#grassland invertebrates

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Life in the Slow Lane: The Brown Garden Snail

Perhaps the most widely known member of the mollusk group, the brown garden snail (Cornu aspersum), also known as the European garden snail, is native to the Mediterranean region of southern Europe and northern Africa, and his since spread to every continent except Antarctica. It thrives in temperate zones, particularly in open forests, coastal dunes, and urban parks and agricultural spaces. This spread has largely been facilitated by humans, and may have started as early as the Neolithic era nearly 8500 years ago.

The brown garden snail's name is an excellent descriptor of the species; both the body and the shell are mainly shades of brown. Generally the body is lighter than the shell, and secretes a thin layer of mucus to keep itself moist. The shell is about 2.5 to 4 cm (0.98-1.57 in) wide, while the body itself is roughly 5-9 cm (1.97-3.54 in) long. Body and shell combined, C. aspersum only weighs 15g (0.53 oz) at maximum. The body is made of two parts; the head, which carries the eye stalks, mouth, and sensory tentacles; and the foot, essentially a large muscle which the snail uses to move from place to place. The rest of its organs, including the heart, lungs, stomach, and anus are contained within the shell itself. Only the genital pore, located on the side of the foot, is exposed.

C. aspersum is primarily an herbivore, feeding on leaves, flowers, and fruits, as well as rotting plant and animal matter. In order to obtain the calcium it needs to build and maintain its shell, the European garden snail also occasionally consumes soil. Because of its slow nature, reaching a maximum of only 2.4 mm/s (0.09 in/s), this species is a common food item for other predatory snails, centipedes, glow worms, small mammals, lizards, frogs, and birds. However, the brown garden snail is able to retreat into its shell and produce a thick, frothy mucus membrane when threatened.

Like other terrestrial mollusks, the European garden snail is a hermaphroditic species, possessing both male and female gametes. Individuals may reproduce year round, provided with plentiful resources and good environmental conditions. When two snails encounter each other and wish to mate, each one spears the other with a hard calcite spine, known as a love dart. These darts allow the two to exchange sperm, and the process may take several hours. Afterwards, an individual may store viable sperm for up to 4 years. About ten days after a snail fertilizes its sperm, it lays about 50 eggs in a sheltered area; a single snail may do this up to 6 times a year. Eggs take between 2-4 weeks to hatch, and emerge with a soft shell. It takes about 10 months for juveniles to reach full maturity, and they may live up to 3 years in the wild.

Conservation status: C. aspersum has been rated as Least Concern by the IUCN. In both its introduced and native range, it is considered a pest species due to its consumption of crops. However, this species has also been adopted in some areas as a pet or as an edible delicacy.

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Photos

Bill Frank

Alan Henderson

Kostas Zontanos

Rand Workman via iNaturalist

[pogomcl]

Forest or Chestnut Chockchafer, Melolontha hippocastani Canon 400D EF 100 2.8 f/3.5 1/200 iso: 400 Celakovice-Jirina, Czech Republic 5/22/2011

[shuttlecarrier]

Two invertebrates from the Geoling homeworld of Anuwaara. More info on these two below the cut.

The first, T'kathucht, are jumping predators that fill a similar niche to some species of frog or toad. They go after flying prey and can launch themselves forwards and backwards up to impressive heights. The species depicted here is native to the Wyu'hlkee grasslands and beaches where it blends in with the red foliage and extremely dark volcanic soil and sands. They're sought after by some bug keepers for their complex patterns, but they have a bad reputation with some who keep dart gardens due to t'kathucht's tendency to hunt and consume the female darts (who are favored by geolings tending the gardens due to their high iridescence and capability for flight). While they have various names in the languages used in the islands, their most common name of t'kathucht comes from "t'kata", a simple toy that would bounce or flip off the ground when one pressed down on and let go of it.

