Tiger Wangvin

The seas of Eryobis are full of horrors and monstrosities with faces hard to love. Evolutionary abominations like llamplelgans, creatures that look like squid-scorpion hybrids that turned out to have evolved from polychaetes, are often considered by explorers to be among the most cursed looking creatures to be found on Eryobis.

Looks are one thing, behavior is another.

Fermourodonts easily take the title of the creatures most unfriendly towards humans, given that they go out of their way to destroy our electric equipment and vehicles, while coeaaien tend to get a bad reputation because of their superficial resemblance to sharks.

There are however a few nienktvissen that also often end up high in the rankings of the most horrible creatures to be found on this world. While this is largely based on appearance, there are real life precedents of nienktvis encounters ending up lethal on our side. While this was likely an accidental anomaly that was only caused by poor handling on the explorer's part, there are other nienktvissen that do actually have a taste for human blood. The losqulas are predatory nienktvissen that regularly feed on large prey, which includes us.

But losqulas are not the only type of nienkvis that prey on large, usually live prey. Considered to be reasonably close relatives to the true squidn'ts, these carnivorous nienktvissen are often referred to as wangvins (Zygopterichthyidae). One the first things anyone remotely familiar with nienktvis anatomy will notice are the large "fins" that flare out from below the eyes. These fins are derived from the barbels seen in other nienktvissen and likely serve as stabilizers and lift generators. An adaptation seen in at least two other unrelated kinds of nienktvissen.

The tiger wangvin (Malascellus tigris), known to live in the Riatis Ocean, is a medium sized species that grows between 150-180 cm long. These wangvins, like most others, are predators with long protruding teeth based on large plates that can all move independently. While they look scary, wangvins are significantly less dangerous than losqulas as they tend to be more wary of their surroundings. It is thought that this wariness might be due to them not wanting to risk their cheek fins getting damaged, as it could pose a large hindrance to their hunting and general life. That said, wangvins are known to get aggressive when they detect blood in the water and there are at least a dozens reports of divers getting bitten in the legs or arms by curious wangvins. Our standard diving suits are multi colored with striped limbs to break the silhouette and deter large predators from attacking, but it seems that these striped limbs can seem like separate, smaller prey animals to the wangvins.

These fish tend not to venture too far out to the open ocean and will usually patrol deeper zones of reefs during the day and come up to the surface at night.

 

Brown Richibi

Most nienktvissen possess 6 or 7 gill slits, with the latter seemingly being the ancestral state. There are a handful however that have even less. The richibi's, as they are often referred to, are conodonts that only have 5 gill slits. That is hardly the only strange thing about them however, as these fish are known to possess a far greater number of functional fins than most other nienktvissen do, moving them in a wavelike fashion similar to how the extinct Anomalocarids of Earth are speculated to have done.

Some researchers have suggested that richibi's might not even be actual nienktvissen at all, but rather another kind of conodont that independently evolved a similar style of locomotion by splitting the ancestral caudal fin into a number of finlets. There is however, hardly enough evidence to confirm this theory and there is too little genetic testing on nienktvissen as a whole draw support from.

Richibi's are almost exclusively found swimming in the coastlines and river mouths tropical and subtropical Miesjeta. The brown richibi (Virrateops fulvus) is a species that can be found inhabiting estuaries, deltas and the waters near river mouths in Bloëca. Spending a lot of time in murky waters, this fish has long barbels with which it can detect food and foe when visibility becomes too low.

It is thought to feed predominantly on plant matter and mollusks, but too little about its lifestyle is known to say for sure.

Whitetip Meadow Coeaai

Much like the sharks of Earth, the coeaaien of Eryobis are subject to rather simplistic names. A prime example of this is the whitetip meadow coeaai (Livadiselache leucacrus), a species of toothed coeaai (order Odontocoeaiida) that inhabits the shallow waters along the eastern coast of Hatèmica. As its name suggests, it has a distinctive white tip on its caudal fin that distinguishes it from other meadow coeaaien.

