Fauna of Columnis

This article is about the fauna (animals and fungi) of Columnis.

Gravel Warthog
The gravel warthog is a type of warthog, very similar to a terran savannah warthog, differing in several small ways. First, it has a large hook on its chin, allowing it to hook into a crystal when the tide comes in, sleeping just above the waterline. Their skeletal structure is thus modified for the hooking to work instead of breaking the bones of the pig.

The pig also has hooks on the elbow, allowing it to crawl up the crystals to avoid being wetted by the incoming tide. Again, the skeletal structure of the arm is slightly modified to allow for crawling with the elbows. The elbows are kept sharp by being rubbed on the crystals, allowing them to penetrate the surface of the crystals.

The snout of the Gravel Warthog has large plates of keratin, allowing it to burrow deep into the gravel without injuring the sensitive nose that allows it to find crystal worms.

Pygmy Column Boar
The pygmy column boar is a species of boar, similar in overall aesthetics to tapirs. They survive by eating the bones of animals eaten by crystal juggernauts. Their snout is the main difference with a tapir-like facial structure and a snout, but with an interesting set of tusks.

The boars have both tusks and fangs, and they are all bicuspid, with the two cusps forming an arc, roughly two inches in diameter. The boars use their long tongues to pull a large bone into their mouth, placing it onto their tusks and biting down, causing the tusks and fangs to shear the bone into two ends and a center section. They pull the marrow out of the bone using their snout, holding the bone in place with their tongue and their front feet.

The boars live on gravel desert plateaus, allowing it to avoid the tidal dangers.

Anemone Deer
Anemone Deer are a species of deer that spend their lives in the gravel passes around tidepools, where they eat the tentacles of anemones. They do not eat the body of the anemone, allowing it to survive and regrow tentacles. Their mouths are filled with a mucus that protects them from the stings. When a strong tide comes in, the deer just stand there, allowing themselves to be lifted by the tide, floating with the waves.

Algae Moose
Algae Moose are large animals who are similar to normal moose, only having adapted to survive off of only the nutrients they can find in algae. The moose live in gravel deserts on plateaus, eating algae and lichen off of columns. They are nearly identical to normal moose.

Columnis Water Deer
The Columnis Water Deer is a cervid similar to other water deer, with large, seemingly-canine teeth, differing in that they have even larger tusks, roughly six inches in length, which they use to fight off algae moose who wander into their feeding grounds.

This particular type of water deer does not fight for territory, instead working as a herd to defend several square miles of territory. The Columnis Water Deer has a skeletal structure similar to that of a Gravel Warthog, allowing it to hang from columns by their tusks. The so-called Water Deer does not actually have the adaptations needed to survive flooding, so they either stay on the plateaus that moose inhabit or hang on to columns when the high tide comes.

Tidal Dolphin
The Tidal Dolphin is a type of river dolphin, typically residing in the oceans of Columnis, which relaxes until the tide comes in, when it swims to the areas that were formerly tidal plains, jumping out to grab the smaller animals currently hanging onto the columns. Typically, it can capture anything smaller than a Columnis Water Deer, but anything larger, including a gravel warthog, will put up a fight, and can sometimes kill the attacking dolphin.

The dolphins have developed large teeth for this, some the size of the teeth of a shark.

Algae Antelope
The algae antelope is a type of antelope that lives on the gravel plateaus of Columnis, jumping upwards roughly twenty feet, then hooking into the columns with bone hooks on their elbows. They then hang on the column, eating the algae that grows there. They are typically ignored by moose and water deer because they eat what is too high for them to reach and it is pointless to defend that. The antelope also has horns, allowing it to defend itself from anyone even when it does eat at ground level.

The antelope cannot camouflage, with light-grey fur, as it spends most of its time on the columns.

Columnis Yak
The columnis yak is a type of yak that lives in the colder polar plateaus of Columnis, where it eats algae off of the columns. It has developed outwards-curved teeth to allow it to simply bite of huge sheets of algae. The yaks are in no other way different than Terran yaks.

The yak is easily capable of fighting of a Columnis Water Deer, its horns able to go through an entire water deer and still have three inches sticking out. They also have greyish fur now, allowing them to camouflage on gravel plateaus.

Columnis Bison
The columnis bison is a type of bison that lives in the mild plateaus of Columnis, where it eats long grasses. The one adaptation of these bison is that they have developed an outer layer of hair, completely disconnected from the nervous system, on which they grow lichen to camouflage better in the blue crystals.

Columnis Muskox
The Columnis Muskox is a form of muskox that lives on the glaciers of Columnis. It lives off of the lichen that grows on the hair layer of other oxen, forming a circle every day to eat lichen off of someone while lichen is being eaten off of them.

Columnis Ibex
The Columnis Ibex is a type of ibex that lives on the rocky cliffs right on the coasts of Columnis' oceans. The ibex does what other ibexes do - climb on small rocks above the water - but it has developed strong triceps, allowing it to jump upwards in order to hook in to the columns with its horns. Its hooves have small barbs on the back, allowing them to fight off dolphins. The ibex eats seaweed off of these rocks.

Columnis Bighorn
The Columnis Bighorn is a type of bighorn sheep that lives in the higher levels of the columns, eating lichen. It has an outer layer of hair on which lichen grows, allowing it to camouflage.

The horns of the Columnis Bighorn are extremely useful. They may be used to push predators or rivals off of the columns and onto the ground about sixty to one hundred feet below. The horns are also ideally suited to break holes in columns in order to build a breeding area.

The horns of the Bighorn are also used in fighting the Columnis Juggernaut. They are hooked into the ribs of the Juggernaut, most likely puncturing some internal organs or arteries on the way. The head is then jerked upwards flipping the juggernaut either behind the bighorn or onto the ground. If the juggernaut falls onto the ground, it immediately dies and is eaten. If it falls back onto a column, the bighorn is able to run while the juggernaut bleeds out and dies or rolls down onto the ground.

However, the hooking of the horns into the ribs does not work all of the time, so starving Juggernauts may attempt to catch a bighorn. The bighorns are actually only eaten by the local lynxes, who jump onto the back of the bighorn.