Ovtya: Pollen-Spewers

Basic Information

Anatomy

The ovtya has two large fins at its sides that it uses as "wings" to glide under the sea. The wings are flexible but also strong enough to bat approachers unconscious in the blink of an eye. The ovtya has a mixture of molars at the front of its mouth and bristles at the back of its mouth, with lips that could adjust to pass food and water through either at will. Because of its large fins, the ovtya has over time lost its hind legs, its tail being only a shell of what it used to be. As a result, the ovtya uses its entire body to act as a replacement hind tail.
The ovtya has a disproportionately large blowhole, nearly the size of its brain. It's not uncommon for a malnourished ovta to quite literally blow its brain out, leaving behind a lobotomized husk drifting through the ocean. Coincidentally, the ovtya also has a second brain near the back that can steer the ovtya in the direction it went when it was alive, giving the impression of a normal ovtya from a distance.

Dietary Needs and Habits

The ovtya is herbivorous. It moves on land to feed on local flowers, most notably the tuerya. However, it feeds on tuerya and visits Keyrit on a seasonal basis. The most common explanation was that ovtya consume phytoplankton, but others believed that ovtya visited the tuerya's fabled ancestral homeland of Retkokua. Both theories turned out to be true; the ovtya enjoy tuerya as a delicacy but need phytoplankton for sustenance.

Additional Information

Domestication

Humans generally haven't bothered to domesticate, or even tame, the ovtya. Most humans who get too close get batted unconscious; the ovtya has to first approach the human. There are only a few motions that the ovtya could understand, and much fewer that wouldn't immediately receive a retaliatory response. Further, while the woowroik could be harnessed to sail barges and used effectively, the ovtya has no effective purpose. These hindrances make it extremely rare to find ovtya even in zoos. It was theorized that kauaru could survive battery from an ovtya and so could tame it, but the kauaru that could do so in theory would be much too large for any expeditionary ship brave enough to test the theory.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

The ovtya occupies the whole Orayi Sea, and is not known to venture any further eastward. The Orayi Sea seems to have exclusively habitable properties, and so the ovtya has fiercely chased out other seafaring herbivorous mammals in order to protect their homeland and resources. The ovtya are thus the largest species in the Orayi Sea, though larger objects such as human ships are tolerated. The coastlines of Keyrit and Wlitowaru'u are populated with ovtya for short periods during the daytime on a seasonal basis.

Average Intelligence

Ovtya are by no means as dumb as the woowroik, with object permanence and general navigational skills, but aside from that they are fairly stupid. In flocks, they often bump into each other. Ovtya were originally believed to be polygamous, but the smartest and strongest in the flock showed signs of monogamy, confusing researchers. It was then discovered that ovtya were not polygamous by choice, but rather because they forget (or, worse, cannot identify) which one in the flock is their mate.

Symbiotic and Parasitic organisms

Tuerya seeds traveled half the globe across the sea in the past, so tuerya pollen, modeled like tuerya seeds, is extremely resistant to corrosion. As a result, while the tuerya itself is digested easily, pollen remains in the ovtya. The pollen spreads across the entire animal, eventually reaching the lungs. When the ovtya surfaces to breathe air, each exhalation carries hundreds of pollen bits. Due to the sheer amount of pollen and the well-placed distribution of pollen, the ovtya takes several seasons to exhale all the built-up pollen. By then, the ovtya has reached the other side of the sea, consumes tuerya, and the cycle restarts. Tuerya from Retkokua and tuerya from Keyrit are practically identical because the ovtya maintain cross-pollination.