Fangbunny

The Fangbunny split from its ancestor. It is more terrestrial than its ancestor, spending most of its adult life on land and only returning to water to spawn. Its larvae resemble its ancestor and mainly move by swimming with their bristly limbs. In order to live on land outside of the monsoon season, it has expanded its diet to include spardis, and given the lack of similarly-sized predators feeding on them it was able to become significantly larger. It has ceased walking on its “foot”, effectively reducing it to a slimy fold on its belly and instead using its muscular limb-nubs as actual legs. They are placed more under its body for this purpose, and the bristles function as something like both toes and claws to increase traction. There are usually six bristle-claws on each leg, but individual Fangbunnies may sometimes have more or fewer as a mutation, similar to the number of digits on a Terran tetrapod. With less calcium available on land, it has prioritized keeping its teeth fully calcified and its walking bristles are instead constructed of a form of calcified keratin. It has developed its simple eyes into slightly-less-simple cup eyes, which allow it to spot and flee from predators more easily by detecting motion. To support its larger size, it has a small heart-like organ in each segment--including its counter arm segments--to help circulate its blood. It has adopted a brownish coloration to make itself harder to see in the soil.

Living on an island, the Fangbunny faced the issue of its eggs sometimes being washed into the ocean. It developed some salt tolerance so that it could at least survive in the brackish estuaries, but the ocean itself was still unsurvivable. However, eggs which shriveled up and went dormant when exposed to so much salt survived long enough to be washed into tolerable waters in Hydro. As it evolved, this ability to survive trips through the short stretch of ocean separating the two became universal in the species. Thus, the Fangbunny is established in both Krakow and Hydro.

The Fangbunny has regained a longer tail. Though the tail was meant more for sniffing out pheromones, the chemoreceptors on the counter-arms are often preoccupied with the taste of whatever it’s eating and waving its counter arms around would be far more conspicuous. It will taste the air separately with its tail, flicking it to and fro, informing it about the presence of potentially dangerous fauna that it can’t see. Lacking any form of lung or gill, the Fangbunny respires through its skin. It keeps its skin moist enough for this, as well as for chemoreception, by secreting a coat of mucus comparable to that of a Terran earthworm. The fold left behind from its ancestor's gastropod-like foot incidentally increases the amount of surface area it has without being especially vulnerable to desiccation, so its contribution to its ability to obtain oxygen from the air is not insignificant.

The Fangbunny’s counter arms lack gonads, as they were too easily damaged while feeding. Thus, it only has 12 gonads, all positioned in the “armpits” of its limbs. It submerges most of its body when spawning in the water. It spawns regularly during the first half of the wet season, in sync with the rest of the local population through pheromone-based coordination, so that its offspring are unlikely to be stranded by the water source drying out. Though millions of gametes may be released, the majority are swept into the ocean without being fertilized, and of those that do get fertilized, most of them will be eaten by predators.

Like its ancestor, the Fangbunny is a carnivore which kills prey using the sharp fangs on its counter-arms. The “gums” of the teeth, which are in reality homologous with its legs, have chemoreceptors which allow it to taste and smell, but as mentioned before it primarily uses its tail for scenting due to it being less conspicuous. Though it has six main body segments, it is capable of mutating to have more or fewer.