Pierced-Snout Feef
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As the chromofeef began to decline with the rise of taxa like the chromanke pushing them out of several of their original habitats, the remaining populations evolved overtime into a new taxon to survive in a changing world. This led to the rise of the pierced-snout feef, which ended up replacing their ancestor.
In many ways, it has not changed much from its ancestor, retaining many of its ancestral traits. The 4 limbs help it clamber about both on land and in shallow water, while its chameleon-like eyelids allow it to look in multiple directions and focus on various things in the environment. If it spots something that looks like prey, however, all 3 pairs of eyes will focus on it and the pierced-snout feef will shoot out their tongue to snatch prey. Large quantities of sticky mucus helps ensnare the target and prevent their escape as they are dragged back into the mouth.
One big difference, however, is the two pairs of large teeth on the lower jaw. These teeth are so large, that the skull of the pierced-snout feef has specialized holes that allow the two pairs of fangs to poke through without any damage. These fangs work particularly well with puncturing prey, dealing large amounts of damage and killing the creature quickly. These fangs also work as an effective defense against predators, since it means they can deliver a very painful bite to anything that tries to attack them. The pierced-snout feef can also still change the colors of its skin, changing into vibrant colors as a threat display towards predators.
While they mainly live in freshwater habitats, there are a few populations of pierced-snout feef that live within the Yokto Bog, where the water is brackish to salty. To survive in these conditions, the pierced-snout feef is able to rapidly change levels of urea in its body tissues, which avoids excessive water loss through the skin in salty conditions. In addition, this species of feef it has three glands within its skin: mucous glands, mixed glands, and vacuolated glands, which help buffer the additional salt which would otherwise enter its body. With these adaptations, the snapper can comfortably live in both fresh and saltwater and thus live in areas where its competition would do poorly. As parts of its range are also subpolar and thus can get pretty cold at times, the pierced-snout feef possesses anti-freeze proteins within their blood that allows them to tolerate the cooler winters.
Just like its ancestors and relatives, the pierced-snout feef lays their eggs into the water before abandoning them to their fate. The tadpoles of this species have the large fangs of the adults, allowing them to tackle prey around their size, which in turn gives them a competitive edge over other tadpoles of related snappers. They often stay in areas of dense cover since pierced-snout feef tadpoles are vulnerable to a variety of predators, including adult pierced-snout feef that will happily consume younger individuals.
