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Description

My interpretation of a Gedd. They’re not well described! We get “like monkeys”, “mouthparts”, three fingers, webbed feet, small eyes by Andalite standards, a Taxxon can bite off one’s head, and uneven legs meaning they’re often on three limbs. The wiki says they’re blue, but I’m not sure where! My impression was that they were gray so I went desaturated.
so my thought was they’re symmetrical when young, and as they start using one hand more than the other that one grows more slowly while the other becomes heavier and stronger. They’re variably bipedal and tripedal. Each hand has three fingers and a “panda’s thumb” that the fingers can pinch against to strongly grasp things like this foraging tool.
They take to the water to escape bad weather and predators, and to find food. While swimming they propel themselves with their tails and snorkel with their nasal trunks, both of which have roles in expressive communication out on dry land. Free Gedd wishing to avoid Yeerk entanglement will often braid reed fibers into their manes and wrap the braids to cover their ears, which deters all but the most determined Yeerk and at least slows that one down.
In Pools where Yeerks have a coercive relationship with Gedd, they often force their hosts to cut their manes short. Gedd taken offworld by the Yeerk Empire are generally shorn altogether.
[...]

They’re more monochromatic than I’m leaning for other aliens because Gedd had no evolutionary pressure to have great color vision. Their eyes are adapted to their lifestyles and to the stresses and demands of their homeworld, such as acid rain, constant Kandrona exposure, and regular submersion in sediment-heavy pools. If they don’t have the wide-band color spectrum and high fidelity of Andalite eyes, well, Andalites stationed on that planet needed eye protection and regular flushing with saline solution to prevent damage just from being outside.
The patterns on the flat, scaly undersides of their tails are unique to each individual, like a fingerprint. Historically Yeerks on the homeworld tended to great fondness for and fascination with these patterns, though Imperial Yeerks are generally instructed that overt admiration for the features of any individual host is the first step towards host sympathy and must be curbed.
It is sometimes policy in the Yeerk Empire to amputate Gedd tails in addition to shaving their manes and any body hair that could be unhygenic, the better to anonymize hosts and reduce the likelihood of Yeerk-host collaboration. It does significantly detract from a Gedd’s ability to swim and means they can’t clean the walls and floors of filled Pools effectively, but that’s what Pool draining protocols are for.

Description

My interpretation of a Gedd. They’re not well described! We get “like monkeys”, “mouthparts”, three fingers, webbed feet, small eyes by Andalite standards, a Taxxon can bite off one’s head, and uneven legs meaning they’re often on three limbs. The wiki says they’re blue, but I’m not sure where! My impression was that they were gray so I went desaturated.
so my thought was they’re symmetrical when young, and as they start using one hand more than the other that one grows more slowly while the other becomes heavier and stronger. They’re variably bipedal and tripedal. Each hand has three fingers and a “panda’s thumb” that the fingers can pinch against to strongly grasp things like this foraging tool.
They take to the water to escape bad weather and predators, and to find food. While swimming they propel themselves with their tails and snorkel with their nasal trunks, both of which have roles in expressive communication out on dry land. Free Gedd wishing to avoid Yeerk entanglement will often braid reed fibers into their manes and wrap the braids to cover their ears, which deters all but the most determined Yeerk and at least slows that one down.
In Pools where Yeerks have a coercive relationship with Gedd, they often force their hosts to cut their manes short. Gedd taken offworld by the Yeerk Empire are generally shorn altogether.
[...]

They’re more monochromatic than I’m leaning for other aliens because Gedd had no evolutionary pressure to have great color vision. Their eyes are adapted to their lifestyles and to the stresses and demands of their homeworld, such as acid rain, constant Kandrona exposure, and regular submersion in sediment-heavy pools. If they don’t have the wide-band color spectrum and high fidelity of Andalite eyes, well, Andalites stationed on that planet needed eye protection and regular flushing with saline solution to prevent damage just from being outside.
The patterns on the flat, scaly undersides of their tails are unique to each individual, like a fingerprint. Historically Yeerks on the homeworld tended to great fondness for and fascination with these patterns, though Imperial Yeerks are generally instructed that overt admiration for the features of any individual host is the first step towards host sympathy and must be curbed.
It is sometimes policy in the Yeerk Empire to amputate Gedd tails in addition to shaving their manes and any body hair that could be unhygenic, the better to anonymize hosts and reduce the likelihood of Yeerk-host collaboration. It does significantly detract from a Gedd’s ability to swim and means they can’t clean the walls and floors of filled Pools effectively, but that’s what Pool draining protocols are for.