ceo of hamster evolution

Today as abundant and diverse as they were back on their home planet, the ants were among one of the most successful terrestrial invertebrates that had been introduced to HP-02017. Descended from a select few species, introduced as detritivores, pollinators and seed dispersers, these remarkable hymenopterans have since spread across the globe and occupied the niches similar to Earthly ants, such as seed-eaters, leaf-cutters, scavengers, predators, fungus farmers and even honeydew-ranchers: though the livestock of those ranchers are somewhat different, with the niches of sap-sucking true bugs instead filled by beetles and lepidopterans.

Some species, however, have begun taking on niches unlike any of their Terran forebearers. Raftants, aquatic species native to floodplains, developed specialized castes to act as oars and floaters to propel the colony along the surface. Perhaps stranger, at least for ants, are the lonestingers: ants that no longer live in colonies and have become solitary, with all individuals being winged and wasplike, no longer producing wingless sterile workers and taking on a niche akin to solitary wasps and bees.

One of the most unusual species in the Middle Temperocene, however, are the lime ants (Citromyrmex polyregina), an abundant and widespread species found all across South Ecatoria and the neighboring islands. Easily recognizable by their distinct yellow and black coloring, these ants are generalist omnivores diet-wise: consuming both plant and animal matter, though prioritizing carbohydrate-rich sugary food like fruit, sap and nectar for the active adults, while saving protein-rich seeds, bugs and meat to the larvae to encourage their growth. Like most ants, they communicate by pheromones, travelling across the forest floor in single file to scout out food sources they can carry back to the colony. They, too, have specialized castes for their vital activities, such as small minor workers that participate in foraging and nest cleanup, major workers that act as heavy lifters and back-up defense, and soldiers, armed with large heads and powerful mandibles who defend the nest, cut up large pieces of food, and even ferry around the smallest workers hitchhiking on their bodies.

But one truly remarkable characteristic of the lime ant is its behavioral flexibility, thanks to an unusual recessive gene, the Q gene, that causes the species to produce three separate types of queens, depending on which alleles they acquire. Each one lives a completely different lifestyle: one that affects the behavior of their corresponding colonies as well. These genes mix together during nuptial flights, where alates from different colonies pair together queens and drones that in turn, produce offspring that are homozygous QQ, heterozygous Qq, or homozygous qq. This is further complicated by male ants being haploid, and thus males are always only Q or q.

Homozygous QQ queens develop into what is known as the despot morph: a sedentary, highly-aggressive queen with a bulky body and large mandibles. Her colony dwells in a fixed, permanent nest that occupies the same space for as long as she lives, which can be as long as fifteen years. During which time, their nests can grow into immense proportions, spanning tunnels and chambers many meters across and inhabiting up to 100,000 inhabitants. Despot morph queens tolerate no other reproducing female in the colony, and a single despot morph queen rules supreme: aggressively killing any other breeding female in her nest, be they rival invaders, her own alate daughters, or a worker that starts laying unfertilized eggs. All of her genetically fatherless drone offspring will be Q drones. If she mates with a Q drone, all her female offspring will be despot morphs as well, and if she mates with a q drone, half her offspring will be despot morphs, and half her offspring will be Qq heterozygous: the communal morphs.

Communal morphs, the second kind, are long-bodied and capable of traveling long distances on foot, unlike the sedentary despot morph. These queens, the most common kind, are different from despot morphs in another way: they tolerate the presence of other communal morph queens, thus producing a polygyne colony that is much larger than those of despot morphs, with as many as nine or ten queens and colonies growing to up to a million or more. Their large colony size instead favors them to constantly be on the move, foraging for food in an area and building smaller temporary nests and moving on once food becomes depleted in migrations every few months, with the queens marching along in the swarms and the brood carried by the workers as they go. With multiple queens that can be regularly replaced as they die, the colony as a whole can survive significantly longer than those of a despot morph, which is important as their nomadic lifestyle also leaves them with a higher mortality rate due to exposure to environmental factors and predators. Being heterozygous Qq, they can produce either Q drones or q drones, and a communal morph queen that mates with a Q drone will produce half despot morph offspring and half communal morph offspring, and a communal morph queen that mates with a q drone will produce half communal morph offspring and half qq homozygous offspring: the usurper morph.