Despite the silly appearance the gliēgl is also a predator. It can be found in slow moving streams and pools of water where it floats and darts around towards other animals, injecting them with a venom that liquefies their insides and then sucking it out with the needle-like mouthpart. They are seen by geolings as a desirable species because they eat common 'pest' species, and are also a nice yellow color. In the tropics of Asagann their presence is believed to bring good harvests, and in the Kaswassan coast and Wyu'hlkee islands they're a symbol of joy and good luck. Familial groups in the South will often keep a gliēgl in a wide shallow dish in the entryway of their home to invite in happiness. "Invitation" bowls which are decorated rain collection dishes are also common sights outside of island homes. These are left out by inhabitants in an effort to attract one of these animals to their settlement. Gliēgl's are also very popular among "stripe-coats" (children) and bug collectors. Kaswassan geolings will wear insulated sleet coats that have been stylized in their image, and in the tropics they're often depicted as charms or floating toys. They are widely beloved and would be considered to be a charismatic animal by the people.

[pleistocene-pride]

The secretarybird or secretary bird is a species of is a large, mostly terrestrial, bird of prey which is endemic to sub-saharan Africa. The secretarybird prefers to inhabit open grasslands, savannas, shrublands, and highlands rather than rainforests, swamps, and woodlands. In these habitats Secretarybirds will form monogamous pairs and defend a large territory of around 19 square miles ( 50 km2), and while capable of flight secretary birds are a primarily terrestrial animal. Hunting in pairs or with there offspring they stalk through there habitat in long careful strides in search of prey such as large invertebrates, lizards, amphibians, small turtles and tortoises, hares, hedgehogs, rodents, polecats, small felines, young gazelle, mongoose, birds up to the size of guinea fowl, and especially snakes. Once found a secretarybird will chase after prey with the wings spread and kill by striking with swift blows of the feet. Standing around 4.3ft (1.3m) tall, 3.7 to 4.11ft (1.1 to 1.5m) in body length, with a 6.3 to 6.11ft (1.9 to 2.1m) wingspan. The secretarybird is a large instantly recognizable bird with an eagle-like body on crane-like legs, featherless red-orange face and predominantly grey plumage, with a flattened dark crest and black flight feathers and thighs.Breeding may occur year round and during courtship, they exhibit a nuptial display by soaring high with undulating flight patterns and calling with guttural croaking. Males and females can also perform a ground display by chasing each other with their wings up and back. Both sexes build a relatively flat 3 to 5ft (1 to 1.5m) wide platform nest out of sticks and grasses at the top of a dense thorny tree, some 8 to 40ft (2.5 to 13m) above the ground. Here 1 to 3 chalky blueish whiteish green eggs are laid and incubated for 45 days until hatching. The young remain with there parents until becoming independent at some 4 to 7 months of age. Under ideal conditions a secretarybird may live upwards of 15 years.

[tribbetherium]

'The Early Rodentocene, 100 years post-establishment.

Before it was a paradise, it was a hamster hellscape.

Without predators to curb their numbers and a nigh-limitless supply of food, the first hamsters, having escaped the confines of Isla Genesis via land bridges that formed during a period of low sea levels, bred incessantly and exponentially. In the span of a century, they numbered in the hundreds of billions, becoming a tidal wave of hungry nibbling mouths that swept through Nodera, and then Easaterra, Westerna and Ecatoria like a rodent plague of continental proportions. They quickly ravaged the local plant life and introduced invertebrates, reducing once-lush grassland into barren wastes and driving many species of colonists to extinction as their numbers grew unchecked, their consumed biomass converted into even more hungry hamsters.

Eventually, having overrun the still-interconnected four main continents, they finally ran out of food, and began starving en masse: heaps upon heaps of tiny carcasses blanketing the landscape for miles on end and emanating the most terrible smell imaginable all across the land as they decomposed, a nauseating miasma of dead rodent times a hundred billion. And yet, in this putrid panorama of death and decay, some life endured. Fungi and microbes and flies and worms soon returned the nutrients of the dead to the soil, and dormant seeds and insect eggs awaiting the end of the scurrying storm burst back into bloom, nourished by the now richer earth. Trees, boasting lifespans measured in centuries, simply held off producing seeds and filled their leaves with distasteful tannins until the menacing swarms died down. Floating seeds and flying insects, blown across the sea from offshore islands and the unreachable Borealia, blew back inland and colonized the continents once again. And, with a new, enriched environment, new life flourishing once more, the world again became a paradise for the few hardy hamsters that survived the armageddon.

