The Woolly Wumpo

The woolly wumpo is the largest living land animal upon Serina 270 million years PE, a huge trunko bird weighing as much as 2,200 lbs and standing up to eleven feet high. It is also one of the most intelligent. Descended from two ancestor species, it is an example of hybrid speciation. As habitable land shrunk over the past five million years and habitat boundaries became less distinct, the wump (Proboscirostrus reductus) experienced a significant population decrease. Surviving individuals grouped together with the closely related but more social mammoth trunko (P. socialis) taking advantage of the latter species’ innate tendency to adopt other animal species into their social groups. Mammoth trunkos’ multi-generational herds, led by the oldest and most experienced animals, were behaviorally better at finding limited resources in the worsening ice age than single wumps. Wumps, being adapted to survive hostile desert environments with extreme temperature swings and scarce food and water, were physically better adapted to endure extreme conditions. Over several hundred thousand years the two species introgressed, cross-breeding in their mixed-species groups until the population as a whole was intermediate between both species. As the mammoth was the more numerous, they contributed a larger share of their genome into the hybrid species, about 80%, with the genes they introduced including those for their larger body size, larger brains and associated abilities, and highly social behavior, as well as the larger pointed defensive claw on the innermost toe which was used for self-defense. The remainder came from the wump, their contributions being primarily physiological traits associated with digesting limited food intake with maximum efficiency and reducing water requirements, as well as the wump’s higher endurance and stronger sense of smell. With their powers so combined, the wumpo was better-adapted than either of its ancestors to survive in the ice age.

The specified woolly wumpo "Blaze" represents her species here. Though average-sized, she is not as big as they come, but her silhouette is sized to her specifically.

This new trunko species has been distinct from its predecessors for some 2.5 million years, and so has had substantial time to evolve new adaptations of its own. The wumpo has fully feathered legs like the mammoth, and a fat-storing hump like the wump, but unlike either of its ancestor species also has a completely feathered face and trunk to avoid frostbite. It is bigger than the wump, and though in line with the average mammoth, the largest wumpos exceed the largest mammoths, as bigger bodies are easier to keep warm in the cold. The body plumage is very long, more than either parent, and generally grey like the wump. Though they are primarily herbivores - and with the wumps’ big fermenting stomach can eat some of the least nutritious dead and dried up plants - they are nonetheless omnivorous, and will eat certain small animals opportunistically, as well as scavenge certain types of carrion.

These trunkos are especially intelligent and have advanced vocal language, spoken largely in infrasound that would be below the hearing range of most smaller animals - generally only instinctive distress calls are high enough to be audible. Their language is designed to be able to convey even abstract ideas, and like bluetails, wumpos use names for one another, but in their case they are always either descriptive, or symbolic - indicative of a much greater understanding of hypothetical constructs. Their behavior is more reasoning-based than instinctive, being malleable and flexible to suit changing circumstances, and they exhibit their own concepts of morality which strongly influence their behavior. They are therefore a clearly-defined sophont species, one in which all individuals demonstrate personhood. Wumpos are different from other Serinan sophont species however, and still similar to their mammoth ancestor, in being rather non-innovative. Though they utilize tools, they do not generally make them. They find them pre-existing, things such as large branches or rocks, in a way that non-sapient animals are also capable. Wumpos are neophobic, wary and avoidant of trying new things, and have maintained a very static culture for millions of years as they do not easily discover new solutions to old problems. Wumpos are not as good at quickly learning new things or solving unknown problems and spontaneously coming up with solutions as the other sapients they are contemporary with, and in this way compare to the bluetailed chatteravens, or even to greenskeepers’ near-sapient ancestors, the luddies. To other sapient species, they might all have been described as primitive, and technologically this is true for all three, but compared to either of these other examples the wumpo stands out in one particular way. While bluetails are aggressive and driven by instinct in most realms of their lives, and luddies were child-like and impulsive, wumpos generally have very good control of their own emotions and impulses, and are excellent at reading and responding to those of others. They most often have calm and stable temperaments. They are excellent at resolving conflicts and show a great deal of patience. Wumpos managed to unite their entire species under a singular umbrella, that which they call their wide and extended family, more than half a million years ago and so avoid in-fighting all but completely. In the past the family would have comprised over 300,000 individuals and surely been an impressively cohesive group, but today it has shrunk; their population is currently only a few hundred individuals - and even this is near the maximum that the limited land area available to them is able to support. Their species has been in a slow but steady decline, as they face competition with thorngrazers for increasingly limited habitat, and they are now a very homogenous and closely related lot, which has increased the expression of normally rare genetic mutations such as white-spotting, heterochromia (eyes of different colors) and albinism within the population to unusual levels.

