{"id":7590,"date":"2019-12-31T16:50:13","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T21:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/?p=7590"},"modified":"2020-11-08T19:58:01","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T00:58:01","slug":"the-crescent-and-its-prey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/2019\/the-crescent-and-its-prey","title":{"rendered":"The Crescent and its Prey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Even though they don\u2019t occupy the \u201capex\u201d niche (does anything, really?), the Crescents are still predators of small prey. Their elaborate, multispecies respiratory system gives them the ability to move faster than anything else in their ecosystem, but, like the sauropods of Earth\u2019s past, they prefer to move their body as little as possible, preferring to reach from where they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Twisters are probably delicious. I doubt we\u2019re biochemically suited. I bet they taste really cobalty.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The harpoon is actually a long, muscled tube that unfurls from the inside out. It can reach out and grab its prey, peristalting them toward the rest of the Crescent\u2019s digestive system. It can move faster than most of its prey can swim away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its favorite prey is the \u201cTwister\u201d, a creature only distantly related on the family tree, in the category of threefold-symmetrical beings. It swims by twisting its semirigid tail in alternating directions, pushing water in accelerating waves along its length. It, in turn, has further prey, but mostly it\u2019s a bottom grazer, picking small living things off rocks with its triangular mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is part of my ongoing project for Issue 3 of Almost Real<\/a>, the speculative biology zine. If you like my work, you\u2019ll love Almost Real!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Modular systems are a function of industrial society. But do people of The Fifth World still know how to agree to standards? With their acute interest in efficiency, I think they might have carried that lesson forward!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though they don\u2019t occupy the \u201capex\u201d niche (does anything, really?), the Crescents are still predators of small prey. Their elaborate, multispecies respiratory system gives them the ability to move faster than anything else in their ecosystem, but, like the sauropods of Earth\u2019s past, they prefer to move their body as little as possible, preferring … Continue reading “The Crescent and its Prey”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":7593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[204,206,74],"class_list":["post-7590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-set-of-all-sets-that-do-not-include-themselves","tag-almost-real","tag-crescent-frond","tag-speculative-zoology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7595,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590\/revisions\/7595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}