>>5400919>>5400920>>5400922>>5400923>The tides carry with them the smallest kind of multicellular life, nutrient-leeching banes to most, but to the Flounder Feeder, a hidden boon. With its long and sinuous tongue, a birther scrapes several Latchers from near its offspring’s nose flap, critical sustenance in a hostile ocean. Close by, the scent of a Latcher wedged in the birther’s flesh catches a releaser’s attention. The entire pack will be eating soon.In a stunningly fast feat of evolution, the Flounder Feeder has developed a new, prehensile and retractable tongue made of the same radiation resistant cartilage as their shells, with muscles well suited to scraping Latchers from the bodies of their pack members. To enable retraction, their mouths are restructured and now lie deeper, behind the pincers. Compared to larger, tougher creatures, the parasites are easy to digest and instinctive grooming behavior swiftly emerges. When a Flounder Feeder smells rotting flesh or another creature on another, it will scrape it off with its tongue and consume it, preventing most infection. Needless to say, this has reversed the Flounder Feeder’s decline and their population has exploded. Though far behind the insatiable Ripple Trackers and ubiquitous Lump Grazers, they are a distant third place. Under these conditions, extinction is unlikely and the risks of hunger have been significantly reduced. Even if their survival would benefit from parasite-removal, other species aren’t yet inclined to let them scrape their flesh for Latchers and justifiably so, as if a Flounder Feeder gets near enough to try, it will consume them immediately.
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