Snoots

Snoots are a family of terrestrial bumblets which, though still burrowers, find much of their food above ground. They are plodding, awkward creatures which shuffle along low to the ground, walking on their highly enlarged wrists which make up most of their forearm, but even so they are far more agile over land than their ancestors. Their wrists have become better suited to walking than in the ancestral bumblet, sitting almost directly under the body with weight born only on the tips rather than across the whole palm, and so snoots can properly move with relative agility rather than be restricted to the frantic sea-turtle locomotion of earlier forms. Snoots are therefore able to amble at a decent pace as they search for food - a diet which is more varied than other bumblets and includes fruit, seeds, and greens in addition to invertebrate prey - in the undergrowth with their long, sensitive bills, much like an avian hedgehog. They are nonetheless still slow and ungainly runners, however, with the large paddle-like wrists still being much more suited to digging, and rely on defense rather than flight for protection; like a hedgehog's quills, the feathers on their backs have elongated into an armor of sharp prickly spines which serve as a predator defense and readily detach if their owner is agitated.

above: a pair of snoots scout the surroundings of their burrow entrance on the plains north of the arid interior for danger. Seeing only a harmless, vegetarian circuagodont grazing just beyond their den, they determine it is safe to emerge and forage for food in the puffgrass.

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Nesting underground, snoots are monogames and pairs work together to maintain a burrow year round for both reproductive and roosting purposes. Their young are born defenseless and underdeveloped like other terrestrial bumblets, and do not venture above ground for four months; they spend a further year and a half with their parents, often assisting in the rearing of the next seasons' young before moving out onto their own to begin their own families.

The snoot's eyes are large and have become important to scout for danger, redeveloping from the reduced state of their ancestors. Like the snuffles, however, eons in the dark have left them color blind, and their eyesight remains secondary in importance to their especially keen sense of smell which both leads them to food and alerts them to predators.