Gash-hopper

In the grassy expanse of Serinarcta's upland plain 275 million years PE can be found one of the fiercest and most deadly predators ever to live. Able to leap 12 times its own body length and taking down prey with a 90% successful kill rate, the bloodthirsty gash-hopper would instill terror in the heart of all living things... if it weren't only 9 inches long, weighing just two ounces.  

The gash-hopper is a species of siphontooth that has abandoned a parasitic lifestyle to hunt live prey in an environment in which insects are incredibly abundant and the climate is warm, so that these once obligate thorngrazer pests are now free to move around and live independent of their hosts. While blood is almost limitless in a herd of large animals, and can be easy to get, it isn't nutritious - sanguivorous animals must feed constantly, and much of their diet is simply excreted as urine. If it can be acquired, meat is a more nourishing and filling meal, and the gash-hopper has reverted from its specialized diet to one of whole small prey items, It cannot undo its anatomical adaptations that arose to feed as a parasite, however; its jaws are unable to open, its two tooth interlocked in a syringe-like mechanism in which the upper tooth slides down into the lower one and retracts to produce suction into the mouth. To adapt its stabbing and sucking mouthparts to a diet of exclusively live prey has required the evolution of stronger, anti-coagulant proteins in its saliva that now serve as a type of venom to subdue prey and help dissolve body tissues so that the predator not only can remove all of its prey's liquid blood, but also break down and remove more nutritious soft organ tissues as a milkshake-consistency flesh slurry through its tooth proboscis.

Hunting like a vertebrate spider more than like other small endothermic predators, gash-hoppers have the ability to slow their metabolisms and rely on ambient heat to maintain their body temperatures while they lie in wait for prey to approach, sometimes fasting for several days at a time, while their cryptic mottled patterns hide them in the grass. When something does come by they can spring into action, extending their paired hind legs - actually hypertrophied toes of a once longer hind limb - and leap rapidly forward as far as nine feet to pounce on their victim. Gash-hoppers are vicious and tenacious when hunting, fighting with animals that may be over eight times their size by clinging to their backs and injecting them with their venomous saliva. A bite directly into the muscle induces paralysis in several minutes, and almost instantly begins to go to work turning the poor creatures innards to sludge. Gash-hoppers are mostly nocturnal, but will take advantage of opportunity whenever it comes, and they are indiscriminate predators that target everything from small insects to flighty sparrowgulls to the ever-wary poppits, being fast and agile enough to outmaneuver and kill all of them if they can catch them at first unaware. Once prey is killed, the hunter will feed and then attempt to drag away and cache what remains in a safe place so that it can return and feed again at its leisure for a number of days.

Though the siphontooth was tolerant of its own kind because it had to be and the food they all shared was not limited, the gash-hopper is far less social. It has become solitary and territorial to defend more limited prey resources: gash-hoppers will sometimes even cannibalize one another, and so there is a strong impetus to avoid coming into contact. These formidable little assassins defend their territories with strong scent marks and screeching nocturnal vocalizations often made from a high perch on a boulder or even from the back of some large, unwitting animal as it sleeps. Females accept males into their territories only when receptive to mate, and will kill and eat them at most other times; she has just a single pup which she alternately carries on her back and hides in a temporary grass nest as she hunts, in contrast to her ancestors that had to hold their babies with them at all times by necessity, lacking a place to leave them on their host animals. The baby is fully independent and leaves its parent at just six weeks old, twice as fast as the siphontooth, as the diet it is provided is much more nourishing than blood alone.