Hesperornis

The Hesperornis (hess-per-or-niss) or just simply Duck or goose is one of the Creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved.

Behavior
Hesperornis is quite content to ignore animals and survivors, unless if they get too close for comfort. They will bite any player that touches them before fleeing. They devour fish such as Coelacanths and are in turn hunted by predators and survivors who seek their organic polymer.

Appearance
The Hesperornis is a strange bird resembling a dinosaur mixed with a loon. Like a loon, it has a long neck, waterproof feathers, and strong webbed feet that propel it through the water at the cost of being rather helpless on dry land. Unlike a loon, it has vestigial wings that prevent it from flying, as well as small needle-like teeth to snatch fish - its favourite meal.

Taming
This bird uses an odd version of passive taming. You must kill fish and then bring it to the Hesperornis to tame it. It appears type of fish and, most importantly, size affects how quickly it's tamed. A small fish might give 2-3% taming progress, while a large one can give 9-10% or more. There is a 30-second cooldown between feedings.

A good strategy to use is to put a fish in a foundation with a ramp and three railings, with one open side towards the birds. Then, they'll walk into it without any effort. Another method is to use a to drag them to your pen.

Sabertooth Salmon seems to be more effective in taming than Piranha, which again seems to be more effective than Coelacanth. Taming it with fish obtained by an Ichthyornis gives more taming percentage.

The Hesperornis deals barely any damage with its attack, unless in water, so getting it to attack you on land which prevents it from running away is a good idea. Luring it into a pen by walking near and gaining its attention is the best way to prevent you from losing it while finding more fish.

Using an Ichthyornis to kill fish will drastically improve taming effectiveness (roughly 5 to 10 times greater effectiveness per fish) due to the "prime buff" given by fish it kills.

Although the Hesperornis is tamed by the player dragging a dead fish up to the bird. Once it is tamed Hesperornis only eats raw fish meat just like other aquatic carnivores.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Hesperornis.

General
It is quite easy to kill a Hesperornis due to their low amount of health. It is best to keep it out of the water, as it does more damage while swimming.

Strategy
The Hesperornis is very slow and poses very little threat, so using a pike should easily do the trick.

Weaponry
Only low-end weapons are needed, such as a spear, bow or pike.

Dangers
The Hesperornis poses essentially no dangers to even a low-level survivor. Care should be taken while hunting or taming them however, as their preferred hunting areas are rivers, often teeming with other dangerous creatures. Most notably, the piranha, which will occasionally try to grab them from the surface of the water.

Weakness
They are slow runners, meaning you can easily out run it, or hit it with a weapon and run before you get hit yourself, they also have low health.

Roles

 * Egg farm: Female Hesperornis can lay and  when brought out of water after killing and eating 5 fish. This process can be somewhat sped up by killing fish as the player and then commanding Hesperornis to attack fish corpses in the water. Note that there is about 10 seconds delay between Hesperornis reaching the shore and laying an egg. The Golden eggs give a temporary 500% experience boost to smaller creatures such as,  and  or a 10% boost to larger creatures when consumed. They are also an ingredient in Extraordinary Kibble which is the only kibble that's effective at taming , Thylacoleo, Megalania, Griffin, and Rock Elemental (Technically, extraordinary kibble can effectively tame any creature that normally has a preferred kibble.) The normal  can also be placed in a cooking pot to produce . Extraordinary Kibble is better obtained from eggs of very low-level Yutyrannus or Deinonychus, and Golden Eggs are currently too much of time-wasters to invest in. However, if you are looking to rush a Thylacoleo, and have the proper saddle for it, this could very well be the method you obtain one with, in addition to a trap.


 * Polymer: Hunting Hesperornis is a great way to obtain for people who do not have Fur Armor or who are far from the snow biome where the more numerous  are found. The  is the most efficient tool to harvest the polymer.


 * Fisher: The Hesperornis will insta-kill a small fish (e.g. coelacanth, sabertooth salmon, etc...). This makes it an excellent fisher, which is good because it only eats fish.

Notes/Trivia

 * The dossier was revealed on 08/21/15
 * The ability of Hesperornis to lay golden eggs is likely in reference to the fairy tale trope of a magical goose that lays golden eggs, appearing in stories such as the Aesop fable The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs and the English tale Jack and the Beanstalk. Hesperornis is not closely related to geese, but does superficially resemble a goose.
 * Hesperornis in real life was rather different from its Ark counterpart: it could not walk upright and instead probably hauled itself on the ground clumsily, a bit like a seal, due to its legs being on the sides, unlike in Ark where they are located underneath. Its legs and feet were a lot larger and the webbing on them was more like that of a moorhen or coot rather than a duck or seagull.
 * The real Hesperornis was native to the shores of shallow shelf seas like the Western Interior Seaway and acted as an easy prey for ocean predators like Xiphactinus, Tylosaurus, and Mosasaurus.
 * Like Archaeopteryx, Hesperornis was a proto-bird, meaning it still retained some Dinosaurian features, such as teeth and visible fingers, which most modern birds lack.
 * Real Hesperornis were a social animal that lived in flocks, Ark's Hesperornis is mostly seen alone but occasionally can be found together.
 * The diving attack Hesperornis uses against prey fish deals 100,000,000 damage to them. (Tested with floating damage numbers.)
 * Hesperornis does not have an stat unlike other air-breathing swimmers such as s.


 * On PC and PS4 it is almost impossible to feed hesperornis with fish that are too big, since the player character will always be inside the collider of the fish causing the "[E]:Release Body" prompt to take priority over the "[E] : Feed Fish" for taming the hesperornis. Your best bet is to strafe along side it while aiming directly at the head. If the fish is spinning, drop it and quickly pick it up before the hesperornis eats it. (Have not confirmed on XB1 yet)