New Fiendish Beast

[sabredog]

OK, so I have this new beast in the works: the Puppeteer. It is a carnivore siren that uses the carcass of a kill to lure in scavengers, opportunistic predators, or even social prey items curious about the mimicked vocalizations and movements seemingly made by the hollowed out carcass the Puppeteer is inside of.

The beast lives in a hole and extends out a frill of fine frond-like filaments that emit pheromones mimicking scents from various kills it has made, harvesting samples as it eats the kill. The thing is large enough to present a threat to a human but only if the person gets close enough to be inside its lunge distance. The majority of the Puppeteer is in the hole for protection, since the beast isn't very mobile and more delicate than one would suspect given the violence it commits in the attack.

The movements the Puppeteer makes the husked carcass do are either through the hijacked nervous system (for as long as impulses can be forced through it) or/and by motions made by the Puppeteer having its head inside the carcass as it peers out of a gash left by a fang to watch what an approaching prey will do.

Anyway....just a preview while I work on the illustrations and some more work on the thing's behavior. In between my law classes and what work I can scrape up I haven't had a lot of time for this sort of thing for a while but I have a to-do list of various beasts - this one should be done by the weekend.

 

[SpaceBadger]

Interesting. Is this critter actually intelligent, or is this instinctive behavior?

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Hehe. A to-do list of critters. Go on, drag it out. I can wait.

 

[McPerth]

Sure this pherormones mimmiking capacity is well appreciate by the perfume industry. Enough so as to breed them for pherormone (and so perfumes) sintetization (possible commercial value, or adventure seed to capture some of them for one such industries).

 

[sabredog]

Interesting. Is this critter actually intelligent, or is this instinctive behavior?

I've been debating this myself so I might make it borderline intelligent. It isn't just making a dumb lure when it attracts its prey, it modulates the performance to induce behavior from the victim based on observations it makes from inside the carcass and selected from memory of previous prey behaviors. Pick and choose the behavior that best lures in the intended prey, including sounds and movements. Since a lot of the prey ends up being opportunistic carnivore hunters and social scavengers the prey is pretty smart with complex behaviors based on how they interact with the environment - not just dumb cows or sheep. This Puppeteer is also fairly vulnerable itself, which is why it keeps most of its body underground when not on the move - so it has to rely on patience and care when luring the prey close enough to get a good bite on it to make the kill. If a Puppeteer fumbles that it can easily end up prey itself, or injured badly enough that it dies later.

The scent lure is glandular and passive - linked to the most recent victim, not any particularly desired one.

And I think having it be fairly smart will make it even more interesting and dangerous.

 

[sabredog]

I'm writing it up now - from 8 pages of notes. Figuring out this thing's place in it's ecoweb has provided a host of new animals with interesting survival strategies to examine, so more may be coming from the world in my TU known as "Eightball".

Here at least is the pic I drew tonight of the Eightball Puppeteer:

 

[Shadowfax]

I like your idea.

 

[sabredog]

Check it out on its own thread. The Eightball Puppeteer thread.