Graylurk
Graylurks are Distal aquatic ambush predators roughly analagous to terrestrial crocodilians. Typically found in shallows, including the marshlands of Dorsal E and in the litoral waters of Distal C, graylurks snatch up nearly any size of prey and drag them into deeper water to feed at their leisure.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Graylurks are flat-bodied, sinuous quadrupeds that can grow up to six feet in length. Like their distant land-bound cousins the Distal Razorback, the bodies of graylurks are protected by socketed bands of jagged, coral-like silicate armor that helps them blend in with the sandy or murky bottoms of their preferred hunting waters. Their sharp, shovel-like snouts tend to end in one or more sharp points which can be used to gouge and tear at prey yet too vigorous to be felled with a bite. Raised occipital ridges contain sets of eyespots protected beneath solid silicate lenses; unlike crocodilians, the actual eyes of a graylurk are never exposed to the environment and, as such, require no lids or nictitating membranes to speak of.
Genetics and Reproduction
Graylurks lay clutches of opalescent eggs in dugouts just beyond the shoreline during early spring, just after the end of the graylurks' winter lethargy. Nests are protected under shed shell fragments, which are gathered together by the mother to form walls and overhangs that resist crushing. These eggs hatch en-masse in the middle of summer; their first struggle is to safely reach the shallows to take their first breaths, as graylurks are aquatic but breathe air with lungs. Clutch-mates tend to stick together for the first year of life, hunting in swarms until they become large enough to strike out on their own in search of larger prey.
Growth Rate & Stages
The segments of a graylurk's outer shell are segmented along the saggital plane as well as being socketed into one another along transverse planes. During the spring molt that immediately preceeds egg-laying, these segments crack apart along the saggital plane to form semi-circular segments which may be shed. Shedding generally occurs from the neck back to the tail, though not necessarily at all segments at once, and special skin glands are constantly excreting new layers of silicate shell outwards like the rings of a tree. The head armor only sheds until the graylurk reaches maturity or, in rare cases, when the head armor becomes too severely damaged.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Greylurks are broad carnivores which will eat just about any prey that happens along their path, including fish of all sorts, Distal razorbacks, Distal urticators, and windsievers. Flabbergrypes are rare catches because of their maneuverability. Flashravens tend to be tolerated rather than eaten because some flocks have taken to cleaning parasites from between the plates and teeth of greylurks who purposely float near the surface in search of such services.
Greylurks are ambush predators. The silicate scales of greylurks serve as a form of hunting camouflage as well as protection. Despite what the name would suggest, greylurk armor actually tends to be some desaturated shade of yellow, orange, or green and is based on the color of sand in whatever littoral waters they hail from. The purplish Distal light tends to wash out this color, however, rendering them a dark grey to the visible spectra of the terrestrial biologists involved with their study. Strands of moss, kelp, and other aquatic detritus tend to accumulate among the sharp ridges, enhancing the camouflage effect by breaking up a greylurk's outine and making what parts of the animal that can be seen look like natural clumps of debris, coral, or rock formations. Many prey animals blunder onto groups of greylurks and never figure out what is attacking them until it is too late to escape.
Biological Cycle
Graylurks are warm-blooded; tiny air pockets trapped between the layers and amongst the coral-like protrusions of their armor plates provide a siginifcant amount of insulation. Nevertheless, they undergo a form of cryptobiosis under the frozen surfaces of bodies of water during the winter months. During cryptobiosis, a graylurk excretes most of its internal water, stops breathing and eating, and can persist nearly indefinitely in this state until conditions improve for hunting.
Graylurks can survive twenty or more cycles of cryptobiosis and wakefulness. Particularly harsh conditions can push a cycle to last longer than a single year, and it is believed that this is how the late ancestors of the greylurks survived disasters like the Ventral A Volcanic Event that ultimately killed off other megafauna species. Indeed, the most common cause of death among geriatric greylurks is failing to fully emerge from cryptobiosis fast enough to recover prey before starvation sets in.
Behaviour
Graylurks aren't very social, but they aren't territorial, either. They often congregate in waters either full of fish stock or near where land-dwelling Distal creatures congregate to bathe or drink water. Graylurks are incapable of distinguishing between Distal and Terrestrial creatures, having a brain roughly the size of a walnut, and thus represent a threat to unprepared sentients even though eating prey with this amino chirality would sicken the predator rather than nourishing it.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Graylurks possess a well-developed sense of smell, which they use to track prey just beyond the shore; they use their sense of taste in a similar manner to track prey through the water, as they are air-breathers.
Graylurk eyesight is less accute to detail than to shape and movement, and it is not clear as of yet to researchers whether or not they have color vision in the traditional sense. The silicate lenses over their eyes are doped with certain biochemical as they grow so that they scintilate on exposure to certain forms of radiation. This allows graylurks who live in regions where life that bioaccumulates radioactive materials, such as shardleaf, to selectively hunt prey with lower levels of bioaccumulation and avoid pockets of contaminated water.
Geographic Distribution
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