Spearing Spardi

The Spearing Spardi split from its ancestor, grew in size, and became a “seaspardi”. With the oceans full of small piscine fauna, such a niche was relatively wide-open. It flies over the open ocean in search of prey, and when it sees an appropriately-sized shadow near the surface it dives into the water, preparing to spear whatever it is with its long, sharp lateral mandibles. If the shadow turns out to be something it cannot eat, such as a nautstar or a flutterworm, it will quickly swing its lateral mandibles away so they don’t break on impact with the shell. Otherwise, its lateral mandibles are driven into the unlucky creature by momentum, and the spardi then flies back out of the water with the prize. Afterwards, it looks for a place to land--such as a beach, a Jester’s Helm, or some type of amphibious flora--and lands there so that it may remove the meal from its mandibles and eat it. If it has babies, it will take its kill to its nest instead and feast with its offspring.

The Spearing Spardi’s babies are small and pseudo-radial. They are helpless and completely dependent on their parents for care. Their small size and helpless state is required as a result of the Spearing Spardi’s skinny anal arm, restricting the width of its birth canal, and flight ability, encouraging it to have smaller and therefore lighter babies because of the weight added by pregnancy. However, its weight restriction is less significant than its birth canal size restriction, so to make up for how weak and helpless its babies are, it can have upwards of 50 babies at a time. The vast majority do not survive to adulthood. It will give birth to these in a nest, which can be either an entire floating Jester’s Helm which it will defend from predation, or a nest of its own construction located on either a beachside cliff, some type of beach or amphibious flora, or on larger floating flora such as the Crystal Gondola. Nests of its own construction are generally made from leaves taken from various violet flora, and in some parts of its range it may fly a short distance inland to collect nest material if there isn’t any on the beach.

With how far apart individuals can be due to their broad range, the Spearing Spardi has developed a call to assist in finding mates. It can produce something like a whistling sound from its lower pair of nostrils. Like other Stinzers, its respiratory system does not run through its mouth; however, this did not stop it from finding a way to use its tongue to adjust the sound of its whistle, as pressing its tongue down compresses the lower breathing pipes. It is able to adjust the pitch coming out of each nostril independently. In a world with little existing song, its sounds are highly experimental and tend to vary across the population, from long dyad chords with little variation to more complex, though not necessarily pleasant-sounding, melodies. So far its vocalizations only serve to help it find a mate, but there is certainly potential for it to develop further.

Like its ancestor, the Spearing Spardi is a heterotherm, able to maintain warmth in its wings during flight but needing to bask in the sun before takeoff. On the ground, it is an obligate biped, shuffling around on its wings. Though not visible in the image due to its pose, it retains the vestigial raptorial arm. It mates by holding hands with its tail-like anal arm, giving birth to its pseudo-radial babies through the rather long and narrow birth canal.