Fitzgerald's World — Life Blog

Named for its discoverer, Dr. Argos Juffle, the Juffalope is a grazing, herd-living animal native to Fitzgerald's world.

Unique Traits

The fact that its home-world has no significant land predators has allowed the Juffalope to evolve several traits that would not survive in other environments:

-Its white skin is spotted in pastel hues, making it immediately visible in the landscape.

-The Juffalope's three long, feather-like tails would be easy for a predator to grab.

-Also, it's painfully slow gait is due to joints ill-adapted to running.

-The Juffalope's long, slender neck terminates in a comically small head. The Juffalope has no ears, making it completely deaf. The Juffalope's brain is quite small, which has the side-effect of making it remarkably easy to tame. The small mouth and slender neck of the Juffalope make grazing an almost constant activity (except during mating season), as it has a hard time swallowing enough food to power its body.

Life-cycle

Juffalopes gestate for a short three months. Mothers typically give birth to a litter of three or four offspring at a time. The young juffalope is quite small, only weighing about ten pounds, but begins walking and grazing almost immediately after birth.

Juffalopes grow to maturity quickly, being able to reproduce after only two local years. Adults can grow quite large, and specimens weighing over 2000kg are not unknown.

The average lifespan of a Juffalope is around 120 Earth-years, the most common cause of death being old age, although occasionally a disease or food shortage will devastate a population, felling entire herds.

Economics

Juffalopes found some market value as pets during Era-1. During Era-2, with its scarcity-based economy, Juffalopes also became livestock. Juffalope meat has an exceptionally mild flavor (often attributed to the low stress lifestyle of the Juffalope). Juffalope hide also became somewhat popular in clothing during Era-2 for its unusual coloration.

Description

The Landstrider is native to Fitzgerald's World, a planet without predators where herbivores can grow to very large size. Because they lack natural predators, they don't fear humans, which means they can be easily tamed, but it also makes poaching a problem. They range the tropical regions of Fitzgerald's World, primarily living in heavily forested areas, and can live up to five hundred years.

Landstriders are the size of a house at birth, and can grow to the height of a ten-story building. Because of their large size, tamed Landstriders are sometimes used as pack animals, and can easily carry an entire expedition with all of its gear on their backs.

The skeleton of a Landstrider contains a large amount of titanium-based compounds, giving it greater strength to hold up the creature's enormous bulk. For this reason, when one dies, its bones are a valuable commodity.

Landstriders are herbivores, and an adult will eat full-grown trees with a single bite. The Landstrider eats by grasping a tree or other plant with the tentacles that grow from the side of its head. Its mouth is surrounded by a thick beard-like growth of hair. This is the only hair on its body.

Landstriders have two pairs of eyes. The eyes on the sides of their heads provide peripheral vision, while the eyes on the front let them look directly at things. They do have a sense of hearing, but it is very imprecise, allowing them to hear loud noises, without being able to discern the direction from which the sound originated.

A Landstrider breathes through openings in its sides that open up to its enormous lungs. Landstriders are known to carry a respiratory infection, known as Fitzgerald's Lung Rot, which has crossed species to humans. Lung Rot is just a nuisance infection to the Landstrider, but can be debilitating, and occasionally fatal to humans.

Landstriders are social animals, and live in family herds led by an alpha male.