So, after a comment a friend just made I was wondering, we have human mutants, what about abnormalities with animals? Is there any chance of one day running into a two headed met? A three winged vestric? Two tailed raptor?
I think there are plenty of mutant animals, but their generations are faster so some of the mutations have stabilized into standard forms. We have rodents with feathers, snakes with feathers, birds with no feathers (did the snakes and rodents take them?) and tortises the size of houses. Those sound like some wild mutations to me, but since those particular mutats breed prolifically the locals think they must be normal. :twisted:
AC
Life for a raptor out in the desert is probably not extremely easy. Prey and water is hard to come by, and they don't have any mounts to carry them when they're tired.
Mutations are, in my eyes, possible and not unlikely, but I would not expect such a creature to live very long unless it is a beneficial mutation...and these are a rarity among an already rare thing.
I do not think it is impossible to see a gurth with a pyramid-shaped shell, for example, but finding one who survived and was lucky enough to not draw someone's attention (there's a huge market for gurth-shell pyramids, you know) to it is unlikely to be easy.