Phantasy week: Creatures

These are the creatures, designed for the environments from last post.

For Jungle environment (Timo)

Alga Hospes

“Happycute-algea”

Little is known about these algae. It lives inside the plants; they eat leftovers from the plant and help the plant stay clean from the inside. They are very small and glow slightly blue

4. Qualtor Fulcio

“Choptopus”

Locals have a word which translates to: “Chair you will never sit on at least you will never get off”

The creature is covered in a sticky material. The animal itself almost works like a flycatcher without doing anything. Speculation goes that it used to catch Flies with this stickiness. But because the Flies are of course not dumb, they just started flying higher. Nowadays the Choptopus uses its stickiness to catch a snake and form a Snakeplant with it. This way, both animals can catch dinner. There is a story that a local man once thought it was a funny hat and put it on his head. The Choptobus lamped its tentacles on the man’s head and never let go anymore. The end of the story is discussable. Some say the man and Choptopus became best friends and stayed together their whole life. Others say that there is still a rather large “Snakeplant” walking around the forest.

3. Serpens Cunctor Cuniuratio

“Snakeplant” (name incorrect)

Acts like plants to attract the Fly. When Fly flies over, the head pops out and devours the Fly. It closes its leaves after catching a Fly. Actually the creature if formed of two different creatures on top of eachother. By using a dead plant as clothing it seems like one animal. Snake shares his caught food with the lower part. Neither scientists nor locals have ever seen the two animals teaming up and covering themselves with a dead plant. They just seem to be there.

2. Musco Celebrer

“Fly”

Locals just call it “The Fly” because it is the only fly in the realm. Flywalkers also mimic this fly with their antenna. Front legs are highly developed; sometimes they even look similar to human hands. Rumor has it that locals sometimes see them using small tools. The snout seems also not biological but artificial. Eat Algea Hospes.

1. Testudo Illusio Musca

“Flywalker”

Locals have a word which translates to: “the don’t step on it rocks”Antenna on the head is used to “Lure” plants and distract them. The Flywalker is a herbivore.

It spikes make sure plant don’t mistake Flywalker for dinner.

Tail works as a sort of radar, making sure the Flywalker can avoid surprise attacks. Because of its heavy shell, it can’t turn around very fast. Scientists speculate if this was originally the head-side of the animal. Head and tail are retractable.

For rubbish cave environment (Enitia)

The environment had a lot of hostiles to deal with, for example the glass eater, the flesh eating plan and the plastic eater. Besides that, there was also a poisonous snake living in the garbage cave. Solution: a cardboard dog. This dog was fully made of cardboard and was able to hide for the snake by blending into the environment and fold itself to a cardboard box.

For the hot spring environment (Marieke)

In the landscape there are craters and hot springs. The steam condenses on the wall and then drips down. The animals should be able to bear great heat and moist. I assume there is not much light on this planet, so the animals might need different visual aids.

There are nutritious algae and mosses growing on the wall. In order to get to the food, the animal has to get to the wall. I decided my first animal has wings. It is a snake/worm like creature with wings. It can suck the food of the wall.
There is also an animal which hasn’t got wings. In order to get to the food he places himself on top of a hot spring and waits for it to erupt. The animal will fly up, and during this flight it will flap it’s petal shaped legs up and so can suck itself to the wall. This animal doesn’t have eyes, it ‘sees’ through echo-location.

For All-round environment (Tomas)

The Grazer

On the grass lands of this environment live large hurdes of grazers. Firm and big creatures which protect themselves by staying together and use their horns for fighting of predators.
They have such large bellies because they only live on grass and therefore have multiple stomachs.

The Fly

Due to the hot temperatures on the rocks this fly has many wings. In these wings the fly circulates his blood, which helps him to stay cool.

These flies live of the blood of the grazers. Every evening they fly out of their homes in the cool caves and circle around on the grasslands to feed on the sleeping grazers.
They are on the menu of multiple other animals, but because there are so many of them around, this doesn't have effect on their population.

The Reptile

Living on the rocks to stay warm the reptile waits till the evening falls and the flies come out of their hiding. Once the flies exit their caves in large numbers the reptile uses his tail to confuse the flies and slap them out of the sky.
The reptile has a family member which can survive in much cooler atmospheres and lives in the grasslands. This one also lives of flies, but he catches them by climbing on the back of a sleeping grazer and waiting for the flies to land.

The Licker

A small but diverse creature living in between the rocks, thats the best way to describe a licker. Feeding on both reptiles, flies and grass this creature is never out of food to eat. However because they have rather large fat reserves, they are a juicy meal for a predator.

In order to escape from his predator he runs fast between the rocks using his tail for stability and steering. He runs slower than the predators, but because he is much more flexible he can easily outrun them in the rocky parts of the land.
Their most vulnerable moments are when they come out of the rocks to eat grass. Even though they never go far away from their save heaven, they often get eaten when they are out on the grass.

In order to eat the use their long tung to grab insects, grass and reptiles. However, the reptiles are bigger and harder to catch, so you often see the lickers struggling and stamping on reptiles, before they can eat them.

The Predator

Crawing through the grass goes the most dangerous creature of the lands. The predator uses the long grass for cover and surprises his prey. It's a rather fast sprinter, but it can't run very long.

It mostly feeds on lickers, but when it sees a possibility it also tries to grab a young grazer. Both of his preys will outrun them if they aren't killed instantaneously, therefore it has developed great sneaking skills and is almost soundless when crawling.

For Factory environment (Luuk)

This is a day in the life of Volatilis Ulterius, the flying fart.

Volatilis ulterius lives inside industrial chimneys near the sea. At night, it hangs from its leash, a strong chord attached to the inside of a chimney. While it sleeps, it breathes in deadly gases but instead of getting poisoned by them, Volatilis ulterius filters out the poisoneous parts of the air and saves it inside its balloon-like body.

When day breaks, Volatilis ulterius spreads its umbrella-like wings and floats up with the hot air in the chimney, leaving its leash anchored inside the chimney.

When Volatilis ulterius lands, it searches for holes created by worms. When it finds one, it inserts its backside in the hole and releases the deadly gases it collected last night.

After a while of inhaling the gas, the worm dies and Volatilis ulterius eats it with its backside.

When Volatilis ulterius is done eating, it reels itself by rolling up its leash. When it's back inside the chimney, it goes to sleep.

For where the city meets nature (Mai)

The creatures in the urban environment are created by trash which we can find everywhere. Basically, the creatures are small robots made of different electric and household appliances which combine and disguise themselves as trash so they can survive on the street. They can choose their own parts to adapt to the environment. For example, their hands can be made of suction cup to climb the wall or scissors to cut the grass on their way.

For the ice environment (Elien)

Living in an environment which is extremely cold asks for innovative ways to move. Several possibilities were explored:

Two irons form the base of this creature, like on a sledge. The tail enables the creature to move by flapping in and out.

This creature is living on the iceberg. It fastens itself to the surface by hammering or drilling his paws into the ice. He more or less crawls up to the iceberg.

On the ice it is hard to move around because of the extreme cold, sometimes bumpy surface. This animal has a heater in the bottom, which results in a smooth surface. The vans on the side of the animal can turn on and off, resulting in the animal moving in the opposite direction than the van.

This animal can live anywhere on the ice. It has paws with little flat surfaces at the end. The animal wets this part of the paw before putting it down. Then it will freeze onto the ice which will give him support to lift his other paws. Releasing the paws is made possible by shortly heating it.