Usurper morphs are unusual as they do not build colonies at all: they never shed their wings and remain solitary, similar to the lonestingers. As they disperse from their parent colony during the nuptial flight, they mate once with a drone and store his sperm, but do not start laying eggs right away. Instead, over the course of their long lifespan which may last many years (but rarely as long as the despot and communal morphs), the usurper queen instead infiltrates the nests of the other two kinds shortly before the nuptial flights begin, lays her eggs inside, and leaves all the effort of childcare to the workers of the colonies. Covering the eggs with pheromones to trick the colony into accepting them, she functions in essence as a solitary brood parasite whose progeny are raised by others. As she does not form a colony: none of her offspring become workers and soldiers, and instead always hatch into queens or drones: drone offspring are always q as they are born from unfertilized eggs. If she mates with a Q drone, half of her daughters will be communal morphs and half will be usurpers, and if she mates with a q drone, all her daughters will be usurper morphs.

This unusual arrangement likely evolved as an advantageous trait due to fickle, changing seasons and environments, allowing the species as a whole to persist. When food is plenty despot morphs become more common, able to defend a productive patch of land. When food is scarcer, communal morphs dominate, able to travel long distances to scout out new foraging grounds. And when times are the toughest, the most common morph becomes usurpers: being solitary, they need less food than a whole colony and can depend on the few hardy colonies to rear their young. Through a complex set of environmental dynamics, genetic inheritance, and competition between the queen types, the lime ant proves itself an adaptable and tenacious species that finds great success in the forest floor ecosystems of South Ecatoria.

Despite its complicated and bizarre life history, however, the local northhounds that occupy its range, in particular the vulpins, have found a rather mundane use for this abundant species. When threatened, major workers spray formic acid from specialized nozzles in their abdomens as a ranged mechanism. This, however, has been exploited by the vulpins who intentionally provoke the ants to get them to spray their acid onto food items: in effect acting as both a preservative to ward off fungal and bacterial growth on food, and as well as a seasoning that imparts a sour, citrus-like flavor onto said food. While toxic in large quantitities, the ants’ formic acid is harmless in small amounts to larger creatures like the northhounds: making for a surprisingly ideal additive in the vulpins’ cultural fondness of imparting different tastes in their primitive form of ‘cuisine’.

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While the daggarats, specialized zingos descended from saber-toothed Glaciocene hunters, now dominate most of the predatory niches of South Ecatoria, a few other species from other, more distant branches of the family tree still thrive on the continent. As the daggarats occupied large-predator niches, the other zingos ended up becoming smaller opportunists: being scavengers, insectivores, small-game hunters and generalist omnivores.

One of the more notable of these species is the mountain barredbandit (Bandacyon acervus) a small, nimble member of the zingo family commonly seen in the scrublands and foothils of the central region of the continent, where climates become fairly temperate. Forming loose family groups, the barredbandit is an avid hunter of small, generalist rodents like furbils and diskmice, as well as gregarious burrowing squizzels and nesting ratbats as well. To hide their kills from other predators, they cache their food in small hidden largers to eat later, and frequently engage in surplus killing when plenty of prey is available, in order to acquire plenty of food that can be left within easy access of other members of the group who may have had less success hunting. While their family bonds are loose, they have a sense of community, sharing their excess food in hopes that they too will be left with some leftovers when it happens to be their turn to have slim pickings.

