Cryobowler Srugeing

As the Srugeing continued to live about in the way they do, with large flights of short-lived adults spawning long-lived larvae, most of which wouldn’t survive to adulthood, specialization was inevitable.

The Cryobowler Srugeing has split off from its ancestor and is specialized to spawn within cryobowls. This has come with a suite of adaptations to avoid predation from the very flora it is spawning in, and to ensure its larvae are able to fit in the (admittedly small) cryobowls. The first of such adaptations is the bright colors of the adult. Though at first they may seem random and nonsensically vibrant, are actually good for blending in with cryobowls from above, the pink and purple mottling mostly matching the fluid contained within the cryobowls. Also, similarly to their relative the Snowmelt Srugeing, Cryobowler Srugeings have internalized their ‘lung bumps’, which serves as a way to protect them and to increase how aerodynamic the Cryobowler Srugeing is.

Adult Cryobowler Srugeings do not eat. Although they retain a functional jaw and digestive system they mostly live off of fat reserves accumulated from their larval diet, which is mainly comprised of symbiotic cryoutines within the cryobowl, and also includes some small fauna.

Cryobowler Srugeings have little way to tell apart carnivorous cryobowls and non-carnivorous ones, but the eggs and larvae are able to release a protein that ’gums up’ the enzymes produced in these bowls. Although unable to protect the larvae from particularly caustic species, it is able to prevent most carnivorous cryobowls from digesting them.

Cryobowler Srugeings technically gain the ability to fly before true adulthood, since they are already born with large fins, the larvae are often pushed by their small birthplaces to take some adventurous first glides out. This is the reason why they do not lose their digestive system, as though it burns fat to fly, cryobowls often do not contain enough food or space for near-adult individuals. Thus, while for most of their larval stage they remain in the bowl, during the last few weeks individuals gain full flight, and it is during these last few weeks they experience most major changes as well. To be specific: they go through a small growth spurt, the upper, dorsal and abdominal fins atrophy while the lower tailfin lengthens (for aerodynamics) and the gonads mature.

Finally, in a synchronized event, these mature individuals stop eating for good and focus exclusively on mating, relying only on their sheer numbers to prevent predators from eating them all during the search for a cryobowl. This frantic final week is where females and males alike fly long distances to find suitably inhabited cryobowls to spawn within. Yet, by the end of the ~7 day period (the specific timing of this period tends to fluctuate a little bit depending on availability of food and predation rates), those same adults that had frantically fluttered with the utmost energy all the other days, are laying dead or dying on the ground or in the very cryobowls they spawned in. Though the lung of a Cryobowler Srugeing needs to be kept moist to function, mature Cryobowler Srugeings do not moisturize it, as by the time it dries out in their native cool climates they’ll likely already have burnt most of their fat reserves in flight.