Hanged Danglers

dentrogenés nýchi( "Treeborne Claw" )

Physical Biometrics: 

12-16 inches long  / 30-40 cm

Weight / Mass: 

280-300 grams

Distribution and Environment:

Densely forested regions, either in extensive and thick canopies or in dense foliage. They are extremely commonly found wherever their are trees across the equatorial tropics.

Description:

Unlike most other scorpion species on Hoxia, the Hanged Danglers are not obligate hypercarnivores, and actually a lot of its diet is composed of fruit juices, nectar, and even sap.

They almost spend all their lives in the trees, a complete revamp for the typical areas where a scorpion lives, on the ground, under rocks, among debris. Rather, they spend almost their entire day on the canopies of trees, in the most densely forested regions of Hoxia. 

Being extremely "shy", they scatter away from any larger animal. Before mating, Hanged Danglers create a burrow in tree crevasses, before gathering a large amount of food scraps. They then carry their young completely protected in their burrow, living off of the stored food.

Evolution / Anatomy:

The top of their carapaces are colored with a green splash, a crude form of counter shading to make them appear to be leaves when hanging from tree branches. Their chelicerae is actually rather enduring and hardy in order to chew apart bark from their nests.

Their 5th caudal metasoma segment, just before the telson, is extremely elongate and curved, and is extremely durable, being heavily biomineralized with zinc and other materials also found on a scorpions aculeus. They use this to hang off of branches.

Perhaps the most noticable change, is its tibia ( also known as the manus, hand, or chela ), of which has its stationary fixed claw being heavily modified into a long curved sickle like hook, completely overshadowing the dactylus.

This is used like "ice picks" to climb trees, and to hang from branches. Their pedipalps have extremely robust trochanter / femur / patella segments, and they use these powerful limbs alongside entire body undulations to quickly swing or move through canopies, away from any threats.

Their legs are also strange, being much more compact, with the femur and patella being the two main segments, and the latter 3 segments ( tibia, metatarsal, and tarsal ) being nearly uniform in length across all 4 pairs of legs. They use these to grip on to tree trunks, and are tucked in when they perform their signature swinging maneuver to travel with overhanging vines

Known Descendants: 

( N / A, coming soon )