This habit of hunting and killing in excess, frequently carrying entire litters of freshly-killed young furbils or duskmice in its mouth all at once after raiding a nest, has gotten it a very divisive reputation between the northhounds and the southhounds, whose territory it both overlaps as well as the mountainous regions that divided both sophonts. To the northhounds, crafty and resourceful beings who primarily prey on small game, the barredbandit is known as the “wise food-keeper”, and is admired and revered in folktales for its habits of sharing and planning ahead for tight times. But to the southhounds, who hunt large prey and have cultural norms to only kill what they need, the barredbandit is despised for its “wastefulness” and “cruelty”, and is spoken off in folklore in a more antagonistic light as a thief and a bully of bad character.

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speculative evolution speculative biology speculative zoology spec evo hamster's paradise species profile the calliducyon saga

The hamrambes, largest of the lemunkies, arose in the Early Temperocene on the continent of South Ecatoria, descending from a group of large-bodied, short-tailed lemunkies known as the chimpmunks. From these, even bigger species arose that spent more time foraging on the ground, and at sizes of up to 200 kilograms, were too big for much of the native predators such as the lycanines and the tigerillas to tackle.

The coming of the midnight howlers, however, changed up the dynamics in the Middle Temperocene. Predatory lemunkies that had adapted to hunt other arboreal members of the clade, they quickly became quite successful, spreading across the continent across varied biomes, leading to a decline in prey lemunkies who did not adapt fast enough, and pushing the tigerillas to the margins.

As such, the midnight howlers ended up coming into conflict with several different species of the hamrambes: in particular the two extant subspecies of the bearded hamrambe (Pongomimus grandis): the tundra bearded hamrambe (P. g. frigus) which ranges across the cooler coniferous forests south of the continent, and the temperate bearded hamrambe (P. g. sylvus) which ranges further up north. The two subpecies are very similar in size, behavior and social dynamics, both being loosely gregarious foragers that primarily feed on plant matter but occasionally supplement their diets with insects they dig out of bark. However, they differ in the tundra subspecies’s adaptations for the cold, such as paler, thicker fur, a bulkier build to better retain heat, and a bigger nasal cavity with an increased complexity of turbinates to warm the cold air entering through as they inhale. Their paw pads on all four limbs are thicker and more insulated, and they have proportionately smaller, rounder ears to reduce heat loss and more hair on their faces to protect against the chilly wind.

Unfortunately for the tundra subspecies, however, the warming climes of the Middle Temperocene have been shrinking their range ever more south, as areas once plagued by harsh winters now grow milder year after year: and allowing the temperate woodland biome to encroach on what was once almost purely conifers and tough shrubs but now beginning to give way to other plants as well. This, in turn, have also encouraged the temperate bearded hamrambes to spread south, eventually overlapping their ranges with their cold-weather cousins. As suitable mates become harder to find in a shrinking habitat, the cross-fertile species begin to intermingle even more, producing fertile hybrids that go on to have young of their own: but gradually diluting the gene pool of the tundra subspecies until eventually, they may be assimilated entirely into the temperate subspecies in the near future: living on in the genes of their kin but disappearing as a purebred phenotype.

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speculative evolution speculative biology speculative zoology spec evo hamster's paradise species profile

The bossums, small arboreal hunters whose earliest members hail all the way since the Middle Rodentocene, continue to thrive in moderate diversity in the Middle Temperocene, with smaller basal forms occupying arboreal or forest-floor mesopredator niches while their derived relatives the treegers and tigerrillas have moved on to larger game. In Mesoterra, small species continue to thrive in the forested areas of the continent, though none quite reach the large sizes like their more-diverse relatives native to other landmasses.

One of the more remarkable species of Mesoterra is the red-shouldered dyedelph (Didelphoatrox pithecocephalus) found in the tropical forested regions of the continent’s north. An opportunistic hunter, its diet includes a wide variety of prey, ranging from squizzels, ratbats, small rattiles and occasionally smaller lemunkies and forest cragspringers. But what makes it distinctive is that it is one of the very few predators of dangerous tree-burrowurms of the forest canopy, such as the target-spotted tree shearwurm (Herpetocricetus annulopunctus), which, while lacking true toxins in its stinging foreclaws like the piedvipers do, nonetheless has powerful jaws and sharp, blade-like teeth, useful both for cutting apart small prey and defending from attackers.

