Ketters

Ketters are a type of plent. They characteristically have "scent-eyes", which are actually smooth, scent-sensitive glands resembling eyes. They also characteristically have leaflike structures on their backs, typically one or two, although they may be reduplicated into thick spikes, scales, plates, or other extensions.

Anatomy
Ketters are a major lineage of plents, which have diversified into many sizes, shapes, and colors over million of years. Tails, necks, and snouts range from nonexistent (or nearly so) to short to long. Legs can be short, long, sprawled, straight, or even fused. Some species have claws, some do not, and one extinct species evolved hoof-like structures from toeless ancestors. Multiple lineages can develop traits, such as wings, tails, and even different tail shapes independently of each other, and even lose traits only to eventually regain them.

The original ketter had no tail, but multiple lineages have tails with a butt-nostril at the tip. Fork Ketters, Flower Ketters, and Ferret Ketters independently developed tails. Phibiketters have a slightly elongated butt-nostril resembling the knot of a filled balloon, and Gliding Ketters similarly have balloon-knot tails, despite coming from different ancestors.

While the first Ketter was dark blue with green leaves, descendant species have a variety of skin, wing-leaf, and even tongue colors (red-to-pink, various shades of green), and the Mantis Ketter can even change color. Like the majority of plents, most ketter species have green ear insides. The Ketterkeet was rather unusual among letters and plents as a whole for not having colored ear-insides. The Pudgy Ketter and its descendant, the Arrhenius Ketter, also doesn’t have colored ear-insides. The Manisketter is unusual for the inside of its ears to be pink, a color that appears nowhere else on its body.

Most Ketters do not have teeth. (CITATION NEEDED) Jabberwocketters and Rackettoons are notable exceptions. Jabberwocketters’ teeth developed from bones In the skull, and Rackettoons have calcified teeth.

Many Ketters, including most extant species, have dark, shiny eyes. The Roving Ketter is a notable exception, for it had eyes which looked unsettlingly humanlike. Most extant species have long, pointed ears, although this is by no means a rule.

Scent-Eyes
In extant ketter species, scent-eyes are often conspicuous, green, dotted bumps; however, some lineages have purple bumps or scent-eyes resembling their actual eyes. Generally, the color of the scent-eyes have the same color as the wing-leaves.

Starting in the Diamond-Leaf Ketter, the scent-eyes developed a grid-like configuration, resembling the eyes of a fly. In some species, the scent-eyes are enclosed in bumps on the top of the head like a crocodile's eyes, and in others the scent-eyes are dome-shaped and positioned on the head like goggles.

Wing-Leaves
Various species can move their wing-leaves. The color, shape, and number of wing leaves varies. In the Mantis Ketter, the single leaf splits into two again. The Leaffer, Rocky Ketter, Hopketter, and Scaleback Ketter all independently developed reduplicated wing-leaves; for the last three, the wing-leaves resemble a set of plates down the back. The descendants of the [Leaffers] have leaves across their flanks as well, and Swamplents' wing-leaves are reduplicated over most of the body. Needleaffers' leaves are highly derived, unique structures among Ketters, resembling the twigs of coniferous plants. In many species, the wing-leaf folds over the back like a saddle; a Bilbetter has a particularly shell-like wing-leaf.

Longisketter its wing-leaves turned scales have become winglike structures again.

Diamond-leaf Ketter: can glide, independently of another gliding species.

Ringtailed Ketter: its back-leaves are not used for gliding; it lays on its back like a saddle or shell, but it still has the distinctive ridges/venation of diamond-back ketter descendants.

Springing Ketter: crab claw-esque snouts; long gliding-wings held over its back. The leaf is controlled with muscles.

Gliding Ketter: wing-leaves split into two; it can glide with them. Rounded tip of the butt-nostril, somewhat resembling a balloon knot. Spade Ketter: can actually fly, paralleling distant phyler relatives. Scrubland Ketter: doesn’t fly; fused-together leaves; very unusual tongue-like snout. More dependent on photosynthesis than usual.

The Barkskin has a body covered in bark-like panels; its snout and tongue have merged together into a proboscis, a bit like a Cottoncoat’s from an unrelated lineage.

Reduplicated leaves (Leaffer), the back-leaves resemble its ears.

No tail. Quilleaffer: its body is covered in spiky leaves; in its size, lemon-like rotund shape, thick legs, dark almond-shaped eyes and spiky scales, it loosely resembles the completely unrelated Blubber Flapper, which similarly lives in polar environs.

Sansauoki: ears merged with leaves as a photosynthetic panel. Like all plents, they secrete urine through their skin.

Lumbering Ketter: fused-together legs; no toes. Needleaffers: wooden hoofs, which are unique to ketters. Not even goutis, which developed much later, have hooves, instead having hoof-like claws.

Toxplage Ketter: a body covered in prickles; quite distinctive.

Nectar-feeding species have long tongues.

They often have well-developed claws. Some use these claws to burrow.

Common traits include a lance-like extension of the snout, or a long snout.

Some species have bigger or smaller leaves.

Diet & Energy
Some depend on photosynthesis, especially Lumbering Ketter descendants. Some species, such as the Swamplent, get more energy from photosynthesis through reduplicated wing-leaves, while the Lumbering Ketter lineage developed enormous wing-leaves, which even fused with the ears. Multiple lineages (e.g., Ferret Ketter, Spelun Ketter) independently went in the direction of having less use for photosynthesis, to the point some abandoned photosynthesis as any significant part of its energy intake.

Many extant species eat fruit, sap, and nectar, and often depend on one or two large flora species for sustenance.

The Sloth Ketter was ectothermic, using its leaves to bask. Its slow, arboreal lifestyle was much like a koala or sloth.

History
The first ketter had the characteristic traits of a single, fused leaf on its back, and a set of scent-eyes. In the only descendant of the original ketter to leave descendants in the modern day, the scent-eyes become green bumps.

The Ketter lineage started in Week 9, Generation 59. All extant Ketters descend from the Mini-Flower Ketter, which arose in Week 18, Generation 120.

Locomotion
Some are obligate bipeds which hop, while others are facultative bipeds which only use their hind legs to dash away. Others are quadrupeds. Many extant and extinct species are arboreal; the Sloth Ketter suspended itself from branches like a sloth. Many sub-lineages live in trees or make burrows, though a few were independently semiaquatic, and one lived in caves, climbing on the walls with a sticky resin it secreted. Some descendants of the Gliding Ketter can fly.

Reproduction
Leaffers mate by kissing, and lay wooden seed-eggs. Other lineages give live birth.

The babies of some lineages of ketters are called “chitties”.

Senses
In extant ketter species, scent-eyes are often conspicuous, green, dotted bumps; however, some lineages have purple bumps or scent glands resembling their actual eyes. Generally, the color of the scent-eyes have the same color as the wing-leaves.

Many Ketters have dark, shiny eyes.

Size
(THIS SECTION IS INCOMPLETE) The Mini-Flower Ketter was only 5 cm long, while the Needleaffer is 3 meters long.

Extinct
All surviving Ketter lineages descend from two descendants of the Mini-Flower Ketter: the Diamond-Leaf Ketter and the Toxplage Ketter.

Lumbering Ketters: an extinct lineage unusually dependent on photosynthesis.

Extant
Hopping Ketters: A small clade (three species) of long-eared, long-tailed, bipedal ketters, resembling jerboas or kangaroos.

Goutis: A small clade (three species) of long-eared, big-headed, scaly-backed, short-tailed, cursorial, fully terrestrial herbivores with a distinct “false face” from their true eyes being so close to the end of the snout as to resemble typical nostrils.