Little Moments

Evolution acts upon a vast time scale that our brains were never intended to comprehend, most of its stories told on the scale of millions of years. Yet the story of evolution over the eons is only a part of the wider story of life, an epic that spans billions of years, but where a single moment is just as much a part of it as any longer time span. We mostly view Serina from the far-off and distant perspective, observing changes that have accumulated over tens of thousands of generations. But each generation is a lifetime, lived by thousands of individual lives. The story of life is one of countless little moments in time. We are born, we live, and we die. Repeated several trillion times, hundreds of millions of years of change can be observed. These small moments are quickly forgotten when only the big picture is taken, but they are as much a part of the book of life as all of the epochs and eras far too grand for any one creature to catalog.

The little moments that happen every day on Serina go mostly unnoticed as we peruse the world from afar at wide intervals. Most of them are insignificant to the bigger picture, having no effects on the world ten or fifty or one hundred million years after. They don’t matter to the world at large, a non-sentient ball of rock headed as it now is toward a cold death, and they do not matter to us exploring the planet’s natural history over eons. But these small moments can matter the world to the creatures that live them. Life is a battle for living things, and it can be short and violent. Nature red in tooth and claw, existence is never easy and life is inherently amoral and unfair. But every so often, a little moment of kindness miraculously breaks through the chaos and for some, this makes all the difference.

~~~

Somewhere in the cold center of Serinarcta in the middle Ultimocene, on a late spring day, a young snow snoot wanders along through the frosted woods and the meadows, his flock nowhere to be found. The little one chirps out plaintively as he meanders, but never does he hear the call of his parents, his sister, his aunties or his uncles. He cannot remember how long it has been now, it only feels like a very long time; his belly groans with hunger and his muscles ache with exhaustion. One moment he was with them, surrounded by their reassuring clucks and comforting warm bodies. His sister jostled him, wanting to wrestle. He would normally be quick to return a shove, to accept the invitation to play. But his legs slipped out from under him. The ground was suddenly steep. Before he could even register who had pushed him he was already sliding, rolling head over heels, falling deep into the river wretchedly wet and cold. He struggled, unable to breathe, his lungs tightening, panic setting in before managing to push himself toward the sun above and lift snout out of the rapids. He inhaled a gasp of air at the very last minute and washed down the river this way so far he could neither hear nor smell his family by the time he hauled himself, soaked to the bone with glacial meltwater, onto the rocky shore and collapsed like a drowned ship rat. From there he had wandered blind, no scent trails to follow, no elders to guide the way. He didn’t keep track of the time he spent searching.

And now the little snow snoot was being followed by an animal he did not know. A strange, threatening figure in the shadows. They travelled downwind and so their scent was unknown to him. He turned each time he heard their footsteps, and most times saw nothing in the dim light. But every time he heard them again, the sounds were clearer. He turned again, and this time there they were at the edge of the trees. A horrible creature with gnashing jaws and scratching claws. A monster. A demon. For the little bird, a sure spectre of death - the thing every creature instinctively fears, even though it is the only thing they are guaranteed. The little snoot was more tired than he ever knew he could be, but still he ran to escape the evil thing. His calls grew shrill, his voice hoarse but desperate - a final cry for help. The evil thing followed, its footsteps skittering as its claws hit the hard frosted grass blades. It was only evil from one perspective, for certain. Its own mind was far from the ethics of the situation. It too was hungry. It was in the final stretch and about to pounce, sink its fangs into the little snoot, feel the blood run and know it would be well-fed tomorrow. The snoot wasn’t anything more than prey. This small but formidable bumblebadger was a solitary predator forged to kill through tens of millions of years of adaptation, and to relate to the perspective of its victim assuredly did not even occur to it.

But this was not how all creatures viewed their worlds. Some species, relatively blessed, get to lead less chaotic lives. They do not depend on a daily rut-and-kill to fill their stomachs. To survive, a social animal which cooperates to survive and forms lasting social bonds has to exhibit empathy - an ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another creature. And in a few special creatures, this ability extends past the species barrier.

The little snow snoot’s world was closing in as the bumblebadger gained on it. Mom wasn’t coming, and hope was fading. But it called out one last time anyway, as the snapping jaws ripped a feather from its tail. It couldn’t run any longer… it was time to give in.