It is a medium sized species, with the largest individuals reaching around 2 meters long and poses little threat to human divers. It feeds mostly on relatively soft bodied animals smaller than itself such as small fish, nienktvissen and llamplelgans as well occasionally scavenging on deceased megafauna.

As is typical for coeaaien, this species also has two large pectoral fins that are permanently oriented upward to function as dual dorsal fins. While these are mostly fixed, they do possess a small degree of mobility and allow coeaaien, such as this species, a surprising amount of maneuverability and makes them able to turn on a dime. Usually slow cruisers, coeaaien can perform quick bursts of speed to catch their prey and their maneuverability and flexibility allows them to strike fast in many directions around them.

A common species around Hatèmica, it can often be found as bycatch in fish markets on the eastern coast of this continent. It is said that the small, but numerous scales of coeaaien make their skin very tough to chew through, but that the meat underneath is quite tasty. The fact that coeaaien do not excrete urine through their skin like sharks do probably makes them a lot more palpable.

While coeaaien such as this species often remind us of the sharks back home and on many colonies, there is one behavioral trait these fish possess that is most unsharklike. Namely their breeding habits. While sharks practice internal fertilization and often give live birth, the method coeaaien use is more like that of most bony fish. They perform a behavior called spawning, where the male and female freely release their gametes into the water. It likely differs per species and location, but whitetip meadow coeaaien have been observed to dig shallow holes in the sediment or make small "nests" in the vegetation for the breeding pair to spawn into. Curiously, it is often the male that stays behind to guard the eggs while the female goes on to mate with another male, only to repeat the process. This makes them seem like quite dedicated parents and indeed, the male will even keep guarding the young after they hatch, but as soon they start growing teeth, which is usually after around a week, the male is just as likely to eat them as guard them.

Green Sjaul

Far out in the open ocean is where you can often find the fastest swimming animals. Nowhere to hide, in this watery desert, the only defense for anything that isn't translucent is speed. Fish that live here are often thunniform and carangiform in body shape for hydrodynamic efficiency.

It should therefore be little surprise that nienktvissen, conodonts that do not possess a typical fish like body, are not that common far out in the ocean. There are a number of very large bodied nienktvissen that carve out a living in the open ocean by feeding on plankton or small shoaling crustaceans and fish, but these do not typically frequent the surface.

There is one kind of nienktvis that can be found at high sea, the sjaul. Scientifically known as the genus Cephalopteron (and possibly others), there likely at least a dozen species of sjaul to be found in the oceans of Eryobis. 

These are peculiar looking animals, even for nienktvis standards.

Their bodies are cone shaped and possess four very large fins, behind which a much smaller fin is located. It is thought that the large fins are used for propulsion while the smaller ones provide stability or aid in changing or maintaining direction and stability. In addition, sjauls have another pair of "fins" located on top and below their head. These derive from the ancestral barbels present in most nienktvissen and are likely a feature that sjauls evolved convergentlty with some other unrelated nienktvissen such as vlagops. It is still unclear what exactly these are used for.

The green sjaul (Cephalopteron virens) is a species that can be found cruising the open waters of the Tinjis Ocean in its warmer regions. Here it feeds mostly on free swimming arthropods, small fish and plankton. The tooth elements in the back of its mouth are blunt and rounded, which helps them crush the food that they cannot swallow whole.

Sjauls are a much desired catch for fishermen because of their muscular bodies and crustacean induced flavor. But it is not just fishermen that want to eat sjauls.

Because these fish are quite common and often form shoals of several hundred individuals, they get preyed upon by a wide variety of both marine and aerial predators.

The soft bodies of sjauls make them favorable prey for ritsuara's and other Fermourodonts, which often emply hit and run tactics where they will slice a sjaul in half and come back to eat when it has become incapacitated.