Snickers

Infamous is today the 24th and 1/2 century for its great shortage of the element illudium phosdax, which was in fact a major driver in the exploration and colonization of Mars by the inhabitants of Earth. Early on, satellites had detected a great abundance of the element embedded in the surface of the planet, with the highest concentrations being found in the lush rainforests of the Argyre Basin. Isn’t that lovely?

The first to explore these uncharted forests was the astronaut D. Dodgers, where he made contact with the snickers (Lunitunus ridiculus), a diminutive species of ushabti. Like its larger relatives, it walks on two upright legs and has a single arm, though there are many things which set it apart. First there are the large fans of feather-scales, which form a sort of flowery “skirt” around the hip area. One presumes that this is a sort of display feature. Then there is the head, which is rather unique among the onychognaths. Mostly spherical in shape, its bony rims and brows give the appearance of a helmet. The mouth underneath the two large eyes is small and the same colour as the face, making it almost invisible. As in its larger relatives, its antennae are on top of the head, but uniquely aligned in a central line, their ends forming a bristle.

Dodgers’ first encounter with these aliens was unplanned and greatly hindered him at discovering an access to the illudium phosdax hotspots. At first, the creatures were simply curious, being for some reason greatly interested in his shoes. But then Dodgers, greatly annoyed, kicked one of the creatures, which made them very angry. Very angry indeed! A whole host of snickers descended upon Dodgers, who was unable to defend himself, as his disintegrating pistol had earlier disintegrated itself. Dodgers had no choice but to retreat back to his vehicle, where the escape was further halted by a malfunction of the ship’s AI. Oh drat, these computers! They are so naughty and complex; I could pinch them.

Dodgers gave his space-mining administration the recommendation to neutralise the site for easier access by utilizing an Illudium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator, but this was rejected as the force of such a weapon would surely result in a mars-shattering kaboom. However, we Kaldanes, now that we have infiltrated the humans’ bases and expunged them from our home, have taken a great liking to Dodgers’ suggestion, though we would rather prefer administering the Illudium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator with Earth as a target. It has been obstructing our view of lovely Venus for far too long now.

Ganguar

 
The ganguar is a quite peculiar creature. Its little cylindrical body is held up by two long legs and a long tail. Although it can walk slowly, it prefers to hop like a little kangaroo. In front of the legs grow small, bony stumps, with long flagella. It is thought that these are feelers, with which the ganguar senses its surroundings, perhaps picking up smells and sounds. Most distinctive are however the fleshy dual-proboscises, which can both fully retract into the body. The bottom one ends in the creature’s mouth, the top one is an eyestalk with only a single, but well-developed eye.

These tiny animals, about the size of jerboas, are commonly found across all the shrublands of Mars. There they feed on small and young fractarians using their iguana-like teeth. Insect-sized onychognaths may also be eaten on occasion. Despite their dynamic mode of locomotion, ganguars have a low metabolism, close to the typical reptilian level, allowing them to subsist on little food. As in yrpoids and thecocerates, it is instead the low gravity of Mars which supports their upright stance and active jumping.

Ganguars are gregarious creatures, often travelling in loose groups. While they feed, their eyestalks look out for predators, of which they have many. When alerted, they will warn each other by repeatedly stomping with one foot on the ground, a behaviour amusingly reminiscent of rabbits. As they have no obvious ears, except maybe for the feelers, it is thought that the ganguars do not hear the sound of the stomping but instead actually react to the vibration in the ground caused by it. Once warned, the group hops away in an instant, though there are usually stragglers left behind which larger predators, such as rannus and bennus, can easily pick up. The fact that ganguars are cyclopes makes one think that they might have trouble with depth perception… which is exactly the case. Although not that big of a problem on the wide, flat plains of Mars, it is not unusual to encounter ganguars clumsily jumping against tall rocks, shrubs or even into ravines because they presumably misjudged their distance.

Although such evolutionary shortcomings can sometimes lead to death, they are usually compensated by the ganguars’ prolific reproduction. In the beginning of spring, many ganguars will meet with each other and participate in necking-competitions, where the length of the partner’s eyestalk is measured. The one with the shorter neck loses and is inseminated by the winner. The “mother” then digs a hole in the ground and lays in there a clutch of 30 – 50 leathery-shelled eggs, which are then covered by dirt again and abandoned. In a few weeks the young hatch capable of jumping and feeding on their own and quickly join nearby groups of adults. Although few of the hatchlings reach adult age, their sheer numbers are enough to keep the species going strong each generation.

