Creeping Crud: These basal colonial organisms form much of the base of the Gummiland ecosystem. They exist as slowly mobile oozes spreading across the ground, over rocks, and attached to surfaces, eating anything organic they encounter. Depending on the species, they may be primarily photosynthetic, primarily detritovores, or carnivorous or herbivorous to some extent, or a combination of any of these (inasmuch as carnivory and herbivory are distinct on Gummiland, where the role of plants is taken by animals). They are a common form of ground cover and epiphyte. Their lack of reliance on minerals such as silica or carbonates allows them to grow faster and spread further, and be more adaptable to different geo-environments, at the expense of protection and structural support.

A given crud colony will expand and move around to find resources. They often have a patch of territory that they will vigorously defend. Colonies meeting each other are likely to fight, although it is common to find associations of different species of crud (or other organisms) living together symbiotically. Different species have evolved a wide variety of methods to defend themselves, including poisonous tissues, oozing toxic, sticky, and/or corrosive secretions, firing venomous barbs, releasing clouds of toxic spores, and even explosively bursting to blast competitors and predators with directed jets of scalding boiling water and foul toxic chemicals (similar to the method used by Earth's bombardier beetles). However, these adaptations are biologically expensive and lead to slower growth, such that many species simply out-compete their rivals by growing faster without any special defense.

Mop Tops: These ubiquitous balls of tubes are a clade of motile photosynthetic colonial organisms. They normally hang out in sunlight and make sugars, but if they need to access water or nutrients – or escape a predator – they can move by rolling.

Each tube is its own zooid, usually terminating in a suction end and a single simple eye. Although their visual aculity is not great, it is enough for them to detect looming threats or seek light or shade as needed. They'll use their suction end to adhere to surfaces and gather food and minerals.

Mop tops are found in most environments, and come in sizes ranging from as small as a dandelion seed to larger than a beachball. They engage in various levels of heterotrophy, with some species content to gain almost all of their carbon and energy from light and air while others graze on sessile organisms and organic debris, parasitize other organisms, or even engage in predation.

Rock Fuzz: A ubiquitous class of Gummiland autotrophes that cover exposed rock in a layer of calcerous or silicious encrustations from which extend a carpet of fuzzy photosyntheic tendrils. Rock fuzz extends roots into rocks to break down the rock for nutrients and for material to buld their shells. Different species are adpated for different rock types. Some live on silicate rocks and build silica shells. Others use the calcium and magnesium and iron ions from mafic silicates that combine with atmospheric carbon dioxide to build shells of calcite, aragonite, magnesite, dolomite, or siderite. Even others grow on carbonate rocks and take their carbonate directly from the rock.

Lip Bulb: Lip bulbs are fleshy colonial photoautotrophes notable for their bright red photopigments. An inner white layer of the exposed photosynthesizing zooids at the surface create a distinctive red and white appearance such that they are sometimes also called Christmas bulbs or Santa Claus bulbs. Lip bulbs are usually found in dry areas with alkaline soils, and use an enlarged underground structure to store water and fats. Chains of zooids extend into the soil from this bulb to act as roots, anchoring the colony and gathering minerals and moisture from the soil. If disturbed, the upper zooids withdraw into their burrows for protection.

Screw-Feather Tree: These tube-forming autotrophes are among the most widespread and adaptable of Gummiland vegetation. They form their tubes out of calcium, magnesium, and iron from local rocks and soils and combine them with atmospheric CO₂ for building materials. In sunlight, they emerge from their tubes and unfurl their characteristic spiraling structure of light collecting zooids. If disturbed, they quickly pull back into their tubes.

Many species of screw-feather tree exist, each adapted it its own particular niche that involves rock and soil type, climate, and light availability. Some grow as big as a pine or fir, others are mere shrubs. Different species use different photopigments, such that a multi-species forest of screw-feather trees can produce quite the visible spectacle.

Because they do not compete for silica, screw-feather trees can grow alongside species that form silica shells where the geology is silica-constrained.

Shrume Trees: Shrumes are large, tree-like colonial photoautotrophes that look something like a giant orange head of broccoli (or, as their name suggests, a mushroom). They are one of the many kinds of photoautotroph that make skeletons for themselves out of silica, providing a rigid trunk and branches.

