Predestar



Split off from leslilstar, as the predestar reached its much larger size it needed a way to get more nutrients, as filter-feeding alone was becoming impractical. As a result, it has developed an additional way of getting food which allows it to take on much larger prey—a sort of “mouth”. This mouth consists of a patch of short, touch-sensitive baits on its somewhat pointed front. When it runs into something too big to filter with its bristly arms, the baits on its front latch on and the patch retracts into the body, where it becomes more like a stomach and absorbs the catch by breaking it apart with pseudopods and pulling the pieces into its cells. Once it is done, the mouth reverts back out, streamlining its shape once again. Its cells digest any foreign organic matter that enters them, determined by individual-specific protein indicators to prevent it from eating its own organelles; this has a side effect of making it able to detect and consume pathogens.

It has additionally developed sexual reproduction, which creates healthier genetics—though it can still reproduce by fragmentation, it can also mate. When any two predestars encounter one another, they will link up their anuses using finger-like projections; as they cannot yet tell male and female apart, this isn’t always successful, but it is about half the time because males and females are about equal in number. Developing predestars remain in the female and receive nutrients from her until they are capable of swimming, at which point they just swim right out and begin to live out their lives. Baby predestars primarily scavenge and filter-feed, but can sometimes consume large cells the same way the adults consume larger meals.

Due to homology of its arms, all four arms have the finger-like projections used by the anal arm in mating. This has little impact on its swimming ability but proves useful in turning around when it encounters an obstacle such as a large rock or crystal flora, as the finger-like projections give it more traction and surface area to kick off from such obstacles rather than pitifully slap them. It has decoupled its swimming ability from its waste disposal system, developing subdermal muscles which are apart from its "intestine".

As a result of the development of a mouth, the organs of the predestar are a bit rearranged; though it isn’t very visible externally, it is now completely bilateral in adulthood, with its center line running along its anal arm.