Serina: Manbird (Patreon)

A giant, ground-dwelling ornkey that has adapted to a high-browsing niche, this is a massively built biped, standing over ten feet tall and weighing up to a ton. It has retained the muscular and lengthy forelimbs of its arboreal, clambering ancestors, which are now useful for hooking down tree branches, or as defensive weapons against unruly predators, since adults are far too large to ever climb any tree. Almost exclusively folivorous, it has developed a huge gut to process its vegetarian diet, giving them a pot-bellied appearance, and thick, pillar-like legs to support its huge bulk. Due to its build and size, it is not at all fast, but its massive curved claws and great height are ample deterrents against predation.

The species has a very unique, upright body shape which makes it easily identifiable from any other animal that has existed on Serina. As the animal strides across the land, it seems to echo some strange uncanny movement of a creature that once existed long ago in another world. However, its leafy diet does not afford it much brainpower, and it has otherwise far simpler behaviours than its appearance might seem to belay. Largely solitary, but not territorial, they spend most of their waking hours searching for fresh vegetation and following the patterns of ripening fruit. Being so large, they have little to fear from most predators, and therefore receive little benefit from strong social connections of their smaller relatives. Females can form loose associations with individuals that forage in the same general region, occasionally grooming one another, but males are territorial and avoid other males. Contrasting bands of plumage on its face and upper body allow the animals to easily visually identify one another from a distance, while deep booming infrasonic calls can travel through miles, and can be picked up by nearby individuals through the fatty pads of their feet.

Young are altricial and held in pouches underneath each arm for the first few months of their lives, fed on regurgitated slurry by their mother. This is initially a type of fatty, nutrient-rich crop milk, which is rich in probiotics to establish vital gut flora and strengthen immune function, and gradually adds in more and more semi-digested plant matter to prepare the chicks for an adult diet. Within six to seven months, the offspring grow large enough to periodically climb out of the pouch and cling to the thick feathery coat of their mother. By ten months they begin to climb down occasionally to walk on the ground with an awkward quadruped gait; it usually takes more than a year before they are able to walk upright and no longer need to be carried around or fed as much by their parent. Independent adolescents favour the deeper forest and often form creches with similarly aged individuals before they grow large enough that their size alone can defend them; at this stage, they remain relatively lanky and can still climb trees to escape predators, although if there's nothing climbable nearby they can also run with surprising speed on two legs, although not with any gracefulness. The sight of the strange upright avians fleeing alone has been known to momentarily confuse and frighten predators simply for how such a gait is unknown in any other contemporary fauna.