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brightberriesBelow is "impersonal/factual" behavioral and biological noemata that I pericall (as in, these are not kintype-like memories of myself, but I'm still sharing them with you so that my actual memories aren't incomprehensible) of one of my stronger Creatures of Sonaria fictherian shift shapes, the Asilvestrela species, alongside a different, but related "cousin" species of theirs that does not exist within the game's canon and a smaller, unrelated animal species (they're mentioned canonically in the lore) which they have a mutualistic symbiotic relationship with. This is constantly having new stuff added to it as things comes to me over time, so please do stick around!
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There exists an innumerable number of complex life species that also dwell on the obligate carnivore ásilvestréla’s vast native planet, Urrànthin (“err-RAWN-thin”). One of these are the similarly obligate carnivoran bannékré (“ban-NAY-kray”), which is the nominate species of a big group of subspecies. They are sort of related to ásilvestréla (“AW-sill-VEH-stray-LAH”), within the same family taxonomically, but very far removed otherwise. They’re adapted to the exact opposite end of the symbolism spectrum than their relative; they are watery, greatly sociable and lunar, whereas ásilvestréla are loners (at least in comparison), fiery, and solar.
Bannékré live in something akin to lion prides blended with orca pods and hyena clans. I’ll just refer to ‘em as “groups” for now, bland as that is. Elder matriarchs, at most 2 for a very large group of up to 24-27 members at most before the excess members split off to form their own new group, lead daily activities.
I don't think they mate monogamously for life. It’s a different pair-up every breeding season.
They primarily occupy expansive watery areas in dense rainforests, or somewhere else with a lot of water and a great variety of safe spaces to incubate/guard egg clutches, meaning probably not open swamps or ocean with no cover or hiding spots.
The mommas who are brawnier, duller-colored (cool colors only: greenish, gray, and bluish), and camouflaged are pregnant for a little less than a month (in Earth-time, that is; days and nights are longer on this planet) before laying their broods of at least 1-2 soft-shelled, semi-transparent eggs, sometimes 3, and very rarely 4, if momma is incredibly well-fed during the pregnancy. They do this so they can be free of the kids quicker so they can return to hunting and defending territories, leaving those eggs at home with the smaller, ornately and vibrantly colored/patterned, slenderer and antlered males, who (after doing their instinctual job of impressing, courting, and then mating with the females) take on the motherly role of incubating and then raising the resulting caché of babies, always at home with them, whether those offspring are genetically theirs or not.
These males are not at all useless outside of that, they're pretty much strong enough to defend themselves from most enemies in their size-range and especially when up against smaller creatures, armed with sharp teeth and claws like any predatory creature; they just are also more vibrant in appearance, "pretty," like a male bird-of-paradise on Earth. Bannékré are apex predators, but they became such a long time ago. So, this extremely pronounced sexual dimorphism didn't develop till much later after achieving that status in the food chain. Males also are kicked out of their birth-group once they reach young adulthood to ensure inbreeding doesn't happen, and they’re supposed to join other unrelated bannékré groups. Bannékré males are like this regardless of subspecies, though there is some variance between them. Natural, innate telekinesis makes them even more interesting-looking. Whichever male always has the “prettiest” and “flashiest” levitating crystals and orbs around them during breeding season is the one who wins the most female suitors.
I don't know exactly how close to human sapience they are, though I get the sense they're dang clever and cunning for animals, maybe like how emotional and self-aware a pokémon typically is and could easily be trained for many different things if they were ever fully domesticated. I guess in that sense, they're like wolves. But they have that streak of innate independence that a domestic pet like (most) dogs lack, just as wolves do. By that, I mean they won't turn to a human (or to an anything) "master" to solve their problems for them. They'll figure it out themselves or grow frustrated and abandon it. They do understand mourning their dead, compassion, and cooperation, but not tool usage.
They are amphibious, able to live on land and water, kind of like Earthly seals, but without their bodies being structured like seals. They’re very much still four-legged, physically adapted to adept swimming and being regularly submerged without the price of losing the dexterity of their forepaws’ deadly-clawed digits. They must periodically come up for air, though it takes up to nearly thirty-two Earth minutes before they need to. They can hold their breath very effectively for long periods of time without causing themselves pain. They possess long, thin, rudderlike tails that end in a strange shape (like an ásilvestréla’s tail, but without the gigantic spiky-furred “bush” at the base), with an empty gap in the middle of that shape.
