Bloodbee

Diet

Bloodbees are, niche-wise, very similar to the face flies of Earth. They feed on secretions around the eyes, mouth, and nostrils. Due to its preferences, it less commonly consumes excrement. The bloodbee also consumes blood/plent sap-blood, though it cannot make the wounds by itself. Thus, despite its name, it is able to feed on blood only occasionally. Fortunately for the bloodbee, it does not need to make wounds to feed on the blood-rich afterbirth of giant hornfaces, snoofloos, drakoggs, dualtrunks, plentshirshus, barkbacks, rosybeak phylers, cragagons, striped phlockss, briarbacks, tasermanes, and handlicker dundis. (It especially likes dualtrunk afterbirth.)

It feeds with rough sponge-like mouthparts. When applied around the eyes, the roughness increases tear production. The spongelike mouthparts look so much like its cloacal plunger (see below) that novices to Sagan 4 organism identification may confuse the cloacal plunger for the mouth. A surefire way to distinguish the cloacal plunger from the mouth is to wait for the bloodbee's long tongue to wiggle out. Since bloodbees wiggle their tongues out when mildly irritated, all a novice needs to do to tell one end from the other is to quietly say "Boo" to a bloodbee. It is hypothesized that the difficulty to tell one end from the other confuses predators, so that the predator aims for the rear rather than the head. This hypothesis also explains why the cloacal lips and mouthparts are an eye-catching shade of pink: it contrasts with the purple of the rest of the body, and thus directs attention to either end for visually-oriented predators.

Strangely, it never feeds from parts of the host's skin covered by polyfees, though polyfees look very much like the surrounding skin. It's hypothesized that polyfees, or some chemical produced by polyfees, tastes bad to bloodbees. This hypothesis is strengthened by how bloodbees will not feed from a wound if a polyfee is in range of that wound.



Its hosts are always large (50+ cm) herbivores. A favorite is the dualtrunk.

Other hosts include striped phlocks, giant hornfaces, and briarbacks. Of these, striped phlocks are uncommon hosts. Apparently the striped phlocks' stripes confuse bloodbees.

Plungers

Its cloacal "lips" have developed into plunger-like forms. These plungers use suction to help the bloodbee stay firmly on a host's skin.

The plungers also help in mating. As bloodbees mate while hovering in midair, they need something to keep their cloacas together. The male's plunger is slightly smaller than the female's plunger; thus, the male's plunger fits snugly into the female's and forms a seal. Though the mating process itself takes less than a second, if the pair is startled during this brief window of time they fly off, still with their plungers together. In this aspect, they are like Earth lovebugs. When this happens, the female takes the lead in flying. Bloodbees can fly both backwards and forwards, but their tails are always curved forward, giving it a rough "C" shape.

A note about "male" and "female": bloodbees are all hermaphrodites, but develop "male" or "female" plunger shapes depending on their diet. More caloric and/or salty diets (tears, blood, excrement) cause bloodbees to assume a female plunger shape. Thus, while it may appear that most bloodbees feeding on tears, blood, or excrement are "female", it's actually the other way around: feeding on those foods makes them "female." However, "female" bloodbees are still capable of fertilizing the eggs of bloodbees with "male" plunger shapes.

Predators

Predators of the bloodbee include rosybeak phylers, snoofloos (on the larval forms), handlicker dundis, and high grassland ukbacks. Some females in this species range have learned to take advantage of the bloodbees' love of afterbirth, leaving it out as bait so they can attract snacks, either for themselves after their exhausting process or for their newborn young. Others trail very pregnant individuals of other species so they can feast on bloodbees attracted by the afterbirth made later.

Handlicker dundis carefully climb up dualtrunks to gain a good feeding perch. They sit near a wound, lick their claws, and hold them out to trap bloodbees. The principle is much like putting flypaper atop a jar of rotting fruit. It helps that bloodbees are not particularly intelligent. This new resource has allowed handlicker dundis to expand their range and numbers slightly. This new behavior has not gone unnoticed by the handlicker dundi's predators, however. This means that even if a dualtrunk wound is not severe enough to classify it as prime prey, it can still indirectly attract two levels of predators: just not its own.