Scalescooter

Juvenile shockscooters thrive in the shallow, warm waters that abound within the tide pools that dot the beaches of Ramul Island. When the time eventually comes and the cusp of maturity is upon them, they will leave these aquatic sanctuaries and take to the land. On occasionally, though, a particularly strong wave may drag a few away from these tiny pools. Most of these end up in the open ocean, where they swiftly perish. A few, however, carried on a current, will make their way across the straight to the larger Drake Island. In a new environment, rich in life and large fauna, the shockscooters found themselves needing to adapt. While the potential for finding food had greatly increased, so too had the threat of predation.

The most prominent of these evolutionary adaptations, and the one for which they are named after, are their wooden scales. While many descendants of plents have evolved wooden armor, this adaptation has only ever been truly effective when dealing with other plents, as the material simply isn't hard or durable enough to deal with the stronger teeth of carpozoans and the like. To get around this, the Scalescooter has taken this defense down a different route. The scales are only loosely attached, and can be regrown quick quickly along with whatever portion of skin was torn off with them. As such, should a predator attempt to bite down on one of these creatures, all they will wind up with is a mouthful of wooden scales while the target of their hunger makes a speedy escape.

The scales also serve a secondary function. Due to their deep purple coloration, they resemble the needle-like leaves of brickbark ferine and wafflebark ferine. As such, Scalescooters can often hide amongst the fallen leaf litter that covers most of the southern part of Drake Island, free to gorge themselves upon the dung and pellets of other, larger fauna at their own pleasure.

Another prominent adaptation is their larger, padded feet. Because the local terrain is much rougher and littered with bits of potentially sharp debris, these feet allow them to move comfortably about. A single, delicate toe-like structure has formed. While it lacks bone, it is packed with sensory cells, allowing the Scalescooter to determine if what it is walking upon is potentially dangerous, thus helping them to avoid damage. This is useful, as cuts and scrapes can give rise to infections, which in turn can lead to sickness, crippling, and/or death. Avoiding this is thus preferable, as one would expect.

While the Scalescooters tend to live further inland, they will return to the beach once a year towards the end of summer, just like their ancestors did. During this time males and females will attempt to communicate with one another, sparking little jolts of electricity between their spines, in order to find a suitable mate. Once they have done so, they will then find a nearby secluded tide pool to reproduce within. The females will go first, wading in and laying their eggs, after which the males will follow and begin to fertilize them. Following this, both parents will show no further care to the offspring and will wander off into the forested plains. They no longer die after mating, and can instead potentially mate up to three or four more times, should they manage to avoid predation and instead die at the ripe old of five years. Because of this, corpses are no longer left to potentially pollute the waters their offspring will hatch in, which also helps to remove a tasty meal few scavengers would ignore.