Unfortunately for them, it would eventually happen again, over and over, throughout the subsequent centuries. A pattern of extreme global boom-and-bust cycles of hamster populations defined the earliest days of the Early Rodentocene, as the ecosystem as a whole struggled to keep this rampant invading species under control. Time and time again, life would rebound from the devastation, only to be destroyed by the growing swarms once more within a few decades. As the centuries passed, however, the extreme pressure the hamsters put on the other species of the planet began to fuel their evolution: in a matter of just a few millennia, many plants, especially grasses, developed enormous rhizomes that grew deep underground, which continued to live on even as hamsters ate their leaves and stems. Invertebrates followed suit, laying large amounts of overwintering eggs in secluded places to assure at least some would survive, timing their emergence by evolutionary trial-and-error to times when hamsters were at their fewest. Some early plants became tougher, or more toxic, or thornier, while invertebrates retaliated with thicker exoskeletons, pinching mandibles, and painful stings to deter them from being eaten. Other species played an opposite game: instead satiating the predators with such a huge influx at the breeding season that they could not all be consumed, leaving a small percentage to survive and reproduce. Finally, and perhaps the most significant deterrent to the uncontrollable hordes, were the opportunistic microbes and invertebrates that, in the abundance of rodent hosts, became parasites and pathogens to them: ones that became particularly devastating when dense populations were in close contact, spreading quickly and causing large-scale deaths when numbers were too high.

As easily-accessible food became scarcer and starvation, disease, and competition began to take its toll, the population booms gradually became less and less severe as time went on, and the mass die-offs too became less and less devastating. Soon, new life began to flourish alongside the hamsters, not in spite of them, and, with their population levels now moderated by factors that kept them getting too overcrowded, the hamsters, once invaders, now became a part of the ecosystem. Some plants evolved to spread their seeds by having hamsters hoard them, while others relied on the nutrients spread by their droppings to grow. And by 10,000 years post-establishment, the periodic overpopulations and mass deaths were a thing of the past: balance restored to a biosphere disrupted by an unexpected arrival.

The world had changed to accommodate the newcomers: but the hamsters themselves were changed by this brutal cycle. With survivors sometimes as few as a hundred or so persisting each die-off, the gene pools narrowed and grew and fluctuated: and through rampant inbreeding, or genetic failsafes to combat the deleterious effects of lessened genetic variety, a plethora of mutations would gradually emerge in the once homogenous population: mutations that, with the aid of time and natural selection, became the catalyst that would shape the hamsters' future for the millions of years to come.'

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[softenedsunbeams]

what’s a prototaxite /genq

MY TIME. MY TIME HAS COME <- LITERALLY NOBODY HAS ASKED TILL NOW

GIANT EARLY FUNGI. they lived around 400 million years ago and before plants or really anything we have today emerged as the main living things on land. they did eventually get outcompeted by vascular plants and went extinct after 20 million years or so, but while they were alive they could've been up to 26 feet tall and a lot of things lived inside of them

this was the time when really the only things on land were fungi and invertebrates and moss, so they towered above absolutely everything else.

unrelated but nobody really ever thinks about it because they love the fauna so much, a LOT of iconic trees are angiosperms, same group that flowers and grasses are in. tree is just a general term for many many unrelated things because having a tall woody stem generally benefits plants, but think things like oaks specifically for that group.

trees like conifers are unrelated and are gymnosperms. they showed up around the early carboniferous around 350 mya. but ANGIOSPERMS only showed up around the early cretaceous around 130mya and they've only been around for one mass extinction. so for a really long time it was just a lot of ferns and conifers. no flowers, no grasses, there's a reason once the dinosaurs died out that's the first time we started having things like grasslands. we owe also almost our entire civilization to them as well because almost all of the plants we farm are angiosperms (think stuff like wheat)

[birdstudies]

April 9, 2024 - Olive-winged Bulbul (Pycnonotus plumosus) These bulbuls are found in a variety of habitats including forests, scrub, and grasslands across parts of Southeast Asia. Foraging alone, in pairs, or sometimes in family groups, they eat berries, fruit, seeds, and invertebrates. They build deep cup-shaped nests from dead leaves, creeper stems, fine fibers, and grass, often decorated with bamboo leaves. Females lay clutches of two eggs.

