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Description

The Noot is an ant-eating teuthave bird, related to the ancestors of trunkos, that lived in the Early ultimocene. It was done on commission by Disgustedorite

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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.

Read on at the Serina site - sites.google.com/site/worldofs… - and consider supporting me with your own commission or month to month on Patreon to help me produce more spec stuff - www.patreon.com/sheatherius

Description

The Noot is an ant-eating teuthave bird, related to the ancestors of trunkos, that lived in the Early ultimocene. It was done on commission by Disgustedorite

~~~

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.

Read on at the Serina site - sites.google.com/site/worldofs… - and consider supporting me with your own commission or month to month on Patreon to help me produce more spec stuff - www.patreon.com/sheatherius