Poisonous Chickenpear

The chickenpear split from its ancestor, the needlewing, and took on a more biennial niche. The first and second stages are specialized for their own notably unique roles in the environment.

A young Chickenpear will leave its mother with a body size of about 5 mm to 2 cm depending on how much energy it had obtained during its initial growth period inside her. During this early time in its existence it will scour the environment for various life forms smaller than it usually going after minikruggs and vermees found in forest floor litter. These tiny solitary hunters must take care when searching for prey lest they run into a larger member of their own species, they may become prey themselves as the species is enthusiastically cannibalistic during their early days.

The skin of a young Chickenpear is patterned to blend into the soil, underbrush, and shadows around them. During this period of time when they're very small they will hide directly in the leaf litter, underneath the debris and often ambushing prey when it walks across or hiding from predators in it. Their specialized wings are lifted away from the body and shaped in a manner so that if a potential predator does spy them then they are more likely to go after this body part and allow the actual young chick to flee the scene relatively unscathed. In the beginning it will be fairly gangly in appearance, being far more leg and odd looking wing than anything else, but as it ages through the year it rapidly increases in size to become more proportional.

As the young Chickenpear grows in size, its diet will become more diverse, expanding from hunting strictly tiny fauna, like mikuks and smaller Minikruggs, to also include small flora and carrion. They will begin to seek out fruits of flora that have fallen onto the ground, and even begin to hunt larger prey including the shrubrattus and common fraboo. They will become too large to hide directly in the leaf litter and begin using the underbrush: it won't be quite as effective at completely covering their bodies but the skin markings will still do their job. In addition to this they will begin to develop their more mature defense mechanism, which is a very toxic arsenic based poison throughout their tissues, one of the main components involving arsine. This gradually builds up as higher and higher concentrations in their tissues as they age, and gradually their camouflage pattern gives way to a more plain green coloration both as a minor source of photosynthesis as well as a warning to many predators that this is a potentially poisonous organism. The rate of this accumulation is reliant on the available arsenic in their local environment, this leads to variations in how toxic the species is from population to population. However, their accumulation of the element leads to an increase of bioavailable arsenic in the area for future generations as they die or shed it back into the top layers of the soil. The mechanism through which this poison interacts with its victim is to bond with hemoglobin in the blood to denature it, deform and destroy blood cells, and rapidly cause coagulation and blood clotting. However to another member of the Plent kingdom the poison just tastes rather rancid or unpleasant due to the high arsenic content, the compound not being capable of fully taking advantage of the unique form of oxygen carrying pigments in Plent blood.

Their population covers multiple latitudes spanning from subtropics to temperate regions, the majority of their population being found in the subtropical regions. In the colder areas they tend to travel to lowlands and if they do end up stuck in an area that gets covered in snow they will burrow down into the leaf litter of the forest floor and wait it out in a lower metabolic state. This results in those living in temperate regions to generally be smaller in stature than those found in subtropical regions.

After a year, they will have reached mature size and will begin seeking a mate. Once found males will approach with care and they will couple, after which the male will attempt to flee, though often the female is able to out maneuver and devour it. For a short while the female will continue to have a hunter scavenger lifestyle, but then it will switch to a sedentary lifestyle staying in place, usually after finding a semi-protected area from the elements.

The embryos of this species have developed a few changes from more traditional embryo behaviors. The embryo has developed a period in its early stages where aggressive polyembryony is the standard. Its chemical signaling to the mother's body has increased focus on lowering metabolic rate earlier on, minimizing the amount of nutrients being spent by the mother. This signaling ceases digestive activity as well and fatigues the muscles.

Loose embryonic cells will fill the reproductive tract of the Chickenpear, spilling out and spreading along the inside cavities of the body. They will colonize the lining of the stomach as well as the more traditional brooding pouch. As this large population of developing young fight among themselves to be able to embed further and spread their placental tissue into the organ linings of their home many will fail to find a spot to plant themselves and perish.

As the thousand or so embryos establish themselves and begin drawing nutrients from their mother's tissues one of the first things to wither away are her legs. No longer being useful, the body responds to the sudden drop in viable energy by drawing as much substance from the limbs as possible. They shrivel away into thin twigs that eventually snap off and disappear in time.

Over the next handful of weeks, the developing offspring will compete further with one another as their placental tissues continue to infiltrate their environment and meet. At this point they will directly parasitize one another, and a second wave of losses will occur as the largest ones consume those who had not implanted themselves quickly enough or in areas with poorer blood circulation. Often a quarter to a third of their population will have succumbed to this form of cannibalization.

Eventually, the mother's body will begin to mummify alive as the hundreds of developing fetuses draw liquid out from her tissue in order to bulk their own. At this point the chemical signals from the developing Young will have brought her personal metabolism so low that she's almost able to sustain cellular activity via her photosynthesis. However she still needs to tap into energy reserves from her time as an active hunter, however meager they've become.

At some point eventually, the mother's body fails, a dried husk of what it once was. The lungs have stopped, the heart has ceased, and the green in the skin and wings become nothing more than decoration. From here many of the infants should be developed enough to be able to take care of themselves, and they begin to leave their home, in various sizes dependent on how they've passed their first trial in life.