Boschian Paardavogel
From Sagan 4 Alpha Wiki
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The boschian paardavogel split off from the plehexapod as populations moved away from hunting small insect-like creatures like vermees to hunting a wide variety of small game. This would lead to a variety of adaptations to chasing down more active prey like lizatokages or small shrews. At first glance, the boschian paardavogel probably does not look too different from their ancestor. This is due to it retaining the long limbs for cursorial locomotion since they give it a larger stride length and thus cover move ground while using less energy.
The main differences are in the head and front limbs, with the boschian paardavogel's hooked beak being well suited for ripping apart prey into small chunks that can then be swallowed. The bill is still made of wood, however, since the boschian paardavogel's reproductive methods have not changed at all with a female still holding her young in a pouch. This pouch still gets filled with oxygen so the young can breathe, while the female does not eat and instead relies on fat reserves built up from eating large quantities of food beforehand. The male still aids in rearing the offspring by providing them fresh meat. Once the young become too big and unwieldy to safely carry, the mother will vomit up the juveniles, with the jaw's ability to unhinge still helping to make the task easier. Due to the need for the taxon's jaws to be stretchy, however, the boschian paardavogel can't make it tougher to better resist the stress of struggling prey.
Instead, the boschian paardavogel relies on its forelimbs to capture and kill prey, with the claw on these limbs having become large and serrated. Since these claws are the main killing tools, they often undergo a lot of stress from struggling prey so the evolution of calcified claws proved advantageous in the boschian paardavogel.
Much like the golden spinebutt plexo, the boschian paardavogel has high amounts of carotenoids and anthocyanins in their skin, giving the boschian paardavogel their orange and purple coloration. This adaptation developed overtime as the boschian paardavogels with such a feature were able to blend in with their surroundings and thus get close enough to prey to then initiate a chase. This also allows them to avoid potential threats such as argusraptors which are present in some of their range. If they are spotted by potential predators and are chased down, their forelimbs can swipe at attackers and deal lethal wounds or their "wing-legs" can deliver a powerful kick. The "tailstril" has also developed larger and more numerous "needles" to prevent predators from biting it, though these spines are not as enormous as those found on the spinebutt plexos.
Unlike their ancestors, the boschian paardavogel are cathemeral predators, meaning they are active at irregular intervals throughout the day and night. This allows them to hunt both diurnal and nocturnal prey and partially avoid directly competing with strictly diurnal or strictly nocturnal predators. In the Dixon-Darwin High Grassland, however, the presence of highly competitive argusraptors forced the local populations of boschian paardavogel into being strictly nocturnal since the saucebacks cannot see as well at night though the two species still get into confrontations at times.