An idea formed from conceptart.org's current Creature of the Week Prompt.

A fiercely territorial creature with an exceedingly diminutive stature and with structure very similar to the smaller, more dextrous primates in our reality. Its forepaws each have two disproportionately long fingers with hooked nails. Similarly, the tail is jointed, long, and hooked. It's face is destinctly birdlike, but its eyes are placed at the base of the "neck." This neck is also rather long and muscled, ending in a slightly curved beak. The neck and head are hairless, but the rest of the body is covered in sparse amounts of scraggly black or brown hair.

These creatures can only be found in fairly spacious caves near battlegrounds or graveyards, or anywhere with plentiful access to corpses. Being far too weak to prey on anything living with the exception of worms and grubs, these creatures are primarily scavengers. They live alone except during mating season, a particularly tumultuous affair that leaves few survivors but promise for a new batch in the following months.

Once finding a corpse the creature holds the head in place with the lower finger on each hand, then hooks the top fingers under the scalp and slowly pushes the skin and muscle back to the base of the neck. A decidedly gruesome ordeal, but one they deem necessary for survival. Any particularly stubborn sections are gobbled up by the creature's beak, as are the eyeballs (which they find great pleasure in plucking out). Once the skull is cleaned on the outside the creature sticks its long neck in through the eyesocket to devour the brain. Once the entire grisly process is completed they sever the skull from the spine, their task but half over.

As I previously stated, these creatures are exceedingly territorial. Though they are rather brittle things compared to many other predators or carrion-feeders, they have developed a rather ingenious method of warding off these less intelligent meat-eaters who might consider them a nice light snack. Once the skull is picked clean it hooks its singularly finger-like tail in the eye socket and scurries off with it to its den, which as mentioned tend to be obscenely large, dead-end caverns that are far too big for something so small. By collecting the skulls of the dead and placing them in large piles, strewn about the entrance, it gives the impression that a significantly larger and more dangerous predator is living inside. Should one still probe about inside, the creature is quite adept at hiding in his much-beloved skulls until the danger has passed. The smell of death usually overpowers its natural stench, leaving it safe from more sensitive noses.

Unfortunately they are not entirely safe in using this clever method of survival, as some make the unfortunate error of inhabiting caves in the same region as the decidedly larger and more vicious skull -eaters-, whose discovery of just such a cave is like a meal from heaven. But that's description for another time...