Ásilvestréla and all its subspecies are significantly larger than their amphibious cousins and any of their subspecies, and are not sexually dimorphic whatsoever, not even in size difference (there is absolutely none between the two sexes. The only way to see if it’s one sex or the other is checking between their hindlegs to see which organs they have). Every species in the taxonomic family that they share with bannékré tends to have binary physical sexes, like most of Earth’s life; female (pregnancy-carrier and birther) and male (fertilizer of the female’s “egg”) is the norm, with the standard being that males are more delicate than females, but obviously ásilvestréla are an outlier in this one, it and all its subspecies are like this, a very small genus compared to the more planetarily widespread, variable bannékré. Other fauna (and even flora) families on Urrànthin don’t necessarily follow this sex binary model.
Neither ásilvestréla nor bannékré suckle their newborn offspring, who emerge from their eggs ready to consume freshwater and softer prey meats. With age, both species and their subspecies gain the ability to crunch bones easily, devouring them as well (osteophagy), making up around fifty percent or a bit less of their diets. This is why ásilvestréla have such strong bite-power, akin to spotted hyenas but even better. There’s a difference between them; it helps the bannékré that the bones of Urrànthin’s fully aquatic lifeforms, which are what they normally tend to hunt and eat, are notably easier to bend and break than typical Earthly fish; made of different organic materials than our fishes. Land-living prey is not so easy to munch, hence the wicked fangs and jaw muscles of ásilvestréla.
Ásilvestréla bio-flames only burn when they’re upset or excited. Normally, when neutral or content, their bodies give off a mild warmth at temperatures that a human being would find tolerable to touch with their bare hands and not ever feel the need to let go. They have a mutualistic symbiotic relationship with a small, agile, arboreal monkey-raccoon-like species that meticulously picks and eats parasites out of its coat/mane/tail-base fur-bush.
They dwell in overlapping territories with conspecifics and brief socializing with those conspecifics now and then, especially to breed and share kills, akin to North American cougars. Unlike cougars however, it doesn’t matter to either sex if they share a potential breeding partner in a neighboring turf with a same-sex conspecific. Female cougars get along better if their ranges don’t “share” a male.
The offspring emerge from soft-shelled, semi-transparent eggs like bannékré babies do (but far more ready to chomp on any meats and bones), and are raised by the father. Just like bannékré, the mother’s pregnancy is only more or less an Earth-month long, and so he remains with the will-be mom during this time, bringing her meals until she lies the eggs (in clutches of 2-3, rarely just one if local prey is scarce) and abandons them with him. The father dutifully teaches these offspring how to fare for themselves until they reach mid-adolescence and begin to venture out to make their own way.
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There exists an innumerable number of complex life species that also dwell on the obligate carnivore ásilvestréla’s vast native planet, Urrànthin (“err-RAWN-thin”). One of these are the similarly obligate carnivoran bannékré (“ban-NAY-kray”), which is the nominate species of a big group of subspecies. They are sort of related to ásilvestréla (“AW-sill-VEH-stray-LAH”), within the same family taxonomically, but very far removed otherwise. They’re adapted to the exact opposite end of the symbolism spectrum than their relative; they are watery, greatly sociable and lunar, whereas ásilvestréla are loners (at least in comparison), fiery, and solar.
Bannékré live in something akin to lion prides blended with orca pods and hyena clans. I’ll just refer to ‘em as “groups” for now, bland as that is. Elder matriarchs, at most 2 for a very large group of up to 24-27 members at most before the excess members split off to form their own new group, lead daily activities.
I don't think they mate monogamously for life. It’s a different pair-up every breeding season.
They primarily occupy expansive watery areas in dense rainforests, or somewhere else with a lot of water and a great variety of safe spaces to incubate/guard egg clutches, meaning probably not open swamps or ocean with no cover or hiding spots.
The mommas who are brawnier, duller-colored (cool colors only: greenish, gray, and bluish), and camouflaged are pregnant for a little less than a month (in Earth-time, that is; days and nights are longer on this planet) before laying their broods of at least 1-2 soft-shelled, semi-transparent eggs, sometimes 3, and very rarely 4, if momma is incredibly well-fed during the pregnancy. They do this so they can be free of the kids quicker so they can return to hunting and defending territories, leaving those eggs at home with the smaller, ornately and vibrantly colored/patterned, slenderer and antlered males, who (after doing their instinctual job of impressing, courting, and then mating with the females) take on the motherly role of incubating and then raising the resulting caché of babies, always at home with them, whether those offspring are genetically theirs or not.
