Tcho-Tcho dwellers

The sunken city of Tcho-Tcho, the world's oldest continuously inhabited settlement, is home to many species found nowhere else in the world. Much of this biota is symbiotic or parasitic on the human inhabitants, such as the many species of glow-bug, which Tcho-Tcho's inhabitants use as decorative adornment in the nearly lightless passages of their city. (Shown here is a mycetophilid larva, common as a head- and genital-hair ornament). Mammals such as the mouse-like tenec (a notoryctid, distantly related to Leng and Australian marsupial moles) eat human food stores and waste. These are preyed upon by a variety of predators, ranging in size from plucker beetles (Cicindelinae) to the wolverine-sized blind devil (Sicaripodidae), a climbing daggerfoot marsupial. Human deaths to devil-attack are rarely reported.

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Forgive me father, for I have geeked out. It has been nearly a year since my last lapse ([link]. But forgive me, father, for this one is in color. And it won't be the last.

I was in the village this weekend with nothing to do but pick cherries, mow the lawn, set up the irrigation system, and read Den Valdron's exquisitely horrible Green Antarctica thread on Alt History. Yes, my sketchbook is full of mothbeasts and shaghui (and Tsalal) but the first thing I saw when I got back was this ([link] and I had to get out my tablet.

As the Tsalal say, taste you later.

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Done while listening to: Legend, Красавицата и звярът, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Era