EVOLUTION ATTEMPTS: Senses- 5, Rasper/radula- 5
(It went without a hitch. For once.)
The estuarine shoalcore is the newest descendant of the original swimemone. These animals, as their names suggest, live in estuaries. Their keen non-visual senses are the main reason that they reign supreme in their murky environment. They have a superb sense of smell, which they use to home in on a potential meal. Their pressure-senses let them find any over-active animals, while their electrical senses mean that even the most well-hidden creatures aren't safe, and their fates are sealed the moment their hearts beat or their tentacles twitch. Even shelled animals aren't safe, as the bottom one of their seven tentacles has transformed into a radula that can bore a hole in the toughest of casings. They manually move their hives by making the hivecase grab them in their tentacles, before it gets dragged into a new location. The hivecases and shoalcores both use the guidelings to gather food, either by helping home in on unnoticed or too-fast prey or by being directly devoured. The hive has developed a cattle caste, which is used to keep their hivecase and its offspring well-fed.
The hivecase is the jawshell's descendant. It feeds near-exclusively on cattle guidelings.
The hive is the nestblob's descendant. It has three castes: the soldier, the guide and the cattle castes.
This estuarine habitat is completely devoid of competitors, because of the shoalcore's ability to sneak up on jawshells and other predators unnoticed.
GENERATION 7:
Symbiot swimemone
A murky green-and-brown tentacled fish-like animal that hunts in the low visibility of the estuary. They swim with their powerful tails and use their fanged tentacles to attack and kill their prey. They grow up to 70 centimetres long, and their offspring are called tentaclets.
SENSES: It has a sense of touch that lets it figure out if it's touching food, and an extremely good sense of smell/taste. Symbiotic guidelings help it find live prey. A keen electrical sense lets it find creatures that are close to it, and it can feel vibrations in the water from moving creatures.
REPRODUCTION: It lets out male cells when they meet a mate they approve of, and growths grow on the area of the body derived from the bases of the tentacles. Younger animals are mostly male, and older animals are female, due to the pressures of swimming while pregnant. Tentaclets follow their mother until they can be dropped off at their hivecore. They eat mucus that the hive creates (although the nestblob sometimes takes either type of larva to supplement its diet) and, when they are large enough, find a suitable guideling to make a nest with. The children of the hivecore (which follow the mother and are looked after by the guidelings) are attracted to the hive-forming pheremones, and a suitable animal is chosen and burrowed into. They then leave to find a new area to live.
MOVEMENT: They move by swimming like a fish. Sacs of carbon dioxide keep them buoyant. They also have jets which also function as their gills, which they use to make fine movement.
EATING: It impales nearby blobs and digests them by drawing them into the tentacles. They are able to prey on fast swimmers, and they use venom. They still have the rather inefficient absorbing-via-tentacle feeding method.
PREDATION: Some species of jawworm are able to feed on the tentaclets. Everything is dinner for an adult estuarine shoalcore.
COMPETITION: They have no competition.
ENVIRONMENT: A murky shallow estuary. Various species of worms (collective small ancestors of aciblobs and crawlers) burrow in the muck or swim around to filter-feed or hunt. It is usually fresh-water, although tides can cause an influx of salt.
NEARBY ENVIRONMENTS: subtropical reef, wide murky river
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Topic: Competition- An evolutionary suggestion game (Read 102035 times)