Rokofa - Sea Crawler

"SEA COWS!"

- Asha

The Rokofa, which roughly translates to "Sea Crawler" or "Sea Grazer", is a large species of aquatic bird, evolved and adapted to live entirely in the water. They hardly look like birds at all with the exception of their their large beaks, which they use to scoop up and crush their primary sources of food, which includes water plants, corals, and urchins. The Rokofa is native to the swamps and river inlets of the Kenerif continent, and after The Sunken Lands fell below sea level, it became one of the largest animals of the Sunken Sea.

The Rokofa have several myths and legends surrounding them. One popular Regalti myth describes them as a former race of aquatic regalti that were scions of the Goddess Enta. Other Regalti saw them as nothing more than dumb animals and in their need for food nearly hunted the Rokofa to extinction. Their numbers have greatly recovered since then but they still live in a fragile environment.

Etymology

Rokofa is a combination of two Vevari words. Roko was originally the word for "Sea". the modern version of Roko is has an entirely different meaning and is now a verb that means "To Swim". "Ofan" was and still is a word that means "Grazer" and "Ofa" is a verb that means "To Crawl".

Evolution

All birds on Collena originally had four legs with two wings on the back. In a way they resembled Earth's griffins from mythology. The ancestors of the Rokofa were semi-aquatic versions of this, roaming a shallow sea eating seaweeds and other plants. As they evolved, they lost their wings, and their rear legs. These limbs now exist only as tiny protrusions of their skeletal structure, hidden completely inside their large bodies. the front limbs turned into fins and their tails were extended into a paddle shaped fluke. They also got quite large, to the point that they no longer had any natural predators, except for Regalti of course.

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Conservation Status:

Vulnerable

Classification

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Sirenia
Genera: Trichechus
Species: R. Rokofa

Common Name(s):
Rokofa (Common)
Sea Crawler (Common)
Sea Grazer (Uncommon)
Sea Cows (Human)

Geographic distribution

Current distribution in green, historic distribution in red.

Characteristics

The Rokofa comes in two different sizes, depending on if it lives in rivers or in the open sea. Both varieties are the same species. The average size of a river Rokofa is roughly a meter tall and four meters long. A sea rokofa can be up to one and a half meters wide and just over six meters long. They weigh between 1,500 and 4,000 kilograms, and have a life span of 40 to 60 years.

A Rokofa is characterized by its large black beak, black eyes, and thick gray hide. It has two front flippers and a large paddle shaped tail fluke. Despite their impressive size, there is little in the way of body fat in these creatures and they will quickly freeze in colder waters. Most of their body size seems to be water and air that keeps them roughly the same bouyancy and allows them to float in place for long periods of time with no movement necessary on their part.

Sice comparison between different Rokofa individuals, limited by the environment they live in. Purple indicates a Rokofa that lives in the rivers and swamps around Southeastern Vefaria. Green indicates a Rokofa that lives in the open sea where it can grow much larger.

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Diet

Rokofa are omnivores and are known to eat nearly anything it puts in its mouth. This is a result of how it eats more than it having a preference for anything. In nearly all cases, they absent mindedly crawl on the bottom of the seafloor or riverbed and using their beaks, they scoop up large amounts of soil and anything in or attached to the soil.

Its goal is to eat coral, urchins, arthropods and more, of which there are plenty at the bottom of the sea and rivers. It usually swallows everything it has in its mount. If the object is too large, it will attempt to crush the object before spitting it out and finding more of the seafloor to scoop into its mouth. The creature can't digest many of the objects it eats. If the object is large enough to pass it will pass safely, otherwise it gets stuck in its stomach.

In parts of rivers and oceans where seaweed grows in great abundance, the rokofa will instead eat that. Due to the low nutritional value, it will eat several hundred pounds of seaweed a day. It will also eat the floating grass of the Black river, as well as virtually any plant matter that falls into the waters it lives in.

Things found in a Rokofa's Stomach

Several hundred years ago, Regalti researchers cut open the stomach of a dead Rokofa (it washed ashore and died from bring unable to get back in the water). The things they found include:

Rocks of various sizes and shapes, including a fist sized piece of quartz.

An indescribable clump of spikes embedded in the stomach wall, possible from sea urchins.

multiple shells of Skyshells that likely fell in the water.

3 bolt-action rifles, dated to the time of the "War of Purges".

A skeletal regalti arm. Carbon dating placed it at thousands of years old, so it is likely it just accidentally ate the arm as it scooped up rocks and dirt.

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Behavior

The behavior of the Rokofa can best be described as...lazy. It is a very slow creature and it doesn't move based on any other living thing around it. Even if a Still Bird is latched onto its body trying to rip away pieces, the Rokofa will absent mindedly continue eating. It isn't known if this is because the Rokofa knows that the Still Bird will give up once it realized the animal's skin is too tough to get through, or if the Rokofa just doesn't care. The animal also isn't afraid of Regalti and makes no attempt to move away from them.

Oddly, Rokofa are known as the fourth most intelligent animal on Collena (behind Kesmodons, Bataiva, and Regalti). The creatures are able to recognize themselves as individuals in a mirror and when it comes to food, and they have some problem solving skills. Not that they show this intelligence the vast majority of the time.

The only time Rokofa gather into large groups is for mating and sleeping. When sleeping, they stick as close together as possible, sometimes locking their front flippers together, and they sleep just under the water's surface. It is unknown if this behavior is so the creatures stay warm or if they formed large groups in the past to ward off predators that no longer exist in modern times.

Mating and Young

The Rokofa generally live in mating pairs that lasts for life. They often mate once every three to five years. The female does not lay eggs like other birds. The eggs hatch internally after a few months, then development continues for several more months before the rokofa gives birth.

After giving birth, the mother's behavior changes slightly, as it will chew and regurgitate seaweed for the infant to eat and will move to areas with more seaweed than other sources of food. The mother will feed her young like this for up to six months.

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Relationship with Regalti

In the distant past, up until about two hundred years before the Exodus, Regalti had little care for the environment, hunting and harvesting creatures for materials, allowing many to go extinct. The rokofa was no exception. They were hunted for their meat and sometimes their oil. The meat of a rokofa was once considered a delicacy and demand was once so high that over ten thousand of these creatures were slaughtered daily.

Then, the slaughter stopped, not because Regalti learned from their ways (this would take another hundred years), but because the Rokofa disappeared. Searched were conducted all along the Sunken Sea and other places to find them, but they were gone. They mysteriously reappeared a little over a century later. It is thought that small numbers were hiding in some remote river inlet or a hidden river spring.

By now, roughly a hundred years before the exodus, the Regalti were more sensitive to the environment and has laws passed protecting endangered creatures. The Rokofa was one of these protected creatures. Now, over 450 years later, their numbers still aren't fully recovered, but they are a much more common sight in the rivers and seas than they were in the past.

Scions of the Goddess Enta

In various Regalti myths, the Rokofa were described as scions of Enta, the original goddess of the sea. The Rokofa used to be beautiful and thin, with the lower body of a fish and the upper body of a Regalti. When the Goddess Enta was killed in the first age of the sun, the Rokofa grew fat and lazy without guidance, and eventually turned into the large lazy creatures we see today.

When Enta arose as the combined God/dess Kellentar several ages later, they found their scions to be utterly changed and different, lazy and indifferent, no more than animals. In their rage, Kellentar destroyed the cities the Rokofa used to live in. As they no longer cared anout anything, the Rokofa didn't rebuild. There are said to be numerous sunken city ruins that were once inhabited by the Rokofa.