The Gallantee

Order: Spathospondyliformes

Family: Pelagiotheriidae

Genus: Pelagiotherium 

The carpgrass meadows are a diverse, sprawling ecosystem. From herbivores which subsist off the nutrient-poor, yet abundant bounty of the meadows, or predators which hunt the herbivores for food. The very basis of this ecosystem is the carpgrass, a hardy plant which grows in great abundance in the shallow seas of the equator. Most of these undersea meadows are concentrated around Eden, the Equatorial Triplet and the northern tip of Ichthyonesia and are havens for life. One of the life forms who inhabit these meadows are some of the most important pelagys of these vast ecosystems: the gallantee.

Gallantees are a herbivorous pelagys, a genus which has roughly a dozen species (the largest is depicted here, P. pratensis is roughly 4.8 metres long) that are stocky and slow-swimming, using its large pectoral fins to propel itself slowly across the seabed, swimming at leisurely pace to consume large amounts of carpgrass. Singlehandedly the largest consumers of carpgrass, gallantees will swim through huge meadows and chow on vegetation at an alarmingly fast rate, similar to Terran manatees or dugongs. In order to feed on the relatively low-nutrient carpgrass at high quantities and as fast as possible, it employs a strange method of consumption. By scooping up large amounts of carpgrass using the spoon-shaped lower mandibles, it gathers them at a specific location in the mouth, in order to rapidly process the large amounts of carpgrass into bite-sized tiny chunks. A flexible 'tongue' grasps the food and pushes it into the throat, and this process will repeat over and over, and extremely quickly. A gallantee can consume roughly 9-12 percent of its body weight every day. This efficient lifestyle expends little energy and can be repeated rapidly, and it can make the most of a nutrient-poor diet. 

However, not every day is leisure for the gallantee. Being slow-moving, and somewhat oblivious to the world, a gallantee might seem like an easy prey item. But, of course, such large animals, despite how easy of a prey they might appear, are always well-defended. Gallantees can use their large, bulbous rostrum to ram predators, and smaller species can swim out of sight once they have detected predators. P. pratensis is unique species, able to ram predators using its rostrum, like other species, yet also has another technique to avoid predators. The second tract in the digestive system, which directs faeces towards the mouth, yet branches separately from the throat (a unique adaptation convergently evolved among various herbivorous pelagys) in order to expel a soupy 'ink', derived from their own faeces and sediment accidentally consumed during the process of feeding in order to distract predators. Deceptively fast, the gallantee can escape quickly out of the scene. But, alas, this may not always work. Especially cunning predators may find their way through the wall of sandy ink and will kill the gallantee for sustenance. Hunting of gallantees, however can prove beneficial to the meadows, as their destructive feeding habits are hindered, allowing growth of young carpgrass, yet gallantees themselves, which might expel faeces onto the sediment, can fertilise the sediment where there was once carpgrass, allowing for more growth. Their niche, inevitably, places them in a highly beneficial and crucial spot in the ecosystem, as massive undersea grazers.

While there is only one species pictured here, there are many other, smaller gallantee species aside from P. pratensis. Notable species include P. chlorocarnis, P. toxicognatha and P. mirabilis.