Dyedelphs, however, are adpt at countering the shearwurm’s tactics, using its speed and agility to dodge strikes, bait the shearwurm into a strike and leap away as they lunge. It takes advantage of the fact that shearwurms, while quick at striking, are mostly stationary in a fight and are slow movers when it comes to a proper escape. Using its flexible, semi-prehensile tail as a decoy, it tricks the shearwurm into making the deadly mistake of focusing on it as a target, allowing the dyedelph to pounce on the distracted shearworm and finish it instantly with a bite to the back of the head before it has a chance to retaliate.

By picking on a dangerous prey item few other animals would tackle, the dyedelph is assured little to no competition in its preferred food of choice. Indeed, the shared diet of small arboreal animals of both the dyedelph and the shearwurm indicate that their current relationship of predator and prey once began as a competitive struggle between two rival predators, before one specialized into making the other its prey: reducing competition over resources, and making an abundant and uncontested resource out of its former enemy at the same time. Yet the shearwurms are not the complete losers of such an evolutionary arms race: opportunistic predators themselves, they will not hesitate to invade the nests of dyedelphs to prey upon their vulnerable young, in short term sating their current hunger, and in long term ensuring there are fewer of them to hunt them in the future.

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speculative evolution speculative biology speculative zoology spec evo hamster's paradise species profile

In the Early Glaciocene, 100 million years PE, the landmass that would become Mesoterra was still two separate sub-continents: East Nodera and North Ecatoria. While North Ecatoria would be the home to the earliest podotheres, buffants ancestral to the piggalo, and relic hamyenas still resembling their Late Rodentocene kin, East Nodera would be the domain of walkabies, bicorns, giraards, jackcats, leftover Borealian flightless ratbats and, most notably the neinschweins, members of a large, predatory group of bumbaas known as the beelzeboars.

By this time, however, as the climate began to cool in the Glaciocene, these original Therocene fauna had begun to decline. Once leftover tropical zones, the lowering temperatures had made the landmass begin to shift into a more temperate clime as the ice crept in from the north and south poles: to a point when even some regions of the equator experienced periods of ice and snow for the winter. The small, omnivorous walkabies were now the subcontinent’s most common creatures, as were the mountain-dwelling ungulopes that made a living in the higher zones, having adapted well to cold.

The continent’s main predators, the beelzeboars, would be greatly affected by the gradual shift in the local ecology: many would die out, their specialization for warm biomes and an abundance of both prey and smaller predators they could drive off their kills was now ill-suited for a colder world with less biodiversity in other fauna. As such, the last surviving species on the landmass would take upon some rather unusual adaptations in a last-ditch effort to survive. During a brief interval of hospitable weather, a new species would emerge from these final holdovers, one that, independently of the boardozers, would switch from being specialized carnivores to generalist omnivores: still scavenging and opportunistically consuming small animals unable to escape, but also reverting back to adding fruit, roots and some vegetation back into their diet as more-basal bumbaas do. As the climes cooled, their wrinkly, bare hides gave way back to shaggy coats: save for their faces, which bore thick, rubbery skin as well, partly to avoid the face from matting with innards from carrion, and partly as facial armor, with tough leathery covers for their eyelids, when they jousted with their own kind for territory and the little available food.

