List of The Future Is Wild species
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This is a list of fictional species postulated in the 2003 Animal Planet/ORF and ZDF series The Future Is Wild. The series examined twelve ecosystems at three different distant future times.
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[edit] Five million years
[edit] Babookari
The Babookari is a social monkey that inhabits the Amazonian grasslands. It is descended from the uakari, an adaptable monkey that inhabits rainforests. The babookari is one of the first terrestrial New World monkey, excluding the extinct Cuban Monkey and its Caribbean relatives. It can grow to 3 feet tall. The legs of the babookari lengthened so it can cover long distances and escape predatory carakillers. Its tail became longer to signal the rest of the troop. Otherwise the bright colors on its bald face and rear work well for signaling. The diet of the babookari is quite variable, eating just about anything available. To satisfy their poor diet, the babookari catches fish. They weave basket-like fish traps to catch fish. Their predators include other babookaris and carakillers.
[edit] Carakiller
The carakiller is a giant flightless bird of prey. The carakiller inhabits the dry Amazonian grasslands. The ancestor of the carakiller was the caracara, a terrestrial grassland falcon native to Central America and South America today. The carakiller is much different. The caracara could still fly, but the carakiller became flightless. After becoming flightless, the carakiller specializes in speed. Packs of carakillers scour the grasslands, flushing out babookaris in their wake. The wings of the carakiller became useful in another way - they became arms. The wing is tipped with a sharp claw, used for tearing up its prey. The carakiller stands about 7 feet tall, sporting a bald head and neck. The only plumage on its head is a fan of display plumage, like those in the tail of a peacock. Carakillers commonly hunt along the edges of brushfires, killing animals struggling to escape from the flames.
[edit] Cryptile
The cryptile is a small lizard, about 18 inches long that imitates the Australian frill-necked lizard, to which it is supposed to be distantly related. It inhabits the salt flats of the dry bed of the Mediterranean Sea. It runs on two legs, minimizing its contact with the hot salt. Its tail is elongated to balance such an agile gait. It has a large net-like frill around its neck, reinforced with ribs of cartilage. The frill is full of holes and covered in a waxy adhesive. The cryptile eats brine flies, using its net-like frill to catch flies, and licking them off with its tongue. Both sexes have an extra crest atop the head, used for display and communication. The only time a cryptile leaves the salt flats is to lay eggs among the limestone plateaus, where it has problems keeping its eggs from being eaten by grykens and scrofas.
[edit] Deathgleaner
The deathgleaner is a giant predatory bat that inhabits the North American cold desert. Due to the freezing temperatures of the desert night, the deathgleaner is a diurnal hunting bat. The deathgleaner hunts spinks and young desert rattlebacks, plus it eats carrion. The deathgleaner has a wingspan of over 4 feet across, rendering it to solve the same problems of the pterosaurs of the past. Its wings are fragile membranes and they lose heat easily. The deathgleaners solved the problem of heat loss by evolving a mechanism that cools the blood before it reaches its wings. Flocks of deathgleaners follow rattlebacks. When a desert rattleback uncovers tubers for food, it also uncovers spinks. The deathgleaners then attack the spinks. To promote survival, the deathgleaners share their food with roostmates.
[edit] Gannetwhale
The gannetwhale is a large seal-like seabird that grows 14 feet (4.3 m) long and lives along the Atlantic coast of northern Europe. The gannetwhale evolved from gannets: seabirds that can swim underwater and can also fly. The gannetwhale however is flightless, turning its wings into flippers for swimming. Unfortunately it still needs to return to land to lay eggs, leaving it vulnerable to predators. Females lay a single egg during the short summer, balancing it on its feet, so it stays warm. Gannetwhales hunt fish and squid in the Arctic waters. The gannetwhale has a powerful beak and the ability to vomit a foul-smelling substance to protect itself from predators.
[edit] Gryken
The gryken is a small predatory mammal, roughly 3 feet long and is descended from pine martens and lives on the rocky plateaus on the Mediterranean Basin. It is related to the larger snowstalker, which lives in the Arctic north. Since its ancestors were tree-dwellers, the change to terrestrial life took place during the colder climate of the ice age at this time. A similar evolution occurred in the past, producing prairie dogs and baboons. In the gryken, its tail became shorter and its feet longer. Overall its build is so much like that of a dachshund, with an elongated body and short legs. This body design is perfect for wriggling through the deep cracks in the rocky surface, or grykes. However it can only accomplish short bursts of speed for catching prey, such as cryptiles and baby scrofas. To make up for this, the gryken evolved sharp canine teeth for disemboweling its prey. The gryken has probably evolved to take the place of the lynx or another large predator that was around during the time when humans still walked the earth. In fact, it was probably humans that caused the extinction of the dominant predator in that area. This would have left an ecological niche that would need to be filled quickly so as to keep the population of herbivores in check. The gryken was in the best position to fill this niche because it was the only predator left in the area.
