Leaping Soriparasite

The leaping soriparasite split from its ancestor. It is named for its very long hind legs, which allow it to quickly leap away from scratching claws, preening tusks, and other threats. It also has smaller, more strongly hooked foreclaws which allow it to cling to hair and feathers more easily when its host is on the move. It can now feed from saucebacks, which have similar blood to carpozoans, and on shrews, which have joined the local ecosystem since its ancestor's evolution. Under significant pressure as an obligate parasite, it has shrunken to only a quarter of its ancestor's size, and multiple leaping soriparasites can exist on a single host. It has lost its vestigial second and third pairs of eyes, leaving it with only a single pair which has been enlarged. Its "hairy" toe pads have given way to thick rubbery scaleless skin, which provides much better traction for leaping. Its grey coloration makes it cryptic in the shadows of even ground-level flora across almost its entire range, though in some biomes "throwback" golden mutations are common.

Like other living soriparasites, the leaping soriparasite has a short toothless lower jaw and a very large lower lip. Its blood-sucking method is unchanged: First, it grabs hold of its host's skin using the teeth on its upper jaw. Anesthetic compounds in its saliva prevent its host from feeling a thing as it proceeds to use its barbed tongue to lick the skin raw, drawing blood. It then wraps its enlarged lower lip around the skin it has grabbed and begins to gulp, creating suction which pulls blood from the wound. It can detach quickly if needed, and it does not spread disease very easily despite its parasitic nature.

Unlike its ancestor, the leaping soriparasite spends more time on hosts than away from them and will leap between them directly. It will even mate and give birth on hosts. When it is separated from a host, however, it does not travel in search of a new one. Instead, it waits in the soil or leaf litter, conserving energy until a new host passes by, at which point it uses its long legs to leap into its pelt. In the coldest parts of its range, it will freeze to death overnight if it does not find a new host, as it lacks any form of biological antifreeze.

The leaping soriparasite reproduces more often than its ancestor because of a few innovations. It has more nipples so that its offspring do not need to spend energy taking turns suckling, and can now have as many as 6 babies at a time. In order for them to grow quickly, it has made a bizarre innovation. It has a placenta, though it is nowhere near as developed as that of the distantly related tamjacks, and it gestates for 3 days. When it gives birth, the umbilical cord is not broken; instead, its offspring remain attached to and nourished by the placenta after birth even as they are simultaneously also nourished by milk. The umbilical cord appears as a red thread stretched between the baby and its mother's cloaca. This allows them to develop rapidly and be weaned as independent miniature adults after only 7 days. It has a poorly formed pouch on its underbelly serving as a guard against oils, microbes, and irritants present on the skin of its hosts, though it is not homologous with the pouch of other shrews and is instead a completely novel structure. It reaches full size in 2 weeks and can begin breeding immediately. As long as mates are available, it can breed every 7 days, giving birth to the next litter as the previous one is weaned.