Taserflame: Difference between revisions
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The '''taserflame''' split from its ancestor. It has taken on a preference for tougher and potentially toxic food, but rather than investing in a larger gut or poison resistance, it has taken a different, less energy-intensive approach. This creature has learned to make and control fire, which it uses to cook its food. This has allowed it to consume organisms which it normally would not be able to due to its small size and lack of teeth. The behavior has its roots in accidental fire-starting, which can happen to any tasertongue, and gradually became favorable both by them as individuals because it made food taste better and evolutionarily because it allowed them to eat things they
The appearance of a tasertongue which uses fire to cook its food may immediately bring back memories of the extinct [[sagon]], a sophont which was tragically wiped out by the expansion of endless ice and tundra which defined the Bloodian period. The taserflame is no sophont, however—indeed,
Taserflames can build fires wherever they please using piles of wood, but these are only used for warmth. Their tool use is overall limited; in fact, depending on
Like their ancestor, taserflames live in groups, though they rarely exceed 50 members. A group of taserflames is called a mob. They do not migrate, instead preferring to inhabit a specific area which is not likely to be burned down by their use of fire, such as a collection of small caves or an abandoned bannertail-[[drakeshrog]]
Taserflames often split up into smaller bands of 3-8 to forage and hunt. In addition to collecting their usual diet of toxic and hard-to-digest flora and fauna, they regularly follow large predators on hunts and use their knife-like fangs to cut slabs of meat (or, more rarely, entire limbs) from fresh kills. Due to their small size, they are usually ignored when they do this and are only rarely picked off as food. Pack-hunters, especially multi-species packs such as those of bannertails and drakeshrogs, may even make room for the taserflames while eating due to their instincts to share.
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Like their ancestor, and like most terrestrial plents, taserflames mate mouth to mouth and give live birth. Unlike their ancestor, female taserflames do not stay in one place while pregnant. However, they do still stay relatively close to home to avoid endangering their unborn offspring. Pregnant females stand slightly upright during late pregnancy to avoid tipping over. They give birth inside dens, which are usually made from natural caves, hollow logs, or abandoned nests or burrows of other creatures. Their offspring are semi-precocial, already fluffy and able to move around on their own but largely helpless, somewhat like toddlers. They reach full size in less than a year due to their highly nutritious diet. Notably, while adults can still digest raw meat if they need to, juveniles cannot.
In addition to behavioral changes, the taserflame has some body changes. Its butt nostril is bisected, granting redundancy that protects it from suffocation. The skin on its tongue is more calloused and pigmented to protect it from its own flame as well as from accidentally absorbing uncooked toxins, and as a result, it can no longer smell using it; however, this is not a problem, because like all plenthogs it has been able to smell using its barbels (which its fangs are set on) all along for hundreds of millions of years and never actually needed to smell with its tongue in the first place. Its fangs are more knife-like and are used to cut its food, particularly to remove thorns and spikes and chop up larger pieces of meat, like a built-in version of its extinct sophont
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