What do you get if you cross a kangaroo and a sheep?
"What's a kangaroo and what's a sheep?"
Kangaroos were bipedal animals we used to have
that were known to have powerful large legs
that they use to bound across the land.
Sheep were creatures we used to have
that would naturally produce fibres
similar in composition to our artificial cotton plastics
that people used to fashion clothing.
"Okay, please continue."
A woolly jumper!
"Ah okay, I guess that makes sense."
No no no
stop thinking about the gene-splicing thing for a sec
I mean like the clothing item made of wool
that our kind used to wear.
"You need new material."
I should have been born while Earth was still a thing.
whip spiders are kinda insane as is
but the fact that this one exists
in a small area of the map
roughly around the Gulf of Aden
this creates a naming convention confusion
where it's officially known as
The Arabian Whip Spider
but it's exclusively native to Somalia
and even though it's been imported illegally
into Yemen, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Djibouti
I think you'll notice the obvious fact that
none of those locations are in Arabia
with only one of them not being in Africa
so we're off to a great start.
its torso is thin and flexible
6 of it's legs are
twice the length of its torso
bent backwards
and lying so flat
that it shuffles along the ground on its knees
while doing the spider equivalent of the splits
its tusks
yes tusks
are modified into arms
that are 4 times the length of it's body
with fake hands on the ends of them
complete with an opposable thumb
and these work together
with the remaining front 2 legs
that are equally as long
weirdly flexible
and for some reason
protrude from the spider's neck
and have a second shoulder joint
immediately after the one attached to the neck
they have one of the smallest mouths
next to the size of their body
of basically any spider
and even with that
the teeth are even strangely small
for the size of the mouth
making the creature almost flat faced
here's pic of one preserved in mid-pounce pose
just to illustrate how crazy a concept that is
and oh yes it can pounce
or sort of
technically it doesn't so much pounce
as it does shuffle along a surface
at around 60 mph or 100 kph
being able to manoeuvre on a dime
during this movement
and also conceal itself in tight spaces
moving a maximum distance of 5 feet
in one of these bursts
which we still don't know
just how many they can do at a time.
being soft-bodied it can hide in spaces
that are even smaller than the size of its thorax
and it's strong enough to take down prey
such as fully grown rats
by grabbing onto them
and dragging them to their mouth
where their tiny teeth
chew through the rat's neck
until it bleeds to death.
for scale here's one on a human hand
and here's their prey
to say the spider is strong is an understatement
oh and by the way
there's a very similar creature
that's local to Southern California
just so you know
and guess what else
i have a friend in the north of England
that actually keeps them as pets
oh and if you go to Egypt
they flavor their French fries with its urine there
are you telling me the non-imperial furries can't 'Smash'?
lol
Posting Smash because they got banned during registration and the guy who came up with using this broken-ass admin bot literally gets no b#es fr i checked
also spriting hteir oc was really hard to do
(the species literally has 6 jaws)
so i want everyone to see it
[no, the Russian guy doesn't count, he's a c#]
EDIT:
fixed a quite frankly bizarre layering issue
that involved the character's tail and pixels around it
(annoyingly the fixed version looks worse)