Fumbled Mouthe

The Fumbled Mouthe split from its ancestor, the Southern Scrambler, it has moved to Darwin Highboreal and shrank in size by about half. They've become more social, forming large loosely associated colonies centered around a cache of storable foods such as dried out Cragmyr berries or Shaggy Volleypom megaspores. This cache is important for the group to survive during times of scarcity for example during particularly drought stricken dry seasons with little hiccup in their activities. They may dig burrows under logs and stones as safe hideaways. These are used by any individuals in the colony and happily shared. If an individual is found injured by another in their group the injured creature will be helped to the closest burrow to recover and receive food. As different individuals move in and provide additions to the excavation these burrows can become rather long and chambered for regular residency. Despite this they prefer to store their central cache in an aboveground hollow such as a shattered stump,or spaces between tightly grown trees stuffed with leaves, as this placement is better for preventing moisture build up and rot. But what they prefer most are the walls of shrog nests, such as Twineshrog or Twigfisher Shrog.

These walls of sticks, woven and bundled, whether tied together or matted with mud, provide an abundance of nooks and potential hollows to stuff with food. These homes even come with its own built in food sources in the form of lively and delicious Cleaner Borvermids and False Cleaner Borvermids, as well as whatever foods the resident shrog had looked away from, dropped, or tried to store for later. Another benefit of relying on these structures for storage is that possible raiding creatures that would, if having discovered the cache in a stump, decimate their stores. Instead, the walls of the nest are protected by the large carpozoans that have built them and any small beasts that foolishly meander in risk getting dispatched. Most would rather avoid the structures all together. This aggressive nature of the shrog, of course, extends to the scurrying vermin that are the Fumbled Mouthes if they are noticed as well.

The use of the Shrog nests are a double edged sword, unlike their ancestor, that would simply overwhelm the shrog and seize the entire nest for themselves, the Fumbled Mouthe must have a nest that is upkept. So those populations that had chased away or even killed the shrog quickly found their beautiful home in disarray, and their central cache promptly raided by the opportunists around them. So, being sneaky, and quick, they developed greater instinctual tolerances for proximity with the shrog. Of course they become discovered and engaged with by their host quite regularly despite their attempts. These engagements are almost always attempts of dispatch on the behalf of the host, via smashing, biting, stabbing, stepping on, or pulling apart to be discarded or devoured.

This storm of violence on the species had rapidly selected for those better and better able to survive and recover greater and greater damages. Those with burrows near the shrog nest were able to be dragged to safety by allies, and kept alive through recovery, if able to eventually eat. The resulting tiny beast of these rapid selection processes become incredibly resilient. Their blood near instantly coagulates over damages, with blood vessels constricting and rerouting their contents so as to minimize loss of fluids at any wound. Their arteries are highly elastic and the smooth muscle in their walls strongly capable of pumping blood if the heart is damaged. Their lungs are many lobed, with each lobe able to seal off via capillary restriction and inflammation if nonfunctional and allow the others to continue their normal processes. If too severely damaged then the lungs may enlist tissues attached to them to become new lung tissue, triggering structure reconfiguration as the new minilobes form. Nearly the entire brain can be crushed and repaired or replaced. Albeit this is not survivable if the portion used to tell the lungs to breath, or alternatively the motor centers that may cause convulsions to force air into the lungs, are destroyed beyond function. The entire body, with exception of gonads, is rich in their lineages' unique nearly totipotent cell layers. Alongside this the body fat content is a higher percentage, spread thoroughly throughout the body, and is capable of providing the energy needed for these repairing cells to function.

This durability allows any Fumbled Mouthes that are able to survive attacks to potentially regrow whatever is missing from their self, given enough time. Those with missing limbs, or pierced organs, or torn skin, that escape the wrathe of the shrog tend to be a fairly straightforward repair. The wounds cap off or fill in with a form of blastema that does its best to replace what was lost. For things that don't necessarily need replacing, but the wound was severe enough to override more typical healing, the process can be a little messy. Organs may get extra lobes or other pieces, either resulting in an organ that works better, or worse, or even the death of the shrew due to malfunctioning. Limbs that trigger replacement, but are still partially attached, may grow extras of themselves that attempt to form nerve, bone, and blood connections. These are normally chewed off by their owner to restart the replacement process properly.

This ability to seal a wound means that even an indidivual getting cut in half can seal off their lower end and survive. These ones don't usually attempt to eat the food provided to them until their digestive system reforms to an acceptable degree, in the meantime surviving on their fat deposits. Unfortunately, although they are able to survive, they generally have stunted backends with problems of sterility. Technically speaking repeated minor damages that trigger replacement can return a more normal backend to them, but it is rare that such damages get properly applied during their lifetime.

In more unusual cases, such as an individual being split only partially in half, where the entire body is still able to share a blood supply but unable to reseal itself back together both major wounds will seal off and begin their regeneration. This strange event will create forms of conjoined individuals, one with the original head and possibly a new backend, and one with a brand new brain but the original tail. Though to each their respective new half is somewhat stunted. Those where the two have more or less entire bodies of their own will pull apart and heal. However, in other cases the conjoinment is more extreme, creating a forked body. These individuals are not particularly useful or capable, and tend to remain in the burrows, continuing to be cared for by the other members of the colony. Eventually they end up bickering and chewing themselves apart, resulting in an even more prolonged state of healing and regeneration.

Like its ancestor the Fumbled Mouthe produces milk to feed its joeys and possesses a pouch to house them in during development. Unlike its ancestor both females and males form pouches and are capable of producing milk at feedable rates, though males pouches are smaller and their milk flow far less if produced. They are capable of breeding 6-8 times a year and can produce litters numbering 8-20 tiny joeys at a time often with multiple identical twins or triplets. The higher end of this many joeys in a litter is more than a single mother can feed at a time, resulting in adopting out offspring to other members of the colony being a common occurrence. This handing out of offspring typically is to newly mature females without a litter of their own with whom favorite burrows are shared. However, males may be selected if no litterless females are available. Though milk synthesis is primarily triggered by pregnancy it is also secondarily, and easily, triggered by the prolonged presence of joeys in a shared burrow and rapidly increased upon adoption.

Though food storage and life revolves around the shrog nest, and much of their restful time is spent in scattered burrows, a good chunk of their active time is out in the leaf litter of the wilds. There is no specific time of day during which they are active, rather the cyclical pattern of activity is dependent on the individual, this results in always at least a few wandering about scouting for food to collect. Preferred routes during their ventures run along the lengths of large objects such as trees, logs, and rocks. This gives them fewer points of vulnerability and allows focus in specific directions for dangers. Areas known to be merely pathways to reach where they want are beelined through, under as much leaf litter and debris as possible, resulting in established aboveground tunnels through the forest duff or pocket meadows that dot their territories. Though its main predators are primarily airborne, the Montemsnapper and Underswooper, grounded predators such as young of the Argusraptor Complex catching and toying with them or Mudslider Teuthopin crashing into their burrows are semi-common occurrences. Dreadful run-ins with Sinister Sorite are not uncommon, though due to the predators hunting habits it results in them being partially eaten alive if their head is not destroyed. More rarely they may be horrifically skewered by a Brookside Leisterpom near some water or thrashed and devoured by a lucky Squirrelly Dufftrout wandering by a pathway.