Though wumpos, living in their herds on the land and eating mostly grass and other low-growing plants, may seem simpler than the sea stewards who engineer the ocean ecosystem and create boats and clothing and weapons, they still have a creative and imaginative mind. They understand representative art, which for them mostly consists of crafting fiber dolls for their children and drawing in the snow or sand with sticks. They also have religious beliefs used to explain phenomena in their lives and the natural world, and have created them in an effort to make the unknown understood and lend comfort to mysteries such as what happens at death. Some of the wumpos’ cultural norms may seem rather illogical, for even when faced with constant pressure to find enough to eat, they will never consume the bodies of meat-eating animals, or what they call “biters”. Though this may initially have sprung simply simply enough from the unpleasantly strong tastes associated with carnivores’ flesh, the wumpos now believe that such animals, believed to take their souls in life, if eaten will take over their own spirits and turn them into “biters”. Though disgust at eating carnivores now seems a superstition without logical justification, there may be some truth to the belief, as thorngrazers - super-omnivores that eat nearly anything, including meat and their own dead, are host to prion-like diseases - mutated, misfolded proteins that may occasionally jump species and infect other animals which feed upon them. Such illness could turn gentle trunkos savage with confusion as their brains are infected and cause dangerous and uncharacteristic behavior - attacking and biting other trunkos. An ancient cultural memory associated with such an outbreak, perhaps even before the wumpo species was distinct from its near-sapient ancestor, could have led to the modern aversion.

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There is an occasional phenomenon in the woolly wumpo, which was not known in the mammoth trunko or the wump, known as wide-mindedness. Wide-minds are individual wumpos with a neurodivergent mentality that is generally less fearful, more innovative, and faster at solving problems than other wumpos, even from a young age. They are very rare, approximately one in 50,000-100,000 births, and the genetics behind them are complex and do not follow simple dominant/recessive inheritance, so that the trait does not perpetuate from one generation to the next. They are very uncommon today with the total wumpo population so reduced, yet enough have been born in times bygone for them to be immortalized in stories and recognized, prophesied, and revered in wumpo society, unlike in bluetail social organization, where such a thing is so rare as to be entirely unrecognized. Wideminds are similar to the seers of daydreamer ancestors that eventually led to a full sophont species, and to the curious case of Brighteye - a singular sapient individual of a non-sapient species - but in their case they are treated as a natural variation of their species, celebrated and important to their societies. Such individuals through history were often responsible for improving the quality of lives of their people during their lifetimes by coming up with new solutions, new tools or new practices that then spread throughout the population and became normalized. Without occasional wide-minds, wumpos would likely never progress as a society at all.

There is only one wide-mind alive today, the elder Blaze of the Coastthorn Herd, who is widely applauded and credited across the family with helping free her people from the threat of predation, but they would not have been alone in the past. There would be multiple alive at any given time in most past generations, and those living close enough to learn of the others would meet whenever possible and so cooperate with their efforts to improve their people’s lives. Though wide-minds are “faster-thinkers” in the words of their people, they do not view themselves as superior or more adult, because all adult wumpos are equally emotionally mature and equally able to care both for one another and themselves, so that wide-minds do not view their counterparts as child-like or less adult, merely less skilled in one specific way. There is an emphasis on every individual having their own strengths and weakness in wumpo society, and wide-minds simply have their own special strength. With such a large support network, wide-minds thus most often led happy and productive lives, and unlike Brighteye, they frequently became mates with neurotypical members of their kind, raised offspring, and lived fundamentally normal lives.