EVOLUTION ATTEMPTS: Tool use-4+3=7, Blinding venom- 4+2=6, Domesticate sightmace- 4+2=6, Venomy pepper-spray- 1+1=2
The sophont nightmace has managed to reach full-on human-scale intelligence. It is a skillful toolcraft, using rocks, wood and other objects to create things such as fang sheaths, hammers, flutes and drawings. A smaller sightmace, the coyote sightmace, has become a domesticated species. Eagle-squids are their equivalents of angels. Their middle legs are dextrous and nimble, for creating these tools, and their venom tubes often hold the results. Another venom tube now creates a thick gloop, which permanently blinds the eyes of soft-eyed species (including sightmace).
The woodland is now fading away rapidly. Our species is making rapid technological advancements, like home-made webbing poles and nest-holes, and has learned that surrounding and capturing a herd of land animals gives a constant source of meat.
GENERATION 26:
Sophont nightmace
A mottled dark purple bird-like animal that hunts on the mountain meadows. They use their fanged tentacles to attack and kill their prey. They mostly fly. They grow up to 40 centimetres long, and their offspring are called tentaclets. They use two claws on their back to snatch prey from the ground or air.
SOCIAL: They live in groups of about 25, alongside one or two eagle-squid.
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. A keen electrical sense lets it find creatures that are close to it, and it can feel vibrations from moving creatures. Its hearing is extraordinary, and it can echolocate. However, this is still inferior to the eagle-eyed vision of other slicers, although the eagle-squid partially makes up for that.
REPRODUCTION: It 'kisses' a mate it approves of, passing male cells to it, and growths grow inside of the womb. Tentaclets follow their mother and are fed by them. They eat regurgitated food from the mother's guts, and when they are old enough, they leave.
MOVEMENT: They fly by using their front wings to glide and their back wings as engines. They have two legs on their underside, which can break through wood and dig through dirt. They can use their wings and legs to gallop across the ground.
EATING: It impales small animals and digests them by drawing them into the guts. They are able to prey on most animals smaller than them, and they use venom. Most of their food is from grazing worms and the dense vegetation. Other prey include land-dwelling spearfaced worms (slitherers) and other flappers, as well as leggedgrinders. We can use a precise jet of neurotoxin, laced with silica shards (to pierce the skin), to kill prey. We can also blind soft-eyed animals with a thick gloopy venom. We scavenge from the kills of our host when we are not hunting.
PREDATION: We have few predators, now we are protected by our shells, our sightmace, our spears and our hosts.
SYMBIOSIS: The greater eagle-squid, a large predator with a 3-metre wingspan and powerful vision and claws.
COMPETITION: Our intelligence, domestication and symbiosis has managed to drive away most threats.
INTELLIGENCE: We have complex language, full sapiece, basic herding, domestication of sightmace, art and good manipulators.
ENVIRONMENT: A cold meadow with loose trees and quite a few balloons above it.
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT: Alpine meadows
NEARBY ENVIRONMENTS: Mammoth steppe, icy ocean, glaciers, icy mudflats
Author
Topic: Competition- An evolutionary suggestion game (Read 102716 times)