Strongarmed Sawjaw

A large, powerful predator of the upland plain, the strongarmed sawjaw is a close relative of the viridescent sawjaw that has adapted to live in drier environments, relying more on strength than agility. 

While its cousin is very fast, it is much littler, and so it relies on overwhelming its prey by hunting in huge numbers - often living in clans of a hundred. Strongarmed sawjaws are social too, but as each individual is much larger - standing five feet high, stretching seven  feet long, and weighing up to 240 lbs - they can hunt just as effectively in far smaller clans, from as few as two up to around fifteen. Because they don't need  to build such numbers, strongarmed sawjaw social structure is much more restricted and based around monogamous pair bonds, with most other members being born into the clan, or else being relatives of the dominant mated pair. In this way, they are similar to wolves, while viridescent sawjaws, which live in clans in which all animals have a chance to breed, are more similar to primates like macaques. 

This sawjaw species, like its relative, mainly feeds on thorngrazers, especially the battering helmethead, but will also occasionally succeed in killing monstrocorn calves and subadults thanks to their great physical strength. Like other sawjaws, the arms are muscular and used to restrain prey animals with the four sickle claws while the killing bite is delivered to the throat with the serrated jaws. Like viridescent sawjaws, this species has a surprisingly limited diet and imprints on specific types of food early in life, but they do have a wider range of prey, which includes not only tribbetheres but also large skuorcs such as the scrunge and skoblin. Even so, their diet is comprised nearly completely on triped and quadruped animals, rather than bipeds like trunkos, which are generally too fast for them. Trunkos, being highly intelligent, quickly learn that they are in little danger from these animals, and so will stay near to them as protection from smaller, weaker predators that do threaten them, such as carnackles and foxtrotters that give the fearsome strongarmed sawjaw a wide berth. 

Though the strongarmed and viridescent sawjaws are genetically closely related, size and behavioral differences have rendered them reproductively isolated to the point that all descendants of both species will no longer be close enough to each other to belong to the same genus. Rapid speciation is still ongoing early in the hothouse, transforming animals, both sawjaws and others, into radically different forms at a speed that will slow for most as the ecosystem returns to a stable, biodiverse state of being. As for these two species themselves, they meet surprisingly often, despite broadly differing habitat preferences, as sogland and upland environments are not necessarily widely differentiated, but can occur mingled together depending on the elevation of the land. Interactions between these estranged cousins occurs frequently along bordering habitats and is usually hostile, as the smaller species will use their numbers to boldly harass their larger rival - and they occasionally push the envelope too far, being killed and eaten if the strongarmed sawjaw is pushed too far by an overly confident individual who gets just a little too close. Of the two animals, the strongarmed is the more adaptable. Though it is more adapted to traverse dry ground, and has even begun to lose its outer toe to move more quickly, it can also swim well and occasionally feeds in flooded regions, while viridescent sawjaws avoid dry upland areas entirely, being more vulnerable to aerial predation without the taller plant cover of wetland areas. Hybridization between the two, though it may or may not be genetically impossible, has ceased for at least 2 million years due to the incompatible size and behavior of both parent species, in stark contrast to other hothouse life such as wumpos which often refuse to totally separate.