[edit] Rattleback
One species of rattleback inhabits the tropical Amazonian grasslands of South America.. Its body is covered in tough armored scales, made from compressed hair (such hair forms the scales of pangolins and the horns of rhinoceroses). This armor is hollow, so when shaken these plates rattle, hence the name "rattleback".
The rattleback has massive armored plates to defend itself against predators, like the carakiller. Even its face is armored and its sides are laced with spines. These plates are also used for territorial display, fending off invaders. This rattleback is carnivorous, feeding on carakiller eggs. When there is a bushfire, the rattleback's fire-proof scales help it avoid being burned.
Another species of rattleback lives in the North American desert. However, this desert will not be assaulted by heat, but by cold. Their scales are used to store heat to avoid the cold currents of the Midwest. The adult desert rattleback has no predators, but may be preyed on by the Deathgleaner, a giant carnivorous bat, when young. The desert rattleback destroys underground galleries made by spinks, a small digger bird, only to find a subterranean plant, like a bulb, a tub.
The rattleback evolved from a terrestrial South American rodent, possibly the paca. Once the rainforests opened into grasslands, the pacas had no place to hide and no defense against predators. The pacas have to migrate north to find food. The rattleback specializes in such tactics.
[edit] Scrofa
The scrofa is descended from pigs (but are very small by pig standards, only 8-12 inches high) and lives on the remains of Mediterranean islands.
[edit] Shagrat
The shagrat is a giant rodent that inhabits the northern European tundra. The shagrat is descended from marmots, which today inhabit harsh tundra-like regions in mountains. The shagrat stands 3 feet tall and is built similarly to mammoths and musk-oxen. It has short legs, short tail, and other small extremities. Its body is covered with two types of hair: woolly underfur and hollow air-filled guard hairs. Those and a layer of fat beneath the skin protect it from the cold. Shagrats wander in herds, feeding on shrubs and grass. It fears the deadly snowstalker, which brings down weak shagrats with its dagger-like saber-teeth. Its only defense is staying in a pack.
[edit] Snowstalker
The snowstalker is a saber-toothed mustelid. It is descended from the wolverine and inhabits the tundra of Northern Europe. The creators recognized the adaptability of wolverines and the past records of saber-toothed cats during the last ice age. The saber-teeth evolved to kill large shagrats, since the snowstalker should not waste too much energy bringing down large prey. All the snowstalker does is bite and wait for its victim to die. Also, it will sometimes approach nesting gannetwhales to get at their eggs and chicks. The snowstalker grows 2 feet high at the shoulder and 4 feet in length, making it much larger than any of the modern mustelids, and is covered in a thick white pelt for camouflage against the snow. The female snowstalker has a quick estrus cycle, lasting about three weeks. The reason for this is snowstalker are solitary and have massive territories due to lack of prey.
[edit] Spink
The spink is a burrowing bird. The spink inhabits the dry cold North American deserts and grows to 10-12 inches long. The ancestor of the spink is the quail: a type of game bird that spends most of its time on the ground. The spink looks like a mole, with a rounded body and a small beak. Its tail feathers and bird-like feet betray its ancestry. Its wings reduces into spade-like forelimbs, sheathed in keratin. The spink is a colonial bird, dwelling in colonies not unlike those of mole rats and ants. Queen spinks sit on eggs, most of which would hatch into new workers. Spinks eat tubers and create intricate tunnel systems just to find them. However spinks are helpless on the desert surface, where they become prey for deathgleaners.
[edit] 100 million years
[edit] Falconfly
The falconfly is a giant wasp that inhabits the rainforests of Antarctica. It is very large, with a 70-80 cm wingspan, about that of a modern kestrel. Its massive size is the result of enrichment of oxygen in the atmosphere, which had also allowed for the evolution of giant insects during the Carboniferous period. The falconfly hunts flutterbirds, using javelin-like front legs to skewer its prey and cleaver-like jaws for butchering it. It creates nests underground, feeding its giant larvae juicy bits of flutterbird. However, the falconfly avoids the spitfire bird, which is known to spray acid at it.
