The Boggart

Order: Toxicopinniformes

Suborder: Dactylopinnoidea

Family: Dactylopinnidae

Genus: Dactylopinna

Maybe, during the night, as one travels through the darkness of the open sandy seafloor, they may find this curious little creature: the strange boggart.

A curious creature, this little pelagys, just around 22 centimetres in length is known as a boggart. Named because it lives in secluded burrows and tends to harass anything that attempts to enter said burrow, it is a type of fingerfish (Dactylopinnidae), a rather peculiar grouping of pelagys who are identified by having a very strange and unusual feature: they have a pair of long, jointed appendages resembling fingers.

Fingerfish are relatives to a large grouping of benthic, mostly cryptically coloured pelagys known as cryptognathids, which includes species such as the benthic flowerjaws. Together, they form the larger grouping 'Dactyloichthyoidea', or fish with fingers. They get their name from having 2 pairs of hypertrophied fin rays which are free of the fin itself and operate as independent structures likened closest to fingers. In most dactyloichyoidean pelagys, these fingers are used for scuttling across the sea floor and are used as an energy efficient mode of travel over the seafloor without having to expend energy for swimming. Such fingers were naturally sensitive and possessed a high degree of movement, allowing them to be used as 'feelers' that the pelagys could use in order to find hidden prey or identify objects. Of course, these fingers would eventually be used in a much stranger way: to manipulate and hold objects. The fingerfish possess the most hypertrophied fingers out of their clade and inhabit a strange and specialist niche as benthic predators and look rather similar to other pelagys, aside from the fact that they have 2 pairs of super long and bony fingers. These fingers, while looking grotesque, are not used for killing prey or anything sinister, but are used as sensory appendages and to manipulate objects; they are functionally hands. At the end of their fingers, fingerfish have various folds and ridges, known as lamellae which aid to increase their grip, which they can use in order to pick up things. These lamellae are also highly sensitive, which allows them to look for prey and identify objects by touch alone. In conjunction with their stout jaws, fingerfish can use them to pry open shells or to pull prey into manageable chunks, making them among the most dexterous species of pelagys, perfectly suited and adapted to access hard, tough prey such as skiddlecrabs and trivalves by prying them open without brute force, allowing them to remain rather small.

Most fingerfish are deepsea species, but some species such as the boggart live in shallower waters. especially the coastal carpgrass prairies and reefs, which are both extremely rich in prey items. The boggart dwells in water of up to 600 metres deep, and spends all its life near the sea floor. A rather elusive species, the boggart is most often found in burrows during the day, which it either digs by using its tail or fingers, or by either inhabiting a vacant burrow or bullying something else to take their home. Staying mostly motionless, the boggart may even end up sleeping for long periods during the day. A rather peaceful lifestyle for a small pelagys.

However, during the night, they start to hunt. Boggarts typically leave their burrow during dusk and start to hunt for benthic invertebrates by using their keen vision and sense of touch. When not hunting and just swimming out in the open water, they either let their fingers free and trail behind them in the water, or fold them in a manner similar to mantises. When hunting over the sea floor, they swim slowly and near vertically, spreading their fingers out in a large radius and using their fingertips to sort of 'feel' around. When they find prey, the boggart will attempt to capture it by using its fingertips. Prey for this fingerfish is rather variable; they eat skiddlecrabs, skrim, bullworms, trivalves and crawlers. To consume hard prey, the boggart uses its exceptionally dexterous fingers in order to sort of pry open their prey by holding one end in their jaws and pulling the other end to expose the soft innards of their prey, which they consume promptly. For different species, they have different 'strategies', and these pelagys are rather intelligent, being among the few to consume venomous crawler species (which have sharp spines) rather regularly by prying them open. If spotted by a predator, boggarts will swim away as fast as possible after 'vomiting' out a cloud of smoky black 'ink', as they are not very fast at swimming due to their long fingers, which are rather ungainly at high speeds. As dawn arrives, the boggart will typically return to its burrow, and rest for the day,

As the boggart spends much of its time in its burrow during the day and are rather skittish during the night, they prove to be a very elusive species; not much is known about them, but they are surely among the strangest and most fascinating species of pelagys on Alladoras.