Hookjaw Carnackle

A clever hunter that has learned to make tools to catch its prey with little effort, the hookjaw carnackle can live a life of relative leisure on the soglands.

The carnackles have diversified since we last saw them at the end of the ocean age. Carnackles differ from other trunkos in having both the upper and lower tentacles well-developed; in their case, as predators, they are lined with sharp keratin teeth helpful to hold animal prey. Their diets have become broader in the hothouse age as a few grow bigger, others faster, and some smarter.

 275 million years PE, the jackal carnackle has evolved into several new species. Some are larger land predators, and others are small oppurtunists, but one has found a new liveilhood living off the water. The fascinating hookjaw, the only member of a new genus, uses remarkable ingenuity in catching food. These trunkos, which are about six feet tall and 200 lbs, have long and very flexible trunks tipped with beak-like hooks, and lined with spikes that server very well to hold tight on slippery fish in the shallow wetlands of Serinarcta. They are waders, like many contemporary trunkos in this wet world, and are common sights across the soglands. Observe a hookjaw for long here, though, and you will see they are not random in where they go fishing. These trunkos have advanced beyond simply walking along and looking for prey as they go, trying to find their food at random. Hookjaws make traps, so that their food comes to them and remains where they can find it later. They stick sharp, dry reeds into the sediment in the water, spending hours finding just the right sticks of the necessary length and poking them down about half an inch apart until they form a nearly-closed approximate circle. Then they make a chute, going several feet into the circle and narrowing toward the end. Once completed, the hookjaw baits its trap. It often uses small pieces of another fish or other small animal it has caught earlier and dismembered, but left uneaten, but may also use a large insect dropped on the water's surface or even the droppings of another animal to draw in opportunistic aquatic scavengers that are not picky in their diets.

The scent of food draws in shoals of opportunistic fish from nearby, which circle the pen until they find the small entryway. There they feed on the hookjaw's bait. Yet when they finish, and go to leave, they cannot find where they came in. The structure of the chute serves to allow fish to easily swim into the pen of reeds, but makes it difficult for them to find their way back out. As it circles the wider border of the trap, it doesn't think to go back to the middle and find the exit through the narrow opening. The more it struggles to escape, the less likely it is to find the exit. Within as little as an hour the hookjaw may return and find several fish stuck in the pen, which it may feed on immediately or save for later. Other types of animals will steal unguarded catches, so if food is abundant enough, hookjaws will go out of their way to share extras they cannot immediately eat with other hookjaws nearby - in this way at least the resources go to their own kind and not to rivals. In this way hookjaws, though they often spend most of their time alone, form alliances and social bonds that may be relied on at a later date; someone they have shared with before is likely to return the favor. Despite their formidable appearance, hookjaws are actually among the gentlest and least aggressive of all trunkos. Sharing collecteed resources equitably, they work with one another to ensure no-one goes hungry, and mutual enemies are kept at bay. These alliances go beyond sharing food, for father hookjaws - which do most of the parenting - can call upon their neighbors for aid if their young are threatened by predator, and others will come to help fend them off.

Young hookjaws learn to make their fish traps from their fathers - it is not instinctive - and some family lines have more elaborate trap designs than others. Variations are also designed which block small streams to catch migrating fishes or snarks, while the most northerly populations have begun to understand hooks and lines and so pass this cultural knowledge southwards. Most hookjaws can also make and use simple spears. And though females are just as capable of crafting the various tools as males, they rarely do so. One of the most important ways a male can win a female's affection is through her stomach, and it is much easier for her to ask neighboring males for a meal than to maintain traps of her own.