Atholat

The atholat split from its ancestor and moved inland, finding success all over the Lamarck landmass. Much like its ancestor, it makes use of its mobile mineralized fangs to snip food into bite-sized pieces, and it has taken almost entirely to herbivory, though it is not opposed to nibbling on the occasional carcass. Its coat color varies from reddish to black depending on its environment and it has a longer, denser winter coat.

The atholat uses its tongue, which has a hand at the end, to pull flora into its mouth, and then it cuts it with its fangs. It then places the cut piece into a pouch beneath its tongue and repeats the process. The pouch allows it to carry food back to its den for storage or to feed to its offspring if it happens to have any. Lacking anything that can be easily modified into grinding teeth, the atholat makes use of gastroliths embedded in a specialized pair of pads in its stomach to grind up plant matter. Like most plents, it has a blind gut and must eventually regurgitate its waste.

As the atholat is now herbivorous, it no longer expends electricity stunning prey. Instead, it stores that electricity so that it may discharge it in self-defense. When facing a predator, if the atholat cannot flee on foot, it will stand its ground and wave around its tongue as a warning. The green color makes it highly visible next to the purple flora and reddish or black soil in its environment. If the predator does not back off, it will grab at it with its tongue and discharge the stored electricity. This can outright kill smaller predators, while larger ones will be stunned long enough for the atholat to flee. The atholat cannot limit how much it discharges and needs to recharge before it can do this again, during which time it is vulnerable to predation. However, its predators might not know that and can still be deterred by its warning. Regardless, if it is caught by surprise, it may not be able to react in time before it is killed, so the atholat is far from immune to predators.

As the atholat has no claws, it does not burrow, but it does live in dens where food is stored and which it can flee into when threatened. These are usually either the abandoned burrows of other species, hollow logs, tree hollows that are accessible close to ground level, or under the remains of an abandoned shrog nest. A large amount of food is stored in these dens so that the atholat can stay healthy even during harsh winters where less flora is available.

The atholat has no breeding season and mates many times a year. It no longer noisily bonks heads over mating rights like its ancestors, thus it no longer has a dome on its head. Its lower jaw, quite flexible thanks to its wooden makeup and lack of teeth, easily bends to accommodate the birth of 2-3 babies each roughly the size of its head. Only the mother takes a part in raising the young. Babies are fed softer flora until they have their fangs and their stomachs can handle gastroliths, at which point they are able to start eating tougher and more abrasive flora. The atholat reaches maturity in about 3 months.