Gravedigger

The **gravedigger** (*Decipulaformus inimucus*), also known as the **southern gravedigger**, is a species of large, mostly-quadrupedal bird with an orange, black and white plumage and a short tail. The gravedigger originally did not exist, but has since been created by SciiFii and introduced across the world except the Arctic or Antarctica. The gravedigger is one of the only living members of the Decipulaforminae subfamily, which are most closely related to a widespread subfamily Carduelinae. The gravedigger is about 23-24 inches (58-60 centimeters) in length. Unlike most birds, their flexible weight-bearing wrists with two-clawed fingers replace the rest of their forearms and it lacks the ability to lay hard-shelled eggs, it instead gives true live birth similarly to mammals and some non-mammal synapsids. The gravedigger has been greatly modified physically and somewhat behaviorally from most birds; a stocky animal, about as big as a bulldog around 65-75 pounds (29.4-34.0 kilograms), it is not a fast runner, instead built for burrowing and feeding on carrion and small animals found underground. It usually does not catch a healthy large or medium-sized animal in a chase, and though it has a fearsome demeanor and a good ability to bluff its way into stealing other predators' kills, what really allows it to so suddenly appear as an apex predator is behavioral innovation. While other predators either evolved or developer sharper teeth, longer claws and other physical adaptations to catch their prey, the gravedigger developed a bigger brain with which it could then solve the problems of living in novel ways with tools and technique, without having to wait for evolution to reshape its body. It usually does not have to hide from its non-sapient prey because they does not regard the small plodding creature with the bold and easily seen spotted and striped coat as a threat; this allows the gravedigger to live among the herds, get to know their behavior and their routines, and to use it against them. Taking note of trails the herds took daily, while they bed down to sleep under cover of darkness it returns to memorized sites and digs deep pits into the earth with its powerful arm claws. It breaks saplings, using its powerful pseudotoothed-beak to strip the bark to a sharp point and partially burying these sticks at the bottom. Just before dawn, the sneaky hunter lines the pit with still more branches, overlaying with grass until the trap is virtually invisible. And then it merely wanders off. The herds of non-sapient animals passes by, uninterested. Unknowing. The gravedigger has never chased or harried them, so they pay it no attention as it follows at a distance behind them. After the surviving non-sapient prey all run away, the gravedigger emerges at the edge of a deep pit to find a very sizeable meal skewered like a kebab at the bottom of a hole that had not been there the day before. The gravedigger then comes down and eats the body of the prey that has fallen in the trap. The gravedigger is usually a solitary animal. Fiercely territorial, gravediggers of either sex only tolerates one another for the time it takes to mate when the call of passion temporarily overrides their innate drive to fight their own kind. This is a necessary change of of behavior, because a given patch of its natural forest environments can only provide so many kills, and there was originally no benefit to cooperating when one individual could build an entire new trap in a single night. But it also complicates passing down the increasingly complex behaviors that they had begun to rely upon, which had no ingrained genetic basis. The only meaningful social bond in any gravediggers' life that originally remained was, and is one of many social bonds they have in recent times, the one-year-long relationship between a mother and her single offspring. During this period of life a high concentration of motherly hormones releases after birth temporarily suppresses her natural territoriality toward her young and instilled a fiercely protective drive in her. To make the most of a short childhood, the young gravediggers had developed a particularly open mind to new things for the first year of life, where they can rapidly learn and retain information almost photographically. This way, their mothers can demonstrate all of the complex survival skills that they need to survive on their own as adults and the young can pick them up in just a matter of months primarily through imitation. During this window of development the young can soak up information like a sponge, and for good reason; after its first thirteen months of life, the gravedigger is virtually unable to learn any new skills it had not figure out before this milestone. As its mothers parental hormones dropped off, she drives it off into the world alone, and it would not form any lasting social bond. With luck it would learn all the skills it ever needs during his youth. Quite likely, while in this more curious mental state it would have also innovates its own new twists on its mother's behavior - things she would never be able to do, already set in her ways, that might make her techniques even more effective. It was in this way that gravedigger culture, just decades after the species' creation, spread very slowly, but cumulatively, over time. In more recent time, the gravedigger has become very social similarly to many other sapient species, and have adjusted to living with other sapient species, including humans. The gravediggers have a wide range of languages (including man-made languages such as English), cultures, religions, technologies, etc similar to those of humans and other sapient species. The conservation status of the gravedigger is **Least Concern** due to successful conservation efforts, the gravedigger's wide range and its tolerance to many of the human activities, including being able to work and live in cities and suburbs.