Maineiac Rivershrog

The Maineiac Rivershrog split from its ancestor, moving into the Maineiac river biome and becoming a carnivore. Its tail saw has been altered to only form a stiff solid piece at the end, with osteoderms along the length of the tail taking over its purpose while granting more flexibility. It will still use the stiff saw at the end to lop branches off of logs. It has a competitive advantage over the local piscivore, the Tipsnapper, but their niches were easily partitioned due to the Maineiac Rivershrog’s violet pelt blending in with flora best while the Tipsnapper blended best with mud and soil. It competes somewhat with the River Lyngbakr as well and can sometimes even be preyed on by it, but it avoids encounters by preferring shallower side-streams over the main, open river. Retaining its ancestor’s intelligence, this shrog uses wooden spears to catch piscine fauna, which it has learned to attract with bait.

Some of the species listed as prey to the Maineiac Rivershrog are not its primary diet, mainly being consumed when larger prey is not available. Though young individuals will eat tiny gilltails, adults use these mainly as bait for larger prey. The Maineiac Rivershrog is more social than its ancestor, allowing it to take down large prey such as the scorpodiles as a group despite its smaller size.

Though its social intelligence level would normally only allow for mob hunting, the Maineiac Rivershrog has managed to circumvent this due to intelligence in other areas. In particular, the use of its name-barking has been modified: the Maineiac Rivershrog has given names to four cardinal directions (based on upriver, downriver, and which side of the river) and to nests. When combined with their own names, a social group can discuss amongst themselves where they will be positioned when tackling prey, on the level of detail of “Fred, upriver-side Henry’s nest”. It still lacks a hierarchy instinct, so these discussions can go on for hours if there is any disagreement. As the sounds for these are names rather than instinctive calls, they vary regionally and have to be learned by foreigners, but with how simple this “language” is—only 5 words apart from names of individuals—this hardly limits mixing between groups. Instinctive calls remain largely the same, apart from being somewhat higher-pitched than its ancestor.

No longer limited in resources, the nest of the Maineiac Rivershrog is more complex than that of its ancestor. To protect the nest from flooding, as it is typically built near the river, it is set up on stilts. This would appear to be rather difficult to build, but nest-making is usually a collaborative effort, and many logs are used for support during construction that are removed later to be repurposed elsewhere. The nest can have multiple chambers, each resembling the ancestral seashrog nests. The main, central chamber has an entrance at the bottom as well as on the top, while others usually only have entry from the top. Nests are constructed in a semi-communal effort by related rivershrogs in the same social group. Lacking fuzzpalm berries to use as glue, pieces of wood are instead tied together using roots and baebula branches. The nest itself is typically constructed of repeating treebion and four-prongion wood found in the surrounding boreal and floodplain forest, cut into planks and beams using the tail saw and bent into the needed shape before it dries. In order to cut through thick-trunked flora, the Maineiac Rivershrog partly wraps its tail around it and moves in a circle, cutting from the outside until it’s weak enough to be pushed over. The heartwood in the center is usually too stiff and dead to bend, so this is the part that is most often used for beams. Similar to its ancestor, the Maineiac Rivershrog stores food and tools inside its nest.

The Maineiac Rivershrog’s reproduction is similar to its ancestor’s. Like many spiny animals on Earth, it mates belly-to-belly. Being in a more dangerous environment with potential predators around, it no longer squeaks loudly while mating. It is placental and gestates for three months and gives birth to live young, which are naked and helpless and live in a pouch. It develops more quickly than its ancestor due to its smaller size, reaching maturity at about 4½ years of age. Though it can live up to 40 years like its ancestor, living in an inherently more dangerous environment has reduced its average life expectancy to only around 15. It has gained a mating season, mating in the fall and giving birth in the spring. Like its ancestor, the Maineiac Rivershrog is also known to engage in homosexual behavior, though in this case it tends to be more bisexual rather than strictly gay. It is polygamous and tends to pick any individual to mate with who’s attractive enough; the horn-like crest on the nose serves as a major health indicator. Mating rivalry exists, with conflict over the best mates being settled by non-fatal ritual combat—a clashing and raking of horns.

Through its nests, the Maineiac Rivershrog has spread the Cleaner Borvermid and False Cleaner Borvermid to Maineiac Temperate Riparian. The role of cleanup is filled by a new species descended from the Shailnitor, the Maineiac Shailnitor. Though the Maineiac Rivershrog finds the Maineiac Shailnitor to be cute, the narrow habitat range which they inhabit can cause the shailnitors to become overpopulated, so the rivershrog has been known to actually kill the surplus to use as bait.

Though a collection of nests belonging to a specific social group of Maineiac Rivershrogs may be referred to as a "village", it's important to note that the individual nests are not particularly close together. A group of only fifteen shrogs may have a "village" spanning as much as 2 kilometers of river, their nests being so widely spaced to avoid conflicts caused by competition for building materials and their still-low social intelligence. It isn't hyper-social like the Terran human, which also builds villages, and therefore doesn't benefit from a high population density.