User:Mason11987/Swiftick

The Swiftick is a fairly tall, agile, carnivore. The Swiftick relies on a strange combination of it's large wings and jaws to swoop in and eat it's prey. It's tail/tentacle allows this animal to grip tree branches to hang or to quickly change directions in mid-flight. It is also possible to use the tail to manipulate objects or deal with enemies.

Metamorphose
The most interesting feature of the Swiftick is it's ability to "morph" it's body parts, to easily rotate and bend it's body and even it's bones in order to fit it's current situation. It uses this ability in fighting, running and many other activities, but most clearly in flying. It's "natural" shape is shown in the infobox.

Flight
The Swiftick uses it's wings to swoop in and capture prey in it's large jaws. It's tusks are also used to pierce and incapacitate prey so that they can be moved to a safer location.

The legs and arms all move horizontally to help with balancing the Swiftick in air and easily grip branches or other similar shaped objects to change directions. The mouth rotates below the body to drop on prey unsuspectedly and the tail spins below the body to make room for the mouth.

Tide pool phase
The swiftick started existance off as an extremly agile single-cell capable of movement in many different directions very quickly. The tentacles on the top of the cell acted as sensors to inform the little guy of any threats that could be approaching. The curled up flagella at the bottom is used to constrict prey and to accelerate while escaping from predators.

Creature phase
The swiftick emerged from the with very flimsy limbs. Evolution took it's course until the flimsy limbs of the swiftick hardened into what appeared to be strangly shaped legs. But the structure of the Swiftick legs and leg muscles allowed it to snap it's legs backwards while running in order to catch up with it's prey where so that it could spear the prey through with it's tusks and pinchers. For quite a long time the Swiftick was the apex predator of it's ecosystem. There wasn't a single creature which could take on the swiftick for a million years.

But finally, overpopulation struck and the food dwindled. Land prey was almost non-existant. So while thousands of swifticks died of starvation, a small group started using their tails and claw hands to help them climb up trees to capture some more elusive aerial prey. This wasn't an easy process and some Swifticks could go days without eating anything. Thankfully their digestive system had been improved during overpopulation so that they could retain as much nutrients as possible from each meal. As with land prey, the Swiftick didn't take too long to become a serious threat to other life. For thousands of years the Swiftics lived off of birds and the infrequent land prey.

In order to capture these birds the swifticks would climb to the very top of the highest trees, from there they would use their four eyes to spot prey camoflauged on branches. The swifticks would leap from their perch with their powerful legs and stretch their pincer arms out wide to pounce on their prey, destroying branches in the process. The Swifticks with more powerful legs became more fit to survive because they were able to leap furthur to reach their prey.

Eventually, those pincer claws started to become webbed, which gave the Swiftick the ability to float furthur. This didn't take on very quickly at first. Since Swifticks with webbed pincers were able to survive not much easier then Swifticks with stronger legs.

Death from above
About 10 million years before the swifticks attained sapience a group were roaming through a jungle where they saw strange lights in the sky. They were mesmerized as the lights danced around. Suddenly another set of lights shined in the distance and began to fire at the first set of lights. The swifticks climbed their trees and watched. The first set of lights destroyed the second set of lights and then shined a very wide green beam up into the sky. The lights and the beam stayed there for a full day, and hundreds of confused Swifticks looked into the sky at the show.

Without warning the thing in the sky was destroyed by a barrage of lasers sending debris to the surface of Illia. Four sets of lights crowded around the area where the first lights were. And they flashed large wide blue beams into the sky. That was the first time the Swifticks noticed the large object in the sky, it appeared to be the size of the very large light that made everything bright everyday. But this object continued to grow in size. The beams from the four things intensified and they seemed to be slowing the object down but not quick enough.

The four sets of lights turned off their beams and dissapeared off into the distance, never to be seen again. The object continued to grow until it covered the entire sky. The swifticks looked up in amazement as a massive asteroid plowed into their planet, Illia.

The immediate strike claimed the lives of 10 million Swifticks as well as half the species of the planet. The following 500 years would show the perserveance of the Swifticks to survive.