Duva (DOO-vuh)

The largest domesticated stock, similar to elephants, having six pillar-like legs that directly support the body, and a muscular proboscis for gathering food. That of the duva is solid, however, and does not have a channel through the center that is attached to the respiratory tract.   Domesticated duvas eat grain stalks, processing the stems and seed husks, and excreting the grains themselves.   Two possibilities have been proposed for why they digest away the lower-quality material and leave the high-nutrition kernels untouched. One is that wild duvas ate something with no hard parts, and so needed neither durable teeth nor harsh digestive enzymes. The other is that their diet included fruit with toxic seeds, and their digestive enzymes needed to be relatively gentle to avoid absorbing those toxins.   Regardless, duvas evolved to binge eat once or twice per year, pack on lots of weight, and then go torpid until the next harvest. The larger and heavier they are, the more docile they are. As they lose weight and get hungry, they get more aggressive.   Mating occurs shortly before a harvest, when they are most active. Birth occurs two years later, at the beginning of a harvest season. Mating may occur every year, but it is not unusual to go five years between births.   Nursing does not occur, but young wander freely among all adults in an area, stick their trunks down the adults' throats, and collect semi-digested food from them. This behavior also has the side-effect of inoculating the young with whatever microbes might be present in the stomachs of their parents, and ensuring that all of the others in the group maintain populations of those microbes as well.   For at least a few years, and sometimes as much as 10 years, depending on local conditions, the young continue to graze year round, slowly synchronizing with the rest of the herd.