Sprinting Bubbleskin

The sprinting bubbleskin evolved from drake bubbleskins that began to rely more on speed and agility to hunt their prey. While they got smaller to avoid competition from their ancestor, they still hunt prey of decent size. Much like their ancestor, the sprinting bubbleskin feeds on the blood of plents, glasseaters and saucebacks though it has also expanded its diet to take the soft parts of a carcass as well such as internal organs. They are still social animals, hunting in packs of 3-5 individuals. The pack continues to sleep in a “dogpile” to keep warm, as several individuals are better at keeping warm than a single individual.

Much like their ancestors and relatives, their skin is covered in air-filled bubbles which trap air to help insulate them from the cold environment. Much like their close kin, the ears are within the skin. Similarly to the drake bubbleskin, the sprinting bubbleskin sees in color from red to ultraviolet from their main eye while the front-most eye can see the bio-electrical signals of their prey and the furthest back eye can see in infrared(meaning they can see heat). The tongue also has the same “sandpapery texture” of their ancestor, due to the small bristles located on it.

They hunt primarily at night, when they have the advantage over their prey as they’re usually sleeping or not fully aware of their surroundings and have the cover of darkness which aids in sneaking up to the animals. As they chase their targets, they select the individual with the weakest bio-electric signals. Once the victim is decided upon, the sprinting bubbleskins communicate with one another with high frequency chirps(which are often out of the frequency their prey can hear) and move in on the target. The pack will single out this individual and isolate it from the group it's in before moving in to take it down. Much like their ancestors, they use their fangs and clawed forelimbs to kill their prey with the claw on their forelimbs have developed serrations to cause more damage allowing the victim to bleed to death much more quickly.

The sprinting bubbleskins will lick up blood that has fallen on the ground, while additionally gutting the carcass to feed on the soft internal organs. While the blood and organs can be frozen, their stomachs are adapted to deal with this. The species does not need to drink water, as they get all their moisture from the blood and internal organs they consume. While their warm blooded metabolism means they need to hunt regularly, their adaptions to consuming internal organs provides more nutrients compared to blood alone so it's not as frequent as their obligate-hemophagus relatives.

The social hierarchy is very similar to their ancestor, with the pack being led by a single alpha male who holds strict breeding rights over the females. The male will mate with the females every fall with the females which then give birth to 1 or 2 pups in the spring, after which the young are kept in the pouch until summer arrives on Drake when they become too large to carry comfortably. These pups lack the fangs, claws, and tongue bristles when born which helps to not damage the mother while in the pouch. The pack regularly feeds them regurgitated blood until they are old enough to join them on hunts. At a certain point, the males of the pack will be driven away by the alpha male.