#creature art

[kitab00m101]

God I love speculative biology

[monstertoothsart]

⚠️watch your fingers

[psalidodont]

Blumplets: '' Smelly disgusting looking fish that call mangroves and other brackish places their home. They can also be found in reefs and rocky shores, schooling together tightly. We consume them everynow and then, their big bulbous head is inedible, its quite fatty and chewy... though, they make for a good fertilizer. We thought their fingerlings were a completely different kind of fish, but as they grow older they slowly start to turn blue instead of red and develop that peculiar growth on their head. '' Oceanic blumplet: '' Massive Blumplets that live in open sea. They're just as big as a hog, and spearfishing for this species in particular is highly demanded, as their taste becomes more intensified within their age. Just like their smaller counterpart, the big hump they have in front tastes horrible. ''

[yellydany]

Chained Wyvern design💜 Commission for @abyssalgoat!

[thedawner]

Another portrait for Moff on Discord!

[hannahorca]

Creature inspired by the Brown Pelican! (both art and photo by me)

[vantabats]

Copper Dragon 🌲

Another comm for Veladynee!

[credus99-blog]

Aggression/ Danger to humans: Extremely Low – None

Element/ Ailment: None

The Azure Jidderway or Cj’idywej (Chidaway), meaning “trotting shrub” in Dhënuvgöm, is a species of Anthropod (Arthropods that have evolved internal skeletons, closed circular systems¸ and are Mesotherms). While Azure Jidderways are one of several anthropod species that have successfully colonized the surface of Atterra, they are one of the few that almost exclusively live on the surface. Azure Jidderways, like other jidderways, are commonly found in forests, shrublands, and other environments where the moist soil allows the jidderway to bury itself in the soil. These small crepuscular grazers utilize their two oral tentacles in order to funnel food into their mouths and allow their radula to break down their food. The azure jidderway prefers to spend its foraging hours eating small fruits, nuts, algae, and soft leaved plants on the forest floor. Like other anthropods, the azure jidderway can see into the UV spectrum and possess biofluorescent spots and patterns on their bodies for infra-species identification. Curiously, the fluorescent markings that the azure jidderway possesses are concentrated on the top portion of its body that stays above the ground when it is buried. This is believed to allow Jidderway to identify each other even if one is buried in the ground and allow jidderways to gather and form ‘groves’. While Jidderways belong to a group of shell-less anthropods (anthropods that either are not majorly covered or lack by hard carapaces).

When it comes to defending itself from predators, the azure jidderway, like all other hoofed jidderway species, has no natural defenses. The jidderway’s skin, while thick,  is similar to a toad’s and offers little in the way of protection against predators. Instead the azure jidderway, like other jidderway, employs bright colors, speed, and camouflage as its means of natural defense. While harmless, jidderways employ the use of bright colors to give predators the impression of them being poisonous. Helping to give the jidderway a much needed moment to run away from the predator. Surprisingly, jidderways are quick on their feet, often seen frantically and erratically running from whatever is threatening them. To further aid their escape, jidderways will position their eye stalks directly in front of their bodies while running. This gives the jidderway stereoscopic vision to be better able to maneuver around objects ahead of them. When not frantically running for its life, or foraging during the night and twilight hours, the jidderway spends its time buried in the ground. While buried in the ground only their plant stalk, eyes, backs, and leaf-like appendages are above the ground. The plant stalks that jidderway posses on their backs are remnants of a beneficial parasitic plant that once worked in symbiosis with its host. The plant helped provide the jidderway with sugars and oxygen metabolization, and the plant was able to spread its pollen and seeds to other hosts.

However, over time, the parasitic plant slowly became completely indistinguishable from the host’s anatomically and almost genetically. In fact, the only place where the original parasitic plant’s genetics can still be found is within the chloroplasts that exist within the leaves upon the stalk. Not only do the chloroplasts of the stalk  and its leaf-like appendages help the jidderway photosynthesize and metabolize oxygen, but also in its reproduction. This is due to the reproductive organs in the jidderway’s abdomen having become completely atrophied and nonfunctional as the plant symbiote and host merged into one. Currently, the function of reproduction has been completely taken over by the stalk on the jidderway’s back. Making the jidderway reproduce through pollination instead of standard sexual faunal reproduction. The pollination style reproduction makes jidderways the only known genus to reproduce in this manner alongside Grasslings who also reproduce through pollination. Making the Jidderway a more derived and extreme version of the ‘Leaf Sheep’ and Sacoglossa molluscs of Earth which incorporate algae into their bodies in order to photosynthesize for their food.