But just before he does so, a low rumble from ahead reverberates through his entire body, like the purring of a cat the size of a forklift. The sensation is familiar - it is the gentle cooing his mother does to comfort him as he lays close against her body in the cold night. A reassuring lullaby. Could it be her, after so long?

The response to his cries gives the snoot a jarring shock of hope, and just enough adrenaline to keep going. He narrowly misses another bite from the badger, still gaining, and chirps out again as loud as he can until his voice cracks. The rumble returns, but something is wrong now. It is far louder, more intense than his mother. It is not coming from one animal but many. The ground practically shakes beneath him, and his relief turns back to fear - yet the badger feels it too and is equally disturbed. For a moment both animals pause, too unsure to run ahead, an intense detente, until the huge, hulking forms appear from the trees. Humongous trunk-birds, close to a thousand pounds each, and there are a dozen of them. They were most certainly not his mother. They were not snow snoots, but mammoths.

Their appearance humbles the bumblebadger, which raises their hackles and hisses, giving the snoot an opening to get away, and the lost snoot runs toward the giants equally unfamiliar but not yet proven so immediately threatening. The mammoth trunkos approach in turn, lowering the volume of their coos now that they can see him, until it sounds much like his mother again - low and bubbly, soothing and warm. They gather loosely around, towering over him, each leg nearly as wide as his entire body, yet they don’t frighten him. He chirps back to them, and tentatively first the matriarch, then her yearling offspring, caress the tiny chick with their long snouts. He is uncertain of them - their scent is novel, but it isn’t entirely alien, and their calls much louder than but similar in tone to those of his kind. Their touch however is exactly the same, and their soft plumage and the way they preen his face brings him the same sort of comfort. They are definitely not his parents, and he recognizes that they are not other snoots, but.... they are not that different from snoots, either. After being alone, any social group not instantly intent on making him their lunch is appreciated.

"Don't you ever talk to me, or my son, or my second son who I just met, ever again."

The cooing mammoths encircle him, each taking a turn to pet the strange, weary child ever so gently, fully aware of their huge size and compensating for it with slow, ginger movements. The young ones among them are particularly keen and curious to examine the stranger, if somewhat less gentle, occasionally knocking him off his feet before getting reprimanded with a shove by their own parents. Never do more than two of the adults look away from the badger that still lurks at the periphery, staring it down with fearlessness in their eyes. They have a deep hatred of flesh-eaters, for though they have few threats themselves, many will go after their young ones, and they won’t allow it to get this youngster even though it is not their own. Fully aware it’s lost its chance and conceding its loss, the badger gives up the hunt and skulks away. Most hunts fail, so these circumstances are not particularly unusual to the predator, and they will simply try again the next day. Their life depends on it, always has and always will. For the snoot however, the circumstances are extraordinary. For ten minutes or more the mammoth trunkos examine the lost child, and then the first of the herd begin to move back the way they came. The chick, for his part, has by now come off his adrenalin and fallen down in the moss, and is much too tired out to even stand back up. The matriarch turns back, seeing the young one staring back at her with his bright, but tired eyes. Without missing a beat, she gingerly picks him up, wrapped around the torso in her trunk. He chirps quietly, but not in fear, as she tucks him gently against her throat and unfurls a pocket therein hidden that folds around the chick in a comforting embrace. He snuggles there into her feathers and falls asleep, lulled by the rocking of the matriarch as she walks and her low warbling purrs. She carries him there, in her incubation pouch with only his head exposed peeking out below her throat. She now treats him as her own.

~~~

Little moments like this, insignificant in deep time but meaning everything to those individual lives they involve, are not as rare in nature as we might expect. Animals, particularly highly intelligent and complicated forms as are so common now in the Ultimocene, are not robots. They have emotions, and they can care for others. The mammoth trunko is an extremely intelligent and social species which survives through intensely strong lifelong bonds and cooperation - all of the individuals in a herd protect the young and are eager to nurture them. Adoption of lost, orphaned mammoth trunko chicks is virtually universal, and their instinct to care for young is so ingrained that it is occasionally triggered by child-substitutes from other animal species. Trunkos have diversified and evolved so rapidly in evolutionary time that even quite divergent species retain a lot of common attributes of behavior and vocalization allowing some degree of interspecies communication. The mammoth trunko is a particularly varied species, with distinct dialects and widely varying appearance, so it is possible that they simply mistake orphans of other species for aberrant members of their own species.

