support beam for the roof. In nests the Drakeshrog constructed for itself, the hole is only big enough to fit the central support beam, but in nests it built for the Bannertail pack it lives with the hole is 2 meters wide, half a meter deep, and filled with water—forming a perfectly sized spawning pool for the Bannertails. This portion is built by the Bannertails beforehand, and the Drakeshrog constructs the nest for them around it.

Without any fuzzpalms inland, the Drakeshrog constructs nest walls using crystal flora such as the Towering Grovecrystal, the Baseejie, and the Vesuvianite Tree instead. It does not use ferines due to their trunks being too thick and rough to cut through easily, nor ‘lures because the ones with tall trunks have too unwieldy shapes for construction. The nests are held together and sometimes even completely coated in earthen plaster, which was invented through combining Bannertail adobe construction with Shrog nest-making techniques in a rare example of interspecies cultural exchange. Sometimes the floors of the nests will even have adobe slabs or earthen plaster in place of wood. In forests, branches from flora are sometimes used to disguise or visually break up the shape of the nest. The nests are still kept clean by Cleaner Borvermids, which have been spread to the Drakeshrog's entire range. Interactions with the Bannertail have exposed the Drakeshrog to the concept of cleanliness, and as a result waste and rotting food don't build up enough to support a new species of shailnitor to follow the Drakeshrog inland.

The Drakeshrog is even less social than its ancestor, at least when it comes to interactions with its own species. However, it is highly social with the Bannertail. Beyond assisting in hunts and building nests, it will engage in play and social grooming, as well as “babysit” juvenile bannertails. Though its instincts tell it to mate with other shrogs, like in many instances of mixed-species social groups on Earth, it isn’t unheard of for some individual Drakeshrogs to instead be attracted to Bannertails. This can result in odd attempts at interspecies mating, though these generally fail due to their wildly incompatible anatomy, and hybrid offspring cannot be produced due to them being about as closely related as a rat and a frog. Due to having little need to communicate with its own kind and the Bannertail lacking ears to hear it anyway, the Drakeshrog is very quiet and rarely makes a sound except when interacting with its own offspring.

When the Drakeshrog does try to mate with another of its kind, it does so during the fall. It will wander from its Bannertail pack into neutral territory and let out loud mating calls—rather deep and long cries compared to those of its ancestor, allowing it to find potential mates over long distances. Should multiple males encounter the same female, they will wrestle using the spikes on their heads, though the female may still pick the loser if he appears healthier. If a male encounters multiple females, he will attempt to mate with all of them. The process of mating itself, done belly-to-belly to avoid risk of injury from the Drakeshrog’s spikes, is a quick and quiet affair due to the risk of attack from other creatures. The father does not participate in raising his own offspring, but this is not an issue as the mother’s Bannertail pack will assist in raising them instead. Pregnancy lasts longer than it did in its ancestor, at 6 months, though the offspring are still born helpless and mostly naked. Hardly resembling a marsupial joey anymore, baby Drakeshrogs are instead called pups. There are usually 3-6 pups per litter. They only stay inside the pouch for two weeks, rapidly becoming far too large to fit inside. Having a somewhat larger brain than its ancestor, the Drakeshrog takes longer to grow up, reaching full size at 8 years. However, juveniles leave to find a new Bannertail pack to join at the age of 4. Such dispersal Drakeshrogs will find and team up with pairs of young dispersal Bannertails, being integral to the formation of a new pack. Others may join Bannertail packs which have recently lost their shrog or that have grown so large that they need additional shrogs to keep up. Sometimes, one juvenile will stay in their home pack until adulthood and will replace their mother in the Bannertail pack if she dies in the meantime. Cultural concepts including the construction of tools are spread primarily from mother to offspring.

The Drakeshrog has been known to steal food from Sowshrogs, and in fact it will even hunt and eat Sowshrogs themselves with its Bannertail pack despite them both being Shrogs. Some Drakeshrogs have also been known to attempt to mate with Sowshrogs if they cannot find a fellow Drakeshrog to mate with. This is rarely successful, as the Sowshrog will actively try to avoid the Drakeshrog and even attack it. However, unlike aforementioned mating attempts with Bannertails, successful matings between Drakeshrogs and Sowshrogs can and do happen and even produce viable hybrid offspring. Such hybrids typically die of malnutrition, however, due to the parent species having different dietary requirements, and those that don’t may be eaten by predators because they struggle to socialize and may find themselves out alone in the wilderness.

Notably, the Drakeshrog and the related Sowshrog are the first furred shrews to be endemic only to Drake since the Biglian period. Though a Terran mammal could never make such a trip, these shrogs’ respective arrivals here without becoming pelagic swimmers was the inevitable culmination of their ancestors’ advances to the already-advanced boat-nest construction ability which first evolved in the Marine Tamow; this remarkable event was inevitable, and there will likely be others, as there is potential for the arrival of other shrogs or even more basal tamows in the future.

Hilariously, the symbiosis between the Drakeshrog and the Bannertail created an aesthetic so convincingly tribe-like that it fooled the Nauceans, the alien beings which seeded Sagan IV with life. The Nauceans abducted a Bannertail, but as they tried to communicate with it they swiftly learned that it was not even self-aware, let alone sapient. Still, the Bannertail's language was complex enough that the Nauceans were able to ask it questions, from which they learned of the Drakeshrog—which they had previously dismissed as a domesticated pet. They proceeded to abduct a Drakeshrog, which they found to be self-aware, but they struggled to communicate until the Nauceans realized the Drakeshrog did not have a language. Realizing they had been fooled, the Nauceans quietly returned the abducted creatures to their pack and left them alone from then on.