The Truculent Bumblebear

The truculent bumblebear is the apex predator on land 265 million years PE, a title it gained after the climate-related extinction of similarly large grapplers. A native of the wide and open harp steppe biome, it is also occasionally found in the southern reaches of the tundra, though it does not extend its range very far north to where snow accumulates considerably. An eight-foot tall, nine hundred pound wall of muscle with a jaw force of 1500 pounds per square inch, this extraordinarily powerful bumblet is the largest ever to walk the land. One of several large bumblebadgers known as a bumblebear, this species is in fact more closely related to the gravedigger than to any other species with this term in their name and fundamentally shares the same anatomy, only scaled up almost twenty times. They also share the temperament, being exceedingly dangerous, very solitary, and downright deadly if confronted by any other carnivore they coexist with.

Truculent bumblebears are hypercarnivorous and can only digest meat. Their lower intestine is very short, and their teeth blade-like, serrated and adapted into steak knives to slice through muscle and ligaments, while the jaws are remarkably strong and able to crack into bones as thick as a thorngrazer’s skull. They are eager scavengers, with a keen sense of smell and an open septum, like a vulture, that improves their perception of scent molecules at long distance. They are also dreaded kleptoparasites that can dominate almost any other hunter off a kill except for the largest circuagodog packs due partly to their size and partly to their fierce demeanor, and indeed they attain more than half their food by stealing. Yet with long legs well-suited to traverse the open grasslands and surprising stamina, these giant predators can also catch their own prey, favoring large prey but indiscriminately consuming virtually any animal they can subdue, even small molodonts that provide little more than a snack. Adult thorngrazers of most species are too tough and thorny to easily subdue, particularly in groups, but their young and adolescents are a favored prey species and the larger trunkos are also hunted frequently. While most bumblebadgers are fundamentally forest animals, this species is adapted to run on the open plains and so avoids the closed spaces of the southern forests as well as the cactaiga, meaning it does not frequently meet the woodcrafters and so has not been subject to predator eradication programs. As such, it has no natural enemies.

Thoroughly intolerant of others of their own sex, truculent bumblebears arrange themselves in territories that can extend past 300 square miles for males, roughly 100 for females, with each male territory covering small portions of as many as ten female territories. Both males and females fight aggressively if others dare to cross territorial borders and with no natural enemies; intraspecific conflict is the leading cause of death for both sexes, though total adult mortality is fairly low and the majority of conflicts do not end in death.

As with gravediggers, these larger relatives come together only to breed. They have evolved clear courtship signals to communicate sexual receptiveness at a distance. Males produce explosively loud, thunder-like booming calls as they patrol the boundaries of their territories which draw in females in season. Receptive females respond with a rolling trill, while disinterested females will bark at the male very much like a large dog and threaten him to leave her land with aggressive postures. An unusual behavior occasionally documented is sexual cannibalism. While rare, some female bumblebadgers not actually interested in mating will present themselves to a male as if wanting to mate, only to attack and kill him when he is in a compromising position; this is likely a way for her to protect her offspring from infanticide and most often occurs in females which have actually already mated and will soon give birth. It may, however, merely be an opportunistic way to simultaneously eliminate a rival and feed herself for a number of days.

Female truculent bumblebears give birth to one to two - very rarely three - offspring at a very slow rate of only every three to four years. The primary threat to the young are adult males, with very little otherwise capable of separating them from their parent. Truculent bumblebears do not have sexual dimorphism however, and so males are not more powerful than females, meaning that most young survive to independence, which occurs around three years old. At this time unfortunately they are subject to intense hazing from all adults of their species until they can find their own territory; it is during this period, cut off from their mother’s aid but not yet fully grown, where mortality is highest, approaching 60%.