Wanderpalms By Imperator-Zor Watch

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On New Australia there are three lineages of macrofauna which crawled out of the ocean, one of which did so with an odd adaptation. It supplemented it's caloric intake by having symbiotic algae living it's skin, which allowed it to photosynthesize. Thousands of species from this clade rose and fell. To many the algae was simply a minor addition to their nutritional needs and a few even lost that ability, but to others it was embraced fully. Most notably in the forest herds of the great Wanderpalms.



Wanderpalms can get fairly large, up to 15 meters tall at the tips of their massive fronds (when locked together for walking) in some exceptional cases and get their name from a passing resemblance to terrestrial palms. Their digestive system has been massively simplified and is almost exclusively used to collect water and sift out salt. The only things that they eat are algae and bits of detritus they find along their migration roots, and even then they do sparingly. Their natural habitat is warm deserts where they spend most of their time sunning themselves. Even so they periodically walk (usually at night) to bodies of water (either fresh or salty) to drink. These creatures only need to drink maybe twice a year and their life cycle is dominated by walking from the sea for water and walking inland to sun themselves.



The wanderpalms has vastly reshaped the deserts of New Australia. Areas which receive less than 10mm of rain a year are home to millions of these plodding creatures in shifting "forests", which sit at the bottom of a complex food chain. Parasitic fauna in the same niches as terrestrial insects and birds feed on these creatures' tissue and blood bit by bit while a variety of specialized predators either take bites out leaves or kill wanderpalms for their meat. Wanderpalms are fairly large and can defend themselves, but they are slow and ungainly and can yield several tonnes of meat. Those that die of wounds or dehydration and picked over by scavengers and the dung of all of said creatures provides reasonably moist material on which more conventional plants grow and are fodder for other creatures. Their young are easier targets, for which reason Wanderpalms reproduce in large numbers. These predators are often preyed upon by other predators. Entire ecosystems have been created due to these creatures.

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