Brighteyes

The Brighteyes split from its ancestor. It has developed more complex feathers down its legs, which are specially designed to allow it to run up trees and mountainous inclines by spreading out and flapping beneath it. The feathers themselves are what flaps while it does this, as they are highly mobile and it certainly can't run and flap its legs at the same time. It cannot run straight up like a terran maniraptor, but it can run up much steeper slopes than other saucebacks. This has allowed it to develop somewhat arboreal habits, where it carries food up trees or leaps down from them to catch prey. In environments without trees, it will do the same with rocks and cliffs. Its new hunting method mainly consists of finding a high perch, such as a tree or rock, and leaping off of it after the potential meal. It will glide a great distance, maintaining high speed with little energy, and if it does not land on top of its prey it will start to “run” in midair to parachute into a landing, allowing it to still be at a sprinting pace to close the distance. It will also glide, and enter a sprint from a glide, to escape predators. Though less common, if it has no good place to glide from it can also glide a short distance from a leap. As a smaller creature, it generally tends to hunt smaller prey than its ancestor did. It also consumes crystal and glass flora, making short work of their chitinous exteriors with its strong jaws.

The Brighteyes is named for the shiny appearance of its so-called “eyestrils”. As there was no way to develop a lens without closing off its scenting capability, it took a completely different approach to improving its eyesight. The back of each eyestril is reflective and directs the light towards a light-sensitive patch in the front, and direct stretching and squashing of the entire eyestril allows it to focus as though it were a lens. The eyestrils are held in a spherical shape by cartilaginous internal support, helping them return to shape after being stretched and squashed so much. This particular eye anatomy is not usually great for image-forming, but the redundancy makes its eyesight just as good as any creature with just two camera eyes. As its eyestrils are prone to dust, debris, and the occasional small fauna getting caught inside them, they are automatically cleaned by a clear, salty tear-like substance. It removes tears from its eyes by shaking its head like a Terran dog, creating a centrifugal force that forces them out of the pupils. It is able to see in color, unlike its ancestor, which gives it a notable edge over other Saucebacks which don’t know light, let alone color, even exists. The primary colors it can see include red, green, blue, and six additional colors in the ultraviolet spectrum which are invisible to our eyes. This in turn means its eyesight also detects over 700 distinct mixed colors, including a great number of colors which are invented by its brain similar to magenta in the Terran human. As is the case in its ancestor, air enters through the eyestrils' "pupils". The stretching and squashing of the eyestril has also taken over as the primary method of pushing out old air.

With eyesight this robust, the Brighteyes has done the unthinkable--it has begun to lose its echolocation ability. It is not completely incapable of using echolocation--rather, it cannot use it effectively anymore without some assistance from its eyesight. In low light conditions, especially around dawn and dusk, it actually still uses echolocation to supplement its eyesight. With little need for it otherwise, however, it may only be a matter of time before it loses its echolocation completely.

Like its ancestor, the Brighteyes is not a pack hunter but does nest with others in its social group. Occasionally, in desperate times, several individuals may group together to take down larger prey. Using its eyes for sight allows it to avoid giving away its nest location to the Opportunity Shrew where their ranges overlap. It incubates its eggs and larvae using the feathers on its legs to keep them warm. Its larvae are helpless and worm-like, lacking legs or feathers, and have to be fed regurgitated food early in their lives.

Notably, the Brighteyes has driven the Proto-Uksoar to extinction in their overlapping range. They competed for some of the same prey, the Brighteyes also fed on the Proto-Uksoar, and warm-blooded organisms tend to outcompete cold-blooded ones in similar niches. Though their niche was far from identical, the Proto-Uksoar could not handle the pressure and predation, which contributed to its range shrinking down. The Proto-Uksoar is now only present in the tropical woodlands and rainforests. Though the Brighteyes also competes with other local saucebacks for prey, it has not outcompeted them due to the other saucebacks also being warm-blooded and the Brighteyes being an omnivore.