The Sealumps (Continued)

This entry was written and illustrated by Troll Man

Nearly five million years have passed since the first trunkos plunged into the oceans to escape the lands blighted by an advancing wall of icy doom. These first sealumps discovered a veritable paradise where food remained plentiful year-round, where the weather never got too unpleasant, where their numbers could grow exponentially. Hundreds of thousands of generations of sealumps thrived as the mile-high glaciers pushed ever further south, destroying tens of thousands of square kilometres of continental habitats. In five million years, the continents have been rendered all but uninhabitable, with nearly all terrestrial life pushed to the equatorial coast as the ice age reaches its apex. Survival is harsh, and competition is fierce as life is pushed together into ever closer proximity with fewer and fewer resources, but such changes happen on timescales so vast, few individuals would ever know of a life possible in better times.

As the seas grew ever shallower, with more and more of the world’s waters locked up in ice, the entirety of the oceans now never plunge deeper than one or two-hundred feet except in the lowest trenches, ensuring that light will always reach the seabed. From space, the sea flushes green with underwater vegetation, a thin band of shimmering emerald surrounded on both sides by a shell of white. Even in the midst of a seemingly endless and ever worsening winter, the seas remain lush and fertile, and the sealumps have quickly diversified into a number of species, successful even as life as a whole struggles to survive. Alongside the dolfinches, eargills, and sea mittens, they are one of few bird groups which have managed to completely sever their ties with the land, and now grow in size unimpeded, adapting into efficient swimmers far surpassing anything that evolved in terrestrial ecosystems.

Dazzled Sealump (Carnatonatator albovirgatus): Trunkos remain successful throughout the Mid Ultimocene through the development of a fleshy, muscular pouch on the underside of their neck which could be used to carry their eggs and young around, eliminating the vulnerable sedentary nesting stage. In sealumps, this was eventually refined further; by retaining the egg in an airtight pouch, they no longer had need to even return to land to breed. No longer physiologically restricted by the need to move on land, they honed their anatomy to live entirely in the water. Their legs turning into broad flippers, their bones becoming denser to help maintain buoyancy, their bodies becoming increasingly streamlined, and the limb bones broadening and stiffening for greater propelling strength underwater, now making it impossible to walk on land. Hips broadening to allow greater range of movement for the limbs, while their beaks lengthened and became more squared-off to better clip underwater grasses and algae facedown. Now able to grow as large as food supplies permitted, they could develop huge guts to more efficiently process aquatic vegetation, making them the most effective marine grazers of the ocean age. With merely two or three million years, archaic semi-aquatic trunkos had become all but extinct. A drastically rapid evolutionary jump, but pushed by similarly drastic climactic changes, they could fully take advantage of a new and food-plentiful habitat where they had little competition.

The dazzled sealump is a direct progression from the ancestral sealumps, now weighing over a ton and propelled by lobed flippers more than ten feet across. When a female sealump lays her single huge egg, the male sits right behind her, ready to catch the egg in his pouch (if there are two eggs, which occasionally occurs, he can catch the second with his trunk to keep it from sinking and then place it in the female's pouch). The egg will remain there for several weeks, replenished frequently by “breaths” of fresh air when the parent surfaces, to keep it well-oxygenated. Buried deep beneath several inches of insulating blubber, it is protected from the cool water outside. The male cannot dive during this period to avoid putting pressure on the egg, but can subsist on the canopies of kelp and free-floating algae species near the surface during this period. Female sealumps tend to grow somewhat larger than males, partly to help defend the male during the vulnerable brooding period. With no seasons at the equator, sealumps breed year-round, sometimes producing up to five clutches in a single year, but rearing of young to independence takes several years. The dazzled sealumps exist in herds of generally several dozen strong, sometimes over a hundred, consisting of several family groups congregating for safety and social interaction.

Many millennia ago, as gravediggers transitioned to a life spent entirely on the sea, they hunted the sealumps extensively, since their large size made them valuable for the quantity of hide, feathers, bones, fat-rich flesh, and oily blubber provided per animal, which were crucial for tool-making away from land and fuel for fire, and they were extremely numerous, spanning tens of millions in herds that could be thousands strong. Hunting of sealumps has reduced in e the present day, as gravediggers and daydreamers rely more on the colossal bloats for sustenance, which provided more than enough food and resources for the survival of gravediggers and daydreamers, though sealumps are still hunted occasionally. Nonetheless, modern distribution of all sealump species tend to centre away from cultivated, inhabited regions, such as areas closer to the continental coast and along the fringes of the Icebox Seaway, so that they will not compete with the much more specialized bloats and the greenskeepers, which range in more productive cultivated growing regions. Sealumps still remain highly successful, since the adaptability and generalist dietary flexibility of their ancestors have not left them, and so despite being forced into less optimal feeding grounds, they still thrive in the apex of the ice age.