The stalk of the jidderway is able to metabolize oxygen in sufficient amounts to where the jidderway does not need to breathe from its abdomen while buried in the ground. While buried, the jidderway will unfurl the large fleshy leaves on the top of its stalk and remain as still as possible. Should the jidderway sense something approaching it through vibrations in the ground, it will extend its eye stalks to survey the threat. Should the jidderway be discovered and harassed it will release low frequency calls from its vocal sacks to startle the threat. Should that not work, then the jidderway will attempt smacking the threat with its heavy stalk.

Should that fail to deter the threat, or the threat is severe enough the jidderway and any others around it will burst from the ground and run away for safety in different directions. The surviving members of the grove (which can be anywhere between five to twelve individuals in size) will use their vocal organs to call out to their surviving grove members to regroup. Once regrouped, depending on the time of the day, the jidderways will then either begin foraging or rebury themselves in a spot of sunny soil. During winter jidderway prefer to spend as much time as possible in the ground and go into a hibernative state as they shut down all nonessential systems and almost entirely rely on photosynthesis to get them through the winter. Only moving when they need to escape a predator or to find a better spot to bury themselves in warm vegetation. During these periods of movement the jidderway will eat nuts and shrubs to sustain itself and build up fat before going back to its near inactive state.

To communicate jidderways use the two vocal sacks on either side of their body in order to produce sound and amplify their calls. Similar to how frogs croak, the jidderway will inflate its vocal sacks and vibrate them in order to produce low and high frequency sounds that can be heard for over two miles in the forests that they inhabit. It helps that the jidderway’s ears are especially tuned to hear low frequency sounds, allowing jidderway to communicate over large distances. During early spring, the large leaves at the top of a male’s stalk will turn from green to a brilliant red, yellow, and orange. At the very tops of their stalks both male and female jidderways will develop a blue or white flower containing a stamen or pistil depending on the gender of the jidderway.

Males will compete by making loud calls throughout the forest,  flaunting their colors, and displaying their fitness by rapidly bobbing side to side like a stick bug in front of the female. The more impressive a male’s display is, the more females he will mate with within his grove. Should the top male be challenged by another male and showing off their yellow belly spots, posturing, and calls doesn’t settle the dispute, males will fight by kicking with their hooves and chasing. The winner of the match is the first one to submit or be eaten by a predator due to the ruckus they create running and calling in the brush. Should the female choose to mate with a male, the female jidderway will connect her pistil to the male’s stamen and become fertilized by his pollen. Once pollinated, the female jidderway’s flower will lose its petals within twenty four hours of successful pollination and begin to develop a fruit the size of a large grapefruit over the next thirty days at the end of her stalk.

The growing of a fruit is extremely taxing for the female jidderway as over half the nutrients and minerals she eats will go directly into the fruit while it matures. Should the female encounter any danger while her fruit is growing, she will immediately detach it from her body and abandon it to distract the predator while she makes her escape. Should this happen early enough in the spring or summer, the female may mate again and begin growing another fruit. When the fruit first starts growing, the skin of the azure jidderway’s fruit is a pinkish violet in color with green tipped developing spines. As the fruit matures it will slowly grow hair and become a mix of browns with dark markings and patterns on its skin and a flat bottom. The waxy spines made from thicker and harder skin remain a darker green in color at their tips as the fruit matures and help to protect fruit from potential predators. The skin of a mature azure jidderway fruit is thin and waxy, the inside has a thick and fleshy pinkish pericarp, locule walls, locules with seeds that make up the inner pericarp, and a thick and incredibly nutrient dense core. Each fruit has between fourteen to seventeen locules each with a small black rice-grain-sized seed at their ends and surrounded by two locule walls.

Once the fruit has reached maturity and has been dropped by the female jidderway the fruit will begin germinating. Over the course of the first three days after being detached, the hard black seeds of the fruit will draw nutrients from the core. The seeds expand to the size of a grape and completely drain the core of nutrients before the hard outer shell pops and reveals the embryo and yolk that was developing inside it. Once the hard shell of the seed has been removed, the embryo will feed off its nutrient dense yoke and grow until it’s two inches in diameter over the course of four to six weeks. The skin of the fruit during this time becomes more and more strained from the growing jidderway nymphs until finally it tears and rips open, releasing the nymphs inside. Once ‘hatched’ the jidderway nymphs will devour whatever remains of the fruit to gain all its vitamins and minerals before leaving as a group to find new sources of food.  This grove of young jidderway will continue to grow and develop as a unit over the course of a year and a half before going their separate ways. It is not uncommon to see a young grove of jidderway following a full grown jidderway, using the adult as a means of spotting predators and finding easily accessible food. Once separated, the jidderway nymphs will reach their full size by the end of their second year and reach sexual maturuity by their third.

