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ravity is still an harsh mistress. Those who plummet to their demise and those whom plummet after end in the same place : the belly of the Depth Crawlers, smelling the carrion with their nose slits.
More interestingly, they are your species main source of food.
Your species is the Tennis Ball sized Under Hunter. It is made of a mouth, a stomach, four limbs and one ear. Wandering in the depth toward the impact of the fallen, it then gobble up whole the Depth Crawlers.
Their sexual reproduction exploit the same mechanism : on death, a male Under Hunter will expel their Crawler-sized testicle, making ample noise. This attract another Under Hunter that gobbles the genetic material. If the gobbler happen to be a female, magic happens and a four to six Under Hunter will gestate, before being thrown up by the proud mother.
Life is easier here under the gentler Yellow star, especially so deep. As such, almost no cancerous tumour plague the Under Hunters. Still, they suffer a certain amount of issues.
First, they struggle to keep heat in. Hypothermia is the leading cause of death for the Under Hunters, but this is offset for lucky hunters.
Less lucky hunters usually are so because of a lack of poor vertical mobility, getting them stuck. Another source of failure is the hunter's relatively poor senses : they can walk past a carrion because they reach it before the Depth Crawlers, missing easy meals.
Their small mouth and gobbing-based feeding render them unable to eat anything bigger than the Depth Crawlers, like aforementioned easily missed carrions. This also result on the death of all Hunter engaging into a confrontation with Tripods and even Ivy Fatties.
The old age limit of the species is 60 days (local days duration happen to roughly match Terran), mostly because of undigested waste. This natural death is among the rarest causes of demise for the Under Hunter.
This is a new species that felled under the gaze of the Hivemind. May fate be in its favor.
How should the Under Hunter evolve?
