Pirate Waxface (Latrotherium ridiculocervix)
Creator: Disgustedorite
Ancestor: Jaydoh Waxface
Habitat: Jaydoh Temperate Beach, Jaydoh Temperate Coast, Koopa Tropical Beach, Koopa Tropical Coast, Hydro Tropical Beach, Hydro Tropical Coast, Ninth Tropical Beach, Ninth Tropical Coast, South Jujubee Temperate Ocean (Sunlight Zone), Putspooza Tropical Beach, Penumbra Tropical Beach, Negative Tropical Beach, Solpimr Tropical Beach, Ovi Tropical Beach, Wolfgang Tropical Coast, Wolfgang Tropical Beach, Clayren Tropical Coast, Clayren Tropical Beach
Size: 3 meters long
Diet: Carnivore (Marine Tamow, Tamjack, Vermees, Cleaner Borvermid, Stowaway Harmbless, Scuttlers), Detritivore (nest remains), Scavenger
Reproduction: Sexual (Male and Female, Ovoviviparous, Crop Milk)

The Pirate Waxface split from its ancestor. It is semi-aquatic and specializes in consuming “seafaring shrews”. It has regained much of its wax; the wax is produced by glands at the base of its tusk-jaws and it spreads it over its feathers while preening, making it waterproof. A notable adaptation it has gained is the ability to rotate its tusk-jaws. It uses this ability to assist it in tearing into the nests of its prey, and in tearing their skin from their bodies to bypass their spikes. It is notable for its limited tool-use ability, where it can pull sticks or peel wood from its prey’s nest and drive it into them to hold them down while it gets to work on skinning them. It is able to accomplish this despite lacking traditionally dexterous body parts by grasping with its teeth, neck, and toes all together.

Life on the open sea isn’t exactly the best for a sauceback, especially one that broods its larvae in its tail feathers. However, the Pirate Waxface’s waxy plumage traps a lot of air, allowing it to swim without drowning its babies. Similar to its ancestor, it feeds its young fatty crop milk. While it isn’t exactly the greatest swimmer, it actually rarely swims when it doesn’t need to. When it kills a nesting seafaring shrew, it will remain on the nest and often even keep its victim’s mate and joeys alive to kill and eat later if another nest doesn’t enter its echolocation range. When a new nest to raid is in echolocation range, it is also in swimming range, and it will paddle there to begin another raid. If there is a long period of time between nest hops, however, it will start to eat the nest itself--particularly leafy parts, as well as vermees which have bored into the wood and stowaways such as Cleaner Borvermid and Stowaway Harmbless. The flora making up the nest itself isn’t easily digested, but partial decomposition has generally set in by the time it resorts to this, making it easier to digest.

The Pirate Waxface is far from unrepresented on shorelines. While the dominant subspecies live out at sea, others move between sea and coast regularly and some only live on the coast. When hunting on the coast, the Pirate Waxface will mostly kill and eat prey that are making landfall. Coast-exclusive subspecies are actually slightly smarter than the ones living out at sea, as they have a more reliable source of food and often must innovate more to hunt. Some coastal individuals are even capable of locating or preparing adequate weaponry to pin their prey, either finding good straight sticks on the ground or tearing strips of wood from trees and logs, long before they actually find anything to eat. They can even pass the knowledge to do so to their offspring by teaching them, similar to how a Terran wolf might teach its pups to hunt, but as it is solitary such ideas fade in and out over the generations and don’t particularly spread any more than an evolutionary trait would.

Weaned juveniles typically live on the beach as small hunters or scavengers before they are large enough to start hunting seafaring shrews.

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I will be commenting with minor description edits to the Seashrog to fit as well, shortly.

There were zero reminders about this contest at all. The only entrants are Nergali, who started literally when it was announced and long before the prize existed, and you. Everyone else forgot the contest existed, and I wouldn't be surprised if Nergali forgot he entered. You didn't even use an @everyone or @here on the vote announcement on the discord server. I strongly recommend taking down the vote, extending the contest at least a week, and giving everyone a reminder that it exists.

@MNIDJM

That's one way to do it. I was just thinking like, for example, when I was first working with saucebacks the scent pits being called nostrils mixed me up a bit, and the description originally described sniffing. Hearthead's weird music note-shaped spiracles are a remnant of that confusion.

QUOTE (MNIDJM @ Feb 1 2021, 09:54 PM)

The Greencrest might be fixable with a supplementary image to elaborate on the shell-body distinction

I disagree. There is no shell-body distinction to point out because it was drawn without any shell at all, just soft skin with no hard edges.

Misinterpretation happens a lot, unfortunately. For the sake of becoming better-capable of detecting misinterpretation and making species that are not easily misinterpreted, I'd like to propose an exercise of misinterpreting species on purpose to explore the different ways it could happen.

You can also meme about it with a backwards shrew if you want, I guess.

Added another problematic squid lineage.

Oh, a bit of an unfortunate coincidence...the ancestor you chose seems to have misinterpreted anatomy, placing its mouth where its anus should be and a giant horn where its mouth should be. We're still working out what we're going to do about messed up creatures like that, so I'd like to suggest holding off on submitting quids for the moment.