However, in more untamed wilds, there are greater varieties of predators for which the sealumps are the most prized of prey, for no other marine herbivore gets as large, fat, and numerous. Although large jetguppies and sea shoggoths may occasionally take a young or weakened individual, their greatest threat comes from packs of predatory dolfinches. In the many millennia since the immense oceanic burdles, the dolfinches, previously largely restricted to piscivorous niches have become the apex predators of the seas, satiating themselves with red meat. Although not exceptionally large, and in fact significantly smaller than most adult sealumps, they are highly intelligent and always attack in numbers. These are the wolves of the seas, and the sealumps are their deer. But sealumps are no easy prey, for aside from their size, they understand the advantages of standing together in numbers.

The contrasting striped hides of the dazzled sealump meld together, creating a visually confusing mass as they close ranks when threatened. When one member of the group is attacked, other members will attempt to come to their aid, ramming attackers with their body weight in repeated blows. Dazzled sealumps have numerous pointed spines derived from keratinous filaments along their facial flanges, which they will use to slash at enemies. Although the spines are not very sharp, the force of a one-ton animal repeatedly striking flesh will nevertheless leave severe gashes and punctures. An entire herd attacking at once is a formidable force for any predators, so most predators resort to ambush on younger individuals, rushing in quickly and retreating just as quickly. Full-grown sealumps are generally much too heavy for any predator to easily drag away, and so mortality for animals past adolescent is low.

Sealumps breed and age slowly, taking up to ten years to reach sexual maturity, and as with all trunkos, they can only have clutch sizes of just one or two offspring at a time (as many as the parents together can hold). However, the social dazzled sealumps can overcome this partly by way of cooperative breeding. Adolescents from previous clutches remain with their parents for years after they’re able to care for themselves and help care for their younger siblings, allowing their parents to further reproduce and produce more offspring well before their current infant has become independent. Older offspring nearing adulthood may even be allowed to incubate the eggs within their own egg pouches, allowing parents to incubate even more eggs. This also helps pass on vital parenting skills to their offspring, which themselves must one day go off on their own to raise children in a harsh and ever-changing landscape.

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Great White Sealump (Carnatonatator immanis): An almost mythical sight cruising through the kelp forests is the ghost of the seas. The largest rhyncheirid that has ever lived, over ten metres long and up to ten metric tonnes, no other trunko even comes close; it is exceeded in size among all living animals only by the immense dolfinch bloats. Its huge flippers push the massive birds through the water, its front end stabilized by its broadened, wing-like flange extensions. Moving slowly and blimp-like just under the water’s surface, its size grants it a massive gut to best process vegetation, but in the process, the continuous gases produced by chyme fermentation and layers of blubber more than two feet thick affect the sealumps’ buoyancy and it has trouble submerging more than a few metres underwater. With the abundance of near-surface seaweeds and a powerful trunk capable of ripping up entire kelp stalks, this is of little consequence. An adult sealump consumes around two-hundred kilograms of plant matter a day, roaming far and wide to sustain its immense girth. Because of its substantial dietary requirements, it does not travel in great herds, existing only in monogamous pairs, sometimes trailed by one to three juveniles.

At such a great size, few predators can threaten a full-grown white sealump, and so the benefits of travelling in large herds for protection are greatly diminished. Travelling minimally in pairs or small family groups helps prevent from competing with one another for food while providing social interactions for the intelligent animals and defending one another from the very few predators that may occasionally attempt a hunt of such a large animal; attempting to attack two seventeen-thousand pound beasts at once is significantly more difficult than just one. Although lacking completely in sharp claws, spines, or speed, any direct blow from an animal this size is almost certain death for virtually all animals. Greatest mortality occurs in the first two years after hatching, when the animals are still relatively small and the parents can more easily lose sight of them. Past this age, the juveniles are well into hundreds of pounds in weight, and only exceptionally large jetguppies and packs of dolfinches present a threat to them anymore.

Sealumps can live for well over a century and breed very slowly; females will lay one or two gigantic eggs which can weigh nearly thirty pounds, among the largest eggs of any known animal, but minuscule compared to the size of the adults. In comparison to body mass, these are the smallest hard-shelled eggs laid by any bird, living or extinct (although these are of course beaten by the tiny, jelly-like eggs of metamorph birds). The hatchlings are only about one-six-hundredth the weight of an adult and remain with their parents for up to twelve years before becoming independent, at which point it weighs nearly four tonnes. Death for young chicks is likely, as the very small clutch size for trunkos (the neck pouch can only hold one egg at a time) combined with the slow maturation rate in a species as large as this makes protecting their newborn young for such a long period difficult. To compensate, sealumps breed continuously, often laying another clutch only a few days after their previous clutch hatches. It is not uncommon to see adults followed by a number of immature offspring of wildly varying ages and sizes. Similar to the closely related dazzled sealump, older chicks assist their parents in caring for their younger siblings; those chicks raised in the presence of at least one older sibling have greatly reduced mortality rates. Chicks grow extremely quickly on a nutrient-rich regurgitate the parents spit up for their newborn, consisting of a mixture of semi-digested plant matter and probiotic secretions from the inner lining of the crop which builds up their gut biota and immune functions. Like most birds, sealumps feed their young mouth-mouth, although the presence of muscular and flexible lips here, which forms a suction seal to prevent food from being lost in the current, makes it seem the parent is kissing their young.

