Moonbreasted Pickbird

An animal that knows to keep friends close and potential enemies closer, the moonbreasted pickbird finds success by forming alliances wherever it can.

Pickbirds are a genus of chatterravens evolved from the bluetails, notable for their elongated beaks - built to probe parasites from the pelage of bigger animals - and their highly social nature. Their ancestors were known for their savagery, both within and outside their own species, and they lived in aggressive dominance-based social hierarchies. Pickbirds, though they still resemble their ancestors, have adapted drastically different social lives in the new, more productive environment where food is no longer scarce. They are gregarious and lack dominance altogether. Conflicts are resolved with social grooming, food bribes and non-reproductive mating behavior instead of physical fights, and flocks are equitable and democratic, with each member taking part in decisions and having no singular leader. They are cooperative and altruistic in a similar way to sawjaws, where parenting is done by many individuals and babysitters take turns caring for chicks while others collect food. Also like them, injured birds are cared for by their clans.

Moonbreasted pickbirds are renowned for their very wide social circles, which extend far outside their own kind. These birds remain playful and curious through adulthood, in the way bluetail juveniles were, and are open to interact with nearly any animal that allows it. They enjoy grooming other animals, and even large and solitary predators often make exception to these pickbirds, for their preening removes blood, feather pests, parasites and even scraps of food stuck in their teeth they may otherwise be unable to reach. Predators and prey alike tolerate or even encourage the pickbird for purely hygienic reasons, but sawjaws, trunkos, and predator birds such as drakevultures often have lasting social bonds with the birds that go beyond purely pragmatic reasons. Though these animals likely first tolerated pickbirds for the practical benefits of the interaction, they now seem to simply enjoy their company. 

Some moonbreasted pickbirds and viridescent sawjaws have learned to cooperate as equal partners, with the smaller birds helping distract thorngrazers so that the hunters may more easily target them, after which both partners share the meal. Likewise, many social trunkos have alliances with these pickbirds to help watch for their own predators. In fact, the pickbirds work with so many animal species that different cultures exist with preferences for animals that are the natural enemies of the animals others may hang with. A pickbird population that spends time with viridescent sawjaws is not likely to have strong social ties to thorngrazers, but may be just fine with trunkos, which that sawjaw species does not eat. When different populations become bonded over a few generations to species that have directly antagonistic relationships, however, those two cultures become separated too. Pickbirds that eat trunkos are obviously viewed as the enemy of those which groom trunkos, so that they do not mingle. In this way, pickbirds form new species very easily, based on which types of animals they are most likely to associate with, and total reproductive isolation can occur in only a few centuries. Moonbreasted pickbirds, a primitive species that befriends a wide variety of other animals, are ancestral to many more specialized forms, each one spending time with only a smaller selection of partner species. Even moonbreasted pickbirds, however, do not form strong bonds with thorngrazers; though they will eat insects off them, they also enlarge wounds and so worsen injuries, and readily help other animals to catch them so they can eat them. The low-intelligence of thorngrazers may prevent the development of reciprocal social bonds; pickbirds seem to determine whether an animal is an equal, or a resource, based on its ability to demonstrate a similar level of social interaction back. Thorngrazers simply ignore the pickbirds, and so no bonds can develop, and thorngrazer remains on the menu. 

Pickbirds most often use their high degree of social awareness to forge clever alliances with bigger animals, even those which might otherwise eat them. Yet this game can go both way; though pickbirds are opportunistic omnivores and not above eating smaller birds, some smaller sparrowgulls can pull the same trick with offerings of food to their would-be predator as a peace offering to demonstrate that they, too, should be friend, not food. Even in the harsh and often unforgiving environment of the hothouse age, especially among the birds, predator and prey relationships continue to become more complicated as more and more of the players become highly intelligent and socially complex. A world once eat or be eaten is now a political game where nothing is set in stone, and even enemies can form alliances. Yet alliances need a common enemy, and in this new era, it is the less intelligent forms of life which become the outsiders to work against. Unable to understand the subtleties of the more complex interactions such as are occurring between animals like sawjaws, trunkos, and sparrowgulls, thorngrazers can only survive by following the most basic rules of nature: fight or flight. They can only adapt to run faster, or act meaner, or evolve stronger armor. The new arms race, for thorngrazers and their many enemies, is one of brains versus brawn, as a lineage tough and enduring goes up against others becoming ever more cunning.