Despite their wide distribution and large population allowing for a lot of easily obtainable data, our scientists have had quite the trouble fitting this creature anywhere in the Martian tree of life. Somewhat similar animals are known in the form of the utigog and the tila, but this was not enough to clarify wider relationships. The internal skeleton of these animals, called Craniopoda (for their central ganglion sits inside the mantle, controlling the two stalks at the base), consists of an internal test which surrounds the mantle, on whose outside the feelers, legs and tail are attached. The stalks are entirely boneless, except for the mouth, which is formed by free jaw bones akin to the beak of a cephalopod. Due to their guts making a distinctive U-turn (with the cloaca usually ending up on the left side of the body), an early, tentative hypothesis was that these were highly aberrant nothornithes, with the internal test perhaps having derived from the internal shell of the Periostraca, but the flaws with this idea were obvious. The tail in periostracans is made of exoskeletal tunicine rings, whereas in craniopods it has an endoskeletal support, much like the legs. Although retractable, the beak-like mouths of periostracans are attached to the rest of the body through an internal vertebral column, much like in turtles, not through pure muscles like in the snail-like stalks of the craniopods. Although some periostracans, chiefly pedicambulates, are polydont, their scolecodonts are in no way comparable to the dentition of the craniopods, whose jaws resemble more those of Earth’s lizards than anything. Lastly, periostracans have eyes derived from their shell, not fleshy eyestalks. With the reclassification of the Netchu it became clear that craniopods are not even within the same phylum as nothornithes, but instead form their own distinctive one, the Hemicalyxia. Their tests are homologous to that of the Netchu and their legs, as well as the tail (which itself is likely a modified leg) and feelers have likely the same origin as its vestigial bone-stumps. 

Although craniopods are all small today and, except for the ganguar, quite rare, newest fossil finds from the Isidian of Mars indicate that these creatures once had quite a heyday in that distant, murky period of the planet. Surprisingly large craniopods once shared the planet with equally strange and now completely extinct phyla such as the ambulostellians and urocephalians (Sivgin 2345). They were consequently displaced by the first megafaunal onychognaths, the tagmasaurs and cancrisuchians. Those were in turn eventually displaced by the Periostraca, as the history of life on Mars seems to have been authored by one Ibn Khaldun. Between the Isidian and today, craniopod fossils are exceedingly rare and thus it appears that the ganguar’s current success is only a geologically recent phenomenon.

Photos and videos of the ganguar’s clumsiness, combined with its small stature and goofy appearance, have made it quite a popular critter on Earth, especially among children. With Gary the Ganguar there is now even a beloved videogame figure based on the species for the best-selling Atari Leopard. Children’s obsession with these aliens has even caused one company, Azuma Corporation, to ask NASA if some could be retrieved from Mars and brought to Earth to be sold as pets. This idea was thankfully rejected, for obvious reasons. Not only would the biochemical incompatibility have quickly caused problems, but Earth’s gravity would have also given these animals a crushing strain which would have been nothing short of animal cruelty. Unfortunately, this might not be enough to stop future endeavours by private spacefaring corporations, as there still does not exist any legislature which protects the wellbeing of extraterrestrial organisms. Their legal status as either animals or natural objects remains heavily debated and will likely continue to do so in order to further justify their exploitation and extermination.

References

• Bomhoff, Nils: A common, radially symmetric origin for the Hemicalyxia and Trichordata and the erection of the new superphylum Xenoradiata, in: Astropaleontology, 528, 2340, p. 85 – 101. 
• Sivgin, T.K.: Life on a Dead Planet. The first 3 billion years of Evolution on Mars, Zürich 234

Netchu

Many things live beneath the ground, in the ancient lava tubes of Mars. Often nameless things which gnaw at the roots of the planet, almost literally. Where the air is moist and temperatures are right in these dark tunnels, lithotrophic microorganisms thrive, feeding on ferrous and sulphurous minerals, sheltered from the dust storms and UV-rays on the surface. Where there once flowed glowing lava are now bioluminescent walls covered in a slimy moss composed of areonts and macroarenonts. Their waste is fed upon by pennatophytes and any airborne particles are filtered by sporians.

