The rise of the black mouse amoeba
The rise of the black mouse amoeba
by willow
In Early Neovestigia, there are many spaces that are missing in terms of species diversity, especially when it comes to the niche of small creatures. One of the creatures that has proven to be flexible and adaptable comes from an unexpected source: the black mouse amoeba.
Being chimeric creatures that consist of a contrasting variety of life forms, your proof that they can borrow some of the genes that were silenced during their formation, float back into the body of life and even thrive in a variety of niches, proves that they are good enough to survive in the field they are suited to.
Furred water rat
mutations:
1: webbed feet
2: book lungs adapted to breathing water
3: adaptation of less light-inclined endosymbiotic sea onyxes into nitrogen fixing endosymbionts
4: increased size
5: decreased neuron size and increased neuron count
6: specialization of middle hands into flippers for constant motion when needed
7: increased exoskeleton thickness
8: nitrogen vacuole for buoyancy
9: increased fat stores
description: the furred water rat is a larger and smarter, semiaquatic version of its predecessor, with the only reason it isn’t fully aquatic being the young not being developed enough to protect underwater at birth.
they have nitrogen vacuoles for the main purpose of controlling their buoyancy while swimming, but it also serves as a nitrogen source when the amoebae can’t find food with sufficient nitrogen for too long, with the increased amount of storable fat allowing longer time between meals and allowing less energy to be spent keeping warm when submerged.
furred water rats typically take shelter in the towns of onyx when underwater, using them to hide from any stupid enough to try and hunt them. they also eat some of the rhizomes while they’re there.
Wolf mouse
mutations:
1: sharper canines
2: pack hunting
3: increased neuron count
4: decreased neuron size
5: more complex language center for better coordination
6: increased adult size
7: hexapedal posture to keep front limbs free
8: thicker exoskeleton
9: sharper tail
10: poison pores on the tail
11: increased fat stores
description:
the wolf mouse is a very small pack hunter, averaging a body length of 6 inches with the same average tail length, however it is very good at communication, and can secrete heteropodatoxin to use to secure a meal by stabbing its prey with its tail and contracting the muscles around the poison sacs.
wolf mice only walk on their middle and back legs to keep the front legs free for using their claws to slice the throats of predators and prey alike, though most predators are either stupid and going to die soon, or a relative of the wolf mouse
wolf mice have more and smaller neurons than their ancestors, allowing them to be smarter and use objects to their advantage better, and decreasing the size of their blind spot. their increased intelligence allows them to take down prey much bigger than them, with a lone wolf mouse being able to take down an adolescent leaf dragon while only almost dying once or twice. this means that a pack of wolf mice could take down something the size of a pig without hassle and eat it as long as it’s not poisonous. as such they have developed a hunting strategy where they find another pack, exchange half of their mice, then take down a large animal that they eat all of as fast as they can without puking, before taking residence in its skull and ribcage, where they then increase their population, raise their young for a week, and then exit the corpse and, if the pack is too big, split it in half
Gliding sootmouse
mutations:
1: heat resistance
2: wing membrane between middle limbs
3: move middle 2 limbs onto the back
4: longer middle limbs
5: multi-layered abdominal, cranial, and thoracic exoskeleton to slow the spread of heat through it, allowing survival in fire for at least a few seconds while minimally increasing weight
6: longer pedipalps for object manipulation, but mainly picking berries
7: size increase
8: extend book lungs into bones, making them hollow
9: decreased neuron size and weight
10: spongy tissue between the brain and the skull to prevent concussions
11: increased sea onyx density in the ‘skin’ layer of the cytoplasm
12: hairs not on underside start becoming bigger and slightly spiky
13: detachable tail exoskeleton segments to make usable surface area for evaporative cooling
description:
the gliding sootmouse is a descendant of the black mouse amoeba that can glide and has less bone mass to make it less energy intensive while also replacing the removed bone tissue with extensions of its book lungs for oxygen storage.
due to its multi-layer exoskeleton, the gliding sootmouse can fly through fire without having to worry about if it will make it out, but instead having to worry about how much of its limbs it’ll need to digest to get back in shape afterwards.
gliding sootmice are typically 5-7 inches long, with an extra 6-8 inches if you count the tail, which does have muscles all throughout it in this species as not keeping it at the same level as your body means unwanted drag, which is bad for flight, especially if it’s unpowered flight.
due to both an increased demand for energy from getting bigger, and an increased amount of surface area necessary for gliding, sootmice have a wingspan equal to their body length including the tail, of which the entire thing is covered in hairs that have capillaries running in and out of them to facilitate faster transfer of their glucose and oxygen to the rest of the body. as the oxygen demand during flight is higher than during sprinting, the hairs on the top and sides of their bodies have started developing spikes to have more surface area they can use
conversely, to reduce the energy and oxygen costs of existing and flying, they have made their neurons smaller. this left empty space in their skulls, which means the brain can hit the skull with more force more easily, so their skulls filled the empty space with a sponge-like tissue made specifically to prevent concussions, drastically decreasing rates of winning the darwin award due to brain damage
due to generally using their pedipalps first to grab things the sootmice have lengthened the ‘arms’ on them, and the noes that don’t have long enough pedipalps to reach the food they want either make really long pseudopods on them, or break the exoskeleton after the first joint on it, and then stretch it until they can reach the food, grab it, and then retract the pedipalp to a cm longer than it was before breaking, before eating the food.