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Knarme on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/knarme/art/Bird-Arms-Race-847431648Knarme
Deviation Actions
Description
I took the back cover of my sketchbook and started plastering some digital coloring and paint on it in Photoshop, and this happened.
Top Row (left to right):
1. A bonobo-sized carnivorous descenant of parrots. These are the last thing you'll want to run into in their forest. Their impressive ability to make different sounds combined with their high intelligence gives them the gift of complex symbolic language that is a core part of their survival. They're very creative with strategies on how to kill either food or competition (also read as food). Due to being carnivores and on the top of the food chain, these cute bean-looking deadly birds are really strict about territories. Tribes negotiate a lot about who gets to hunt and where. Sometimes conflicts can't be avoided, and even a human would flinch from terror watching them plotting and executing their plans to annihilate enemy tribes. They are more intelligent than any modern-day non-human animals of modern day (compare; the most cognitively developed present animals are on the level of a 6-year-old human child, but these creepy critters would be on the level of a 10-12-year-old human child, which is a lot more brain power).
2. This green, flightless gliding parrot is actually the ancestor of the previous arboreal one. It lives in rainforests so dense that actual flying has become useless, and only gliding ability remains. The thumb claws of the wings are enlarged to enable the use of the forelimbs in climbing. These parrots are omnivores that live in social groups and make simple tools.
3. The juvenile of the previous green parrot. The "wings" of the juvenile are very useful for climbing, and they're hinting towards a future where this neotenic trait will be preserved further and further into adulthood, giving rise to the "climber-parrots" like in example 1.
Middle Row (left to right):
4. The side profile of a large land-dwelling "sapient" parrot. The face shape is good for protecting the eyes from sunlight in the open landscapes these birds live in.
5. This one is not a parrot, but a descenant of starlings (also the feet are wrong in this one...). Just playing around with the idea of "sapient" birds retaining neotenic traits like big "lips" on the sides o their mouths (what tf are those called???), big eyes and a small beak to strengthen affection and social bonds between the members of the group.
6. A relative of the top left climber-parrot, a. k. a. just another kind of climber-parrot. These are just as scary and dangerous as they look like, and you won't want to mess with them. They live in small groups and they're basically demons. If you thought that the past world where multiple different kinds of hominids competed for the arms race of intelligence and culture was a spooky world, think again, - the world of Post-Holocene sapient bird lineages is even more intense than that.
Bottom Row (left to right):
7. A relative of number 4.) of the Middle Row. Like the Himba people of Namibia today, these land parrots paint themselves with red soil to expel parasites from their skin and feathers. They're omnivorous descenants of the climber-parrots that took life to land instead, and yes I know, they cheesily imitate of humans evolved. This speciment has decorated her spear with two tufts of fur from different mammals she has slain. Using feathers of other birds is not considered approppriate due to the spiritual connection felt towards their feathered kin in their culture, but mammal fur is free game for creating fashion items.
8. A starling descenant playing with similiar ideas as n. 5. in the Middle row.
Image size
1768x2465px 5.57 MB
© 2020 - 2025 Knarme
Comments2
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The colors here really convey the bird