Reference Sheet: Titdogs

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Belonging to the family of tits, titmice, and chickadees, the titdog manages to be the most obnoxiously adorable of all birddog species. While desperate individuals have been known to subsist on berries, seeds and insects, this species exhibits an unusual behavioral adaptation in that it thrives best in the care of other canids.

On leaving the nest, young adults immediately seek out a new host, preying on the strong mothering instinct of other inexperienced animals. When a young titdog successfully attaches itself to an unlucky host, it is most often set for life. A titdog's preferred foods are milk and half-digested meat.

The breeding cycle of the titdog is most unusual and often produces such levels of stress in the host as to reduce her own reproductive success. Males have a strong roaming instinct that asserts itself in late spring and early fall (their two breeding seasons; finding food isn't an issue for pups born in the winter, so males roam when food is most abundant e.g. spring and summer) causing acute separation anxiety in the host mother until they return later that year.

Females, on the other hand, stay right at home but may disappear for a day or two whenever a male pays a visit. Unfortunately, roaming males have a relatively high mortality rate - not so much from starvation or predation, but from protective host mothers who are distressed to find their "puppies" getting it on in the bushes.

Gestation lasts about 33 days and results in a litter of 4-7 pups, all from varying fathers. The mother titdog may nurse her offspring for a day or two, but she soon "persuades" her host mother to adopt them instead. The titdog family will live together under the care of a dedicated, if bewildered, host mother until the pups are so big that their real mother cannot stand them any longer. At which point she chases them from the nest to begin the cycle all over again.

Titdogs generally live 7-8 years, about as long as their host mother if she has a particularly strong constitution, and longer if she doesn't.

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