The result of these trials would thus conclude the lineage of the neinschwein with a creature that, in a visual sense, looked every bit like an incongruous hodgepodge of un-alike beasts, a lopsided patchwork of parts that, on their own, appeared as if taken from separate animals. Thus arose the frankenswine (Amalgasuimys shelleyi), whose males assumed a truly bizarre morphology unlike any other of their group, with a large heavy head bearing powerful jaw muscles ideal for cracking open bones as well as hard seeds and tough plants. The frankenswine males sported a distinctive hunched profile, with pronounced shoulder and neck muscles attached to neural extensions of their thoracic vertebrae. More of their weight was supported by sturdy forelimbs while their hindquarters seemed disproportionately small, and, to add to their peculiar appearance, males sported a lean, front-heavy figure and asymmetrical tusks: a greatly-enlarged upper tooth derived from their first molar, typically on the right but sometimes on the left, perhaps as having two be equally large would hamper their feeding too much. The enlarged tusk serves as an imposing weapon against rival males, often scoring each other with gnarled lacerations that often become grisly-looking scars, in the aftermath of clashing over mates and territory.

Save for the distinctive pale band adorning her flank however, the female frankenswine is a far less distinctive-looking and less malproportioned creature, being a stouter, rounder, relatively smaller-headed and less conspicuously-patterned creature with smaller tusks. She, too, is a solitary animal, but unlike the males is more tolerant of other females and their territories may overlap. Males roam larger territories encompassing those of several females, using their impressive weaponry, striking coloration, and pronounced cranial protrusions to show off to the opposite sex and proclaim themselves as a worthy mate.

However, at the tail-end of the Early Glaciocene, the continents of East Nodera and North Ecatoria would collide: causing their respective ecosystems to suddenly enounter new niches and other species they had never seen before. With new competition to aggravate the struggles of a changing clime, particularly the coming of fierce new predators like the ripperroos and their relatives, few of their native species would persist into the Middle Glaciocene, and by the Temperocene only a few odd relics of East Nodera’s original wildlife, like the pinguiphants and the threepeaked tricorn, would remain. With the disappearance of the frankenswine by the beginning of the Middle Glaciocene, the beelzeboars would be survived only by the boardozers, of which only one group, the omniboars, would continue to persist into the Temperocene, enduring thanks to their adaptability, tenacity and indiscriminate diets that allowed them to find a liveable niche in the dynamics of the warm new world.

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speculative evolution speculative biology speculative zoology spec evo hamster's paradise species profile

In the Late Glaciocene, the carnohams, once diverse and abundant predators with a nearly-global distribution, were now beginning a steep decline as climates changed, landmasses collided and split, and new competition arrived from the tectonic turmoil that would challenge the current ecology’s delicate balance. Hit hardest were the predators: at the highest rung of the food chains and with lower population densities than herbivores and omnivores, they were the most sensitive to sudden changes and were the first to suffer when large ecological upheavals came without warning.

The great tibears had long been gone since the Early Glaciocene, and Borealia’s panthsters soon followed, from their last remnant range in the mountains when the climate cooled too much for their liking. The clade would be survived longer by smaller groups, including the jackcats: plains-dwelling mesopredators that relied on speed and endurance rather than stealth and ambush. However, they too were not to endure.

The last species of the jackcats to survive, about 115 million years PE, was the bearded plains lynkote (Cynofelimys barbus), which roamed the northern temperate grasslands of Arcuterra. Adapted for running on open ground and pursuing prey such as ungulopes and hamtelopes, it possessed a muscular torso, long slender legs built for sustained chases, and a broad chest to accomodate larger lungs as well as small nostrils that minimized heat loss but could flare wider when exerting effort to pump more air into its lungs. Its claws, unlike other carnohams, were blunter and non-retractable, acting as treads to grip the ground as it picked up speed, and instead it used its jaws, longer and stronger than those of a typical carnoham, to deliver lethal bites to a prey animal’s neck, intending to inflict lethal wounds that would cause its quarry to eventually bleed out to death.

All these unusual traits, unlike the other carnohams, meant that, appearance and behavior-wise, they converged heavily with the other dominant carnivore group of the time: the zingos, whose similar niche they occupied with their more-canine than feline-analogue lifestyle. And this would be bad news for the lynkote when, at the end of the Glaciocene, the zingos, in particular a group of short-fanged daggarats known as lycanines, would begin gaining prominence on the continent. As new competitors emerged in a warming world, the lynkote found itself vying for the same ecological niche and pressured for the same resources with the zingos: creatures that had the upper hand when it came to social intelligence and cooperation. And it was, ultimately, a battle the last of the jackcats would not win.