And where there is flora there will usually follow fauna. One of the more common animals in the lava tubes is the netchu, a rather funny-looking fellow, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Its body is an almost spherical cauldron supported by four tube-like legs which end in feet that resemble suckers or upside-down funnels. Atop the body grows a dextrous proboscis with a mouth at the end. The mouth is a simple tube which can extend into a lamprey-like maw, whose inside is beset with rings of little grinding teeth. These the netchu uses the scrape off and feed on the mossy walls. Similar tooth-like protuberances covering the soles of their feet, giving them excellent grip while climbing walls. The netchu has no visible eyes, instead there are writhing tendrils growing out of all the extremities, which the animal uses to feel its way through the dark corners and crevasses. Netchu are largely soft-bodied and capable of almost fully retracting their proboscis and their legs into the body, as can be seen in the right individual. Little is known about their general behaviour, as their habitat makes them difficult to study. Observations during winter time suggest that they survive by entering a deep sleep in which they likely breathe hydrogen, much like other cave dwellers. It is theorized that they reproduce by laying eggs (Schröckert 2301).

 Calyx of a netchu, with vestigial(?) leg bones.

Historically, netchu were grouped with a variety of other miscellaneous Martian invertebrates among the phylum “Brachiostoma”, which has however become invalid. The internal anatomy of these organisms played a large part in breaking up that waste-basket-taxon. Netchu have little in common with any of the Martian worms and, as may surprise some looking at them, actually possess an endoskeleton, albeit a simple one. The body is internally supported by a so-called calyx or test, superficially similar to what is seen in sea lilies or sea urchins. It is a bony box which encases the internal organs and offers attachment points for muscles. Unlike in echinoderms or vertebrates, this skeleton is only rudimentary. The calyx is open on top, allowing for the complete retraction of the proboscis into the body. The legs are supported at the base by single tiny bones articulating with the calyx, which serve solely as muscle-attachments, leaving the rest of the limbs soft-bodied as well.

Where that puts the netchu on the extant Martian family tree is a much-discussed question. The presence of an endoskeleton may put them somewhere close to the onychognaths or the trichordates, though the similarities are superficial at best. Similarly to the zitharta, some have taken the position of the cloaca, which is atop the calyx close to the proboscis, as a trait that might unify them with the Antitremata. This simply seems to be a case of convergent evolution, however. As in Antitremata, the posterior or ventral part of the body is internally sealed, albeit by the calyx in this case, forcing the gut to wind back up to the top to find an exit.

Out of extant animals, their internal anatomy instead puts them closest to a group of small bipedal surface animals called Craniopoda, to which belong funny fellows such as the utigog, tila and ganguar. These were previously classified as highly aberrant nothornithes or simply as incertae sedis, but their apparent relationship to the netchu and similar forms has opened up the opportunity of classifying them as their own distinct phylum. This new clade has been given the name Hemicalyxia. Of course, that still leaves open the question of their wider relationship status. Based on morphology, the closest relatives of the Hemicalyxia may have been the ancient Ambulostellia (Sivgin 2345), a phylum that is now thought to be completely extinct on Mars, being only known from fossils. Both may form a larger superphylum with the trichordates (Bomhoff 2340). If true, all three phyla seem to have descended from a radially symmetrical ancestor, distinct from the laterazoans (and without going first through a bilateral phase like Earth’s echinoderms). Though in Hemicalyxia we can observe a late bilateralisation, with basal forms like the netchu reducing their legs down to an even number and moving with bilateral behaviour and more derived forms like the craniopods becoming true bilaterals.

References:

• Bomhoff, Nils: A common, radially symmetric origin for the Hemicalyxia and Trichordata and the erection of the new superphylum Xenoradiata, in: Astropaleontology, 528, 2340, p. 85 – 101.
• Schröckert, Daniel: Fortpflanzungsweisen der marsianischen Brachiostomen, Bochum 2301.
• Sivgin, T.K.: Life on a Dead Planet. The first 3 billion years of Evolution on Mars, Zürich 2345.