Me, yesterday, when I was still a fool: Wow, figuring out how scuttlecrab heads worked was a lot of fun! I should find and fix misinterpretations more often.

I added a bunch more misinterpretations and unclear stuff. I also found a misinterpretation worse than anything I could ever have imagined. I think "who approved this?" is gonna rapidly become my catchphrase.

I've added a note of wingworms losing their eyes too, another ludicrously common misinterpretation.

Ukfauna shells are not segmented, though. They're inflexible spirals. Assuming they are like molluscs, which all other species reflect, there is no precedent for them to do that.

QUOTE (Cube67 @ Jan 31 2021, 12:42 AM)

https://sagan4alpha.miraheze.org/wiki/Tepoflora anyways, here's a very bad example of genus "absorption".

Oh my god. There's a lot of bad genus groups, but that might be a contender for the worst.

QUOTE (Cube67 @ Jan 31 2021, 12:42 AM)

There's no description mention of the cave rustcell replacing the cave rustmold. they're both extant.

It used to replace its ancestor but was retconned to not.

There have been at least a handful of known cases where species were incorrectly replaced or outcompeted when it made no sense to do so (such as the Cave Rustcell replacing the Cave Rustmold).

Please list any examples you know of on this thread. They may be retconned to either still be alive up to a mass extinction event or have been outcompeted by something else that took their niche later.

Edit for alternative title: Dorite has a breakdown over spore-inspired art game

There have been a number of cases of Sagan 4 species being misinterpreted over the years. This thread serves to help collect them so that they may be identified and repaired. Extant species and those with many later descendants are priority.

Known unrepaired misinterpretations:

Several descendants of Pedesorm were mistakenly given eyes.
- Should be repairable without changing the eyeness of it or its descendants? Photoreceptors are modified chemoreceptors in real life.

Wingworm Clade: Legs and eyes mistakenly lost several times independently, but correctly retained in others.

Greencrest: Hard shell inexplicably became a segmented body and tail.
- May not be possible to repair without complete redesign. There is no plausible way for this to have happened. Fortunately, it has not produced any descendants, so we don't have to worry about that at least.

Many descendants of Plenther inexplicably transformed the left leaf into a spike.

Some living bearhogs are drawn as though they incorrectly have a mouth-like butt nostril, when in reality they should have a normal butt nostril shielded by two leaves. (Most might be possible to fix with description clarification, but Whiskerslurp takes it a step further and has its butt nostril imitate its head)

Bloodbee: It is unclear from the description which end is meant to be the head, but the constant reference to the cloacal plunger and the only plunger-like organ being on the mouth end is either a case of misinterpretation or a misinterpretation waiting to happen.

City Snotflora: Ancestor possibly misinterpreted as unicellular. The mucus inexplicably acts like a cell membrane and produces pseudopods, when it's literally just snot.

Carpofauna: Several cases where backwards-facing knees were interpreted as heels of digitigrade legs. Are any still extant that haven't had this happen?

Sucker Swarmer and descendants: Inexplicable, unexplained tail fin

Descendants of Hydrogen Jellysquid: Perhaps one of the worst misinterpretation events of them all. In its descendants, the beaked mouth inexplicably became a nostril, symmetry went sideways, and a new mouth appeared where the anus was.
- I think I can fix these at least with only inserted transitional forms, which hydro gave his blessing on. Other instances of this misinterpretation in aquatic filtersquids aren't so lucky, however.

Bristlesquid: Swapped its mouth and anus. This is reflected in living descendants, some of which have outright placed shells or armor where their mouth should be.

Plenthogs (Bearhogs and Gulpers): The fact that they smell with their barbels is seemingly forgotten, as they are inexplicably turned into horns in hornfaces and all living gulpers use their tongues to smell for no apparent reason.

I've edited it to state they leave.

the purpose of the harem starving is to remove risk of inbreeding. The existing harem would contain the new gamergate's father.

That species isn't canon yet, but yeah, people haven't generally freaked out much about blood. If there was guts, though, I would recommend toning it down.

Bufforpington A "gamergate" is a fertile worker of a eusocial species and the term has existed longer than the political word of the same spelling.

The diet should be formatted like Diet: Carnivore (list)

Thanks.

Also, corrected a weird error in the description.

There was a vote on the discord about this and it was unanimous, so this is canon now.

Yes, I did use "exponentially" intentionally.

"Fat, hairy sausages" is the best description I can think of for what the larva looks like at that stage. There's an illustration of it in the ancestor and it's quite accurate.

I've fixed the errors.

QUOTE (Coolsteph @ Jan 27 2021, 07:51 PM)

Oh, I like this genus group. But...those integrated species are all extinct already. Its ancestor is extinct, too. Rustmolds are still around, though, so you could tweak the art and description and explain they don't form plasmodial structures anymore.

Some really bad genera are getting retconned and split into multiple genus groups.

Yeah, all looks good now.