Tree Pinyuk

The Tree Pinyuk split from its ancestor and proceeded to learn how to climb trees. It does not have any particular new climbing adaptations, it simply balances on branches using its hooves. This is similar to the behavior of some Terran goats. One adaptation it does have, however, is that a row of feathers along its sides can be splayed out to slow its fall. It isn’t quite a true glider, but it can drop from heights as great as 10 meters without injury. These long feathers also serve for sexual display. It also now has a nearly full coat of feathers, instead of only being feathered in some areas. It no longer has blue legs because they were actually extremely, extremely bad for camouflage, making its ancestor look like a floating purple orb which prompts a double take rather than actually doing any good to keep it hidden.

Despite its name, however, the Tree Pinyuk does not actually live entirely in trees. It is simply called that because of how much more conspicuous it is to see it somehow at the top of a tree despite having no adaptations for grasping or climbing. In reality, though it can climb trees to feed, it mostly uses them for nesting and escaping predators. It spends much more of its time foraging for food on the ground. It has greatly reduced its chin-spike so that it doesn’t interfere with feeding. Though the chin spike is no longer sexually dimorphic, the feathers are. The flank feathers are present in both sexes but are orange in males, and males also have an orange crest.

The Tree Pinyuk nests in vesuvianite trees, high up and away from predators. It may live in fairly large groups of up to 40 members which all share the same tree. It is polygamous, and males will fight one another for the right to mate, though this is far more ritualistic than in its ancestor so that they do not fatally wound one another and fail to reproduce at all. Its calls sound disturbingly like the screams of a Terran human male in distress. Its nests are round and constructed of sticks and feathers, and it lays 30-50 eggs at a time. Vulnerable to predation, most of its offspring are eaten before they can reach full size.

Notably, the Tree Pinyuk does not technically hear with its eyes like its ancestor did. Rather, the bony crest making up the “pinna” has a round hole on the inside, which causes the skin of the “pinna” to function as a far more effective tympanic membrane. This gives it the best hearing of any eucaudopodosaur (or "dweller") thus far. Like its ancestor, it has 2 toes on most feet but 3 on its tail-foot.