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Ramul — REP: The Slashers
Published: 2010-04-14 18:21:45 +0000 UTC; Views: 14933; Favourites: 163; Downloads: 108
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Description
Slashers are the main larger carnivores on the Western Continent and can be found in the umbrella tree forests and plains. The plain-dwelling species are nocturnal since they lack the armored skin the larger mantisbirds developed, to whom the slashers are distinctly related. The group can be separated into the true slashers and mantistabbersm, aside from small, solitary arboreal relatives. True slashers are larger and usually hunt in pairs or small groups. Their typical hunting strategy is using their enlarged median tooth to tear open the lung chambers of their prey, then retreat and let it suffocate or bleed to death. Slashers are fairly intelligent and use different strategies for different prey items, often different populations show different strategies for the same animal. Since their prey is often their size or larger, coordinating the attacks is important and gets accomplished with extendable fans on the elongate postabdomen. The stridulation organs are used for other means of communication, especially during courtship.Common mantistabber: Mantistabbers are smaller and live in larger groups than true slashers and their fan communication is more advanced. Instead of their front teeth they use the claws on their middle legs as main hunting weapons.
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Comments: 37
This creature (and others) reminds me of mammalike reptiles!
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I just realized this is actually my favourite animal of Red Earth. Kinda like how the Daggerwrist is Wayne Barlowe's favourite of Darwin 4.
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They are a mixture of wolves, komodo dragons and sailfish.
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A.K.A=F**king Awesome!!
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The largest species reach a length of almost 3 metres and weigh around 400 kg, but one must consider that the gravity on Red Earth is 10% higher, so they would be lighter on Earth.
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awesome, got it. Thanks.
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not very creative names i'd of called this one vorperhound
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The names are intentionally chosen to be somewhat silly as a homage to the exobiology project that inspired me to do this one.
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It seems I have unintentionally copied you!
here!
[link]
the "venomfang"!
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Aside from being large predators with their middle legs developed into hunting tools, there is not that much analogy between those two.
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really? the "hooks" of your predator are on longer appendages, I think there is enough similarity to cause suspicion!
If my predator will develop into something more worhy of attention, I will still provide a link to this one (to show what a real masterpiece looks like) and as an example of "convergent imagination"!
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They still have very different hunting strategies, and a creature with a serrated beak would be pretty different from a creature with a sticking out tooth.
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That's also true, a sticking out tooth and lateral jaws! 
Funnily enough, I was doubting how the limbs of my animal could evolve, but your creature gave me an interesting insight on how it could happen, even though I was imagining it to be tree-dwelling with the middle legs shortenned to make room for the other legs and still providing an extra grip surfaces for the animal. The rainforests would disapear like in Africa, and the animal with four long and two short legs would be laft in a grassy plain.
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Pretty much all of the higher hexapod tetragnathes have the middle legs off the ground, either being atrophied or changed into organs with another purpose. The reason for this is because they are not really needed for walking - an animal with a flexible body needs only four legs to have stable movement, and since the middle legs are pretty close to the forelegs, which is an evolutionary leftover of the time tetragnathes had a slightly more arthropod-like appearance.
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I've noticed that trend of your animals!
Arthropod-like ancestors... nice! it has something to do with the "crawns" right? they look segmented!
I have opted for six legs, to make the animals "alien" on the first sight, but also to produce an excessive number of tailless forms, because the hindlegs can easily adapt to bypass the function of the tail, like the "tail" of many of the aquatic animals and flight rudders for the "birds" I am still working on, I have a vertebtate "mantis" with snatching forelegs resembling bat wings (it uses them as webs), but i also have a silhouette of a hexapod predator and a group of hexapod herbiwores - I will probably keep all herbivores hexapods, to support their barrel-like bodies - all of them are hippo-and-above sized ones. But no! I've made a hexapod "sloth", but I will rework it to give it gradually shorter legs (from front to back, to give the animal long arms for switching branches or pulling neighboring branches close to the mouth, but the other legs are meant to be shorter to not add an extra weight 
and you're right that quadrupeds are perfectly stable, which is the reason why so many of the hexapods use their limbs for different tasks, just like your ones! (P.S. the vocal forelegs submerged in the skin of one of your animals is incredible!)
And talking about squidfish... My "fish" are going to develop three tentacles around the mouth (to aid in catching larger prey), but they will look a lot different than your ones and this feature will eventually desappear in a herbivorous lineage, which will be the first vertebrates to make it on dry land, to gain advantage of the plants conquering the swampy environment, "flooding" large portions of the continets, because they had no competition from plant-eaters. I envision that omnivores and then primarly carnivores will evolve from the herbivores, to put the equally abundant invertebrate and newly appeared vertebrate terrestrial forms to fill their ever-empty stomachs with!
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No, the crawns belong to a separate group, the tentaculopods, which are mostly limnic animals. Primitive land tetragnathes looked like the quadragintapedes, before parts of the leg-holding apparatus extended and fused four primary legs into one secondary leg, resulting in eight-legged animals with a large postabdomen (the arthropod-like form implied in the previous comment). The modern hexapods stemmed from small predators that lost the third leg pair to have a more expandable body, as well as the weight caused by ingested prey being centered between legs and not behind them. They were the only survivors of a mass extinction, therefore all tetragnathes with secondary legs are six-legged.
Your hexapods starting off as herbivores is quite an interesting contrast to vertebrate evolution.
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Thank you for the insight and for the nice words!
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Wow! Einfach nur genial!
Sehen alle Augen im selben Lichtspektrum oder sieht ein Paar im Infrarotbereich?
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Alle Augenpaare sehen auf unterschiedliche Weise (vordere hell/dunkel, mittlere langwelliges VIS-Spektrum, hintere kurzwelliges UV-Spektrum). Organe zur Wahrnehmung vot Infrarotlicht sind nur in Ausnahmefällen in diesem "Tier"stamm vorhanden.
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Liking the stripes, particularly when the darker brown fades out between stripes. I often see those slits next to the back legs of your creatures, what are they? And the mouths confuse me, could you draw one open, maybe? :l
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Breathing slits. Tetragnathes have two pairs of them, one for inhalation, one for exhalation.
I will draw one.
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Depends on the size of their prey and the individual strategy. Sometimes they rear up, sometimes they don't, sometimes they rear up and get a hold with their middle legs first, sometimes they use just the claws of the middle legs to stab their prey, etc.
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Ясно. Но мне почему-то кажется, что они должны быть длинее, чтобы произвести такой удар?
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Мне это представляется подобно механизму челюстей змей, языка хамелеона. В таком случае конечности, которыми производится удар, должны превышать тело, чтобы не подходить вплотную.
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Got it...maybe. The blow is delivered by a downward movement of the head and neck. The neck would be more short and strong to build up and translate enough force to get through the cartilage-reinforced lung chambers. Rearing up before is used either for reaching the lung chambers or putting more force into their blow by adding the weight of their front body. To prevent themselves to be attacked by their prey, which often has long claws on the middle legs to fight off attackers from the side, they jump back after a blow to get out of range and make use of distraction tactics. Another tactic to avoid being attacked back is jumping/climbing on the back of their prey where it's claws or teeth can't reach them, the preferred tactic of mantistabbers.
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Ясно. приблизительно поняла механизм.
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I'm interested too, can you translate?
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"Understood. But it appears to me that they should be longer to deliver such a blow."
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