100,000 years ago, a gravedigger of the far north did something unusual when he befriended a pair of strange birds that had been following him for some time, pestering for scraps. For days he had tried to make them get lost, turning around and chasing them into the distance. He couldn’t keep up long, though, and as soon as he tired, they returned and walked a few meters behind him. He eventually grew apathetic to them, and then almost began to appreciate the company. A life alone on the tundra, even for a hermit-like species like this, was for some a lonely one. If nothing else, the birds would provide entertainment to a repetitive day to day grind. His most recent kill - a thorngrazer - was indeed so large he would probably be unable to eat it all before he had to move on anyway, and if something else had to eat his leavings, well then it might as well be these harmless trunked chickens and not the packs of circuagodogs that would take his every last kill if he didn’t keep ahead of them. So he shared the least desirable tidbits, luring the small but intimidating-looking trunkos close and tossing them the scraps. They picked up the bits of meat in toothy, hooked trunks, turning intelligent eyes to him after they swallowed each grisly gobbet as if asking for another handout. They were about the same weight as the gravedigger but differently built; long and lithe to his stout, muscular form. Even in a pair they couldn’t take him in a fight, built to run instead of battle. And anyway, they had no reason to attack him; it was in their much better interest to be polite, as he was providing them free food.

The jackal carnackle, a smaller and more cold-adapted species in the same genus as the grisly carnackle of more southerly latitudes, was a smart animal, knowing a good deal when it saw it. They were naturally the most predatory trunkos, their group having begun evolving down similar lines to the now nearly extinct grapplers as carnivorous tentacle birds. Though they still ate plants, they had evolved as the most active hunters of any trunko and for more than one million years had specialized toward hunting and killing small terrestrial animals, particularly molodonts, to survive the increasingly cold climate, as such food was much more nutritionally dense than any vegetation and provided many more calories per ounce. But the jackal carnackle was opportunistic and so also quickly learned that following larger, stronger, but slower carnivores was an even easier solution to finding food in the hostile tundra. They began trailing the great, bone-crushing bumblebears across the frozen north, feasting on their scraps and using their great agility to avoid falling into their unwitting host’s jaws themselves. And soon, the gravediggers too were determined to be a suitable host, for though they were small creatures they also held the means to collect great quantities of meat. Yet they defended it better than other hunters, and would rarely let them take any at all. So the carnackles learned to be patient and friendly, manipulating the hunters to share just a few pieces. Novel behaviors entertained the gravediggers and brought more to eat. They did tricks. And soon the lines blurred between just who was manipulating the other. And it didn’t matter. A partnership had formed.

Jackal carnackles were monogamous and mated for life. Pairs naturally hunted cooperatively, one frequently flushing out small prey into the jaws of the other - and so were predestined to also work together with the gravedigger. Not only were they evolved to work socially to find food, but they were intelligent enough to return a favor. Pairs of carnackles which bonded themselves to an individual gravedigger helped defend their kills from third-party scavengers and soon also proved their worth in helping obtain food, doing just as they naturally did together by directing prey into ambush. Working with the gravedigger - a skilled hunter that used the uneven tundra terrain to his advantage and working in pitfall traps, snares and triplines - the carnackle’s quarry were no longer limited to the small creatures they could catch and bite themselves.

Now they could harass the herds of large grazers, animals many times their size who they could never bring down alone, and worry them. The herds would view them only as an annoyance, but would be distracted from their surroundings - and that was what the gravedigger needed. They’d try to move away, not watching closely where they were going, as the carnackles snapped at their heels like poorly-trained lap dogs targeting the paper boy, until the prey ran right into the gravedigger’s trap. The quarry now restrained, injured or otherwise unable to escape, the gravedigger then burst from cover and bite out the unfortunate prey’s windpipe, if it were necessary, or simply began to gnaw at the hindquarters if the crippled prey was not able to bite or kick out defensively in its compromised position. All three shared the spoils, as everyone had played a part, and if any one of them tried to dominate the carcass then next time it would more than likely find itself hunting alone and much less successfully. The partnership also increased the odds of success when hunting the same small prey that the carnackle naturally fed upon; stronger and a capable digger, the gravedigger didn’t need to rely on catching the quick-running molodont prey as they darted above ground but could break into their burrows, while the nimble carnackles intercepted any of them that got past its jaws and bolted for cover.

At first the ancient gravedigger and his two bird sidekicks were a novelty, the only such oddball assemblage of hunters on the entire tundra. But while the gravediggers hated one another, the carnackle was a social learner and others quickly caught on, tagging along with their own gravediggers which, at least sometimes, would gradually learn the benefits of working together too. This was not domestication, where one dominant species controls another for personal gain. The jackal carnackle was equally in control of the dynamic, choosing to work with the gravedigger. The gravedigger might have been somewhat smarter, or at least more capable of self awareness, but the two species were equal, autonomous partners that chose to work together for a common goal. And so the behavior spread and became commonplace over 100,000 years without any physical changes in the carnackle, for it remained wild. Just how the partners - always a gravedigger and a mated pair of carnackles - viewed one another was hard to say. At first it was a marriage of convenience and interactions tolerant at their very best. Yet over time, bonded groups let their guards down and became almost affectionate, with the carnackles nuzzling and grooming their solitary partners as they would their offspring and the gravediggers coming to enjoy the interaction too, sometimes even reciprocating. As their kind elsewhere found in the antlear people, the tundra gravedigger found an outlet for repressed social instincts that they could not fulfil among their species with another.

Yet the jackal carnackle never moved south, to places where the gravediggers began to settle down on plots of land and ceased to follow the herds. It was not in the carnackle’s nature to rest. They were nomads by heart and by instinct. It was only during the short polar summers that they briefly slowed their travels, bore their young and temporarily parted ways with the gravediggers. Summer was a time of abundance, and neither species needed the other’s help now. Perhaps this was how it was always in the southern lands; friends by convenience, in a more plentiful world maybe gravediggers didn’t need carnackles and carnackles didn’t need gravediggers. Or maybe it was the grapplers, which clung to life longer in the warmer regions than the poles, that for so long excluded the carnivore trunkos from extending their range. Whatever the reason may be, this remains a partnership unique to the far north, and is unknown to gravediggers elsewhere.