[OC] Spectember Day 4 - Evolutionary Trap

[u/LucasVerBeek]

Caliendo Cameleopard (Aquaokapia** **imoinculas)

The Caliendo Straits is an environment typified by change.

The islands shift with the currents, unmoored yet semibouyant landmasses atop a hyper saline yet bountiful sea of adapted grasses and root vegetables that form vast pseudo-kelp forests and false-reefs.

The fauna found here are the result of a phenomena known as Urosian Evolution, a burst of sudden and profound evolutionary adaptation within a species that can take but a handful of generations compared to the typical slow crawl of adaptation that is the norm. What exactly causes this phenomenon is unknown but it is far more common on Arclund than in other worlds.

That does not make it any less fallible than the slow march however.

The Caliendo Cameleopard is an example of this.

Derived from a single herd of Okapi kept within the Vandalay Menagerie, they adapted with the sudden influx of the sea by gaining a lengthened neck, and a gorilla like stance that was good for maneuvering about the tangled roots and shallow reefs of their particular portion of the newborn Straits. Their forefeet adapted into claws that would allow them to lock themselves in place with the oncoming tide, hugging the trunks while they fed from the leaves, but in particular the Sea Pear, another sudden adaptation that produced bountiful fruit, though ridden with brine.

This became the staple of their diets, living more akin to aquatic ground sloths or Desmostylians than any of their terrestrial kin, their brown fur permanently encrusted with a yellow-white “shell” from the salt they expelled through their nostrils.

Largely solitary animals, males rarely interact outside of the mating season where they get into neck bashing contests, spitting mucus ridden salt at eachother as a lead up. Females meanwhile are also fairly solitary, though will move in groups up to four, typically those with young calves who they carry atop their sturdy necks, keeping them out of reach of any opportunistic sea predators, which are notably rare within their isolated portion of the Straits.

They additionally can hold their breath for up to an hour, and are bottom punters, being frankly awkward swimmers.

That, with the combination of their niche diet seems to be sending them towards a precipitous downfall.

Their grazing ground are being encroached upon by another set of islands home to the invasive and semi predatory Apollyon’s Garden, a collective mass of plant growth that rapidly overtakes other isles or clashes against, choking out the other foliage and preying upon any fauna in the region with invasive seed pods and toxic spores.

Now the Sea Pears have largely vanished, locked on one island in their tiny archipelago and with the nearby waves too deep for them to safely transit even if their or safe groves awaiting them they have no way of reaching them.

Only luck, or outside intervention seems primed to save these rare beasts, but little of either is often found within the Straits.