However, all was not lost for the carnohams. While the lynkote would be outcompeted by the zingos as cursorial plains predator, the last survivor of the carnoham clade, the meowse, would endure, as a semi-arboreal small-game ambush predator that did not directly compete with the zingos. In time, the meowse would once more diversify into a wide range of species across Arcuterra in the Temperocene: not entirely, but at least partly, returning the carnohams to something approaching their former glory.

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speculative evolution speculative biology speculative zoology spec evo hamster's paradise species profile

On the former continent of South Easaterra, a specialized clade of zingos, the bearhounds, once roamed the continent as its apex predators. Armed with stocky bodies, big boxy heads and powerful jaws, they hunted the local tetracorns, oingos and rhinocheirids with the help of bone-crushing bites in a heavy convergence with the carnivorous badgebears of Gestaltia.

But their dominion was not to last, as in the Temperocene South Easaterra would collide with the drifting Peninsulaustra, merging to form the continent of Austro-Easaterra. There, the blubbears, powerful hunters descended from the flightless blubbats, would gradually push them aside to the margins, and in the midst of the mutual decline of both blubbears and bearhounds, during a brief window of low predator density an opportunistic big-game hunter would emerge as well: the lipgrips, a clade of carnivorous rhinocheirids.

The end seemed certain for this strange, experimental lineage of bulky, bone-crunching zingos, but one, the lesser burbruin (Cynarctomys taeddi) would hang on in the northeast corner of the continent and whose close relative the greater burbruin (C. ursamajor) would barely hang on over the millennia before finally disappearing entirely only less than a million years ago. This region was the farthest from Peninsulaustra and thus the blubbears would move in more gradually: giving the burbruins a chance to adapt.

Burbruins, thus, have survived where the larger bearhounds have not: by partitioning niches with the blubbears. While the blubbears used their powerful forearms, formerly wings and then flippers, to grapple large prey in a deadly embrace, the burbruins would instead focus on scavenging carrion, unearthing small prey, tearing up logs and dead wood in search of insects and even wading into shallow rivers and lakes to hunt for shrish and pescopods as they migrate during the spawning season. Thus again, the small, unassuming and yet very adaptable members of the family, with a varied diet, would survive a sudden change, able to fall back onto an alternate lifestyle if pressured by competitors. This is not to say, however, that the burbruins have entirely escaped the wrath of the blubbears: while their niche partitioning has spared their lineage, they have now in turn found a dismal place in the food web– as a blubbear’s occasional prey.

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speculative evolution speculative biology spec evo speculative zoology hamster's paradise ask species profile

Once the specialist arboreal hunters of the Glaciocene and Early Temperocene, the tigerillas had been in steep decline with the coming of the midnight howlers: carnivorous lemunkies that were more intelligent, adaptable and cooperative in the trees than they were. Slowly pressured off the trees, and retreating off to the ground, now but a few genera remain: still some of South Ecatoria’s most notable predators, but nowhere as diverse as they once were.

Some, such as the red dwole (Cynosimiomys vulgaris) have become small, omnivorous opportunists, relying on their flexibility to exploit multiple different niches. They still climb trees and forage on the ground, searching out small animals, insects, carrion, and even fruits and fungi on occasion. Faced with competition in many of the major niches, the tigerillas have found momentary success relegating themselves to the sidelines.

Their bigger, more specialized cousins, however, have not fared too well in a time of great changes. The woodland chimpanther (Pithecopanthera leucops) still retains its role as tree-dwelling lemunky hunter in regions where midnight howlers are less abundant. They have stuck to this niche and surived in marginal regions where competition is scarce, particularly in dense jungle: however, in howler territory the chimpanthers are hopelessly outclassed. Solitary creatures, they are no match for whole troops of up to a dozen midnight howlers, who don’t take kindly to rival predators in their territory: and sometimes even considers the chimpanthers prey.

