Windsiever
Basic Information
Anatomy
Externally, a windsiever resembles a dark-furred rabbit or hare of some description, albeit with four large eyes providing almost ubiquitous binocular vision. The long ears that stand up from either side of the skull have more purposes than meet the eye, however; in addition to providing directional hearing and heat dissipation for extended sprints, as appropriate for a prey animal, a windsiever's ears feature internal channels along either side terminating in special olfactory organs similar to those found in snakes. These channels each can accomodate one of four branches of the windsiever's tongue, which is long, sticky, and lined with feathery extensions like those found on a moth's antennae (see Dietary Needs & Habits). The head and neck of a windsiever are proportionally larger than those of a terrestrial lagomorph in order to accomodate these more complex sensory structures and the larger volume of brain matter required to make best use of them.
Genetics and Reproduction
Windsievers reproduce quickly. They gestate for six weeks and give live birth to litters of up to eight pups which are weaned within two weeks. The metabolic requirements of birth and nursing are taxing on windsiever mothers, however, meaning that they produce fewer litters in a year than their terrestrial counterparts.
Growth Rate & Stages
Windsiever pups are born blind but furred. They mature enough to leave the nest after two weeks and typically stick with their mother for two weeks more while learning how to hunt for insects and create burrows. Windsievers become fertile between six months and a year after leaving the nest, depending on the favorability of climate conditions for breeding. A windsiever can live up to five years in the wild, though the average life span is around two years due to extensive predation by Distal razorbacks, flabbergrypes, and Distal polyp colonies.
Ecology and Habitats
Windsievers can be found in every cube layer associated with the Distal Tesseract, though they are most numerous in places with extensive ground cover. Windsievers fill an important niche as staple prey animals for larger Distal predators while also helping to control pest and weed populations.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Windsievers are both omnivorous foragers and filter feeders. By day, they burrow underground and stick their tongues into the air (see Anatomy & Morphology) as they sleep. The four comb-like branches of the tongue are coated with microscopic barbules that give them the stickiness required to passively ensare gnats, flies, pollen, and even dustwisps. Drawing this detritus from time to time for consumption also gives the creature the chance to survey its environment for factors like temperature and the presence of predators in the area (see Perception & Sensory Capabilities) via its Jacobsons organs. By night, windsievers emerge from their burrows and use their tongues to probe insect hives for live prey. Most Distal insect toxins have little effect on windsievers, an adaptation evolved to suit this diet. Windsievers can also use their tongues to lick up pollen and nectar from within flowers, and enough pollen gets caught on them in the process that they have become an important pollinator for some Distal plant species.
Behaviour
Windsievers are skittish and prone to fleeing if caught outside of their burrows. Should they smell predators during daylight hours, they wake up, retract their tongues, and seal their burrows to wait for the danger to pass. Other than during mating season or shortly after birth, windsievers are non-social and merely tolerate the presence of other members of their species rather than seeking them out. Windsievers may seek to frighting one another away from insect burrows upon which they intend to feed, and it is believed that this behavior is designed to help prevent 'tongue-tying' between the animals as well as being a form of competition for limited resources.
Additional Information
Domestication
The unique chirality and variety of food involved in their diet, as well as their paranoid nature, make them ill-suited for domestication even as pets. The population and behavior of windsievers are important bellweathers for the status of the food chain in a given Distal environment, however, and researchers can observe the animals to draw conclusions about the health of the environment. For example, numerous windsievers in close quarters with eachother may indicate plentiful insect and flowering plant populations, while a lack of the usual fear around researchers may indicate low predator populations.
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Windsievers are nocturnal and have excellent low light vision, though they only have limited color perception. Because they have four eyes - two along either sides of their heads - and divets along their skulls in line with these eyes, windsievers can see all around them except for a narrow area directly behind their heads. Predators seeking to capitalize on this blind spot are often detected anyways due to the creature's sensitive hearing.
Windsievers bury themselves in the earth during daylight hours and flick their long tongues into the air, immitating blades of grass blowing in the wind so as not to draw attention to themselves. In addition to passively feeding (see Dietary Needs & Habits), they retain excellent situational awareness by doing this, drawing smells in to be analyzed by the Jacobson's organs in their ear channels.
The great sensitivity of windsievers has benefits and drawbacks. The metabolic requirements of such a complex sensory system means that the creatures must either be hunting or resting. The creature is often forced to ignore one sense in favor of another so as not to overtax its brain; windsievers prefer to focus on scent when resting during daylight hours, hearing and scent when foraging during nighttime hours, and sight when evading predators.
Comments