Damacolot

The damacolot is a reptilian predator of Diddu infamous for its ability to change its color and pattern to camouflage itself with its surroundings. Damacolots roam the scrubs and mountains of the world, feeding on anything smaller than themselves that they can catch. This decidedly includes humans; damacolots are one of the most dangerous organisms in their area.

Appearance

The damacolot has a lacertine body with six legs, which are held rather more erect than for most modern lizards and crocodilians. Its head is perched on a long neck, and is split by a huge mouth which, when it's not actively trying to hide itself (since its teeth and tongue and other features of the inside of its mouth are not subject to its camouflage abilities), usually gapes half open in a toothy grin. The wedge-shaped head bears four eyes, though the anterior pair is much smaller than the posterior and easy to miss, and a single row of horns running down the center, diminishing in size as it reaches the tip of the snout.

An adult damacolot can reach up to six meters in length, and almost a metric ton in mass.

Anatomy

Despite their somewhat lizardlike appearance, damacolots are warm-blooded (perhaps not surprisingly, considering that they're actually more closely related to dinosaurs and birds than they are to lizards). They share with crocodilians the foramen of Panizza connecting the left and right aorta. The most unusual thing about the damacolot's circulatory system is its two hearts. The damacolot has a double ribcage, one between the front and middle pair of legs and one between the middle and rear, and has a heart within each ribcage. This allows the damacolot to survive for a time even with one heart somehow out of commission, though a one-hearted damacolot tires easily and is incapable of the same top speeds as an intact specimen. The damacolot also has four lungs, two in each ribcage, but most of its other internal organs are not doubled. Its (single) stomach and liver, among other organs, are in its anterior rib cage; its intestines are in the posterior.

Another unusual feature of the damacolot's anatomy is the silk gland also located in its front rib cage, and connected by a duct to the back of its throat. It is this gland, not found in any near relatives, that allows it to spray the silk that is one of its hallmarks... unlike spiders, which extrude their silk from the rear of their abdomens, a damacolot actually shoots silk from its mouth.

Camouflage

The damacolot's most notorious ability is its power of camouflage. The damacolot can almost perfectly replicate any background, making it extremely difficult to spot, especially against a background of a broken pattern that makes it harder to make out due to shadows. There are some limitations to the damacolot's palette; it is unable, for instance, to imitate pure white or some particularly intense colors, especially in the red-violet range. Still, it is able to imitate almost any color commonly found in nature, and many artificial ones as well. Its ability to match patterns is no less impressive; although there is a definite limit to its resolution (on the order of one "pixel" per three or four square millimeters), this is generally only important when the damacolot is very close—by which time it's often too late to escape it anyway.

The damacolot's camouflage ability is entirely nonmagical; it comes from the manipulation of pigmented cells called chromatophores.

Ecology and behavior

The damacolot's size and strength generally makes it the top predators wherever it is found. Because of their warm-blooded nature, damacolots need a considerable food intake, and so, unlike some snakes for instance, cannot go for long periods of time without eating. Damacolots are almost always on the hunt, and even if they just ate they will still attack prey to save for later feeding.

In fact, damacolots have a special adaptation for just that purpose; they can exude sticky silk that they use to wrap their kills (or sometimes prey still living but too badly injured to be able to resist) in sealed cocoons for later consumption. (These cocoons are airtight, so a living being cocooned is likely to suffocate before it's eaten, although it may be able by struggling to open up enough of a gap to breathe.) The damacolot will not bother to remove its food from the cocoons; once it is ready to eat its "leftovers", it will simply devour them cocoons and all. In extremis, the damacolot can also use its silk as a weapon, either to stop escaping quarries or to slow pursuers in those rare cases when it finds itself on the defensive. It can spray its silk over a wide area, immobilizing anyone caught in the attack.

Damacolot silk has an iridescent sheen that is widely considered quite beautiful—so much so that it is a sought-after luxury for the manufacture of the finest silken goods. Despite the danger of venturing into damacolot territory, there are those, called silkers, who make (or at least supplement) a living gathering this silk, having devised several methods of silking the damacolots—that is, of getting the silk from them. The fact that silking is such a hazardous occupation makes the damacolot silk all the more valuable.

Damacolots are oviparous, laying clutches of three to six eggs at a time. They do not form lasting attachments; but after mating the male and female go their separate ways. The damacolot's camouflage abilities even extend passively to the eggs; the shells of the eggs the thing lays will be colored and patterned to match the nesting spot, although the eggs cannot change color after having been laid. Because the eggs are difficult to spot anyway, the mother damacolot is not particularly careful of them, and continues to range far from the nest while the eggs are there. She will return to the nest periodically to check up on the eggs, however, and woe betide anyone who is caught stealing or damaging them.