But by far the most notable species is the greater foldpaw (Malupantherimys malignans), a 200-pound carnivore that reigns as South Ecatoria’s apex predator. For long, it has benefitted off the success as a megafaunal hunter, tackling boarochs, ungulopes and podotheres alike with its powerful forelimbs and prehensile arms that allow it to wrestle prey to the ground. A formidable predator, the greater foldpaw is dreaded by any other predator in its territory, as it has no hesitation in disposing of any rivals that may cross its path. Yet, ultimately, this may as well prove to be its undoing: by making an enemy of a rival carnivore with the intellect and capacity for grudges and retaliation.

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speculative evolution speculative biology spec evo speculative zoology hamster's paradise ask species profile

The caterpedes are a group of abundant and diverse insects found well across HP-02017 in the Middle Therocene. They are, as their name would suggest, the larval forms of moths: yet, oddly, they never actually become moths at all: they are neotenic, maturing and mating in a larval form without ever undergoing pupation.

A misplaced hormonal signal that halted their metamorphosis but allowed them to grow functional gonads has enabled the caterpedes to spread far and wide in a world that, in its inception, was filled with the essential insect life such as pollinators and detritivores, but had many ecological vacancies left unoccupied. Thus, these mutant, non-metamorphosing caterpillars came to fill the niches of various other arthropods: in the case of the caterpedes, some became scavengers on the leaf litter feeding on dead vegetation like millipedes, while others became predators that hunted smaller insects, much as centipedes or arachnids would.

But even still, this was a world where predators abounded, even the founding hamsters that were present since the beginning. As such, the caterpedes have had to innovate with various defenses since day one: and in the Temperocene, few are as remarkable as the fiery blackbuff (Pseudophiops caudatucephalus).

Fiery blackbuffs share their habitat, the damp tropical forest floors of Mesoterra, with the five-eyed whipwyrm (Pyrophimys pentoculus): one of the most lethal of the burrowurms delivering a deadly sting in its front claws that can incapacitate an animal the size of a piggalo and kill anything else smaller. The five-eyed whipwyrm is generally a placid insectivore: yet it is this diet of ants, slurped up with its long flexible tongue and narrow mouth, that provides it with the toxins it needs to produce and concentrate an even more powerful paravenom.

As such, the distinctive arrangement of three false eye-spots and red stripes on a black background is one recognized and feared by every creature that lives in those same forests that the whipwyrm frequents: and the fiery blackbuff takes full advantage of it. Mimicking the distinctive conical head and five false eye spots on its posterior end, the blackbluff flashes its distinctive behind when bothered by predators: primarily small ground-dwelling ratbats. The sight of something resembling a deadly burrowurm sends many would-be attackers fleeing: and they usually do not return to confirm, allowing the otherwise-defenseless caterpedes to inch along another day.

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speculative evolution speculative biology spec evo speculative zoology hamster's paradise ask species profile

A recurring adaptation among limbed animals are the specialization of limbs away from their original purpose of locomotion: on HP-02017 most prominently the bipedalism of the jerryboas that would give rise to many biped clades, such as the walkabies, rhinocheirids, podotheres and pterodents, to name the most notable examples, their forelimbs no longer taking part in walking and instead finding other uses for grasping, fighting and even flying.

Yet this trait becomes even more evident in animals with more that four limbs, as is the case with many insects, crustaceans and other arthropods that have made unusual uses of their front legs, such as pincers and grabbing claws. And thus, while vertebrates are limited to a maximum of four legs, this effect has been most pronounced in the one clade that bypassed this anatomical constraint: the sixteen-pseudolimbed daggoths.