[edit] Great blue windrunner
The great blue windrunner is a large bird with a wingspan of 3 meters (10 feet across). This bird inhabits the mountainous Great Plateau. Its ancestors are cranes. The Great Plateau is much higher than the Tibetan Plateau, so the great blue windrunner has to specialize to cope with the thin air. Birds are able to reach high altitudes but the thin air cannot hold up wings as well as the air near the ground, and the great blue windrunner must be adaptable to spend its winter in the lowlands. To solve its problem, the great blue windrunner evolved flight feathers on its legs, so it can use them as extra pair of wings for gliding by spreading them sideways in mid flight. Its head also has feathery tufts which act as gliding wings to support its head in flight. At such high altitude, ultraviolet light leaks through the atmosphere. The great blue windrunner is covered in fluorescent blue feathers that reflect ultraviolet light. Great blue windrunners can also see in ultraviolet and use the light to recognize one another. Their eyes are protected from these high amounts of light by lenses which act as "built-in sunglasses". The great blue windrunners primarily eat silver spiders.
[edit] Lurkfish
The lurkfish grows 13 feet long and lives in the Bengal Swamps. The lurkfish's ancestors are electric eel. It has evolved a sophisticated way of killing venomous swampi: electricity. The lurkfish has a massive head, branch-like barbs and an elongated body. All those can advance its surface area to store muscle blocks that produce electricity. To hunt, it creates a weak electric field and detects whatever movement goes through the field. Once its victim comes within range, it releases a thousand volts to stun its prey. Then the lurkfish can eat in leisure. This behavior is similar to many electric fish in murky, brackish water - such as the electric eel. It occupies a similar niche to crocodiles.
[edit] Ocean phantom
The ocean phantom is a huge sea creature that visits the algal reef, approximately 30 feet long and 13 feet wide. Descended from the present day siphonophores, they form a floating mass with highly advanced systems of coordination and functions. Each phantom is actually a colony of thousands of individual creatures, such as spindle troopers, combined into one giant organism.
[edit] Poggle
The poggle inhabits the Great Plateau (the point where Australia collides with Asia and North America). The poggle is a small large-eyed rodent which evolved from hamsters. The poggle is one of the last mammals on Earth. Once the climate warms up, insects, birds, and reptiles rise to dominance, further displacing the mammals. After 100 million years, the poggle is one of the last to survive. Poggles are very prolific mammals and they feast on grass-tree seeds. They live in small caves along with silver spider colonies. The spiders provide the seeds for the poggles. Once the poggles become fat and slow, the spiders slaughter one and eat it. Just as the poggles rely on the spiders for seeds, so too do the spiders for poggle flesh.
[edit] Reef glider
The reef gliders descended from sea slugs. The adults are 13 feet long and shaped like a giant teardrop. Swimming using a series of wings along their flanks, they patrol the shallow seas hunting for ocean phantoms. They have keen eyesight and can also sense chemical changes in the water. Because of its body size and behavior, the reef glider has probably evolved to take the place of the whales and seals from modern times. This is not unlike the gannetwhale, which evolved to fill this niche 95,000,000 years earlier. The baby reef gliders eat red algae, and are hunted by the ocean phantom. The adults, however, are much larger than the babies, and hunt ocean phantoms.
[edit] Roachcutter
The roachcutter is a small purple bird with a thick beak and is descended from the tube-nosed birds that inhabit Antarctica in the 21st century and have adapted to live in the Antarctic forest of 100 million years in the future (as Antarctica would then occupy a tropical position). Due to its elegant wing design, the roachcutter is the fastest and one of the most manoeuverable birds living in the Antarctic forests. Like Gallimimus and the other ostrich dinosaurs of the Mesozoic, the roachcutter has virtually no method of defense other than its speed, so it is still sometimes caught and preyed upon by the giant predatory wasp, the falconfly.
[edit] Silver spider
The silver spider is a colonial spider that inhabits the Great Plateau. The silver spider is silvery to reflect ultraviolet light. Otherwise its greenish stripes along its silvery body is used to foil its main predator: the great blue windrunner. Since the windrunner sees in ultraviolet light, the silver spider creates an ultraviolet pattern that makes it imitate a grass tree seed.