[artechoceneexplorer]

Hello! Sorry for the inactivity, posting the same drawings on 5 different platforms with different limitations is quite exhausting, so I'll be posting my Spectember drawings in batches until I finish it :>

So without further ado, here's the second week of Spectember:

Day 8: Ambush Predator

Featuring the Titan Låtmimik (Venatoramus longus), a giant carnivorous katydid from the northern forests of Antarctica, which can imitate the calls of certain bird species to attract them closer to their lethal grasp

Day 9: Producer

Featuring the Ggulu Orchid (Caelorchis divinitus), an orchid common in the Muraanad forests of the Somalian subcontinent, where it grows from the fungi growing chambers of the termite nests, taking advantage of the fungi until it bursts out of the nest, finally able to photosynthesize and flower.

Day 10: Filter Feeder

Featuring the Wandering Dumingo (Pinnatocetus celer), a seafaring member of the dumingos, a family of filter feeding mallard descendants, which embark on incredibly long migrations across oceans, from pole to pole, in the search of summer plankton booms.

Day 11: Semi-aquatic

Featuring the Beringian Selkie (Sennapithecoides polaris), an aquatic rodent from the Arctic region, which spends most of its life diving and digging around the coastal mudflats in search of invertebrates to feed on, including clams and crustaceans.

Day 12: Megafaunal

Featuring the Transoceanic Navalodile (Galleonosuchus imperator), the largest of a group of seagoing crocodiles, which patrols the equatorial waters of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, constantly searching for fish, rarely encountering others of its kind.

Day 13: Grazer

Featuring the Rugose-browed Pricklyhog (Hoplohippus rugosus), a large porcupine descendant that lives in the African grasslands, protected from predators by its thick skin, and large keratinous plaques and spines that cover it.

And day 14, some fanart of one of the OG spec books, After Man. One of my favourite creatures from its incredible roster, the Night Stalker!

[todaysbug]

February 12th, 2024

Giant Whip Scorpion (Mastigoproctus giganteus)

Distribution: Found in the southwestern United States, including New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma and Texas, down through much of Mexico, as well as Florida.

Habitat: Found in arid habitats; deserts, scrub forests and grasslands, where they take shelter beneath plant debris, in rock crevices or in abandoned animal burrows. Can be found living at altitudes of up to 6000 metres.

Diet: Carnivorous; feeds on a variety of invertebrates, including cockroaches, crickets, millipedes, other arachnids, worms and slugs. Has also been documented feeding on small toads and frogs.

Description: Though their name would suggest otherwise, giant whip scorpions are more closely related to spiders than they are to true scorpions. This species is also referred to as the giant vinegaroon, as it has the capacity to spray a substance containing high concentrations of acetic acid, the same acid found in vinegar. They're able to spray up to 19 times in a row before their pygidial gland is depleted (though it fills up pretty fast; they're usually ready to go again the very next day!). This spray does not usually cause long-term harm, but can occasionally cause the skin to blister, as well as intense pain if it gets into the eyes. Luckily, they only spray when touched—as long as you remain at a respectful distance, you'll be okay! They may also deliver a painful bite or pinch with their powerful chelicerae, though they have no venom.

This species is usually considered to be beneficial, as it often hunts other undesirable arthropods, such as scorpions, as well as agricultural pests that may threaten crops. Giant whip scorpions are also fairly common in the exotic pet trade, as they're non-venomous and have a long lifespan; males can live to 10 years, and females, twice that long!

