Mangrove Smasher: Difference between revisions
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Due to its large size, even female mangrove smashers find difficulty supporting themselves on land. Instead, they walk on the ocean floor and periodically paddle up to breathe. They feed from deep-water mangrove flora further from shore at low tide and enter the mangals proper at high tide. In order to smash a mangrove tree, a mangrove smasher, usually a male, will target the roots with its robust forelimbs, destabilizing the plant until it topples over. This not only causes the leaves to fall into the water where other mangrove smashers can feast, but it also disturbs fauna such as gilltails and swarmers which use the mangrove roots as shelter, which the mangrove smashers snap up and eat. They will also feed on the leaves of younger mangrove trees. Being omnivorous makes their diet sustainable, as they can feed on mangroves slowly enough that they are capable of recovering later. |
Due to its large size, even female mangrove smashers find difficulty supporting themselves on land. Instead, they walk on the ocean floor and periodically paddle up to breathe. They feed from deep-water mangrove flora further from shore at low tide and enter the mangals proper at high tide. In order to smash a mangrove tree, a mangrove smasher, usually a male, will target the roots with its robust forelimbs, destabilizing the plant until it topples over. This not only causes the leaves to fall into the water where other mangrove smashers can feast, but it also disturbs fauna such as gilltails and swarmers which use the mangrove roots as shelter, which the mangrove smashers snap up and eat. They will also feed on the leaves of younger mangrove trees. Being omnivorous makes their diet sustainable, as they can feed on mangroves slowly enough that they are capable of recovering later. |
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Juvenile mangrove smashers are better swimmers than adults. When they reach about two meters in length, they will swim away and disperse hundreds or even thousands of miles over the ocean and non-mangrove-supporting coastal waters, resting on shrog nests and rafts of floating flora along the way and using these as food sources. This behavior encourages genetic diversity and has allowed the mangrove smasher to colonize the entire coast of Wallace and some of the closest landmasses, |
Juvenile mangrove smashers are better swimmers than adults. When they reach about two meters in length, they will swim away and disperse hundreds or even thousands of miles over the ocean and non-mangrove-supporting coastal waters, resting on shrog nests and rafts of floating flora along the way and using these as food sources. This behavior encourages genetic diversity and has allowed the mangrove smasher to colonize the entire coast of Wallace and some of the closest landmasses, Kosemen, Fermi, and Drake. |
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Though Sagan 4 has a long history of local extinctions caused by new aggressive predatory or competitive behavior, the mangrove smasher's destructive feeding habit has caused no extinctions, as it achieved equilibrium without becoming so aggressive as to permanently destroy its food source. Stretches of mangal recover from a period of heavy feeding just as readily as a forest recovers from a fire, closing up old smasher-made passageways through ecological succession. |
Though Sagan 4 has a long history of local extinctions caused by new aggressive predatory or competitive behavior, the mangrove smasher's destructive feeding habit has caused no extinctions, as it achieved equilibrium without becoming so aggressive as to permanently destroy its food source. Stretches of mangal recover from a period of heavy feeding just as readily as a forest recovers from a fire, closing up old smasher-made passageways through ecological succession. |
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