Porporants

Porporants are a widespread clade of highly aquatic birds which evolved in the early Cryocene and can be found in oceans worldwide by 100 million years PE. They are allied by their long beaks, armed with sharp pseudoteeth adapted to catch and hold slippery aquatic prey, and swim mainly with their well-developed wing-derived flippers, though some groups also rely on the hind legs, which are positioned at the extreme back of the body and can provide propulsion by clapping together or be used to steer at high speeds. Most groups have lost most of their feathers and rely on their body fat to keep warm, because as they do not regularly leave the water if they relied on plumage for warmth they would be unable to moult it without becoming chilled while new feathers grew in. Newly-hatched chicks however do sport a full coat of thick, insulating down which is shed roughly six months after hatching, and some sparse plumage does remain on adults of many species, sometimes adapted into sensitive whiskers around the bill.

The porporants' evolved from the dougal, along with most of Serina's most specialized aquatic birds, though they evolved later than birdwhales and bloons from an ancestor that remained fairly primitive for the entire duration of the Cryocene, only specializing after its end. They are not closely related to the true birdwhales or the bloons; porporants do not mouth-brood their eggs, and still retain more primitive behaviors. In order to breed adult females must haul themselves out of the water to bury their eggs in the warm sand, much like sea turtles. Young porporants are superprecocial and may never meet their parents. After several months incubating in the hot sand, they hatch from the beach in numbers so large as to flood the ability of local predators to catch and eat them, ensuring some survive the gauntlet of beaks and teeth and reach the relative safety of the sea, where they immediately begin to hunt and catch their own food. Male porporants will never again have to leave the sea - though they may still do so to rest - but females must return to the beach at maturity to lay their eggs. This group as a whole is thus much more constrained in size than the pelecanaries which incubate their eggs at sea, though the males are able to grow larger than females, sometimes substantially. Even the largest female porporant, however, does not usually surpass ten feet in length.

Porporants comprise a wide variety of ecological niches, from fast-swimming open water piscivores to large, lethargic ambush predators which ambush prey from the water's edge in rivers and lakes. A sampling of different species from across the world are represented below.

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1. The penguipleurodon is the heaviest porporant; an open ocean carnivore partial cooler waters near Serina's poles, males can reach weights of 7,000 pounds and grow to lengths of twenty feet, dwarfing their mates which typically weigh only a fifth as much and are much more lightly built; they grow to only about eight or nine feet. Penguipleurodons, particularly males, are active predators which feed on large fishes and other sea birds including birdwhales and other porporants. Their jaws are enormously powerful, able to crush other birds' skulls as well as the shells of large oceanic molluscs in order to get at the meat inside. Females and young individuals fill a somewhat different place in the ecosystem than adult males: being smaller and much more agile, the majority of their diet is made up of bait fish. Cannibalism occasionally occurs where food is otherwise scarce, with males killing and eating females or younger individuals as they would normally other bird species though this behavior is generally quite rare.

Females migrate to warm tropical seas to lay their eggs, with the young chicks typically sheltering in bangroove forests initially before gradually moving out into the open sea after two to three years, when they are larger and less vulnerable to predation.

2. The poultrypus is a seal-like porporant which is native to freshwater environments throughout the equatorial eastern hemisphere. Adapted to foraging through the turbulent, muddy waters of rivers, it's a solid brown and fairly drably colored animal which can grow to lengths of ten feet, females usually topping off around six feet. The beak of the poultrypus, like the penguipleurodon, is strong and suited to crack the shells of invertebrates such as snails, crabs and crayfish, which it finds by swimming along the sediment at the bottom of the river and sifting its beak through the sand until it comes across a buried prey animal and clamps down, cracking open the prey animal's shell if it sports one or getting a firm hold on any slippery fish that might have been hiding in the mud. To further improve its sensitivity, the snout of the poultrypus is ornamented with long whiskers to feel for the movement of prey in the muddy water. It lays its eggs in nests dug out into sandy riverbanks, though in some seasons many nests are flooded by rising water levels.

Living in rivers and always near shore, poultrypuses often bask on land. Because they are always found near land and are able to do this, unlike pelagic species, they are one of the few porporants to retain a full coat of insulating plumage rather than body fat into adulthood; for a few weeks in the summer, they spend almost all of their time on the shore while they molt.

3. Timos are a diverse group of small, basal porporants, somewhat reminescent in appearance of puffins with deep and often colorful beaks with only small serrations, which can be found across the northern hemisphere. Growing to no more than four feet long, many species aren't much larger than small dogs and rarely weigh more than fifty pounds. They travel in large flocks in open water far from shore, moving at high speeds and with great agility as they work in coordination to corral shoals of small fish and krill-like copepods into bunches which the group can then more easily prey upon. Unlike most porporants, males and females are not significantly different in size. Females nest in huge concentrations on only a handful of offshore islands sporting sandy shores and almost never upon either the eastern or western mainlands, likely due to the high risk of predation by terrestrial carnivores resultant from their small size.

4. and 5. Dordors, closely allied to the timos, are generally similar in behavior but grow to somewhat larger sizes in the range of five to seven feet long and several hundred pounds. Their beaks are long and thin, suited to snatching small agile fishes from their shoals, and sport longer teeth than those of timos to ensure these prey are held tight. Some dordors have developed an almost dolphin-like shape, but they still rely mainly on their flippers for propulsion with their feet used mainly to steer. Dordors nest on tropical beaches, and though male and female are similar in size, the male is frequently more colorful; male dordors often sport brightly contrasting markings of black, red, gray and white while females are generally more monotone.

6. Phocnars are seal-like porporants, their group including the penguipleurodon, which is the largest representative. Most species are considerably smaller, faster, and more lightly-built and the majority prey on fish rather than other birds.

7. Not all porporants are squat, stocky animals; the notaloons are a group of solitary long-necked porporants which pursue fishes in cool polar waters. The largest species weigh about as much as a man, reaching lengths of seven feet if you were to include their long necks.

8. Possibly one of the most unique of all the porporants, the crocanaries are a widespread and abundant group, closely related to the poultrypus, which are found mostly in freshwater environments throughout the tropics, where they are adapted to lie in wait just beneath the water near shore and ambush large terrestrial animals which approach the water to drink. The jaws and beak are extremely powerful and almost impossible to prey open once clamped down on prey, such as a serilope or aardgoose, which is then pulled into the water and drowned. To rip flesh from a large animal, a crocanary will grasp and twist its body in a death roll to dismember the carcass. To allow for their lethargic lifestyle and infrequent chance to feed and surface for oxygen, crocanaries have dramatically slowed metabolic rates compared to the rest of the porporant family and have lost the ability to maintain a warm body temperature on their own. Thus, like crocodiles, they must haul themselves onto the shore fairly regularly to warm themselves in the sun. Like the poultrypus, crocanaries, all of which are restricted to warm tropical environments, too retain insulating coats of feathers instead of fat as adults, which require the crocanary to spend most of its time on dry land for a short time each year while these feathers are shed and replaced.

Some crocanaries can reach lengths of seventeen feet and weights of 1,500 pounds, with males - which must only flop onto the shore to bask - larger than females, which must be able to haul themselves as far as several hundred feet inland to lay their eggs past the flood line.