The Solitary Sophont: The Boundary Tree

265 Million + 2000 Years

The gravedigger (Decipulaformus inimicus) is a solitary sophont: a sapient animal with a comparable capacity for complex thought to human beings, yet with a very different mind from most of us. Whereas humans evolved to live in cooperative social groups to survive, gravediggers evolved to live and hunt alone, finding more success in closely guarding available resources from others of their kind and partitioning the lands into territories owned by a single individual. They are thus extraordinarily territorial by nature as adults, though they do not begin life this way. Young gravediggers rely on the care of their mothers for almost everything, but rapidly learn survival strategies and cultural knowledge from her and as they reach adult size around one year of age begin to distance themselves from their parent quite willingly; there is very little outward aggression from mother to offspring as occurs in some solitary species such as bears and wildcats when it is time for the young to be independent, namely because of physiological changes in the juvenile which occur before the mother is required to act. The adolescent gravedigger’s solitary instincts develop first as a sort of social anxiety, triggered by changes in the brain, particularly in the concentrations of the hormone mesotocin produced. Mesotocin is the avian analogue to the hormone oxytocin in mammals, and both hormones induce pro-social, bonding behaviors in their respective animal groups. Young gravediggers have high mesotocin levels and show well-developed social behaviors, play, affection, and distress when separated from their parent - all typical hallmarks of social species. Yet around one year of age they experience a sudden and dramatic shift away from pro-sociality and become much more isolationist, the result of crashing mesotocin levels. In a developmental milestone comparable to human puberty, juveniles around this age soon become disinterested in social play and uncomfortable around and avoidant of other gravediggers, including the parent that was until then the only social bond maintained.

This time in the individual’s life is known as the dispersal period and lasts from six months to as long as eighteen months, during which time they often travel long distances alone from their birth territory (particularly males) and are forced to pass through or along the borders of possibly many other adults’ territories to do so. Adolescents during their dispersal periods avoid other gravediggers almost phobically, but they will not develop their aggressive territoriality until they establish a territory of their own, which triggers a secondary puberty that is two-fold; only now do the gonads develop, and the gravedigger becomes sexually mature. At this age, triggered by the settling down and guarding of a territory, the brain also begins producing a larger concentration of the stress hormone corticosterone, making the gravedigger much more aggressive toward rivals in order to effectively defend their land. This period is known as settling. Apparent physical markers coincide with changes in the structure of the brain during settling, with the color of the feathers now losing the orange hue all gravediggers are born with. The change of coat colour both directly reflects the stage of development of its owner and also influences the behavior of others; adult gravediggers - even males that do not take any role in child rearing - are relatively tolerant of these transient orange-coated juveniles and generally allow them to travel through their lands to establish their own territory provided they do not overstay their welcome, but once juveniles take on the black and white coats of settled, territorial adults they will be treated with intense hostility.

Social interaction in settled, territorial gravediggers manifests in them as intense anger whenever two adults are in close visual range of one another except during brief periods when a female is sexually receptive to a male and the drive to procreate temporarily overpowers all other instincts. Their response, while largely innate and controlled by their hormone levels, is nevertheless graduated; a distant rival along a territorial boundary, easily spotted thanks to their bold warning patterns, elicits only a mild reaction; erected plumage and guttural warning calls which serve very well to keep the parties at a safe distance from each other, whereas sudden close conflict triggers blind rage and a physical confrontation - perhaps a fatal one - is certain.

Because of their instinctive territoriality, gravediggers’ brains operate differently from those of social sapients, including humans and the extinct fork-tailed babbling jay, which had also evolved more convergently alongside the former. Gravediggers do not require social interaction with other gravediggers after adolescence to lead fulfilling lives. They are able to focus on apparently menial tasks, such as digging trenches, for very long periods without apparent boredom and develop strict routines, sometimes to a ritualistic extent, resulting in highly structured day to day lives with very little variety, yet they often have a lot of free time to fill with unnecessary activity as well and will include this in their routines. While young dispersing gravediggers must focus almost entirely on finding a suitable land to claim and upon avoiding others of their kind, with food hard to find and free time virtually nonexistent, settled adults have it a bit easier; the majority of their time is devoted to patrolling and protecting the perimeter of their territory from rivals, with catching food relatively easy and requiring only a little daily effort once a number of effective traps are constructed. As a result settled adults do have free time, and often engage in playful or creative pursuits to keep themselves entertained in their alone - but not lonely - lives.

Gravediggers amuse themselves in a wide variety of ways, yet their primary methods of finding food - building traps from raw materials - also lends them toward less necessary creative pursuits in the form of wood carving and even illustration. Though cultural transmission is slow in their species and primarily carried down matrilinear lines, many gravediggers draw and may even represent abstract concepts symbolically by scratching or painting with soil-based pigments symbols into trees and rocks along shared territorial boundaries. Over time these boundary markers can even develop into a crude social media system that allows multiple gravediggers, which meet at these same boundaries and add their own marks to them, some social interaction without ever having to confront one another. Gravediggers can transfer cultural skills laterally between adults via boundary markers, as one individual may copy another’s art. Among the most common motifs expressed and those often created first as an individual is learning to express themself artistically are self-portraits, with the stylization being limitlessly varied from highly abstract to very realistic renditions. These drawings in turn give other visiting gravediggers information about their neighbor, and it is very common for gravediggers sharing a boundary to communicate back and forth continuously with illustration in this way - a shared language through which ideas and at times even real-life information can be expressed over days or weeks, such as announcing the birth of offspring, the killing of a mutually disliked enemy, or a warning of danger. When one gravedigger dies or is otherwise cast out from its territory, its longtime neighbor may even feel sorrow at the loss of what had become like a pen pal - a long distance friend that, though they could never meet face to face, had nonetheless become a regular part of their life.

above: a mother gravedigger demonstrates the skill of scratch-drawing to her young offspring in the bark of a boundary tree: a marker demarcating the boundary between her territory and that of another gravedigger owning the land on the other side of it. Following their mother's movements closely, the young one draws a similar stylized self portrait, facing against one drawn by the neighboring land-owner. The mirrored portraits lie among other, older scratch marks from both adults depicting enemies and prey - sketches of the antlear people and a herd of trunkos - seen across both of their territories.