#irken softshell

[xd0ntr0nx]

Iɴᴢɪᴅɪᴏᴜꜱ, the Irken Softshell. °‧★🪐

[hermajestytak]

Sorry for the spam liking do you have any irken biology hcs you could feet us……?

⬆️me looking at you with anticipation

Oh do I ever!

Last time, I went on a tangent on how I think the entire (modern) Irken species came to be, so this time I'll feed you bullet points:

Irken "worm tongues" are meant for lingual luring (luring prey into a predator's mouth by using their tongue as bait). In the real world, you can see this in action in alligator snapping turtles. Irkens used to hunt like this in prehistoric times, but they prefer highly processed food nowadays.

As for the whole herbivore vs omnivore debate, irkens are herbivorous (flat teeth!), but (should) supplement their diets with meat. Fun fact: IRL herbivores aren't as strict as we were taught! Many deer, cows, horses among others voluntarily eat meat when given the chance. However, modern irkens generally see natural meat as disgusting (ESPECIALLY if it's not from Irk, think of all that foreign bacteria!) and will only eat heavily processed fake factory meat.

Irkens have fluoride in their saliva (and naturally minty breath). It's how I justify them eating so much sugar without having to brush their teeth.

Irkens were swamp tree dwellers in their prehistoric era. Their sharp hands and feet were for climbing bark and their green color was for camouflage!

Prehistoric irkens were REALLY small, as in "iguana sized" small. They grew to various human sizes by the time they developed their society because of mating preferences (even their feral lizard brains HATED being small).

Irkens used to greet each other by hooking their antennae and rubbing them (see my antennae post for more on this), but if you do this nowadays, you look extremely weird.

Like the permeable skin of a frog, Irken skin absorbs fluids! This why they use dry "cleansing chalk" in place of soap and why Zim and Tak are extremely sensitive to chemicals in Earth liquids. It's a useful feature for staying hydrated in a moist swamp, but terrible when coming into contact with anything that's not pure natural water.

Of course, a lot of people are only here for the mating/reproduction headcanons, so here's a rundown of natural irkens smeets: they were laid in softshell eggs, but laying these eggs sucked because their increasingly larger heads meant laying larger eggs as they evolved.