Alternative body plan

Because of this, their ancestors have had part of their tongue and their upper sensory organs turn into manipulators along with the beak, and their middle eyes move deeper into the mouth area. This way, they got to solve more complex tasks and get into more difficult food items. Any branches can also be grabbed by the big jaws to move the body elsewhere, and a practiced individual can use their head and body motion to launch themselves a great distance onto a different surface, ideally catching onto something with their beak for support.

The head, while large, isn't too massive. The vocal organs take up most of the skull space, meaning majority is filled with air while the rest hosts complex nerves, eyes, muscles, and mostly hollow bones (they are stronger in the jaws). The true brain is in the chest.

So these skulls aren't as heavy as they seem.

And about Neal- He's the worst example for the species because he barely has any basic knowledge of the species.

Being raised by slomen and being very insecure about his appearance and behavior, you will never see him actually use his head to do anything, and to him, it only gets in the way and frustrates him. It is probably his biggest insecurity.

He did use his jaws as a baby, but as a witch, he did get some motor issues, making him very shaky while holding anything in the beak and putting pressure on it. He now hides this well, but also has comparatively extremely weak jaws.

His actual way of manipulating the world is with his hands, like slomen. This is not unique to him, uniima can use their limbs for things, but discriminate less between front and back limbs. They do this more for support than the default though, none of their hands have opposable fingers, and their large claws get in the way (and heavily arboreal communities don't want to risk losing them).

Neal doesn't have functioning claws. They were gutted at a very young age. For the same reason, he's also missing some fingers.

They come from temperate climates, where they roam the forests, eating animals of many sizes (usually based on pack size). Most often, they are seen in pairs (commonly of siblings), but this rule isn't unbreakable. Sometimes, packs reach over 6 members that stay together for a long period of time before they eventually separate into smaller groups. This adaptability might be why their domestication came quite naturally. From the bobole's point of view, slomen might have been great hunting buddies.

Bobole are intelligent hunters that rely on visualizing the path of their prey more than on communication between members. This makes them both adaptable and stubborn when working in bigger groups or with slomen. The usual strategy is for one individual to stay low, watching the target, while others chase it in the other's direction. The unmoving bobola waits for the moment the target is close enough to strike it. In case it fails, the one chasing will still be available on the other side to mayhaps save the hunt.

With smaller prey, they can be useful chasing the target for slomen too. But with their stubborn attitude toward their technique, it's more common for them to help keep the watch on prey and track it.

In an active hunt, the slomen direct the bigger prey to the usually-larger-breed bobola to deal the first hit, keeping the animal in grasp for a person to kill it with a weapon.

Some breeds are very territorial. For this, you will rarely see them in Ciwa, where you could consider them outlawed. Not because they could hurt a person, but because a kula could be at risk. The sacred feral population must live on.

Unlike a dog, bobolas are not as flexible to train. Little funny tricks are meant for a kula. These orbs are loyal and follow direction, but they take a lot of time to do their natural behaviors in ways most useful for people.

The easiest is for them to protect family members from threats, which is why many cultures have at least one devoted to the household kids and follow them on their mischievous journeys even when they sneak around the adults. Of course, one must establish what a threat is early on. Nobody wants an anxious bobola who bites their aunt.

In some regions, if you were to visit a village, chances are you would see them sitting by every third settlement, either sleeping or watching you. Sellers might even take them to the markets to keep thieves away.

Now, you might find these orbicular animals somewhat similar to the put-tut, but they are hardly related. Bobola are actually genetically closer to the 'slomland' bird than to slomen themselves. Just like with the raptorial shape before the mammal overtaking on earth, the upright biped is popular with convergent evolution. However, since vertebrates of the continent don't have true tails to balance them horizontally, most bipedal animals here keep their head high.

This character is the ruler of the aforementioned "city" in their younger years. Before Hydra (the heir) was born, they were a source of small legends, very capable in their deeds and words, even if it rarely benefited the average folk. They would spend long days making art, especially puppets, commissioning tailors for the clothing and metalworkers for the joints. Those puppets would often take the form of people and ideas, including personal deities (like the one in the background of this image). Before this. - They learned the craft of making. . Then they mastered it. Sculpted the image of the perfect heir, or maybe themselves? . They made what was on their mind. An heir who lived in the real world. Their skill started slowly failing them. . Then they only made. They didn't remember what, but they made it. They made it as many times as they could. Until it was the last time. -

Hydra only ever got to remember them as they were during their mental decline. Others had to tell Hydra the stories of that past glory, if those were even true.

Here is an approximate scale compared to a human. Important to remember- while slomen are humanoid, they are smaller than humans.

Species info:

Sky uniima are primarily an arboreal species that mainly lives on a single large forested land with many surrounding islands. While their range is much smaller than that of land uniima (a distantly related species of sophont), their specialisation allows them to occupy the more extreme parts of their biosphere and spread all over there.

Sky unii generally build smaller societies with unique languages/dialects and cultures, even when these settlements aren't too far apart. Still, in modern times, cooperation is highly encouraged in the more politically active areas. This isn't an issue for most, as uniima have an extraordinary sense for picking up languages. Sky uniima learn new tongues especially well, even in older age, and many more-traveled ones can speak over 10 separate languages.

Their way of speaking is through the crest, creating multiple 'simpler' sounds at once. Unfortunately, they can't mimic other sophont ways of speech very well like this. Writing is the best next thing.

Sky uniima also show emotion using sound. This tune comes from the base of the crest and can be heard over speech. To our ears, it might appear like a humming/rattling sound in a chamber, but we would have a harder time separating it from other noises. The secondary way of emoting is the stretching and inflating of the facial markings.