Droopgea Trapinout

The successful colonial trapinout diverged and branched off into many different species, one of them being the droopgea trapinout. It split off from its ancestor and evolved to feed on the ebony pump gilltail, an unfilled niche. This had a bizarre result where it evolved to imitate the center of the ebony pump gilltails life: the bubble droopgea. The change was quite radical, especially on the outside. Notable is that it grew shorter than its ancestor to better imitate the droopgea, and it also changed color.

The shell imitates the characteristically shaped upper part of the bubble droopgea. The out-shooting parts of the shell are not just aesthetic, they are also sensitive to movements in the water, detecting if an object is close, how it moves (and therefor what creature it is) and its size. The vibrations the movements of the water cause on these appendages transmit to a pseudo hearing mechanism inside the shell. This is the way the droopgea trapinout detects its victim. When the ebony pump gilltail comes close enough to feed, lay eggs or just take shelter the droopgea trapinout strikes viciously fast. The nine long tentacles, sitting in bundles of three to imitate the shape of the bubble droopgea, wrap around their prey with sharp barbs making sure that a captured prey does not get away. The trapinout even has a special twisting technique that makes these barbs pierce the pump of the gilltail so that the extra speed boost does not allow it to get out of the trapinouts grip.

The prey is then pushed into the mouth of the trapinout with the shorter tentacles, evolved from some of the longer tentacles of the colonial trapinout. In the wider part of the shell the organic part of the trapinout widen as well. In this part an organ has evolved where the prey is slowly devoured with the help of the poisons the droopgea trapinouts ancestors used for hunting.

When a droopgea trapinout has eaten it has enough energy to reproduce. It does this by budding off a small bud inside the shell. It then comes out of the shell and swim to the bottom of the ocean and dig into the sand. The bud grows into a new organism, protected by the shell during its youth, and the old organism grows a new shell. This takes some time, which is the reason why it only reproduce after just having eaten.