Great white sealumps, although travelling nomadically in small groups, are highly communicative animals, their great bellows travelling for miles through the water and incoming signals picked up through sensory hairs on their face, allowing the animals to communicate with one another from great distances. Great white sealumps often travel alongside groups of smaller sealumps, especially newly independent subadults recently separated from their parents, which is mutually beneficial. Sealumps are all closely related enough to share social cues and physical recognition of their common ancestry and so the white sealumps can fulfill social needs with a related species, while the presence of such a huge beast amidst their numbers is a significant predator deterrent. The great white sealumps are more than just a passive discouragement, and will actively defend smaller sealumps of a different species from hunters. Whether this is genuine empathy extended towards a distant kin or some misplaced parental instinct (or both) is uncertain, but either way, the smaller sealumps are grateful to have such a helpful bodyguard around.

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Duckbilled Sealump (Muscapennus caerulodorsus): Although most sealump species have forsaken the lands entirely and grown increasingly massive to increase grazing efficiency and avoid predation, one species has gone in the opposite direction. The duckbill sealump is the sole remaining “archaic” sealump, retaining the ability to walk on land and breeding in colonies on the shore, overall changing relatively little in millions of years. In fact, it is smaller than the ancestral sealumps, reaching only up to five-hundred pounds rather than eight-hundred, and seldom ventures into the open ocean, foraging in shallower depths rarely deeper than twenty or thirty feet, where larger predators are scarce. Far less bulky than either its ancestor or its more specialized marine relatives, it can easily out-swim the few predators it does encounter, while on land, they can quickly waddle into the water to escape terrestrial predators. Although it retains the ability to walk, its disproportionately huge, lobed feet make it difficult to move swiftly on land, so it rarely ventures more than a hundred metres inland.

By foraging in the shallow depths, it avoids competing with larger, more aquatic sealumps in deeper waters, primarily feeding on the low-growing billowing sea bamboo which carpets vast areas around the coasts. Although terrestrial bamboos have been extinct for millions of years, below the waves they still proliferate in nearly endless quantities, providing limitless food for the duckbilled sealumps. Their muscular flanges sift away the sand as it feeds, exposing the sea bamboos’ starchy rhizomes, which are more nutritious than the fibrous leaves, although all parts of the plant are usually eaten. Duckbilled sealumps, like many plant-eating trunkos, are not purely herbivorous and will opportunistically supplement their grazing diet with small benthic animals, such as crustaceans, bivalves, and sea snails, the shells of which are easily crushed by their broad, flattened beaks, adapted for grinding up vegetation. Duckbilled sealumps are extraordinarily shaded, even among trunkos, sporting red, golden, evergreen, and even bluish hues across their body. Trunkos have no direct mechanism, pigment-related or structural, to produce blue colours, because their feathers are very simple in structure, and it is an illusion produced by semi-translucent, greenish-grey filaments over its dark skin.

Duckbilled sealumps breed on land, but due to their smaller size, are more vulnerable against land predators such as bumblebears, carnackles, circuagodogs, cutthroats, and plague-like swarms of nightbiters. In this time of cataclysmic climate upheaval, many hunters have become increasingly opportunistic in order to survive. Even herds of thorngrazers, forced down from the inland steppes and tundra will kill and consume young sealumps. This has led to most colonies of duckbilled sealumps on the continental coasts being extirpated over the last few millennia as fewer and fewer young survived constant raids by increasing numbers of predators. Despite this, overall global populations are booming, particularly on islets and crags out in the ocean and along the Fringes, where few aside from large sea ravens and occasional snowscroungers which have reached the islands via ice bridges, and these are of little threat, even to healthy chicks. Being the only semi-terrestrial grazers on these islands allow them to graze the land vegetation unimpeded; once an island is depleted of its edible flora, the sealumps can simply graze in the seas or scrape the algae off wave-blasted beach rocks until the grasses on land grow back.

Breeding on land allows the parents to keep their offspring safer for much longer than the fully marine sealumps, leaving their chick behind in the collective protection of a nesting colony (since sealumps are intensely social animals, other herd members will generally defend even unrelated individuals or even animals of other species) where it can grow larger and stronger before taking its first dive. Despite their “primitiveness”, the duckbilled sealump remains successful long after all of its relatives have abandoned life on land, partly because as global cooling continues to freeze the world over, the seas get ever shallower, opening up more and more optimal grazing lands for the species and increasing their range, and partly because as semi-terrestrial animals, they can subsist partly on land flora, avoiding direct competition with both terrestrial herbivores and seagoing herbivores, especially as dropping sea levels reveal more islands which they can use as further nesting colonies.