>>5411300In the current era, it’s rare for a Flounder Feeder to reach two Terran months of age before succumbing to its own immune system and a heavy majority are only able to manage one reproduction cycle. The Flounder Feeder population has dropped dramatically and is now endangered. If there is one benefit, it’s that cancer is now the third likeliest cause of death, after autoimmune disease and just behind heavy metal poisoning.
At the same time, the frequent, suicidal aggression of the Ripple Trackers to Flounder Feeders has brought on a brutal natural selection for those that are most successful at surviving confrontations with their bloated cousins. The tips of their pincers have sharpened and hardened into a dull, but by the standards of the narrow band ecosystem, keen edge, largely negating the Flounder Feeder’s advantage of a (relatively) harder shell. Due to their raw bulk and existing intelligence, the Flounder Feeders still get the better of them more often than not but it is far less onesided than before, and with their decline, the Ripple Tracker population grows, mildly outnumbering the Flounder Feeders for the first time in recent memory. At least when a Flounder Feeder survives with a cracked shell or missing a chunk, septic infections are vanishingly rare.
>How should the Flounder Feeders evolve?>2/2 