{Done for the Alien Safari Jam 12Aug24–13Sep24}


Creatures Name:
Yellow-backed Shinola Spitter (aka Shinola Snail) - Spitorium deficus [​proposed]

Key Features:
Spits to defend itself and its 'grazing' territory

Planet & Location Discovered In:
Muscida Obscura IV
[​The name chosen by the discoverers has been disputed the New Order Planetary Exploitation Commission aka NOPE in favor of Muscida XIV-d as NOPE contends Muscida itself is a rouge exoemmissive metaJovian planet rather than a dim M-class star, Obscura to be one of its major moons and Muscida Obscura IV the moon of a moon.]


The Yellow-backed Shinola Spitter [​Spitter] is found on a dim, cold world that would likely never have been visited had not the free company ship Interlocutor been ambushed by a remnant space mine of the Old Cretin class. Needing pressure to facilitate recalibrating the polarity of the unobtainium sheath it's drive nacel , the Interlocutor made 'planet-fall' on the closest Oxy-nitro atmophered body.

The Spitter (only one specimen has ever been documented [​thankfully]) was first taken for a snake-like life form, as – barring the ventral stripe – it is well camoflaged for its environment.
Other prominent features of the lifeform include the oversized, rearward facing nostrils that appear developed to warn of threats from that direction. (This function is assisted by the creature's habit of turning so as always to have a tailwind.)

The comparatively plain sides of the creature were questioned at first, but remote medical visualization revealed them to be large tympana that are exquisitely tuned to detecting unltrasound — so sensitive are these tympana that Capt. Kipper was nearly killed during an attack that appears to have been precipitated merely by his having at one point owned a dog whistle.

Scantly visible under normal circumstances is the belly tongue by which the Spitter both moves and feeds – its diet constiting exclusively of a sort of toxic slime that covers the South polar region of Muscida Obscura IV in which it is found.

The Spitter's most prominent feature, however, is the combined eye and excretory stalk which was originally thought to be a head*.
It is via this muscular appenbdage that the Spitter 'spits' the highly toxic residue of its diet at any threat — which appears to be functionally defined as anything other than itself and the litho-vorous slime on which it subsists.

Despite the great rarity of the creature, it's toxic nature and extreme hostility have — so far — thwarted any attempts by institutions (or their gradual students) to obtain funds for further study.


*With regulations prohibiting any but remote sensing, no disection has been performed, but the creature appears to lack any approximation of a brain, relying instead on a few primitive reflexes operated by a rudimentary neural net that has been compared unfavorably to that of a Terran sea cumcumber.