Gryken

The Gryken is a highly vicious marten, descended of the European pine marten

(Martes martes) that lives in grykes and crevices of karst on islands in the Mediterranean Basin, 5 million AD, in The Future is Wild. Grykens are only found on the isolated karst Mediterranean islands of barren mountains and woven plateaus. It is the scrofas' greatest enemy. Although grykens go after scroflets, they never attack adult scrofas.

Down in a narrow gryke, this slim, agile creature (while tracking prey such as scrofas) can wind from side to side, following the tortuous route of the chasm. Now and again the gryken will stop and poke its head out of a gryke, keeping an eye on a scrofa herd. Then its head goes down again and it continues to negotiate the labyrinth of fissures that separates the clints. In places, a gryken's path is interrupted by a gaping hole, an entrance to the network of subterranean caverns that lies below the karst.

Its triangular face is crossed by a thick black band which helps to camouflage its beady eyes when peering out through vegetation. The sleek body is also striped, breaking up the gryken's contours and helping it to blend in with the vegetation.

The hunter can be poised to leap from the gryke streak towards a helpless infant scrofa (or scroflet). It is a fast, streamlined predator. Like the snowstalker of the cold northern plains, the gryken is a member of the mustelid family. Descended from the tree-living European pine martens of previous times, it has the same long fur-coated body and triangular head. Its ancestors had powerful hind legs which they used to leap through trees, and a long tail to maintain balance as they ran along branches. The gryken, on the other hand, has had to adapt to a habitat of rocky crevices. It no longer needs a long tail for balancing and its legs are long and slim (better suited to squeezing through narrow cracks). It is about 20 centimeters tall at the shoulder.

The stealthy gryken's jaws are full of sharp, dagger-like teeth. Its canines are much longer than those of its ancestors, reaching down over its lower jaws. Like the Snowstalker of the Northern European tundra, the gryken is also saber-toothed. Its long teeth are needed to tear through the tough hides of scroflets, the gryken's main food source. The victim is swiftly disabled, its throat punctured and its windpipe ripped out. Sometimes, grykens will also go after nesting cryptiles.