Images by Bryan Maltais and Diego Barrales.

[purpleweredragon]

An outstanding wildlife and community site in Essex is under serious threat from the development of up to 1,000 houses.

Locally known as ‘the Wick’, this 76ha mosaic of flowery acid grassland, sandy slopes, scrub, woodland and hedgerows is home to a rich diversity of animals.

The Wick is a key breeding area for the second-best population of Red Listed Nightingale in the UK, and a home to nesting Skylarks and Vulnerable Barbastelle Bats. It supports almost 1,500 invertebrate species, including a quarter of all the UK’s spiders and a quarter of all the butterflies and moths found in Essex.

We need your help to secure the future of this nationally important haven for wildlife- please sign our petition and help to save the Middlewick Ranges.

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Access Denied: The Inaccessible Island Rail

The Inaccessible Island rail (Laterallus rogersi) is a rarely seen member of the rail family, Rallidae. Part of the reason for its obscurity is the place in which it resides: Inaccessible Island, part of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago in the southern Atlantic Ocean. These islands are extremely remote, and until 2019 it was unclear how L. rogersi even came to be there. We now know that the species colonized the island some 1.5 million years ago, originally coming in from South America and subsequently losing its ability to fly.

In addition to its unique evolutionary history, the Inaccessible Island rail's greatest claim is that it is the smallest flightless bird in the world. Individuals weigh between 35 to 49 g (1.2–1.7 oz) and can be 13 to 15.5 cm (5.1–6.1 in) long from beak to tail. Members of both sexes are dark brown with red eyes; some may have white striping along the underbelly or wings. Females tend to be slightly smaller and lighter in color than males.

The Inaccesible Island rail can be found on all habitats on the island in which it inhabits; these include low mountains and fern brush though the species is most abundant in the grasslands that grow close to the rocky shore. Within these habitats, L. rogersi is largely diurnal. They freely forage for invertebrates, including earthworms, beetles, and moths, as well as seeds and berries; as they have no natural predators they have few defenses against potential threats, although they can run extremely fast when alarmed.

Adults are highly territorial, and when two rivals of either sex encounter each other they will display by lowering their heads, circling each other, and calling loudly until one of them concedes. Males and females mate for life, and build nests in the tall grass. The breeding season is between October and January, in late summer, and females lay a clutch of 2 eggs. Both parents take turns incubating the eggs until they hatch. Chicks can be vulnerable to predation by the migratory brown skua, so parents guard the nest fiercely. The time it takes for chicks to fully mature is unknown, as is the average lifespan in the wild.

Conservation status: The Inaccessible Island rail is considered Vulnerable by the IUCN. The island's population is believed to stand at about 5,600 adult birds. While the island's ecology is currently stable, researchers believe the species would be seriously imperaled if invasive species such as house mice, feral cats and brown rats were introduced. Access to the island is currently restricted, and the island has been declared a nature reserve by the Tristan da Cunha Island Council.

If you like what I do, consider leaving a tip or buying me a kofi!

Photos

Peter G. Ryan

[pogomcl]

Eumolpus asclepiadeus Canon 7D EFS 60 2.8 f/7.1 1/400 iso: 160 Milovice, Czech Republic 7/5/2020

[outofangband]

Flora, fauna, geography and environment of Arda Masterlist

Here are a collection of headcanons for an anon who asked for more environmental headcanons for the region of Nargothrond! I can do more in depth flora and fauna posts with specific categories; I’ve actually already started one for flowers!

More in the Nargothrond tag!

Disclaimer: I’m going with the likely climate and environment based on what information we have about the surrounding regions however, I’m always happy to do posts with ideas about what environment or ecology could be based on real locations like the one I did for the havens based on Southwestern Australia

Given that Tolkien was inspired in his plains and grasslands of a wide variety of places, everywhere from China to Britain to Northern Africa and the US, I’m imagining a wide range of biodiversity here in this plateau especially given the proximity to these two rivers. I don’t think that all of his grasslands have life from all these places necessarily but I do think there is the potential for more biodiversity. 