It is perhaps more likely that this very smart animal is fully aware that the snoot is not a mammoth trunko, however, but that she simply does not care. She sees a helpless child and is drawn to assist, as are most humans if they come across orphaned baby animals, even animals that resemble them very little. It may even be that smaller trunkos like the snow snoot innately trigger maternal instincts in the mammoth trunko, for their features are extra compact and cute like those of their own very young chicks, thereby functioning as a superstimulus and making them extra especially attractive to protect and to nurture. Inter-species adoption is very common in captivity, where animals are often removed from the stresses of life hunting and surviving in the wild, but it occasionally occurs in wild animals. In most species where this occurs the relationship may be well-intended but rarely lasts; carnivorous circuagodonts adopting and raising orphans of herbivorous related species instead of killing them, only to have the young hunted by unrelated carnivores after leaving the foster parents’ care come to mind. Yet the mammoth trunko is not only a particularly eager adopter, but an effective one. Perhaps due to their close-knit social nature and great size, and the generalized diets and behavior of most other trunkos, the survival of interspecies adopted chicks is no lower than that of their own offspring hatched within the group. The behavior could be described as relatively common - as many as ten percent of mammoth trunko social groups can incorporate one, or sometimes more than one, trunkos of other species, and it is not unheard of for more than one adopted species to be integrated into the herd at one time. These adopted orphans will often fully imprint on their foster species and, if they are also social, prefer their company to their own species even as adults.

There is surely an individual advantage for a small snow snoot to live among a herd of the largest trunko species - there is nowhere safer to live, and these individuals are very safe from predators versus others which do not have such protective families. But for the species as a whole it is a detriment - adopted chicks don’t generally reproduce because they are isolated from their own kind both physically and behaviorally, since they take on the dialects, mannerisms and behavioral cues of their foster species and may not even recognize their own kind when adult. Fostered trunkos of other kinds are much more likely to try to mate with their foster species than to seek out their own, the results of which can range from comical failure where the size difference is vast to the formation of occasional hybrids for less disparate-sized species, even from some trunkos that are quite divergent in appearance and niche from the mammoth. For the mammoth itself, the laws of nature would suggest that wasting resources on offspring of completely different species is detrimental to them and the behavior should be discouraged, or at least not remain in the population at high levels. Yet all mammoth trunkos willingly adopt, and most adopt unrelated species as readily as their species. Perhaps because the mammoth is so large, has few threats versus smaller species, and eats such a wide diet that food scarcity is not a regular concern, the extra time and energy devoted to raising random orphans is simply not a major detriment, or is perhaps even outweighed by the benefits these young often provide to the herd’s own youngsters, which take great interest in helping to raise the smaller adopted kids and in turn practice parental skills they will need as adults. Indeed, after an initial introductory period, it is often the yearlings and other adolescents too young to have their own offspring which become the primary companions of these interlopers.

~~~

The little snow snoot sleeps for a very long time in his new mother’s pouch, and when he awakes the sun is high in the sky and the mammoths are grazing on a wide grassy plain. Rested, he takes his chance to jump out as she lays down on the grass to digest, and tentatively sniffs around his new home. The young trunkos come round to greet him as they would a newborn of their species, and now familiar to their scents and sounds, he responds by pushing into one with his side; an invitation to play wrestle. This behavior means the same thing for both species, and the much larger, older trunko chick agrees to play. She is aware of her size advantage, and so rolls on her side to allow the little snoot to get the upper hand. She flops around on the ground as he jumps on top of her and bites playfully at her neck, allowing her small playmate to win the mock fight as she would her own little siblings. They tussle for a while until this game becomes boring and they decide to play chase. The adults look on as the chicks play without a care in the grass, jumping and rolling - all of them now equally their own. It’s just a little moment in time, to be forgotten all too soon. But it is everything to them now.