The barrelbacked rumptusk (Abyssoscrofa nychoceros) is a daggoth species related to a more basal group of the biblarodons, and is a relatively small species: being about five or six kilograms on average. While possessing sixteen pseudo-limbs, each in fact a very modified finger emerging from its “shoulders” and “hips” (actually its ankles and wrists), only six are used in walking: moving with a distinctive shuffling tripod gait that moves the front and hind legs of one side and the middle leg of the other at once, ensuring that a minimum of three legs are always on the ground at any given time, granting it good stability on the slippery rock floors of the cavern system.

The ten other digits, on the other hand, have found unusual new uses in this peculiar species. Like with many other daggoths, the first and last pairs have evolved into long feelers equipped with bristly sensory hairs to feel its way through the lightless caves. But the second and second-to-last pairs are far thicker and enlarged, and possess large upward-curved claws: which it uses to defend against its main predators, the carnivorous blindmutts, and also used by males when they compete over territory and mates. Armed both front and back, the claws function much like horns and tusks in fending off an enemy: with the advantage of actually being moveable and able to point in the direction of an attacker.

These small, stout creatures are omnivores, and indiscriminately eat whatever edible thing they can find: shroomors, meatmoss, mocklichens, fungi, bacterial mats, invertebrates and even smaller daggoths are all items on the rumptusks’ menu. Its nasal tendrils are short, broad and flattened, allowing it to root about in the abyssal foliage in search of food, while its third pair of forelimb digits bear smaller, yet still enlarged claws that in contrary to its main claw-horns curve downwards, which it uses to dig for its favorite food: the swollen, rhizome-like mycelia of mocklichens, excavating it from the rocks and organic mulch that gathers at the floors of the caves.

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speculative evolution speculative biology spec evo speculative zoology hamster's paradise ask species profile

The Ecatoriungulidae, ungulopes isolated onto the continent of South Ecatoria when it split off from Arcuterra all the way back in the Middle Glaciocene, are a quite diverse family that have come to include among their ranks in the Middle Temperocene such species as the plains-grazing triclops, low-browsing greaserhorns, and the semi-domesticated horn-herders to name a few. And here, where tall trees with edible lower branches grow in abundance, a few have filled a niche coverging with the altolopes of Gestaltia, evolving elongated builds with lengthly necks and tongues to better feast upon a bounty many other herbivores cannot access.

The tallest of these, the slopebacked hightower (Alticaprimys longicollis) is a wide-ranging species most common in the temperate forests across the continent, feeding from the branches of the local pebblefruit trees. Most distinct are its odd proportions, with its forelegs longer than the rear, giving it extra reach in plucking off leaves with its dexterous, prehensile tongue and extended upper lip. Its unusual stature also give it a distinctive bounding gait, with a distinct “crutching” motion a side effect when moving at higher speeds.

A sexually-dimorphic species, both sexes reach similar heights of roughly 4 meters (12-13 feet) when fully grown. Where they differ is that the distinctive two-pronged horns of the species only occur in males: they are too large to be threatened by most predators by themselves, and thus these weapons have been relegated to sexual display and competiton over mates between rival males. As they compete with sideward blows of their heads, a secondary distinction is made evident: while still lanky-looking, males’ necks are far thicker and more muscled than the disproportionally thin necks of the females to better wield their weaponry. While older males lead small groups of females and their young, adolescent and subadult males form small bachelor herds of up to a half-dozen once they leave their mothers’ care, honing their skills in combat by testing and sparring with one another.

Hightowers range across most of the territory of both the northhounds and southhounds, and while they are too large for the small-prey specialist northhounds to tackle, they are among the various wild game that are hunted for subsistence by the various southhound populations, who typically target them by the watering hole and strike while the hightowers are forced to awkwardly bend over to drink, a period where they are most vulnerable. This has found its way into southhound vernacular, primarily the plainmanes, who use the term “a bending tallbeast” to refer to one who makes themselves an easy target, and whose folklore include tales of how the hightowers long ago dared to stretch their necks higher than the heavens and were thus punished for their arrogance and hubris by the ruling cloud-spirits to forever thirst for water they cannot reach with ease.

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