Due to the skittish nature of the jidderway, initial domestication attempts for meat and fruit farming of the anthropod were largely unsuccessful. Until over thirty years of selective breeding produced a domestic strain of the azure jidderway. While still skittish, the temperament of domestic jidderway is more akin to that of a chicken’s. Generally minding their own business and allowing themselves to be picked up by handlers, but sudden movements and loud noises send them into a panic and make the jidderways run for the nearest cover. Luckily, jidderway are easy to raise and farm due to them needing minimal land due to photosynthesizing in the ground for the majority of the day. Farmers often feed jidderway extra fruit, mineral rich pellets, and scraps of vegetables that are left over from their harvesting process as a way to make use of unwanted parts of edible plants. This ease of farming and the fact that the white flesh of the jidderway, like other anthropods, easily soaks up flavors while cooking. Making  it incredibly popular within the walled state of Malgori and the SRA.

Besides being harvested for their meat, they are also farmed for the fruits they grow after mating. During the spring and summer months jidderway fruit is incredibly popular due to the creamy texture of its flesh, and tasting like a citrusy custard. Adding to the popularity of the jidderway’s fruit (also sometimes referred to as the jidderway melon) is the fact that it is rich in fiber, antioxidants, vitamin c, vitamin k, cobalamin, acticidin, folates, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, pyrite, and copper make the fruit particularly good for growing children.Once dropped by the female the fruit is flash frozen as to stop the germination process of the fruit and allow it to be sold in various grocery stores. To maximize production of fruit during the spring and summer months, female jidderway are fed a calorie and mineral rich diet in order to grow their fruits quickly. Once fruit is detached from the stalk of the female, the female is put in a greenhouse to simulate early spring so that she redevelops her flower and then is repollinated to restart the process. Once the summer ends and fall begins this process is stopped to give the female jidderways a break and resume their natural habits.

Due to jidderways being the most recognizable anthropod besides moss crabs, and how silly it looks while running has made it a pop-culture icon within Malgori and the SRA. In media depictions of the jidderway, the anthropod will bob side to side before disappearing and teleporting somewhere else, often leaving after images in its wake. Another popular depiction of the jidderway is that while running, it’s moving at the speed of sound so everything else is whipping by it. Only for it to switch to a human’s perspective and show that the jidderway is only trotting away at a much slower pace.

The most famous depiction of jidderway’s in media however, is the azure jidderway superhero known as ‘The Blue Bolt’ or Bolt for short. Bolt is part of a cast of other superpowered animals that gained their powers after coming into contact with ancient and powerful relics. In all his depictions Bolt has the power of superspeed, with more recent depictions adding to his list of powers. Turning the jidderway into a martial artist that uses psionic powers to turn evil doers into fruit that he then eats to temporarily gain their powers. The franchise of Bolt and other superpowered animals and their fight against crime has grown so large in recent years amongst the natters (orphans living on the streets), that they can often be seen with memorabilia and shirts depicting Bolt and the other animals on their shirts. This popularity has even gotten to the point that particularly quick and fast acting policemen are called ‘blue bolts’ due to the blue tarda’s (face paint) on their faces.

[eronousofcalore]

Tutrle tortle ttrutle turtle Look at this goofy dragon!

[crowvern]

currently this guy is hanging out in a house plant pot!

[franciscolemos]

The entire cast of The Lair of the Alchemist.

[thebritishdragon]

Astolfos and Orpheus! Another combination of worlds!!!

@okirayoshi

[monstertoothsart]

🌬️☁️

[psalidodont]

' ' Blitzshells are small, rodent-mole like beasts that live burrowing in forests and shrublands. We use them for consumption, as their meat tastes quite good when roasted and their shells make for excellent shoulderpads. However... within centuries we figured out how to ''tame'' these vermin, and nowadays we tend to breed them for the sole purpose of living ammo. They're usually loaded on balistas and thrown at incredible speeds, their endurance is surprising and those spikes are no joke if they happen to get into your skin... and to think we use our distant ancestors and relatives as weaponry. ''

[ozzyeelz]

I like them lots💚