Wolfcollar Shrog
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The wolfcollar shrog is descended from wolvershrogs that drifted to the newly-formed King Temperate Coast. It no longer ventures far out to sea, preferring to stay close to shore on much smaller and simpler rafts. It is both a part and a product of an ongoing feedback loop which is in the process of driving the ancestral wolvershrog to extinction, where their massive nests became less sustainable due to the ecosystem catching up to the increased presence of wood at sea, thus they produce more restricted and often aggressive descendants that stop making huge nests, which in turn outcompete their ancestor in much of its range and cut them off from inland sources of wood, further reducing wood availability and increasing pressure on remaining wolvershrog populations to adapt. With the wolfcollar shrog's appearance, the wolvershrog has vanished from LadyM Temperate Ocean and North Jujubee Temperate Ocean.
The wolfcollar shrog is named for the spikes on its neck, which resemble the spiked collars worn by terran dogs to protect their necks from wolves. They serve a similar purpose: wolfcollar shrogs have significantly more territorial disputes than most shrogs due to their narrow range and high dietary needs and are willing to kill each other over it, so the neck spikes evolved to guard their throats. This also, in a sense, makes them both the wolves and the dogs in the analogy. These are present in both males and females. Their head spikes have become crests, which help signal health to rivals and potential mates.
The wolfcollar shrog has thinner fur than its ancestor and lacks thick layers of fat, but it retains bulk in the form of muscles. Just as strong as the wolvershrog, the wolfcollar shrog uses its strength to move heavy logs and rafts over land, wrestle with prey, and fight rivals. Similar to its ancestor, it lives and hunts in groups. These groups are much larger, however, generally around 50 shrogs maximum but they can rarely number in the hundreds. A single group will control several kilometers of coastline and will fight neighboring groups. In a rather unshroglike fashion, they organize, invade, and kill mercilessly in something almost resembling war. Similar to Terran chimpanzees, their tools go unused in warfare; they instead use their teeth, claws, and tail to maim and kill. They can sometimes seem very cruel, dismembering cubs and tearing off faces and crests, but this serves a genuine purpose as a demoralizing display of power so that the opposing group will flee rather than fight back, reducing total deaths and energy used fighting. In some disputes, such as for territory expansion, females will be captured and left alive to be added to the conquerors' gene pool (though any of their existing cubs will be killed), while in cases of food shortage they will kill any that don't escape. They aren't especially amicable to other species of shrog either, particularly seashrogs which they compete with, but they only kill them during extreme food shortages.
The wolfcollar shrog is more bipedal than other shrogs, and in females its pouch faces forwards instead of backwards, more like that of a kangaroo. Males still retain a backwards-facing pouch to protect their external reproductive organs while swimming, similar to other shrogs. Adept bipedalism allows the wolfcollar shrog to keep its balance while using tools more effectively, which is important on its much smaller rafts which are more susceptible to being tossed by small waves.
The rafts of wolfcollar shrogs are not used as nests, but as mobile platforms to navigate the coasts. A long blunt stick, longer and thicker than a spear, is used to push the raft along in the direction the shrog wants to go, so it isn't entirely at the mercy of wind and currents, and they are dragged onto land above the high tide line when not in use. Prey items are stabbed to death with wooden spears and are brought back to shore to be shared with the rest of the group. Larger prey or groups of smaller prey will be hunted by many wolfcollar shrogs at once to ensure a successful kill, especially as some of their larger prey will just as readily eat the shrogs. Periodic large catches are necessary to feed them all, so they communicate vocally with one another to gather for a hunt. Their vocalizations don't differ much from those of other shrogs, though the unique "family name" feature of wolvershrogs has been repurposed into the name for an entire social group.
The wolfcollar shrog builds dens on the beach or above water in the mangrove swamp. These dens are more like typical shrog nests, being domes or squashed spheres with wooden "rib" supports arranged in a radial pattern held together by woven flora and glue made from chewed fuzzpalm berries. They lack much of the complexity of the ancestral wolvershrog's nests, but some instinctual vestige is clearly visible in mangal populations, which will construct deck-like rings around them so as to avoid the water below. These are widely spaced and belong to no specific shrog; as the group moves up and down their territory to hunt, they stop and rest at various dens they have already constructed, which are stocked with tools so that they don't have to carry a large number with them or make new ones every time they break.
The wolfcollar shrog is no longer monogamous, and it lacks a mating season. Males will show off their crests and wrestle as a display of health and strength to receptive females. A female will never choose a male with smaller crests than her own, which can cause frustration in small-crested males and ones that lost theirs in combat. However, though wolfcollar shrogs can be aggressive and pushy, as is their nature in all other things, unwanted mating advances are very rare because they require getting past an axe tail capable of severing limbs.
Like its ancestor, the wolfcollar shrog is both placental and pouched. To avoid overpopulation in its narrow range, it has just one or two cubs at a time. Gestation lasts 6 months and newborn cubs are blind and helpless. The cubs don't start to grow their spikes or saws until they are about two years old; they are weaned after one, but remain able to enter the pouch for protection for longer and are brought on hunting trips. It is common to see a cub poking out of its mother's pouch with a miniature spear of its own jabbing at gilltails in the water while its mother scans for larger prey, allowing it to practice before it's big enough to stay balanced on rafts and aid in real hunts. Once they graduate from the pouch, juveniles continue to tag along on hunting trips and help take down smaller prey, but will also aid in making tools and maintaining dens. They reach full size in about 10 years but will sometimes disperse at the age of 8; dispersing juveniles ensure there is some spread of genes between different social groups.
The wolfcollar shrog originally evolved along King Temperate Coast, but it spread to encircle the supercontinent and made its way to offshore islands and even Kosemen. With its long narrow range restricting breeding opportunities, like many widespread coastal animals on Earth it is actually a ring species—though all neighboring groups can interbreed, wolfcollar shrogs from the two far extremes of its range, Elerd Temperate Coast and Dass Temperate Coast, cannot produce fertile offspring with one another if they were to somehow meet.
The wolfcollar shrog caused the following species to spread when it evolved:
- Mainland Fuzzpalm to King Temperate Beach
- Fuzzpile to King Temperate Beach
- Topship Fuzzpalm to King Temperate Beach
- Fuzzweed to King Temperate Beach
- Cleaner Borvermid to King Temperate Beach
- False Cleaner Borvermid to King Temperate Beach