Tigmow

The tigmow evolved from a population of pickaxe tamow which moved from the Dixon High Grasslands to the southern Dixon Rocky habitat. With no stride saucebacks or other hunters around, they are the apex predators of their territory.



(Tigmow territory in red)

Tigmows feed on leafplate hatchlings that are less than three months old or non-dominant male leafplates that are weakened from a battle with dominant male leafplates. Only rarely do they attack weakened non-dominant males while they are in their bachelor herds. Usually, they attack such males while they are alone.

Tigmows live in groups, but not groups as large as its ancestor. Groups consist of parents and their offspring, parents and their grown offspring, parents and their grown offspring and immature offspring, or a bunch of siblings with no parents. In the last example, a tigmow will leave its group to raise its offspring alone. On account of having no predators and a low mortality rate, tigmow populations can become so high as to be unsustainable in some years. During this time, there can be instances of rare cannibalism, in which siblings of the parents will eat the parents' children. This may explain why members of a sibling-group leave that group to raise offspring.

In parts of the year when leafplates are absent or rare in their part of the Dixon Rocky habitat, a tigmow will dig up dusty spelunkhoes instead. They also eat dusty spelunkhoes when leafplates are available, but not as often. In migrating and non-migrating months, an adult tigmow will eat roughly equal amounts of sandy orbiboms and meat, but young tigmows eat exclusively their mothers' milk and, later on, any meat their parents take back to their dens. (They do not make adobe-like dwellings anymore.) Young tigmows are weaned earlier than their ancestors. If weaned too early, a young tigmow has the disturbing tendency to suck the blood from dismembered prey as if it were milk.

As usual for cynosauriformes (or "shrews"), the offspring are born very immature. After emerging from the mother, they crawl to her pouch, latch onto a teat inside, and drink the milk. The embryos/newborns are pink, hairless, small-eared, and lack spikes on their back. Though born with all their eyes closed, within two weeks their first pair of eyes (the ones closest to the nose) will open. These eyes are slightly specialized to detect distance, which later helps them determine when to pounce on a leafplate and rip it apart.

Tigmows are usually nocturnal, but can hunt through the day when they have offspring to feed. When too hot in the daytime, they cool off by radiating heat through their ears and the spikes on their back, which are helped in this function by their greater length. When releasing heat through the back spikes, the spikes will become pinkish, hence the species name rubor, which means "to blush."