#sci-fi creature

T.W for horror/creature art below cut ‼️

Fly man

Apologies for the delays! This was meant to be a December post, but it got pushed to early January, so Happy New Year! Cave-Clicker (artwork by Yuujinner)

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: incertae sedis

Class: Hyolitha

Order: Anomalohyolithida

Family: Anomalohyolithidae

Genus: Anomalohyolithes

Species: A. troglodytus (“cave-dwelling unusual hyoid stone”)

Temporal range: unknown to recent (??? - present)

Information:

Relatively new to science, very little is known about this roughly cat-sized creature. The one thing which scientists know definitively is that it is a member of the hyolith clade, albeit one so heavily derived from the ancestral body plan, that it is hardly recognizable as one. 

Typically covered in striated black and gray bands with a fleshy pink head, these creatures are seemingly adept at navigating through the canopies of giant fungi found deep below in the caverns, swinging and hopping to get across the difficult terrain. Their diet is not fully understood, but tissue sampling would suggest that they consume small animals in addition to the fungi found in their habitat, possibly filling a generalist omnivore niche, and observed behavior would indicate that they frequently get into scuffles over food, the horn-like projection on their “face” being used to jab at other individuals. Exceptionally social for a non-arthropod invertebrate, these creatures sometimes gather in groups of up to 50 individuals. Its social nature can be dually inferred by its broad set of vocalizations: chittering, squeaking, and clicking (the latter of which gave the creature its name) have all been recorded, though the actual functions of these calls remains unknown. The total population size is unknown, and based on any number of estimates given for the size of the cave system it inhabits, it could be anywhere from simply a few thousand to over half a million. It appears this animal is capable of seeing light in the UV and infrared spectrums, as wild specimens have reacted to such lights in the presence of researchers, whom they appear to be naturally inquisitive towards. 

Their reproductive biology and life cycle is unknown, though as they are inferred to be poikilothermic, it is possible that they may live for several decades, maturing at a gruelingly slow pace and mating once or twice throughout their lifetime. Likewise, they are believed to be oviparous, though as no eggs have been found, much less even female specimens (it is known that they have separate sexes, but every specimen captured thus far has been male), there is no way to definitively prove this. The means by which these animals do sexually reproduce also leaves open more questions than it answers: there is no obvious orifice through which they could theoretically deposit sperm, and considering that this creature descends from an aquatic clade, it cannot be ruled out that they do not return to subterranean lakes and rivers to spawn. To further compound this issue, no young of this species have ever been identified, suggesting that they may have simply not been found yet, are indistinguishable from the adult form, or (most likely) that they look so radically different from the adult form, that they may be perceived as a different species entirely. Unfortunately, this is difficult to study in a laboratory setting, in part due to the fact that all captured specimens have been male and in part due to the fact that only 3 specimens have ever been brought to the surface, and within 2 days of being brought the surface, all 3 of them died of unknown causes.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/56924870

Subnautica Below Zero FanArt

I highly doubt their hearing would be worse than a standard human, our hearing is pretty poor when you compare us to the rest of the animal kingdom. That’s probably one of the reasons why we domesticates dogs!

Whether heat loss is a concern for a human with fennec fox ears will depend on their ambient temperature. They probably wouldn’t handle snowy climates well at all, but in warm, dry environs like where the fennec originated they may well be fine. Larger animals have a smaller surface area to volume ratio, so they typically lose less heat than smaller species anyway.

So while their hearing and heat loss is probably fine, making these ears move is a little more of a challenge.

Look at this drawing of canine head anatomy from Millers Guide to the Dissection of the Dog.

There would be, oh, something like 15 muscles involved in the movement of ears. You can see some of them above, particularly scutuloauricularis. To appreciate how much of a canine head is composed of muscle, take a peak at this typical CT image, also from Miller’s guide.

Compare that to a human CT scan of the head from http://w-radiology.com.

You can see the ear canal at #5. Air is black, bone is white, and soft tissue (eg muscle) is grey. Canines have much, much more muscle and less brain space than humans do. Admittedly much of the canine muscle mass are jaw muscles, but some of them are ear muscles.

So you can stick fennec fox ears onto a human head, but if you want those ears to be able to move and do the cute things then you need to provide large enough muscles to do so. If you haven’t shrunk the brain of this humanoid they may have extra muscles packed around the skull, giving them a more domed appearance than a human would have had. They will also likely have more muscle running from the back of the ear down he neck.

I hope that has given you something to work with.

I don’t know how many hours I spent working on this baby, but I love how this one turned out. I feel like I’m actually improving on my digital art skills???

Anyways, this cutie’s name is Saydi :3