Soricinus

The soricinus split from its ancestor, the lazarus soriparasite. At half the size of its ancestor, it has underwent a series of adaptations that improve this species's blood-sucking efficiency—with vampiric precision, and has made it the second-ever shrew species to forgo milkfeeding.

Instead of latching with teeth and scraping with a tongue, the soricinus now takes a modified pair of front teeth and punctures the site like a hypodermic needle, with the tongue then moving in and out to break the skin and create a draw into the mouth via capillary action with some aid of cheeks that cover the whole mouth, all made possible with the bottom lip in tandem with the puncturing teeth creating a tube. Much akin to its ancestors, analgesic saliva is utilized to avoid being felt by the host. As it enjoys its blood meal, the soricinus maintains its position on its host with wider, flatter feet and a flatter pad on the forelimb digit, which also now bears gekkotan setae, in tandem with the shorter but stronger and darker claw.

Once the more-elastic stomach, like a vampiric blood balloon, has fully inflated, the soricinus remains attached to the host until knocked off—if it wasn't devoured beforehand. In that situation, while buoyed by its gastric reserve of blood, it must still find a new host. As no amount of pain-soothing saliva is sufficient to avoid that of most small shrews like the opportunity shrew—which would doubtlessly seize the opportunity presented in such the soricinus bold or desperate enough to tackle hosts not much larger than itself—it obligately seeks out medium-sized to large carpozoan hosts. Proportionally larger eyes (and not to speak of the smaller two pairs having completely disappeared) help the soricinus resolve greater detail in discriminating host size. Aiding the endeavor of host-finding is an enhanced sense of smell, with the mucosal tissue of the nose lined with a multitude ridges through which air passes, giving this parasite a detailed olfactory picture of all the possible hosts nearby. As it targets mesothermic or, preferentially, endothermic hosts for warmth—especially vital for when it comes time to hibernate—a novel, heat-sensing pit that formed in the distal cleft of the nostrils had come to the assistance to ensure that this preference is satisfied to boost its metabolic performance and to ensure it doesn't freeze to death in the winter.

Elastic as the stomach is compared to the ancestral condition, it is even more elastic in females. So filled with blood the female becomes that her back begins to arch as the stomach starts to occupy up to a half of the body in order to satisfy the other half: an equally voluminous uterus carrying up to half a dozen embryos that gestate during the winter to be born in the spring. What makes the soricinus stands out from other soriparasites—and most shrews for that matter—is the fact that their offspring, born up to half a centimeter in length, emerge fully formed, ready for their first meal not of milk, but of blood—from the host. This newfound precociality has rendered mammary glands useless to the point of disappearing in this species, making this the second time ever in shrew evolutionary history in which lactation was lost.