Zoo alphabet O Oukawhaam

Oukawhaams are quasi-feline faced ape bodied creatures, and with the exception of its largest family member, are completely arboreal. They live in the tropics in troops with a 'council' of dominant males watching over them. They eat fruit and leaves, the latter usually more for medicinal purposes than nutrition as most tree foliage is nutrient poor. The staple of their diet is meat, and oukawhaams are pros at obtaining it.

These animals have a strangely primate like body with five fingered hands and grasping thumbs. The 'inky' finger is inlarged to almost the size of the thumb. Most members of the oukawhaam family have a crest or dorsal stripe of erectile quill hairs which rise when the animal is threatened or excited in any way. The tiny pilm oukawhaam, one of several gliders (shown here escaping the jaws of it's hungry cousin, the belbel) has no such crest.

The largest oukawhaam (who I must re-draw later, because the 80's version sucks..) is a burly adult chimpanzee sized brute with powerful muscling, enormous lamp like eyes, a dorsal crest three feet high, and a small curled up tail. Like most other oukawhaam, it does not have the ability to 'fly'. This bad boy is the only one in his family group who dares venture down onto the forest floor and knuckle walk his way over to another predators kill hidden in the bush, or take a drink from a refreshing stream. Other oukawhaam must settle for tree-top snacks and water licked from leaves.

Belbels are a little bigger than a house cat, are longer bodied and longer tailed. They have parachutes of leathery skin that attach to the body from hand to loin. It billows out when the animal makes one of it's spectacular leaps from tree top to tree top. They are social, vocal creatures who live within a structured family group in a small portion of the Ecidarapian rain forest. They communicate with squirrel-like chattery screeches and when truly excited, their bottom jaw vibrates up and down so fast it has earned them the name belbel which means 'crazed laughter' in the M'zesi and Noginzesi people's language. The tail of the belbel is wide and flattened, and helps to steer the animal in its glide.

Female oukawhaam can give birth to a single offspring fathered by two males. I can only guess at the advantage to this strange adaptation. Perhaps when two physically superior males mate a female it creates a 'super young' more robust and disease resistant than an offspring fathered from one male. Or it could have something to do with the fact that they live in such a small section of the forest that this may give them more genetic differances to work with and help with the problems that inbreeding can cause.



All zoo fauna are creations of y-eskii-lass