I have some headcanons about bioluminescence in the caves of Nargothrond here and about the environment of western Beleriand more generally here!

-While the ecology of the Talath Dirnen or other parts of the region of Nargothrond is not described, we get some descriptions of the trees and plants around Amon Rûdh which is slightly northeast of Talath Dirnen.

-Average temperatures in fall and winter are one to twelve degrees Celsius or thirty to fifty five degrees Fahrenheit. Spring to summer are about twelve to twenty five degrees Celsius or fifty five to seventy eight degrees Fahrenheit

-The climate is temperate with cold winters and warm summers. Snowfall is typically an average high of six to seven inches or fifteen to seventeen centimeters

-Temperature is more stable within the caves though there are additional measures used for warmth during the coldest weather including expanding insulation

-As parts of the river Narog is underground, there are many unique species found there including salamanders like olms, cave amphipods, species of subterranean  Nemacheilidae, Viviparous brotula, and Ictaluridae (cave dwelling fish) and roosting bats (mostly in the far uninhabited passages) as well as a variety of more invertebrates. 

-The area surrounding Nargothrond is mostly prairie like grassland steppe and forested hills. The species of grass are primarily wheatgrasses, fescue, junegrasses and other species from the poa family

-The hills and open plain are made up of a variety of species including apera, Coleanthus,  reed sweet grass, melica, veldtgrass, sages,  weeping alkaligrass, and many species in the daisy family. Wild strawberry and musk strawberry, hawthorn, thistles, and meadowsweet are more possibilities for the more shrub like areas around the hills. 

-We know from descriptions in The Children of Húrin that mountain ash grows in the surrounding areas. Rowan trees, also called mountain ashes. These trees are ecologically important in that their fruits feed a huge variety of animals including red foxes, spotted nutcracker birds, song thrushes, dormice, redwings, roe deer and other cloven hooved creatures, and more. 

[siravalon]

Bird of the Week: The Spur-Winged Lapwing/Spur-Winged Plover! 🪶

The spur-winged lapwing, or spur-winged plover (not to be confused with the masked lapwing) is a medium sized wading bird. They belong to the Charadriidae family, along with other lapwings and plovers.

Wetlands, freshwater/saltwater shores, and grasslands are ideal habitats for the spur-winged lapwing.

The most unique feature of this lapwing is the small claw, or spur, that can be found on their wings. They are not, however, the only bird with this feature. Masked lapwings and spur-winged geese do as well. These spurs can often be tucked under feathers.

Spur-winged lapwings feed on small fish and invertebrates, including insects, crustaceans, and mollusks.

Lapwings are well known for their protective and territorial behavior. Any perceived threat to their nests is likely to be dive-bombed.

[tribbetherium]

The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment

Remember the Titans: Cavybaras of the Late Rodentocene

Much of the Early and Middle Rodentocene had been defined by its lack of large terrestrial megafaunal animals. In these early founding eons, the introduced hamsters still try to gain their footing in a strange new world, first spreading out into adjacent niches filled by other rodents back on Earth, before, over time, slowly progressing generation after generation onto other roles occupied by gradually bigger and more diverse creatures.

Yet in the Late Therocene, this era is quickly coming to an end. As the descendants of the gouties and the squeasels, prey and predator, clash in an arms race to gain an advantage over the other, their sizes have been growing at an unprecedented rate: as bigger prey animals can better defend themselves from predators and are able to resist attacks. The cavybaras, already the largest terrestrial animals of the Middle Rodentocene, have grown even larger than ever before, with some reaching truly impressive proportions.

The largest of them is the titan cavybara (Noderotitan gigantus), which grows to roughly the size of a mid-sized cow and can weigh half a ton or more. These enormous creatures are among the first animals on HP-02017 that can truly be considered megafauna, grazing in small herds on the open plains and feeding on tough, woody vegetation that, without their heavy grazing, would quickly overwhelm the prairies and savannahs and crowd out other, more easily-edible vegetation that other herbivores such as hamtelopes and jerryboas depend on for food. At such a size, the titan cavybara now affects its environment to a degree unlike any seen before: acting as a vital ecosystem engineer helping keep the grasslands well-managed and promoting maximum biodiversityby allowing other plants, and animals dependent on them, to thrive.

