Barkbuck

Following the attack of the argusraptors, some regions were left completely devoid of large herbivores, as they had all been eaten to extinction. One such region was Javen. The barkbuck split from its ancestor, left the trees, and quadrupled in size to fill this void, losing its prehensile tail in the process. Despite its beak and teeth being made of wood, it is very effective at consuming crystals, as all it needs to do to eat them is create enough force to crush them—it doesn’t need to chew—and wood is strong enough to do so. Despite its bark being useless to protect it from predators, it is retained as insulation, as its structure blocks excess heat from entering its body and traps the heat that it has already produced fairly well. Its legs remain naked, as it still needs some bare skin in order to urinate due to plents like itself doing so through pores in their skin. This also has the effect of removing excess heat as needed.

In an arms race with the argusraptor complex, which completely bypasses any form of woody protection with its sclerotised jaws, the barkbuck rapidly evolved cursorial adaptations to flee instead. Because it evolved its long legs so quickly, being selected for over a short period of time rather than appearing gradually and being optimized along the way, all of its toes are intact and clawed, even though it only walks on two of them per foot. Its thumbs are still opposable, allowing it to use them to grasp and manipulate flora as needed.

Barkbuck’s bark, instead of forming thick brown splintering scales, is fairly thin and smooth and, like a surprisingly large number of Terran trees, actually contains pigmentation. It can be difficult to distinguish from the bare skin of its face and legs without close examination. There was actually no biological reason for it to be colored distinctly in its ancestor, and the reason why basal barkbacks have such strangely-colored bark will likely remain a mystery.

The barkbuck has smaller and more numerous babies than one might expect from a creature of its size and niche. This is because of a major constraint of plent reproduction—their offspring, at birth, must be able to squeeze out through the mouth. Further, having a single large baby would restrict neck flexibility during pregnancy, which is not great for an herbivore. So, barkbuck still has litters of 3-4 small babies like its ancestor instead of investing in one large baby. It is also beneficial to have more babies because it doesn’t live in herds and cannot depend on group defense behaviors, so many of its babies are lost to predators.

The barkbuck is yellowish in the more open parts of its range, but populations in the woodlands have darker coloration to blend in with the dark trees.