The Noot

Noots are a specialized species of Teuthaves, descended from the terries and an ancestor similar to the polymorph bird. They are primarily similar to other tentacle birds of this grade, with shaggy brown coats, largely featherless faces and strong hind legs with three toes. The noot is distinctive for its lack of facial tentacles, however - six ancestral appendages have fused over evolutionary time into one highly elongated, fleshy mouth, with just two small lobes at the distal end of the jaw. Beneath this mouth, the noot's skull is equally aberrant, its jaw being very weak and the bones of both upper and lower mandibles reduced to thin, barely mobile rods of bone that extend only one third of the way down the snout. These adaptations have occurred as a result of specialization toward a diet few other softbilled birds utilize, but many other avian clades before them have - ants.

Using an enlarged first digit on either foot, the noot - which is a shuffling, reclusive dweller of northern tropical forests - kicks and claws open rotting logs to access ant's nests. Its bizarre snout is extraordinarily flexible past the point where the underlying jaw bones don't reach, reaching into the log and "kissing" everything it comes across to pull in the nutritious larvae via a suction mechanism. Down tunnels too narrow for the snout itself, the noot sends in a sticky tongue more than twenty inches long to pull out the rest of the nest. Like ancient and unrelated shimmersnoots (which were vivas), noots have evolved thick, beaded protective skin over bare faces, while their thick plumage extends down to their toes to provide some degree of insulation against the biting insects defenses.

Like other teuthaves, noots are intelligent and to some degree show complex social behavior, particularly around parenting their eggs and young. Males and females are monogamous and cooperate to incubate only a singular egg in a simple scraped depression in the forest. If disturbed by a predator, they are able to quickly scoop up their egg with their dexterous mouth parts and carry it against their chins, where a small fold of feathered skin keeps it secure while the adults flee. Both sexes are devoted parents and care for the chick for a prolonged period, and are highly affectionate. Social bonds in this species are maintained with mutual grooming, which looks like kissing, where one individual pecks another repeatedly over the head or neck with the lips. Such actions serve to strengthen pair bonds and familial connections, while also removing parasites from one anothers' feathers in places they can't reach on their own.