Fishing Triyena

A large foxtrotter with a novel social structure, the fishing triyena hunts in shallow water across the soglands and shores of inland waterways.

Standing up to five feet high at the shoulder and weighing some 330 pounds, the fishing triyena appears intimidating, with gnarled teeth and a frightful smile - and indeed, they are carnivores - but they very rarely hunt on land. They are mostly fish-eaters, adapted to wade along the shores of the sea, rivers and lakes and throughout the flooded soglands, where they hook aquatic prey from the water with their robust arms and hooked claws and killing it in their long jaws, some of the strongest on Serina. They are capable swimmers with webbed paws, able to cross several miles of water at a time, and so have colonized many offshore islands, though they are incapable of long-distance sea crossings.

Fishing triyenas are solitary hunters, each well-equipped to catch their food without any help, but they are highly social when not finding food and gather at common den sites almost daily to socialize. They live in stable clans of up to eight adults, usually some combination of parents, siblings, or grown offspring, which share a home range and cooperatively rear their young. Triyenas have evolved an unconventional social structure in which they no longer form pair bonds to mate and are fairly promiscuous, with females mating briefly with males of other clans, rather than those which they live with - they may then never see their mates again. Males of their own clan likewise help raise their female relative's pups instead of their own, and are fairly tolerant of unrelated males passing through their ranges in search of mates, though there is the expectation that such travelers will be submissive and not hunt on land that is not their own. Females only leave their home ranges once in their lives, at adulthood and usually with several other siblings or cousins, and are briefly nomadic before settling in a new territory. Because females are highly tied to their home ranges, unlike wandering males, they are highly aggressive toward same-sex interlopers and drive them out of their lands if they spot them.

One adult in the clan typically takes the role of babysitter for all the young pups in the group each day while the adults go hunting, keeping them all on its back when they are very little so that little heads and legs dangle every which way in a tangle of babies. It alternates with a different adult the next day, so that each one gets time to feed and takes a turn to watch the young ones. Each clan member who had success hunting each day will share a small amount of food with the babysitter as well as the pups to pay them for their work. As the pups grow too big to cling all to their babysitter's fur they will start to follow different adults on their hunting forays - not necessarily their mothers. Each female most often gives birth to two pups, but most often only takes out one at a time, with the other trailing along with another relative, sometimes a male, sometimes a younger female who has not yet left the clan, who will learn child-care experience by helping her mother mind their next litter.