The Antitan: Monticarpus gladiocornus (sword-horned mountain-devourer), from “Serina: A Natural History of the World of Birds.” Artwork by Dylan Bajda.
An unexpected predator of incredible size that eats among the littlest of foods.
“An immensely large Serinarctan giraffowl that reaches a height of 35 feet, the antitan is second only to the starscraper of Serinaustra in body size. A descendant of the skreehonk on a continent where giraffowl are still scarcer than in the south, this rare example of its kind in the region is extraordinary for its size even exceeds the size of some cygnosaurs. Only the gigantic ridgeback cygnosaur is unquestionably taller, though many are heavier. A lack of a tail means that length measurements, of course, are far less impressive, but compared to other giraffowl this one is stocky and sturdy with a long back and heavy-set legs. It reaches a weight of 10 tons, rivaling the lankier starscraper that exceeds its own height by 16 feet thanks to its own stilt-like legs and short body length. This is a size larger than the atrocious crossjaw and the cutthroat subjugator. And that matters because though it appears herbivorous, the antitan feeds mostly not from leaves, but on ant colonies it grazes from the branches of cementrees, making this animal and not those others the largest land carnivore in the entire world, if only by technicality. The antitan is the largest ant-eater ever to evolve, like a whale that walks the land, sustained in life by countless multitudes of some of the smallest of animal prey. It was once a browser, feeding on vegetation, but as cementrees spread widely over the plains, it became more efficient to focus their efforts on the branches that held the protein-rich insect's nests, until they eventually consumed vegetation purely to access this richer diet. Now, the adult antitan is exclusively dependent on spire forests and sky islands for nourishment, for the ants that collectively build and maintain these terrestrial reef-like ecosystems are the only food supply big enough to support their mass.
It feeds by gouging the inhabited upper portions of younger cementrees with its solid head crest, which works like a pick to excavate holes in the walls and access the nutritious larvae within. Its narrow beak then probes into the holes it creates, and a tongue that stretches five feet out of its jaws rapidly flicks in and out of the narrow tunnels through the structure, collecting vast quantities of insects which it swallows whole. It feeds continuously through the day, consuming some 350 lbs of ants in total every day - up to 50 million of them. It wanders constantly to new feeding sites, digging a new hole, feeding on all it can in several minutes, and moving on, which prevents total extermination of the colony and allows it to recover. Limited by its neck length, an adult can rear on its hind legs and prop itself up with hooked scales on its forelegs, but is still limited to a height of around 42 feet and is much too big to climb. So it aggressively cuts down the tops of cementrees that it can reach, slowing the spread of sky islands outward and keeping a supply of food accessible for it to return to later, once the cementrees have healed themselves. With each individual needing so much food per day, the antitan is solitary and territorial, driving off rivals from their feeding grounds and each requiring up to 25 square miles of prime territory in sky island-rich regions to find enough food. But where sky islands are rare or have already grown to heights where they are mostly out of reach, antitans may require up to four times as much territory to find the same amount of food, and may cross 40 miles per day in their trek to find it. Males and females come together only to mate, with males attracting females with bellow-like long-distance infrasonic calls that can carry for a mile in air but over 30 miles as vibrations in the ground. These rumbles also serve to keep away unwanted rival males. Females may mate as often as three times a year, demonstrating a very rapid cycle and high reproductive output even compared to the cygnosaurs that share their domain.
As giraffowl, female antitans rear their pupa in an abdominal pouch, keeping them warm, moist, and safe from most predators. Their pouch still opens forward in this species, unlike the skybreaker clade in Serinaustra. While those species have evolved backwards pouches so that pupa can be deposited directly inside as soon as they are born, antitans and their other relatives in Serinarcta must gently transport their pupa into the pouch opening near their chests by using their mouths. This is made somewhat easier by the presence of a newly evolved secondary placenta that surrounds an entire clutch of developing larvae in the mother's uterus toward the end of gestation, so that the whole lot of them - up to forty - are held conveniently in a sac that the adult can grasp in its beak and carry around to the pouch entrance after birth. Also unlike southern giraffowl, mother antitans continue to provide care to their young for up to six weeks after birth by permitting them to return into the pouch at night to roost. Though the pheasant-sized young are fully independent and able to fly and hunt small insects within two days of emerging from their pupal cocoons, they continue to return to their mother to sleep for as long as she will let them, which is typically until she has produced a new clutch of young and then seals her pouch to exclude them. Then they will settle onto the forested summits of the sky islands, remaining there for several years until they are too big to fly and eventually too big to easily climb, forcing them to descend down to the ground. Throughout the entire life cycle, insects make up 80-90% of the diet, though when very young they hunt all kinds of them and only transition to ant-eating when several years of age. Grown adults still consume some vegetation, but it may be incidental when collecting ants instead; their stomachs are small and have become inefficient at getting much nourishment from leaves, and these materials are passed in their droppings barely digested at all. They also feed on small animals that do not get out of their way, including nestling birds like mowerbirds, tree lumpuses, and small molodonts.
The mature antitan's large body size and formidable crest, which is suitable as a weapon, might be enough to deter even large predators. If this were not enough, however, the animal is poisonous, rare for a creature so large as itself. A diet of primarily huge masses of ants and their own chemical defenses has allowed this bird to sequester toxic alkaloids into its own body tissues, rendering itself foul-tasting. Its diet also provides a much more active defense. It stores excess formic acid, another chemical produced by its prey, in a pouch in an upper stomach chamber and regurgitates this foul-smelling, highly concentrated acid at predator's eyes and noses if threatened, potentially causing disfiguring burns and eye damage. Dragons may not be real, but the antitan's toxic acid spit may be the closest thing to fire breath, and deters even the most ferocious predators from coming too close. It takes several years for this defense to become significant in the young antitan, but development of it correlates to the time they begin to descend the islands and come down to ground, where they are more vulnerable. By 3 years of age, most have sequestered enough chemicals from their diets to utilize it sparingly while adults that eat such huge amounts of ants day in and day out have an all but limitless supply, leaving them one of a few animals with no natural predators as adults. Predation on the much more fragile flying juveniles by just about any small carnivore, and limited territory that can support the caloric needs of the adult, control their numbers instead.”
