Written by T.K. Sivgin, illustrated by Bob Guan
Horsetails, I feel are underappreciated plants. They look fascinating, are ancient and used to come in wide varieties, such as the giant, tree-like forms of the Carboniferous and Triassic. The rhynian habitats, being holdovers from the Paleozoic, are in this way a great place for people like me. Unfortunately, none of my human crewmates seem to share my enthusiasm.
Even worse, the one thing here that does seem to share it looks like it waded straight out of a nightmare. The reedstalker (Equisepedis scloperostrus) is a smaller, more compact relative of the mantis stork, about 190 cm tall. Like it, it is a piscivore that wades through swamps on its hands and catches aquatic animals with the hooked claws on its feet. Unlike it, its most distinguishing feature is the bizarre look of the legs, whose coloration and filaments obviously seem to have adapted to make the limbs blend in more with the surrounding swamp plants. Since these perfectly camouflaged legs are, however, still attached to what appears to be a rather unsubtle greater daemon of Chi’an Chi, one does have to wonder who this is actually meant to fool. The fish? Predators? Garden gnomes? More prolonged observation is obviously required to answer this question.
Like their larger relatives, reedstalkers harpoon their prey, which may consist of sarcopterygians, tetragnaths or a strange species of crayfish-like centipede. Sometimes the prey, while still living, is held up to the bird-like mouth to feed. Other times, when it is already dead, the reedstalker does the same as the mantis stork by laying it on the ground and awkwardly crouching down to eat it. Interestingly, it lost a skull-plate between its upper and lower jaw to achieve a wider gape, something which convergently evolved in other placoderms as well. The exposed soft-bits around that area form a pair of inflatable sacs which it can use for display purposes.
Reedstalkers breed in spring, and find eachother by rapidly clacking their jaws together in a fashion similar to shoebills. This produces a harsh noise reminiscent of a firing Gatling gun. Reedstalkers are livebearers, who give birth rather unceremoniously by dropping their young into the reeds from a standing height. Despite this, the young are cared for for some time and reedstalkers have some form of sociality, sometimes fishing in mated pairs.
One fascinating observation was made when we tried to mark a tranquillised specimen for better identification. While asleep we drew a little cross on its forehead with a waterproof marker. After the animal woke up and went about its day, we saw it leaning forward staring into the calm water. At first it looked like it was just staring through the surface onto a hapless lungfish it was about to spear, but instead of harpooning the water, its left foot reached forward and began scratching the animal’s head right where we had drawn the mark. While this could just be a complete coincidence, I believe it is possible that it may have seen its own reflection in the water and wondered what that mark on its head was. We would have to test this again under more controlled conditions to confirm, but if that is indeed what happened, it means these placoderms have the capacity of passing the mirror test, which is possibly indicative of some form of self awareness.
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