#specubio

What's a goat-spider? What's it do? How'd it come to be?

They're this centauroid thing in 2022 when I was deeper in the spec-bio community. Here're the only two gs characters I drew back then, Show-off (left) and Fencer (right).

I did a soft re-design in 2024, with fewer eyes and a smaller torso in the front. They never felt right, though, so I've tried (and failed) to redesign them several times since. Now that I'm drawing one for a sophont group picture, I'm trying my hand at them again. It's funny how the firmest grasp I have on their design is specifically for their earliest, lobopodian-esque ancestors in the top-right corner of the left pic↓. Everything after squiggly noodle stage just feels off.

I now realize I've shrunk them down to the size of like, an Aussie. Look at how tiny Fencer's gotten!

woah bro. silly fucking me. i kinda expected everyone to sorta already know, but i guess i never really introduced them properly.

what is a smuppet.

bam.

smuppet.

picture taken of one under the lil’ man’s bed. you’ll find these freaks living in your walls, your basements, your attics. and that’s just urban infestation.

they’re just fuzzy little guys kickin’ it around town. all fun and games ‘til you decide to remodel and knock out a wall just to find a floor-to-ceiling, labyrinthian nest full of bulbous eyes and a whole spectrum of fuzz, meeting your gaze.

artistic rendition.

anyway, they’re like burrowing mammals, or something along those lines. i think they lay eggs. or sacks. either way, they’re not any worse than rats. they’re like

[ORIGINAL CONTENT DELETED BY EDITOR] or more [FLAMBOYANT] meerkats.

I don't understand why Shuri has to move to the Capital. He said its for studying, but why can't he do that in our school? Rasha goes to our school, and all my cousins, too.

Mom said it's because the Queen says he's smart enough to study in the Royal Academy and become a royal botnasist, but she's always telling us that you can't learn between brick walls because you need to go out and look at things yourself. What's up with that?

_________________________________________________________

I had to dig Ish out from under the ramp again, all squirm and screech before he ducked under my cloak to tug at my pouch.

"I'll come with you," he cried, "I'll be really quiet, I promise."

I had to sit down to force him back out from under me and when I did, he was white to his ankles, his face achurn with a mottled veil. My reds burned to match the expression but with great effort I managed to keep the grief polite. "I'll still come back each week," I promised.

It took a while and repeated promises 'til he was red again, and he followed me quietly for the last hour of my packing, only cracking a white muzzle once I'd closed the carriage door.

"Shuri?" he asked, "before you go, can you help me with a thing? It's a really small thing, I promise."

"If it's just a reeally small thing," I smiled, and allowed him to lead me back indoors.

"It's this game," he told me as he lead me to the living room where our sister had spent the last week furiously grinding through the catalogue of video games I'd be leaving behind, "Rasha and I tried to play it but it has a part that was really hard." He pointed at the screen across the room where I was met with a thousand hours of button-presses between two silent pairs of eyes.

"Can you help us?"

What was I supposed to say? No? I must leave while the road is light? It's just one small part.

First sight.

_______________________

Usha keeps insisting I'm awful young to have my pouch full, and while I may indeed be young, I think she worries too much. I've my family here, they know how this is done.

"What will you do when she outgrows the pouch?" she asks and in her voice I hear my mother. She hunts my daughter from between her feet and holds her like a fruit as she inspects her.

"Put her on the redhorn and send her to fetch water," I jest, "no, she'll stay with my cousin when I hunt."

There's a short hum of acknowledgement. The giant lets my child back down and turns her eyes toward the skies. "It's funny," she starts, "where I'm from we share pouches with the father. When I first came here I thought you'd be the same, that perhaps you'd lost your partner, but no." She looks at me and sighs, turning her gaze to the distance. "Instead he's just... one of the nameless faces out there."

My gaze joins hers in the distance. Beneath me my daughter dives back into my pouch, her weight rocking my body in the process. I take a breath to speak but words refuse to leave me. I think of the faces I've shared my nights with and I think of the face tucked within my pouch, and finally my breath leaves my mouth.

Üsha, warmly dressed and in the middle of a conversation.

ain’t it just a tragedy? all those smuppets, forced out of their natural environments due to human development. shit sucks, man. what a bummer.

guess you don’t know about that.

you know about smuppets because you probably had one skitter by you when you were boarding the subway. or maybe your apartment complex had a colony living in the walls all cozy like.

to you, they’re vermin. pests. maybe you find them cute in a sad, pathetic way. but i don’t doubt for a second you think they’re dirty. you wouldn’t touch one. not in a million years.

if you’ve got any understanding of invasive species, or any species in general that is not native to its current ecosystem, then you should know they had to have come from somewhere.

…what, you think i know? shit, if you were lookin’ for professionalism, you should’ve tried JSTOR.

nah, smuppets come from like, south america, or some shit. new zealand. madagascar. papua new guinea. they’ve still got some original colonies in these places, but their range is pretty diminished. odd, considering the rate at which they reproduce and the at times inconvenient aversion predators have to their naturally fluorescent pelts.

they tend to do best on islands. keeps the population in check most of the time, and there’s usually a decent PPR. i’ll tell you more about burrows and some specifics later.

course, there’re the urban colonies that cropped up from some negligent traveling at some point in history. pilgrims n shit. or maybe some rich, wannabe zoologist intentionally brought a hearty collection of smuppets to a place they didn’t belong, and the population got out of control one way or another. either way, those bitches have taken up in cities like they own those streets, and i swear to god i’ve watched one battle it out with a particularly sizable rat before over a stray (and comically-appropriate) fry. freaky shit.

honestly they’ve adapted pretty well to cities. just makes me upset they’re there in the first place. smuppets should be out in the wild, unprobed by mankind, with the wind blowing through their noble plumage. you put them in a sewer or attic space, and you just end up with something that looks halfway between a toy some kid left at the park that a dog got the better of and the dog itself.

i’ll be honest. i was bullshitting you about the original habitat. only one of the smuppet regions listed above has documented toxic smuppets, so that’s likely what counts as an “original habitat.” poisonous—aposematism or deimatic displays—hence the pelts. what category they fall into is based on the diet-sourced toxins derived from that region (or rather, not). whatever, dawg. i’m not a scientist.

you may be happy to know that, yes, there has been someone documenting these freaky little critters at length. they fascinate me. i’m sure they fascinate you, too. why else would you be here, peeping in on the subject?

my documentation of these illusive yet invasive little animals is a lifelong endeavor.

i haven’t stopped, and i won’t stop.

my pursuit of the knowledge of urban adaptation and original habitation will be extensively catalogued here from my months and years of personal research.