While not all cavybara species are as large, they nonetheless are quite huge for their time compared to the hamsters they descended from, and thus have come to affect the environment in significant ways. Wetland swampsogs (Potamocricetochoerus breviceps) are smaller, but still quite large, cavybaras that have a preference to marshy areas, spending much of their time in the water to cool off, conceal themselves from biting insects, and foraging at the bottoms of swamps, rivers and lakes for the abundant, fast-growing aquatic plants. They, too, are important ecosystem engineers, as their huge appetites for water plants prevent them from overgrowing in bodies of water, shading out all the sunlight from photosynthesizers lower down at the lake bottoms and clogging the flow of rivers and impeding its usual course that can lead to small, localized droughts when river flows bringing much-needed water to drier regions get deprived of their usual water supply.

Not all cavybaras are purely grazers, however. In the competitive environment of the Rodentocene, where many clades collide and compete for niches in the presence of many vacant ecological spaces, it pays off sometimes to try something new, that others have not yet taken advantage of. Long-toothed cavyboars (Protosuimys magnodontus) are one such illustration of this, having expanded beyond a diet of tough, woody vegetation and also supplementing its diet with seeds, fruit, roots, insects and even carrion and small animals on occasion. These proper omnivores have the upper hand in dealing with small-scale food shortages, as they can thrive off other sources of sustencance until their preferred forage becomes available again, while other more-specialized species are forced to migrate in search of food or simply die out at the slightest changes of the environment. To aid in digging up roots and invertebrates, the cavyboars' lower teeth have become longer and stronger, protruding out of the animal's mouth even when closed: these also make remarkably effective weapons when utilized by males against same-species rivals over food, territory, and mating rights to nearby receptive females.

While many cavybaras have grown to enormous sizes, a few have taken an opposite route. Some, like the banded cavilet (Nanocricetochoerus minimus) have, in fact, gotten smaller than their Middle Rodentocene ancestors, as they became small-scale herbivores feeding close to the ground in a manner similar to rabbits or guinea pigs. These tiny cavybaras specialize on the tough woody stems and shoots of small ground plants and grasses, and would eventually usurp and outcompete the broadheads: a clade of Early Rodentocene herbivores whose lineage would disappear entirely by the beginning of the Middle Rodentocene.

While cavilets continue to persist in the Temperocene in small, unassuming grazer-rodent niches, they have changed little from the Late Rodentocene, having settled onto a stable and secure ecological space that has profited them since then. But their ever-growing kin continue their trend of increasing size well into the Therocene and Glaciocene. From the titan cavybaras eventually come the mison, the Therocene's dominant megafaunal herbivores, from which in turn descended the hammoths of the Glaciocene and the piggalo of the Temperocene. The semi-aquatic swampsogs, meanwhile, would become the amphibious mudmallows, with some crossing across shallow seas to colonize islands and subcontinents in the Temperocene, while the cavyboars, with their diverse and omnivorous diets, would give rise to the highly successful bumbaas, some of which, the beelzeboars, would become proper carnivores during much of the later part of the Therocene.

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[clairebretecher]

Pigs are active in the morning and evening.

Pigs only sweat from the disc of the snout.

They like wallowing to cool down, and seeking shade.

Wallowing also helps with parasites – tree rubbing also.

Pigs are omnivores –

In spring and summer, pigs forage on more open

grassland and marshland where they feed on

grass, roots, tubers and invertebrates.

Most feeding in

autumn occurs in woodland where they will gorge on

acorns, nuts and berries to last them during the sparse

winter months.

Pigs also eat a large range of

vertebrates including frogs, snakes, turtles,

the young and eggs of ground nesting birds and have been known

to prey on small rodents.

Carrion is also devoured.