#handbats

[bolloria]

Found across East Utasha, the Foldear is a fairly large species of Handbat. It’s a woodland animal, preferring colder regions, and is very common throughout the northern taigas. Like all Handbats, the foldear is a carnivore. It’s capable of catching small prey in their long jaws, but hunting larger prey requires a more advanced method. Foldears are proficient climbers and will position themselves on a tree branch directly above their prey. They will then drop down directly on its back, bringing down any cat-raptor or breaking the spine of smaller jackalopes. The predator will then try to puncture arteries in the neck with their sharp thumb claws.

This hunting strategy is mostly deployed during the summer months, when medium-sized prey migrate into the Foldears habitat. During the winter, most prey are either small enough to be caught on foot or too large to be ambushed, and so attempts are only made out of desperation.

Foldears are primarily auditory animals. Their sense of smell is poor, and they're fairly near sighted. Their ears, in contrast, are huge and can pick up the heartbeat of even the smallest animal hidden under meters of snow. But, in the cold taiga, these ears radiate a huge amount of heat. A death sentence for anything as small as the Foldear.

To survive, these creatures will fold their ears in on themselves. This not only reduces the exposed area but also serves as a sort of blanket, trapping heat trying to escape. This has the added benefit of giving them an adorably puppy like appearance.

[bolloria]

Hidden in the densely vegetated eastern forest, the Glaring Spring Catcher can be found stalking small prey. Their senses are well developed, as evidenced by their large eyes and ears, though their sense of smell is notably less acute. They use these senses to locate prey, typically some sort of Ratbat, but this agile creature is known to catch anything it can get its grubby little hands on, even including flying bats and small dragons.

The Spring catchers preferred habitat is dense woodland, something they have found in abundance along Utasha’s eastern coast. The canopy here grows dense, and the understory is covered in bramble, giving the spring catcher practically unlimited hiding spots. Yet this only applies for the summer, as when winter arrives, the trees shed their leaves, and the forest weeds die back, leaving any would-be predator horribly exposed.

The spring catcher's solution is quite simple; hibernation.

It is one of only three hibernating handbats currently alive. The others being the grey bush catcher and Morgland craftsman. When summer ends and the day lengthens, the spring catcher starts preparing for the coming hibernation. This can prove futile when late autumn approaches and the mating season begins. Males can spend entire days fighting over females, burning through their fat reserves in the process.

The vast majority of males don't make it through the winters. When their energy storage runs out, they're forced to wake up and hunt for food. Many will die from predation or exposure, but most fall to starvation. This may seem like a grizzly fate, but it offers the youngsters a much better shot at life with drastically lower rates of competition when they leave their mothers to live on their own.