#volucri

Manticores hunt similarly to Komodo Dragons; they sneak up to prey and stick their venomous quills into it. They then follow their prey until it succumbs to the venom's effects, and finishes it off by crushing the windpipe with their jaws, dragging it up a tree to eat in safety.

A little larger than a house cat, they have quills on their tail and base of the neck, and the oil follicles excrete venom that runs through small grooves on the quill. The venom is a depressant, and causes paralysis and hallucinations. It takes around an hour to take full effect. If you manage to get to safety or the manticore can't find you the venom will wear off in about a day. They are immune to their own venom, but distant subspecies of manticore may or may not be immune to each other's venom.

Manticores eat medium to small animals from deer and insects to foxes and skunks. They rarely attack animals that are likely to attack them or be defended by pack mates, as manticores aren't strong enough to defend themselves or fast enough to run away (their top speed is around 15mph, and they can't maintain that speed for long.) One of their favorite prey items is livestock because they are stuck in a small area, so they don't need to be tracked far. They are easily dissuaded by guard llamas.

Notably, unlike Cetaceans they lack sophisticated sonar and long-range vocal communication underwater. Instead they use their well-developed eyes and whiskers to sense movement in the water and their high-contrast, expressive faces for long-range communication.

Their "ears" aren't external ears, but rather structures modified from external ears used for communication.

Their scars lacking pigment mean different things to different pods, usually the more scars one has the more experienced they are, though in pods with less competition for resources scars may mean recklessness. Some pods practice scarification as body art, others may look down on this practice.

Here's a post about how having a pigment condition affects an OC, Oratio.

Here's a post about scarification for Sea Sirens.

Their genus "Enhydra" means "in water." The only other extant member of their genus is the Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris). Their specific epithet "sicuthominus" means "like man" or "similar to humans" referencing their human-like appearance.

Sailors would confuse Sea sirens resting on rocks as half-fish half-woman mermaids. In some places they are still referred to as "mermaid" or "merfolk."

Here's a diagram for how the confusion happened (imagine you've been out at sea for weeks and are also drunk out of your mind)