Silver spiders are divided into castes depending on size. The smallest and youngest spiders start a web by ballooning over a ravine, trailing a line of silk behind it. Larger web-building spiders start the framework of the web and fill in the gaps. These webs are for trapping grass-tree seeds, which are blown by the wind into the webs. Harvester spiders collect the seeds and pile them in their nest. These seeds are fed to poggles, the main food for the spiders and the last species of mammal. This is not a surprising relationship for today leafcutter ants do a similar thing: collect leaves to feed to a fungus. The largest member of the spider colony is the queen, which grows to the size of a football and is the only spider to breed in the colony. When the fat poggles living in the silver spider colony are killed, one by one, often according to the poggle's age, they are fed to the queen first to trigger a reproductive hormone to produce eggs and eventually, more spiders.
[edit] Spindle trooper
The spindle trooper exists in a symbiotic relationship with another fictional creature, the ocean phantom, a future descendant of Siphonophora (creatures related to the Portuguese Man O' War). When the ocean phantom is attacked by a reef glider, the ocean phantom releases the spindle troopers to protect itself. Upon being released, the spindle troopers climb down the tentacles of the ocean phantom and spear the predatory reef gliders with its poisonous fangs. In return for protection, the ocean phantom feeds the spindle troopers.
[edit] Spitfire beetle
The spitfire beetle inhabits the rainforests of Antarctica. The ancestors of the spitfire beetle are unknown. Their evolution coincides with the spitfire tree and the spitfire bird. The spitfire bird defends itself from predatory insects like the falconfly by spraying hot chemicals, which are collected from the flowers of the spitfire tree. The spitfire beetle found a way around this. Their wings and wingcases are patterned like the flower of the spitfire tree. But one beetle can not work by itself. So four beetles cooperate to catch a spitfire bird. When four beetles arrange their wings and wingcases at the right angle, they imitate the spitfire flower. The spitfire bird visits flowers when it needs the chemicals used for defense. So when approached by the spitfire bird, the spitfire beetles all fall upon their victim and eat it. When the spitfire tree stops flowering, the spitfire beetles lay their eggs and die. As the larvae develop over the winter, they emerge during the spring to feed on more spitfire birds.
[edit] Spitfire bird
In the tropical forests, the spitfire bird has adapted the ability to use chemical weapons to fend off predators like the falconfly. They get their chemical weapons from a tree called the spitfire tree. The chemical they use is very corrosive and harmful to the bird's attackers.
A species similar in appearance, the false spitfire bird, has also evolved but that species is harmless.
[edit] Spitfire tree
The spitfire tree inhabits the tropical rainforests of Antarctica. The ancestor of this tree is unknown. It evolved elsewhere and dispersed into Antarctica the same way modern trees colonize the Pacific islands. The spitfire tree has a stout trunk and frond-like leaves sprouting from single stalks. Flowers cover the surface of the trunk. Unlike most flowering plants, the spitfire tree has separate male and female flowers.
The spitfire tree sparks the evolution of other species of wildlife. The spitfire bird is a flutterbird that pollinates the tree. In return, the tree collects pools of highly reactive chemicals that explode in a corrosive acid when mixed (hence the separate male and female flowers). The spitfire bird collects both chemicals to spray at attackers. To counter this evolution, the Spitfire Beetle imitates these flowers and attacks spitfire birds before they could spray acid.
[edit] Swampus
Descendants of the octopus, swampi live in the brackish Bengal swamps, formed when Africa merged with and blocked the Bay of Bengal. They have a deadly venomous bite that can even kill a baby toraton. Unfortunately for the swampus, adult toratons have no predators and are not affected by their venom. One of the only things that can kill a swampus is a lurkfish, because of the electric field surrounding the lurkfish's body. Infant swampi are nurtured in a leafy plant filled with fresh water, into which the mother urinates to maintain the proper salinity. Four of the swampus' arms have "devolved" back into four individual snail-style foot-muscles, and its mantle cavity can also be used as a lung for four days.
[edit] Toraton
The toraton lurks in the Bengal Swamp, which replaced the Bay of Bengal after Africa collides with Southeast Asia. The toraton is 23 feet (7 m) tall and weighs 120 tons. Its closest ancestor is the tortoise. The toraton is the largest creature (let alone the largest turtle) to walk the earth, if measured in terms of bulk and weight (growing even larger than the dinosaurs), though the sauropod Argentinosaurus and other giant sauropods like it rival the giant turtle in weight. Although young toratons are small enough to be killed by swampus venom, the adults are too big to be harmed. In fact, a full grown toraton has practically no predators. The toraton eats constantly, consuming 1,300 pounds of vegetation a day. It requires less food than a mammal of the same size because of its ectothermic ancestry
The toraton cannot withdraw into its shell like the tortoise could, but its shell is used to protect and partially support its weak muscles. The toraton has evolved a digestive system that has a muscular stomach (to grind its food) and a gut filled with bacteria (to digest the rest of the vegetation). Its legs have moved from its sides, to completely underneath to support the tons of massive muscle on this enormous creature.
