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DragaFlammis [2020-05-14 00:58:20 +0000 UTC]

Does Polly want acupuncture? I'm at a loss for these creatures' ecology but they sure are neat!

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Nortstar [2020-04-29 18:25:46 +0000 UTC]

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GersifGalsana [2020-04-29 13:09:58 +0000 UTC]

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CyberCorn-Entropic [2020-04-29 04:59:41 +0000 UTC]

Clearly, convergent evolution works in really strange ways, sometimes.  It worked for echidnas, hedgehogs, and porcupines, so why not a bird?

Throughout the U.S.'s early decades, lumberjacks made their mark upon the wilderness.  To pass the time during lonely nights and explain the strange sounds that abounded in the wilderness, lumberjacks created tall tales of over-the-top phenomena and strange creatures, the latter affectionately dubbed "Fearsome Critters".  These Fearsome Critters included such things as the Hidebehind, which no matter how a person turned, was always right behind them; the Agropelter, mysterious arboreal creatures that dropped "widow-makers" (dead branches that fall out of trees, risking injury or death to any lumberjack unlucky enough to be underneath them); and the Philamaloo Bird, a rheumatic bird that remedied its disdain for the cold and damp by flying upside-down.

An early Fearsome Critter was the Parrupine, allegedly North America's third native parrot species, along with the Carolina parakeet and the thick-billed parrot.  They were described as the offspring of a porcupine and a parakeet, possessing a thick mat of quills on their backs they could drop on the heads of unwary lumberjacks or perhaps shoot as porcupines were reputed to be able to (actually, porcupines can't shoot their quills).  However, they were terrible flyers and thus were also very rare, to the point that lumberjacks soon invented other, more interesting critters and left the parrupine to fade away and be forgotten.

No one ever expected the parrupine to be a folk memory based on a real bird that had already been on a sharp decline by the time European settlers came to North American shores, and was likely extinct around the time lumberjacks started their chopping.  After all, feathers that have evolved into quill-like structures don't fossilize well.  The cause of their extinction is uncertain, but likely related to the same poor flying that drove the evolution of their "quills".

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abrahamjones [2020-04-28 20:50:30 +0000 UTC]

No predators, not one.

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mortalshinobi [2020-04-28 20:16:01 +0000 UTC]

nice work

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bhut [2020-04-28 19:33:42 +0000 UTC]

Makes as much sense as anything.

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