These males are not at all useless outside of that, they're pretty much strong enough to defend themselves from most enemies in their size-range and especially when up against smaller creatures, armed with sharp teeth and claws like any predatory creature; they just are also more vibrant in appearance, "pretty," like a male bird-of-paradise on Earth. Bannékré are apex predators, but they became such a long time ago. So, this extremely pronounced sexual dimorphism didn't develop till much later after achieving that status in the food chain. Males also are kicked out of their birth-group once they reach young adulthood to ensure inbreeding doesn't happen, and they’re supposed to join other unrelated bannékré groups. Bannékré males are like this regardless of subspecies, though there is some variance between them. Natural, innate telekinesis makes them even more interesting-looking. Whichever male always has the “prettiest” and “flashiest” levitating crystals and orbs around them during breeding season is the one who wins the most female suitors.
I don't know exactly how close to human sapience they are, though I get the sense they're dang clever and cunning for animals, maybe like how emotional and self-aware a pokémon typically is and could easily be trained for many different things if they were ever fully domesticated. I guess in that sense, they're like wolves. But they have that streak of innate independence that a domestic pet like (most) dogs lack, just as wolves do. By that, I mean they won't turn to a human (or to an anything) "master" to solve their problems for them. They'll figure it out themselves or grow frustrated and abandon it. They do understand mourning their dead, compassion, and cooperation, but not tool usage.
They are amphibious, able to live on land and water, kind of like Earthly seals, but without their bodies being structured like seals. They’re very much still four-legged, physically adapted to adept swimming and being regularly submerged without the price of losing the dexterity of their forepaws’ deadly-clawed digits. They must periodically come up for air, though it takes up to nearly thirty-two Earth minutes before they need to. They can hold their breath very effectively for long periods of time without causing themselves pain. They possess long, thin, rudderlike tails that end in a strange shape (like an ásilvestréla’s tail, but without the gigantic spiky-furred “bush” at the base), with an empty gap in the middle of that shape.
Ásilvestréla and all its subspecies are significantly larger than their amphibious cousins and any of their subspecies, and are not sexually dimorphic whatsoever, not even in size difference (there is absolutely none between the two sexes. The only way to see if it’s one sex or the other is checking between their hindlegs to see which organs they have). Every species in the taxonomic family that they share with bannékré tends to have binary physical sexes, like most of Earth’s life; female (pregnancy-carrier and birther) and male (fertilizer of the female’s “egg”) is the norm, with the standard being that males are more delicate than females, but obviously ásilvestréla are an outlier in this one, it and all its subspecies are like this, a very small genus compared to the more planetarily widespread, variable bannékré. Other fauna (and even flora) families on Urrànthin don’t necessarily follow this sex binary model.
Neither ásilvestréla nor bannékré suckle their newborn offspring, who emerge from their eggs ready to consume freshwater and softer prey meats. With age, both species and their subspecies gain the ability to crunch bones easily, devouring them as well (osteophagy), making up around fifty percent or a bit less of their diets. This is why ásilvestréla have such strong bite-power, akin to spotted hyenas but even better. There’s a difference between them; it helps the bannékré that the bones of Urrànthin’s fully aquatic lifeforms, which are what they normally tend to hunt and eat, are notably easier to bend and break than typical Earthly fish; made of different organic materials than our fishes. Land-living prey is not so easy to munch, hence the wicked fangs and jaw muscles of ásilvestréla.
Ásilvestréla bio-flames only burn when they’re upset or excited. Normally, when neutral or content, their bodies give off a mild warmth at temperatures that a human being would find tolerable to touch with their bare hands and not ever feel the need to let go. They have a mutualistic symbiotic relationship with a small, agile, arboreal monkey-raccoon-like species that meticulously picks and eats parasites out of its coat/mane/tail-base fur-bush.
They dwell in overlapping territories with conspecifics and brief socializing with those conspecifics now and then, especially to breed and share kills, akin to North American cougars. Unlike cougars however, it doesn’t matter to either sex if they share a potential breeding partner in a neighboring turf with a same-sex conspecific. Female cougars get along better if their ranges don’t “share” a male.
The offspring emerge from soft-shelled, semi-transparent eggs like bannékré babies do (but far more ready to chomp on any meats and bones), and are raised by the father. Just like bannékré, the mother’s pregnancy is only more or less an Earth-month long, and so he remains with the will-be mom during this time, bringing her meals until she lies the eggs (in clutches of 2-3, rarely just one if local prey is scarce) and abandons them with him. The father dutifully teaches these offspring how to fare for themselves until they reach mid-adolescence and begin to venture out to make their own way.
