Evolution

Two fat taeniodonts grubbed their way across the ground, their faces buried in the rotting leaves. They looked like heavy-jawed wombats, and they used their powerful forelimbs to dig into the dirt, seeking roots and tubers. They were followed by an infant, a clumsy bundle pushing at her parents’ legs, struggling through the thick layer of leaves. A paleanodont scuffed for ants and beetles with its long anteater’s snout. And here was a solitary barylambda, a clumsy creature like a ground sloth with powerfully muscled legs and a stubby pointed tail. This creature, scuffling gloomily in the dirt, was the size of a Great Dane — but some of its cousins, in more open country, grew to the size of bison, among the largest animals of their day.

In one corner of the clearing Noth made out the slow movement of a primate, in fact another kind of adapid. But it was quite unlike Noth himself. Like the loris of later times, this slow, ground-loving creature looked more like a lazy bear cub than any primate. It moved slowly across the mush of leaves, making barely a sound, its nose snuffling the ground. This adapid generally stuck to the deeper forest where its slowness was not as disadvantageous as it would be on more open ground. Here, its slow and silent movements made it almost invisible to predators — and to the insect prey it sniffed out acutely.

Noth wrinkled his nose. This adapid used urine as its scent marker; every time it toured its range it would carefully urinate on its hands and feet to leave its signature. As a result, to Noth’s sensitive nose it stank badly.

Noth found a fallen beehive. He inspected it curiously, hesitantly. Hive bees were relatively new arrivals, part of an explosion of new forms of butterflies and beetles and other insects. The hive was abandoned, but there were whole handfuls of delicious honey to be had inside it.

But, before he attacked the honey, Noth listened carefully, sniffing the air. His sensitive nose told him that the others, high in the trees above, were still far away. He ought to be able to devour this food before they reached him. But he shouldn’t.

There was a calculation to be made.

Noth was low-ranking among the males in his group. What Noth was expected to do was to call out, letting the rest know he had found food. Then the other males and the females would come, take as much honey as they wanted, and — if Noth was lucky — leave him a little for himself. If he stayed silent and was caught with the honey, he would be severely beaten, and any food left would be taken away, leaving him nothing at all. But on the other hand if he got away with it he might get to eat all the honey, and be spared any punishment…

The choice was made. Soon he was working the honey with his small hands, licking it down as fast as he could, eyes flicking around to check on the others. He had finished the honey and wiped away any traces on his muzzle by the time his mother reached the ground.

She still had her pup, Left, clinging to her belly. She began to scrabble at the floor, her fat-ladened tail held out behind her, silhouetted against the bright shafts of light that pierced the forest’s higher layers. She quickly uncovered more chunks of the fallen hive. Noth made a play of grabbing at the honey, but his mother pushed him away with a sharp shove and fell on it herself.

Noth’s father now tried to join in the bounty, but his mate turned her back on him. Here came two of Noth’s aunts, his mother’s sisters. They immediately rushed to their sister’s side and, with screeches, bared teeth, and handfuls of thrown leaves, drove Noth’s father away. One of them even grabbed a chunk of honeycomb from his hand. Noth’s father fought back, but, like most adult males, he was outsized by any one of the females, and his struggles were futile.

It was always the way. The females were the center of notharctus society. Powerful clans of sisters, mothers, aunts, and nieces, together for life, excluded the males. All this was a behavioral fossil: The dominance of females over males, and the tendency of male-female pairings to endure after mating, were more common in nocturnal species than those able to live in the light. This powerful matriarchy was making sure that the sisters had first call on the best of the food, before any male.

Noth took his own exclusion calmly. After all, the taste of illicit honey still lingered in his mouth. He loped away in search of more food.

Purga and Plesi had lived isolated lives, usually as females with pups, or as half of a mating pair. Solitary foraging was a better strategy for nocturnal creatures; not being part of a noisy group made it easier to hide from night hunters, who would wait in silent ambush for their prey.