Daydreamer

The small prey specialized daydreamer ecotype (SPS).

The daydreamer (Paelagiuvenator excoginator) is a species of large, featherless, pliosaur-like bird with smooth yellow, grey, black and white skin. The daydreamer originally did not exist, but has since been created by SciiFii and introduced across the world's oceans. The daydreamer is one of the only five living members of the porplet (Paelagiuvenatorinae) subfamily, which are most closely related to a widespread subfamily Carduelinae. Due to being fully-aquatic, the daydreamers give birth to single live young rather than laying eggs. Two major ecotypes of daydreamers currently exist. Distinct phenotypes each adapted for different niches, but with too little genetic difference to classify as subspecies, the two ecotypes can still freely interbreed. Small prey specialized ecotypes, abbreviated as SPS, are somewhat more rounded, with shorter flippers and narrow beaks, while large prey specialized ecotypes (LPS) are slightly thinner but with sturdier necks, long pointed flippers, and heavyset jaws with a sharper hooked tip. One of the most striking differences between the types is the large, exposed keratin teeth present on LPS daydreamers, used to hold on to and subdue comparatively large prey and which generally prevent the beak from closing tightly. SPS daydreamers on the other hand which evolved to catch much smaller prey, have most of their small, conical teeth hidden in the jaw when at rest, with only a few small emergent teeth at the end of the bill. In addition, LPS's are usually somewhat darker, with a less bold body pattern but conversely exhibit a brighter, less faded flash of gold on either side of the neck which is more muted and spread out into a light brown in the fishing ecotype. SPS's are most likely to show a rounded spectacle marking around either eye, nearly always extending from the brow down a stripe into the beak, whereas LPS's have a reduced pattern, with little to no continuation into the beak.

The large prey specialized daydreamer ecotype (LPS).

In the large prey specialists the white marking is most consistently presented as a large, downward angled brow, giving them an angered expression, with the marking only rarely extended around in a circle and usually being broken, with a smaller, isolated stripe beneath the eye. The large prey specialist ecotype is well-adapted to grab and tear flesh from other large aquatic animals. Small prey specialists have been developed by humans slightly later, in an example of a cultural split eventually giving rise to a distinctly differentiated phenotype that has some similarities to the descent of the social gravedigger. Yet the SPS daydreamer is perhaps the only creature that has ever changed its own nature on the basis of morality; they are descended from the modified LPS ecotype about a few decades ago, when some pushed back against the majority and made the decision that eating other marine tetrapods - the primary ancestral diet for the species - was morally repugnant. Adopting a diet of smaller and less relatable animals, over many generations their moral choices reshaped their bodies, rendering them slightly smaller, more agile, and with weaker jaws. Today the most numerous cultural groups of daydreamers are the fishers, which belong to the small prey specialist ecotype, and the pastoralists, which are large prey specialists, but which primarily raise livestock to eat instead of hunting wild animals. The latter has a more derived and complicated behavior, even having domesticated relatives of luddies, the nops, which guarantees a stable food supply. Fishers object to this on the basis that the various species of porplets are themselves near-sapient species, which exhibit the capacity to communicate not only with one another, but with daydreamers willing to learn their own relatively simpler language. To fishing daydreamers, wild porplets are treated as somewhat mischievous, comparatively child-like but nonetheless autonomous entities, and interactions with these other species are largely friendly. In some areas, a pidgin language has even developed to transcend the species barrier, consisting of simplified daydreamer syntax and including a lot of porplet loan-words. Fishers can talk with some of these related porplet species, which lack comparative attention span or the capacity for complex discussion but are fully capable of expressing all of the same feelings and emotions as the daydreamer, and who can express their feelings through verbal language, albeit with some difficulty. Viewed from the fisher’s perspective, they are most similar to their own young. So to them, the pastoralists are effectively enslaving and consuming their race of children. This is thus a moral dispute to which there is almost no leeway, and resulted in a cold war lasting thousands upon many decades. Fishers hated the pastoralists for being amoral bullies, complicit in the systematic exploitation of weaker people; pastoralists conversely despised fishers as terrorists, who take every opportunity they get to sabotage the livelihood upon which they depend. It is a moral impasse that for many decades did little but grow deeper over time, effectively splitting the species in two populations that have refused to intermingle for so long they diverged as distinct phenotypes. In reality the situation is complicated by the fact that although the pastoralist's livestock was once, indeed, an intelligent and near-sapient species, a very long time has passed since this was the case. The conservation status of daydreamer is Least Concern due to successful conservation efforts, the daydreamer's wide range and its tolerance to many of the human activities.