[edit] 200 million years
[edit] Bumblebeetle
The bumblebeetle is a sparrow-sized descendant of beetles that inhabits the Rainshadow Desert (southeastern Pangaea II). The wingcases of the bumblebeetle reduce into streamlined airfoils. Its body is covered in sensory hairs, specifically for detecting smell. The bumblebeetle has no mouth and practically no digestive system: the bumblebeetle spends only a day in its adult form.
Most of its life, the bumblebeetle is a larva, which is called a grimworm. When a bumblebeetle emerges as an adult, it already carries its cargo of grimworms. Then it flies away to a flish carcass. With no other landmasses to break up storms, powerful hurricanes called "hypercanes" blow dead flish over the mountains into the desert. When the bumblebeetle finds a flish, its abdomen splits to release the grimworms and dies. The grimworms burrow into the flish and eat the rotting flesh. Male grimworms leave for other flish carcasses and mate with female grimworms. When the flish carcass is stripped of flesh, the grimworm females pupate and emerge as adult bumblebeetles. Thus all bumblebeetles are female.
The bumblebeetle serves another role to the Rainshadow Desert ecology. The deathbottle plant can fertilize itself, but it can not spread its seeds. So it evolves silvery leaves that imitate a flish corpse. Bumblebeetles land on this leaf and fall into a seed chamber. Covered in adhesive seeds, the bumblebeetle deposits them far from the parent plant.
[edit] Deathbottle
The deathbottle grows in the Rainshadow Desert of the continent of Pangea II. It grows natural pitfall traps lined with poisonous spikes. Desert hoppers sometimes land on these traps and fall into them, where they are impaled and consumed. Since its main diet consists of animals, it is a carnivorous plant.
Deathbottles reproduce with seeds. Since they are incapable of spreading them on their own, they rely on bumblebeetles to spread them. Bumblebeetles are drawn into a seed chamber that imitates the appearance and odor of a dead flish on the outside. After many adhesive seeds attach to the bumblebeetle, it is catapulted out of the seed chamber and continues on its way.
[edit] Desert Hopper
The desert hopper is an advanced snail about 1 foot tall and inhabits the Rainshadow Desert of Pangaea II. Today, snails are restricted in size on land and they slide along on a sheet of mucus. In a desert, water for creating a lubricant is too valuable for use since water could be lost easily. The desert hopper takes this specialization a step further. Instead of eyes on stalks, the eyes of the desert hopper rest on movable turrets like those of chameleons. To conserve water, the desert hopper's skin is like that of modern reptiles. Instead of sliding on mucus, the foot of the desert hopper modified like a spring for hopping over the desert. To eat tough desert plants, its toothed tongue functions like a drill to bore into plant material. This weakness for plant food makes it common prey for deathbottles. To protect itself from intense heat and predators, the desert hopper retreats into a spike-covered eight-inch shell.
[edit] Flish
The flish is descended from cod, which was one of the last fish on Earth 200 million years from now. Unlike the cod, the flish can accomplish something beyond any modern fish: flight. Today, flying fish use their broad fins for gliding. The flish takes this one step further. It attaches powerful pectoral fin muscles to its gill arches. It breathes air outside of water. The flish retains two pelvic fins for resting atop the oceanic surface. To provide more force for flight, the caudal fins rotated 90 degrees, so they are flat like the flukes of a whale. Because birds are extinct when flish evolved, the flish filled every niche of seabirds along the global ocean that surrounds Pangaea II. They hunt silverswimmers and are in turn hunted by rainbow squid. Flish hunt by expanding toothed jaws from its beak-like sheath.
Along the northwestern coast of Pangaea II, flish evolved to fit the role of forest birds. Unlike the oceanic flish, the forest flish has hook-like claws on its pelvic fins for hanging upside-down. They are also much smaller, taking on the role of old world hummingbirds and general forest birds.
[edit] Gardenworm
The gardenworm is an 18 inch long wormlike creature with a symbiotic algae in its multi-branched limbs; when it spreads these limbs to the sun, the algae feeds the gardenworm through photosynthesis. While feeding thus, it resembles a plant. The gardenworm is vulnerable to terrabytes while on land, as they "farm" its algae inside their nests.
