Villati
Villatis’ thin skin and weak pigmentation mean they easily dry out, so they require cool, moist conditions. They are most often active in the evening and early morning, though they are also active at night, and wet, heavily shaded environments extend its daytime activity hours.
Villatis have a more spiderlike movement pattern than its more froglike relative, the Glassbelly. While its relative can crunch things up with its strontium-bump “gizzard” but can only digest small things, the Villati can eat big things but relies on large amounts of digestive acids. As it’s not particularly good at digesting chitin, it prefers softer, easier-to-digest prey, such as related species.
Physiology
Villatis have a system of 25 small water and air exchange sacs on their now shorter-tailed back ends, which are connected to their large stomachs. Though it draws in air through its mouth using these sacs, it doesn’t breathe through the sacs. Instead, air that passes through its mouth flows over special, mucus-coated villi on the insides of its lips, which can absorb oxygen from moist air. The mechanism is somewhat similar to the pharyngeal breathing of soft-shell turtles. It retains the ability to passively absorb oxygen from its skin, mouth lining, and vents, although the total amount of oxygen it can absorb is lower than through its lip-villi specifically. While largely terrestrial, Villatis are still able to breathe underwater.
Villatis have bumps (papillae) along their “lips” which help it grind food. These are actually extensions of its digestive system merged with outer tissue, and similar to its breathing villi, if much larger. Villatis have no teeth, and no means of ripping things apart, so it must swallow food whole. Lacking any sort of mechanical processing (e.g., a gizzard) in is digestive system, it works purely through large volumes of relatively weak digestive acids. Though Villatis can close their four cloaca-like vents with internal sphincters, they have no esophaguses, so they must seal their mouths entirely to fill their stomachs with acid. To remove undigested chunks too big to be excreted through their vents (e.g., bones from bigger Spardifly prey items), they tilt their bodies downward and dilate their mouths to gently pour it out.
Its body is hydraulic, with an open circulatory system. Blood flows passively through their water balloon-like bodies. They use hemocyanin as a blood pigment, which exists in such small concentrations their blood is colorless.
Senses, Brain and Behavior
Villatis have fewer but bigger eyes than its ancestor: only four, set between various bioluminescent patches. While Villatis have poor visual acuity, they have remarkably good color vision: they can see every color in the human visual spectrum. They are especially sensitive to green, as they use that color to communicate. While it has sharper acuity than some of its relatives’ vision, by human standards its acuity is rather blurry: it’s roughly equivalent to 120p on Terran video outlets. The actual structure of the eyes is a pinhole design, similar to the abalones (e.g., green ormer) of Earth. Its true strength is sensitivity to motion, allowing it to detect and respond to potential prey very quickly.
Its nerve net is even denser than its ancestor, and lays very close to the outer layer of its stomach. It is quicker to respond to stimuli than some of its kin. It is also smart enough to “give up” on prey that won’t fit into its mouth or would make its stomach too full to move, if only after several minutes of unsuccessful tries. Still, much of its behavior is reflexive. Thus, they are easily “teased” using colorful, high-contrast, non-food items, such as brightly-colored leaves pushed along in the wind.
Their chasing and eating behavior is usually triggered by anything small suddenly moving, especially when it has a strong color contrast and runs across its field of vision, rather than straight at it. Once it sees prey, it tucks its extra legs, dilates its mouth for greater oxygen intake, sprints, and swallows it whole, ratcheting it down using the bumps on its lips.
Since it can’t get as much oxygen as usual when its mouth is sealed, when digesting especially big prey or prey items it must quickly find a place to rest for about ten minutes. When this happens, it becomes sluggish like a gorged anaconda. It tends to rest in small, concealed puddles, such as beneath shrubby flora or on the edges of streams with abundant undergrowth.
The legs on its upper side are not used often. If knocked onto its back, it uses its top legs to right itself again, and it flails around its legs and their strontium-reinforced claws if captured by a predator.
Life Cycles
Like its ancestors, chemicals emitted by Continentadoras and Adoralgae mark out puddles as good breeding sites for it. At such puddles, it draws in mates using specific patterns of flashing lights, uses its extra dangling leg to dig into the pond, and spawns. Its Carpotesta Luceremundare-esque newborn stage (0.4 mm at birth) is a shorter stage than before, with longer fins. Though they start out filter-feeding, they quickly progress to eating tiny fauna, starting with things like Ciliastars, Warmbuns, and Grapplebuns. (including species that could easily eat newborn Villatis). At roughly 1.6 cm, they emerge onto land.
Typically, they reproduce sexually, but they retain the ability to reproduce asexually. Their ability to reproduce sexually is linked to environmental stress, such as temperature changes, so in a completely regulated artificial environment they always reproduce asexually.
Organism Interactions
If pursued or captured by a predator, it flickers its lights rapidly in panic patterns which cause others of its kind to flee. If captured, it flails around its claws and potentially scratches the predator. However, once captured, they are almost always devoured, as they are small and nigh-defenseless.
They survive mainly by their sheer numbers, activity patterns differing from their predators, and hiding and staying still for extended periods. Although faster than some of its relatives, its low endurance while running means it can’t survive sustained pursuit.
With its new villi adaptation and better movement efficiency, it can live in the Glicker Cloud Forest. However, it can’t pull in oxygen quite as well as its relative, the Mattebelly, so it’s quicker to tire when pursued by predators in this habitat.