The New Gravediggers

Gravediggers are a genus of primarily carnivorous bumblebadgers descended from a solitary and territorial sapient ancestor ten million years ago in the middle Ultimocene. Their name originates from their ancestral use of pitfall traps to kill large prey animals such as circuagodonts, but though it has been carried down via descent in multiple species it is now a misnomer, as neither of the species now known by it are regularly known to utilize such a strategy anymore.

There are three gravedigger species extant in the late ocean age, 270 million years PE, with the gregarious and widespread thalassic gravedigger, Decipulaformus thalassicus, being the most successful. A sophont species that has abandoned its solitary ways in favor of highly cooperative group living, this behavioral shift has coincided with the retention of several physical traits normally lost at adolescence into adulthood, including mostly orange plumage. Thalassic gravediggers also exhibit increased irregular piebald patches and a smaller brain than their ancestor, the latter occurring even despite no loss of intelligence due to it mainly affecting the parts of the brain that control fear, anxiety, and aggression. All of these are common markers of genetically tame animals, and in becoming a social species they have effectively domesticated themselves. These gravediggers average a little smaller than their ancestors, averaging just 20-25 lbs, but their heads are also proportionally large, similar to the young of the other gravedigger species.

In addition to their neoteny, these gravediggers have some additional adaptations specifically helping them survive in oceanic environments, making them the most divergent of living species despite their ubiquity. They comprise one branch of the sea stewards, an alliance of three species which regulate the ecology of the ocean environment they share, alongside the greenskeeper and the novan daydreamer. They have much reduced serrations in their beaks which goes hand in hand with replacing their natural tools with artificial ones, show adaptations to drink seawater in the form of large salt-filtering glands in their nostrils, have partially webbed feet, and have adapted a more pronounced brow ridge which helps shade their eyes from the sun in an environment with minimal shade. Their forearms are relatively short and broad, better-suited to swimming than in other gravediggers, and they are also much more capable of prolonged bipedal walking than other forms, a behavioral and biomechanical adaptation which frees those forearms to be used as hands to a much greater degree. The fingers are also more poseable and the claws thinner and more curved, allowing finer dexterity to facilitate tool creation and use.

Thalassic gravediggers are the sole descendants of social gravediggers, a subspecies which emerged 5 million years ago as a result of interspecies-cultural osmosis and social interaction with the woodcrafters, or antlear people, which lasted several thousand years. It is from this circumstance that the thalassic gravedigger’s ancestors developed more expressive eyes and mouth movements as the woodcrafters exhibited them and better communicated with gravediggers that could mirror them. Thalassic gravediggers have complex vocal language, extensive tool use including fire and textiles, and are a major keystone species.

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The closest relative of the thalassic gravedigger, with a point of divergence just five million years ago, is the Icefisher, D. mareglacius, which descends primarily from the same ancestral subspecies: the southern gravedigger. 70-120 lbs in weight, this species is much larger, more robust, and thicker-feathered than its ancestor and has specialized to spend its entire life out on sea ice on the north edge of the seaway. They have long, plush feathering and a shorter jaw than others which is more covered by plumage; the beak is short but bulbous and sharply hooked with well-developed serrations, and the feet are partially feathered. Icefishers have limited tool use, well-developed but highly specific and based almost exclusively on bone tools and tendon nets and lines. They feed on fish and tetrapod/tripod animals that live in the ocean near its northernmost extent, sometimes a number of miles from the edge of the ice shelf, where the only way to procure food is by puncturing holes in the ice to fish or ambushing sea-molodonts as they surface to breathe. They are relatively solitary but have lost the aggressive, innate territoriality of their ancestors, and so have some cultural transmission and a vocal language. Adult males spend much of their time alone but develop bonds with two to three females and will visit and help provide for their offspring. Mothers and female offspring, or same-sex siblings, may live together for many years, and adolescent males will sometimes leave with their fathers near adulthood and so learn from them for a period before settling into their own territory. Conflict avoidance is now preferred to fighting, and their temperament could now be described as gentle and even shy.

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The largest gravedigger species is descended from the tundra gravedigger with some hybridization with the southern. It is a hulking animal which weighs as much as 180 lbs, making it as much as nine times as big as the thalassic, and is the end-product of millions of years of selection against planning and tool use in favor of brute physical strength. The plumage is very thick and the soles of the feet are completely feathered, while the tail feathers are carried higher than in others, perhaps to avoid them being covered with ice. With massive crushing jaws, huge claws and a muscular build, the most notable trait of the savage gravedigger, D. atrox, is that it has lost the spark of sapience that characterized its ancestors. Forged in Serina’s coldest and harshest habitable environment, the extreme hardships forced upon their ancestors reduced the size and complexity of their brains in order to reduce their calorie requirements. Another extreme adaptation which this species has evolved is some capacity for hibernation; to survive prolonged food shortage they may retire to a den for weeks at a time, ceasing to eat and falling into a state of torpor where their metabolism slows much like a bear’s. They are not yet well-suited to this emergency survival measure, however, and a significant number of younger and older individuals forced into this torpor starve to death before they re-awaken.

Savage gravediggers are extremely hostile among themselves and the least social of any species that has so far lived, for they require large territories to sustain themselves on limited prey. Functionally animalistic, they have a chimpanzee-level cognitive ability yet their almost total lack of sociability means they have very little capacity for empathy. They have almost no culture at all, and all social interaction is now limited to brief mating, which is itself an aggressive affair without much tenderness, and the two year period where young are dependant on their mother. The latter is the only time that savage gravediggers live together and the singular circumstance where they still must have some capacity for caring for others. Females defend their own young fiercely from all threats as long as they retain a light tan juvenile coat, but don't extend their tolerance to any unrelated offspring which will be unceremoniously killed and fed to her own.

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The near-ancestors of savage gravediggers displaced the southern gravedigger about 2 million years ago, when they were nearing the loss of their sapience. After about one million years of isolation from one another due to the formation of a large polar desert that split up their clinal range, worsening glaciation pushed the now-larger descendants of the tundra gravedigger south again. Now they easily killed their smaller relatives, as they lacked the complex social organization of the thalassic species to defend themselves from foes physically much stronger. The southern gravedigger contributes a small percentage of its genome to this species as a result of forced mating between large male savage gravediggers and female southern gravediggers, but interactions between the two were most often predatory with savages simply killing and eating their relatives. The icefisher is descended from a small number of southern gravediggers which managed to flee the arriving northern savages and seek out a precarious existence on the bleak sea ice where their less-intelligent rivals would struggle to follow. As some of the founder population was made up of females spared by savages which used them as unwilling mates, the icefisher also has a small percentage of hybrid influence from the savage gravedigger, though in this species it mainly has influenced their size and color and less so their cognition or their behavior.