When not above ground, the worms live underground in the large reservoirs of groundwater present below the desert, where they are vulnerable to attacks from slickribbons. If pursued by a slickribbon, they can release a cloud of liquid that serves as a distraction to the slickribbon, allowing the gardenworm to escape.
[edit] Gloomworm
A gloomworm is a bacteria-eating worm decended from a type of bristleworm that survived the mass extinction.
[edit] Megasquid
The megasquid is a 12-foot (3.65 m) tall, 8 ton terrestrial air-breathing squid. With tentacles that extend to 10 feet (3 m) and rhino-like skin, the megasquid is a formidable creature. It roams the northern forests of the planet. All eight of its arms have evolved to become legs that look like thick columns, each a 1/3 of a meter thick. Its locomotion is different from other animals: it first moves its front legs, then its back legs, and then the ones in the middle. Although it would appear that an invertebrate of this size would not be able to live on land (it would be crushed by gravity and lack of bones), it has specialized muscles that form rings and columns in the legs to form a mock skeleton-like supporting structure.
[edit] Rainbow squid
The rainbow squid is one of the ocean's largest species, and is a giant carnivorous squid, with a total length of 25 meters (82 feet). When hunting it can change colour and camouflage well. It is nearly at the top of the food chain but is still disturbed and hunted by the pack-hunting sharkopaths. Rainbow squid hunt ocean flish. To catch an ocean flish, the squid mimics a group of silverswimmers, the flish's prey. When a flish comes close, the rainbow squid will lash out and grab the ocean flish. Rainbow squids are, however, a banquet themselves for the sharkopaths who hunt them. When attracting a female the male displays flashing bioluminescence from which the species derives its name; as an unfortunate side-effect, this makes it easily visible to predators. Overall, the appearance of this future squid is quite different from any present-day squid.
[edit] Sharkopath
The sharkopath grows up to 13 feet in length and hunts in packs of dozens of individuals. They can hunt at speeds of over 25 mph and have powerful jaws with the force of 40,000 pounds per square inch. They have specialized ridges around their heads packed with sense organs. Within the array each individual passes information on the location of prey to the others around it via bioluminescent patches that run along their flanks. These features help make it possible for a pack of sharkopaths to hunt down and kill a rainbow squid, which they prey upon.
[edit] Silverswimmer
Silverswimmers are neotenous forms of crab. Their ancestors were microscopic crab larvae, but now they are as diverse in size and shape as fish once were, and they fill the void in the sea left by the absence of fish.
[edit] Slickribbon
The slickribbon is a transparent wormlike creature up to 3 feet in length. It has powerful pincer jaws and a nasty sting, and is equipped with numerous bristles on its side to help with swimming and sensing water pressure changes. The Slickribbon mainly feeds on gardenworms.
[edit] Squibbon
Squibbons are air-breathing squid who can swing through trees. They swing better than modern day gibbons due to their lack of an internal skeleton. Because of their need to coordinate their many-muscled limbs and the complex visual perception needed to swing from branch to branch, their brains are highly developed. As a result, they are highly intelligent and can even outsmart a megasquid, which sometimes tries to eat them. It is implied that they have the capacity to evolve into sapient beings, thus allowing civilization to once again develop on Earth.
[edit] Terrabyte
Terrabytes are termite-like desert insects. They are the descendants of modern termites.
Like termites, terrabytes are organized into castes but are even more specialized than any present-day insects:
- Transporters, which carry other legless castes to a specified area
- Gum-spitters, which do nothing else but spit sticky gum
- Biters
- Rock-borers, which use chemicals to dissolve the hard limestone under the desert to get to the underground pools below (the chemical in question is concentrated hydrochloric acid).
- Water-carriers, which suck up water to water the algae that they grow.
To get this alga they have to fight gardenworms. The terrabytes cultivate gardenworm algae in their mounds, using the water-carriers to water it, and getting it sunlight from transparent panes in the top made of terrabyte saliva. Gardenworms are either found vulnerable, lying around near oases, or inaccessibly swimming around in the underground caves. The transporter terrabytes carry gum-spitters to the attack point and the gum-spitters freeze the worms in their tracks. Then other transporter terrabytes apprehend the worms to grab some algae to take back to their enormous nests. Underneath the nests are a series of caverns that disperse heat from the nests. This is so the terrabytes don't get hot in the blistering desert.
