
Skunkatrice (Late Hothouse Age:290 Million Years PE) By Sheather888
Shattered Islands (Ansteva)
The skunkatrice is a large skuzzard of the shattered islands southwest of Ansteva. Its ancestors were creatures not terribly unlike the woozel, very reptilian skuorcs which evolved on Ansteva. But while woozels relied on toxic bites for defense, the skunkatrice's ancestors evolved an alternative discouragement to their predators in the form of noxious secretions produced from their cloacas. The first form of this defense would have simply relied on the animal's natural waste excretions to render it unpalatable. This would also be used to mark claimed land against others of its kind, and so the scent would be strong enough to persist and waft some distance, keeping rivals out of an occupied territory. Over time a large gland under the tail would appear which stored a separate potent secretion which combined the scent molecules and pheromones with an oil base which would linger for longer on scent marks than droppings. This also allowed for more specialized defensive secretions, as the chemical cocktail in the gland could grow more toxic as necessary to keep ahead of increasingly persistent predators into the late hothouse. It has reached its pinnacle in the skunkatrice, an animal which communicates almost entirely through its noxious scents.
Skunkatrices mostly resemble a woozel sized up dramatically. Their bodies are mostly covered in smooth scutes, but their backs, throats, and tail tips support bristling manes of plumage. Virtually mute, and with near-sighted vision, skunkatrices are extremely solitary and make rivals aware of themselves through their brightly contrasting patterns - visible even to weak eyes - and through marking their island territories with scent signals. They lift their tails and back up to trees, logs, rocks and other boundaries, spraying their messages - which usually say "stay away!", but can also be enticing to the opposite sex at the right time of year - and then brushing against the marks before they dry with their plumage. Now having marked both themselves and their surroundings, they will leave their scent trails on everything they pass against, scraping their feathers to leave more traces. They may even stand on their forearms alone to brush their tails against high branches, giving competitors the impression the leaver of these marks is much bigger than it really is. Where two individuals meet at the edge of their territories, they engage in fights of scent, flinging secretions from their tail tufts at one another from a distance. Two males or two females only argue this way, their scents vile and intended to overpower the other's and drive it off. But males and females may have conversations of much greater depth this way, flicking back and forth and exchanging information about one another like age, diet, and receptivity to mate. Females are larger than males, and if one likes what she is smelling, she will tentatively enter his territory, and he will dance around her slowly and elegantly. He raises his tail and his head at the same time, until his tail tuft tickles his chin, and he emits a quiet purring call, vibrating his throat. It is the only sound this species ever makes. If she is ready to mate, she will lay down beside him and mirror his movements. The two will couple and then part ways peaceably, and in several months, she will bear as many as ten small young which are independent from the start and retreat high into the forest trees before their own mother can eat them.
Though opposite-sex skunkatrices of the right mindset may not mind the scent, this species is so smelly that there is hardly anything else left which would still dare and mess with it. Growing to 60 pounds, it is a virtually unbothered species lacking enemies of its own, and though not especially large, it roams the shattered islands with impunity, eating whatever it wants with a powerful jaw that can handle almost any food - insects, smaller vertebrates, fallen fruit, and seaside refuse. It is especially fond of large carrion, which it readily usurps from anything it can harass into giving up its meal by flicking hostile-smelling secretions in their direction, driving away even much larger species that will take hours to groom the oil from their own bodies (and the scent will still linger for days.) But even the worst of the skunkatrice's offensive scent marks pale in comparison to its defensive ones. Younger individuals are more commonly preyed upon, but very occasionally an adult will find itself threatened by some foolish animal. Now the animal, having nothing to lose, will empty the entire contents of its scent gland with enough force to shoot up to 30 feet, targeting the mouth and eyes of its enemy. Though not fatal, and lacking any permanent effects, the odor of such a large discharge is incapacitating to even the most fearsome of predators and the oil the scent secretions are carried in temporarily blind them for hours as it dries and may bind their eyelids together until it can eventually be scraped away. The effect on the skunkatrice's would-be-attacker can be so powerful as to cause it to involuntarily retch and throw up its stomach contents. As it staggers away, the skunkatrice - an inveterate scavenger with very low standards of food - may happily eat what is left behind, gaining a meal in the process of self-defense. It must be cautious after releasing its entire store of defensive spray, however, for it takes a few days to regenerate in enough capacity to spray again. Thus, the skunkatrice does not typically use it except in urgent circumstances, for though it could gain some benefit in doing so at other times, it might be left vulnerable if it really needed the defense later on.