Tribbats

Tribbats are a clade of flying tribbetheres which share a common ancestor with the canitheres, which have become the first group of vertebrates on Serina to independently develop powered flight. This has occurred via five elongated bat-like wing fingers attached together by a flexible membrane of skin, very alike the wing of an Earth bat. Like other tribbetheres they are active, warm-blooded animals with a furry pelage. Smaller than canitheres, most tribbats are still largely predatory but feed more on insects than vertebrate prey, though they do prefer larger insects; none have specialized to feed significantly on the tiny flying types that cloud the skies. Rather, with their highly extensible jaws and good eyesight, the tribbats feed mostly on larger prey such as crickets and beetles, and sometimes small birds. They are notably more omnivorous than their ancestors and also partake significantly in the fruits and certain young leaves and buds of plants, with some species also favoring nectar.

Tribbats vary from very clumsy fliers which use flight only to move between trees or escape predators to skilled aerial acrobats which are capable of high-speed maneuvers through dense forest in pursuit of prey or in flight of predators. The first tribbat was surely akin to the former group, and may have developed its flight initially as a combination of gliding and prey-grabbing behavior, resulting from the animal launching itself downwards in ambush from a high perch at a passing bird or insect below and grabbing it in the hands - inadvertently performing a flight stroke, which could have generated further lift and prolonged its descent until, over time, its grabby little fingers expanded into a webbed net attached to the body with patagia and it was capable of upward momentum. Primitive tribbats still exist today which feed in exactly this manner and are otherwise only highly labored flyers, which much prefer to climb through the trees. In these forms, the five wing fingers retain claws and a degree of grasping mobility. In more advanced groups, however, only the first two digits of the wing - which are not connected with patagia to the rest of the structure - retain their claws. In some groups, these fingers have become opposable, the "thumb" being able to rotate ninety degrees from the second digit, so as to still give it some ability to grasp food and to climb while the specialized wing digits are folded up out of the way when not in use. The hind limb has only two digits but they are also opposed in a manner that allows their owner to grab hold of a tree branch and to climb or to roost. In flight, the hind leg becomes a balancing tail, to which both wing membranes attach right along the "ankle".

above: two clown tribbats - crow-sized frugivores of the equatorial rainforest - begin to stir at their roost tree in the evening hours. This species is crepuscular - most active at dusk and dawn - and they are preparing to spend the next few hours feeding. A third crawls over the ground nearby, perhaps to feed on fallen fruit. The color vision of these tribbetheres is excellent in order to locate ripe fruit and their communication, in addition to vocalizations in the form of chirps and squeaks, is highly based on body language that is elaborated upon with brightly colored, mobile ears and mouths which can be extended wide to reveal a blood red gape and make themselves appear larger in conflict.

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Tribbats are mostly animals of the tropical forest, as they are all adapted to roost in trees - usually hanging vertically by their tails in a posture reminiscent of fruit bats. A young group, they are still much less ecologically diverse than the flying birds but compete among many of them even in broad daylight - indeed, most tribbats are diurnal - for many of the same food resources. Their wing design is well suited for fast and agile flight and thus they occupy many small predator niches, chasing birds and larger insects on the wing in dense forests with unmatched maneuverability. In the open sky, however, birds still have them beat. Their wing design is inefficient for gliding flight and the open skies night and day swarm with changeling birds which never need land and spend their entire lives fluttering through the air in search of small flying insects. With solid bones and no air sacs, they are limited in size in much the same way as true bats to relatively small sizes. Many tribbats are still thus very much generalists, behaving much like flying lemurs or possums, climbing more than they fly, and still very tied to the forests from which they originate.

Birds thus are still the lords of the air, and with the evolution of the quadrupedal changelings, some have now reached sizes unforeseen ever before in their history...