Watchtower Wumpo

A tall, stately trunko species that lives among social thorngrazers, watchtower wumpos protect the herds from their enemies with a taller view of the surroundings to spot danger, and are in turn sheltered by the herds from lightning storms. But the wumpo is a double agent - and the thorngrazers are none the wiser.

Standing nine to ten feet high and weighing about four hundred pounds, the watchtower wumpo is taller and lankier than its ancestor the island wumpo and appears to have evolved into a browser. Yet in a landscape devoid of most trees, being able to reach and nibble from the foliage that grows high on isolated sogland boulders is only a secondary benefit to its height: it has evolved to watch the horizon for enemies, more than double the height of the thorngrazers whose short necks keep them low to the ground. Female herds of social thorngrazers such as the helmethead rely on watchtowers to alert them to the approach of sawjaws, as well as other enemies such as drakevultures, so that they can take protective formation around their calves in time to defend them. In return, watchtower wumpos use these herds to guard them when they must lay low to avoid being struck by lightning during thunderstorms. It is easy to consider this a completely mutualistic arrangement - but nature is not always so black and white. 

Watchtower wumpos and thorngrazers do have some enemies in common. Some large sawjaws, large aerial predators, and even carnackles will hunt and kill them both if the opportunity presents itself, and so both of these animals have a common goal in keeping an eye out for them. But when it comes to the most numerous thorngrazer killer, the viridescent sawjaw, things become more complicated. This sawjaw doesn't hunt trunkos - its diet is exclusively thorngrazers. And while the crested thorngrazers are basically vegetarian, this wumpo - an intelligent animal with a large brain - needs some meat in its diet to maintain its health and cannot survive on grass alone, yet lacks the adaptations to kill large game. It feeds on insects as well as the small ground birds and molodonts that its herds disturb from their hiding places, but these are small pickings for an animal as big as itself, and it is in its interest to occasionally partake in a large meat meal. Usually it alerts the herds, giving them time to protect their young and one another, and so leaving only the males who linger outside at a distance the herd's protection to be hunted. But every so often, the watchtower wumpo will turn a blind eye and let the enemy into the herd, hoping they will kill and butcher a few of the young calves so that, in the chaos, the watchtowers may eat one as well. It seems the younger thorngrazers taste much better than the old, sick adults, for the hunters favor them if they can get them - and in return for the opportunity will often leave one, neatly killed and opened up, for the double agents to take. It will look like an accident, and the wumpos will never do it twice in a row - even though thorngrazers are dim-witted and probably would be unable to recognize that their partners have worked against them anyway. Yet this shocking twist and change of alliance shows one thing - it is really the wumpo which takes advantage of the thorngrazer in this relationship, which is far less equal than it first seems.