Cavehorn

The Cavehorn split from its ancestor and moved into the Mandate Limestone Caves. With less food it has adapted to eating the limestone ball. It can no longer photosynthesize because of the darkness and the fact that it has lost the genetic ability to do so.

The lack of light meant that its eyes are now of no use, and therefore it is mostly blind. But relying on its sense of hearing proved valuable as its sound membrane "ears" grew and became more complex. Instead of only one membrane, it now has two, one on top of the other, allowing better hearing.

Feeding on limestone balls made it fight for resources with the mandate emulsifly. To be able to keep its ground it normally uses its air holes as blow-horns to scare the emulsifly away. If the later does not run away in fear of the noise, the Cavehorn will attack it with its horn. The horn itself has changed to be more aggressive in appearance and in use, being now able to protrude through the skin of other creatures. Although a murderer at times, the cavehorn can not digest the emulsifly, so dead carrion is a common sight near cavehorn feeding sites.

Its reproduction, like in most plents, is through the mouth. While copulating, the cavehorn's digestive track retracts to a sack under its "skull" and allows the reproductive organ to stretch itself from its normal size to twice as long. (Figure 1)

The infant cavehorn is much smaller than the adult, sizing only 5 cm in length on average, and depends on the parent supervision for almost 23 sagan4 days. By the time it reaches its "teens", it will grow 5 times its size and develop the horn on its mouth. A remnant of its ancient genes makes its crest grow at this age, to signal its sexual maturity, but since this creature is practically blind, this serves no purpose at all. (Figure 2)

Moving closer to the ground, probably because of the less space there is to move in the caves, the cavehorn adapted to a new method of using its back legs. It is more inclined to hopping, but it is forced to move one leg at a time in a form of walking, using its front limbs as anchors on the ground while doing so.