Komu Ka Bawe

Disclaimer: The Komu Ka Bawe is a fictional animal from Keenan Taylor's Tales of Kaimere.

## Cladistics

### Synonyms

Synonyms: Titanophon

Video on the Topic: Dinosaur Kings of Kairul Part I: The Titan Slayer, Komu Ka Bawe

## Description and Biology

Komu Ka Bawe, also known as Titanophons, are massive eudromeosaurs which resemble a mix between a cassowary and a large theropod. In adults, they average around 4-6 tons and are specialists of large game. Males and Females show little sexual dimorphism, an odd trait for a flamboyant animal, but these flaps of skin serve less as a display feature, and more as a warning sign, as well as a reliable method to shed some heat.

A komu ka bawe stands it's ground ferociously against a megaraptoran despite being at a size disadvantage- Shiny Gander
### Tail and Claws

Being a dromeosaur, Titanophons have an enlarged and curved 2nd toe claw, however, due to their size and niche change, this claw now only serves to hold down prey while they killed with massive jaws.

To accommodate the fact that they were now too heavy to balance at the knees, yet had already atrophied much of the caudofemoralis muscles which gives large theropods their powerful stride, Titanophon tails became extremely long and they built up a substantial fat reserve at the base of the tail, which shifted their balance back to the hips. Their bodies are still a bit tilted, a relic of their ancestral configuration, but as happens all the time in the natural world, they made do despite a suboptimal form.

### Teeth and Hunting

Like Cockatrices, Titanophons have flat serrated teeth for cutting flesh and bone, however, as this is their only hunting strategy, this trait has been taken to an extreme within the species. the teeth of this lineage became trapezoidal for three cutting edges. Like the now-extinct carcharodontosaurs, their backs developed tall neural spines to secure enormous muscles. They don't have particularly powerful jaws, but retaining their hip flexibility and having enormous back muscles meant they could slice through hide, muscle, and even bone with a few tugging bites. This weapon is poorly suited to grasping smaller prey, and even prey their own size are sometimes pulled along rather than cut through, reducing the efficacy of their weapons.

 This is, however, an excellent weapon to be used against the most abundant large herbivores of Kairul, and something so large that their mass makes a shearing tugging bite extremely effective: the titanosaurs.

A pack of Titanophons tackle a subadult hoplotitan- Keenan Taylor, Color by ShinyGander

## Ontogeny and Social Dynamics

  Like kairulan megaraptorans, titanophons are quite good parents. Mothers and their sisters will closely care for the hatchlings for the nine months, but stop regularly feeding them once they lay the next year’s clutch. By nine months the young are several hundred pounds. They subsist primarily on small game in their mother’s territory, often the lizard and mammalian potential nest raiders. In so doing, they help protect their little siblings and get paid in small game, and living with two to five enormous theropods means threats to the young avoid this territory. Unlike megaraptorans, which take up to fifteen years to reach maturity, Titanophoneus don’t reach maturity until the age of five. They are typically chased out of their natal territory at three, which is when they pass half a ton of weight and experience a tremendous growth spurt. Before this growth spurt, their overall built is much more reminiscent of conventional eudromaeosaurs: their sickle claw is elevated and lethal, they make full and proper use of their knee-centered balance in being extremely agile, and their teeth have a standard knife-shaped morphology well suited for grasping struggling game. During this juvenile stage they hunt a wide range of prey. After being chased off, they develop macropredatory specializations. Their toe shifts to weight bearing, they bulk up to shift back their center of balance, and their teeth not only reduce in number, they lose grasping capacity in favor of broad slicing surfaces.

   Once they are no longer defended by their mother and aunts, they have to grow fast. Megaraptorans that catch them go for the kill. They are vulnerable to their prey at this stage, and their new suite of anatomical adaptations are poorly suited to catch prey they have prior experience with. While megaraptorans have a long childhood observing their parents and steadily working their way up to large prey, titan slayers are thrown into the proverbial ring with little experience and have to figure it all out fast. While packs are chased from their mother and aunt’s territory in numbers ranging between ten and fifteen females, it is not uncommon for there to only be three to five by the time they reach physical maturity and actually establish a territory.

Titanophon Ontogeny- Keenan TaylorA mother/aunt titanophon keeps close watch of her relatives- ShinyGander
### Males

Males have a tougher gauntlet than their female counterparts once driven off. Their drive to be dominant over cooperative means they regularly fight and bicker with each other. While their juvenile packs also number between ten and fifteen when chased off by their parents, their fighting often turns lethal. Subordinate males quickly flee for their own safety, and the bickering of dominant males gets so violent that a love survivor or pair is established in blood within a few months. This experience not only helps them establish a territory in adulthood, it also prepares them to fight off megaraptorans. Robust monarchs of the Kairulan forest often outweigh the largest titan slayer by several tons, but these kings prefer to settle their own scores by intimidation, so an experienced titanophon can be surprisingly efficient in defending his territory: as a megaraptoran inflates their chest and spreads their arms to brandish claws nearly a meter long, the giant cockatrice simply charges and goes for the throat. As a single bite and tug can red open jugular and windpipe, megaraptorans are well documented to stand down with a charge. They do sometimes hunt and kill titanophons, and they certainly are the dominant predators in terms of number, but this aggression especially from male titan slayers has helped keep the species from being eliminated. It also helps that they don’t target the same prey, so the two species can coexist in an albeit tense condition in a way that other large predators have failed to do in the advancement of megaraptorans. Titan forests tend to have more titans than a lot of the megaraptorans preferred prey, which further favors the survival of titan slayers. The clade has lost several genera and their range is smaller than it was before the arrival of the robust monarchs six million years ago, but Titanophoneus proves the legacy persists in specialists and through such ecological focus stability can be found.

## Phylogeny

During the Tyrant Dynasty, derived tyrannosaurids were the top predator. In their shadow, alongside young tyrants, several predators served as their ecological vassals. When the tyrants of Kairul died, forests were the domain of the cockatrices.   These cockatrices quickly became massive. As they were already at the upper limits of what anatomical features set cockatrices apart, such as compromising tail strength for agility and the use of their formidable toe claws, their bodies rapidly took on the form of a more conventional large theropod.

## Human Relations

When discovered by naturalists, Juvenile Titanophons were assumed to be a completely different species, sharing a strange symbiotic relationship with Komus, however, it is now known that despite their glaring differences, they are the same species.

## Redesigns

The Komu Ka Bawe has had one redesign.

original design of the Komu ka Bawe, alongside other scrapped designs for kairulan mega predators- Keenan Taylor