Many species of shrume have evolved a symbiotic relationship with certain varieties of crud. The shrume drops its waste and dead zooids from its living canopy. This feeds the crud, which grow around and on the tree. The crud, in turn, defends its shrume from other competitors. This includes attacking any rock fuzz that would otherwise grow as epiphytes on the trunk and branches, which would weaken the shrume's skeleton.

Shrumes make up an important part of land reef ecosystems. As one of the larger sessile organisms of these regions, they often give the appearance of a savanna or woodland, with scattered shrumes dominating the landscape.

Shrumes are preyed on by a variety of loopers and fuzz-rugs that can climb, glide, or fly into the canopy.

Toobs: Toobs are colonial photoautotrophes that form tall, collumn-like meshwork lattice skeletons of silica. While alive, they spread out short tendrils that makes them appear like they are covered in orange fuzz. The lattice-work skeletons serve as habitats for many animals. In the illustration to the right, they serve as a roosting spot for a colony of wingdings where it provides protection from a marauding predatory death snail.

Puffing Bunkles: Puffing bunkles look like pink fleshy balls. They are a common variety of photoautotroph, detritovore, and filter feeder; and often blanket surfaces with their globular forms. The outer mantle of a bunkle is a tough, leathery surface that helps them resist predation. Bunkles do not make mineralized skeletons, and thus are not restricted to growing in places with skeleton-forming minerals. They do need the usual nitrate, phosphate, iron, and other fertilizers and benefit by consuming organic carbon, all of which they access by capturing small animals and by growing tube-like roots that burrow underground or snake across the surface. These roots are mobile, and can search around for new nutrients when they have exhausted previous supplies. In extremes, bunkles can slowly crawl to a new location. Some roots will typically seek out other bunkles in the colony, keeping contact and serving as a means of communication and exchange of water and nutrients. Bunkles can extend a feather-like structure to capture more light, sieve air plankton, or release pheremones or attractants for small mobile creatures. If bothered, they will retract their extremities back into their mantle for protection. If gravely threatened, they will release a puff of spores that cause irritation, pain to mucous membranes, rashes, and ulcers.

Bottle Bush: Some species of photoautotroph have re-purposed their silica skeletons to produce glass. Many of these use the glass as a greenhouse, allowing them to thrive in climates that get some sunlight but would otherwise be too cold.

The illustrated species is called the bottle bush. The organism grows underground, sending up tube-like structures around its greenhouse bottle for respiration. The bottle, once formed, cannot be re-sized. Thus young bottle bushes grow with only the tip of the dome showing, and the dome is further extruded as the bush grows. The glass panels are originally covered by a layer that excretes the silica and the chalcedony framework, which is protected by a keratinized sheath. As the glass panel is fully formed, the growth tissue dies off and the keratin peels away.

The photosynthesizing portion of the bottle bush is a single giant quilted succulent "leaf" with five-fold radial symmetry. The bottle protects the leaves from winds and weather, which are the usual factors that restrict leaves to smaller sizes in other organisms.

The self-contained growth habit of the bottle bush allows them to store water in their fleshy "leaves" and underground body. In this way, the bush can survive in cold desert environments. They are also often found at high altitudes where they can get plenty of sunlight but have to endure cold temperatures.

The underground body of the bottle bush is a blob of flesh that looks something like a shucked clam. It has tendrils that can unclog its breathing tubes and clean the glass of dust, grime, and slime.

There are several varieties of predators that have evolved to break through the glass of bottle bushes to get the delicious flesh inside. One defense against this is that the glass is stressed so that while very sturdy, when it does shatter it breaks outward, potentially cutting the attacker. A broken window can be scabbed over, the scab eventually forms another layer of glass secreting tissue and creates a new pane. Once the pane is thick enough, the scab falls off.

Gummi Snails: Gummi "snails" are not true snails. They are colonial animals that usually adopt a nearly bilateral shape. They secrete coiled shells, convergent with those of Earth gastropods, ammonites, nautiloids, and forminifera. Their usual form is of a cloak or mantle of tough, resilient zooids forming a dorsal surface, with eye-stalk zooids for sensing and parapodia zooids to make a set of many short legs for getting about. Many species will have an operculum or similar structure (aptychi, epiphragm, or clausilium) that can seal the entrance to the shell when the snail is inside it.

The death snails are the most notorious of the Gummi snails. They posess specialized zooids that produce harpoon darts and a brew of toxins. A dart stylus is barbed and difficult to remove once in flesh; it will even cling tenaciously to skin on a glancing hit. It has several reciprocating sections powered by muscular action of the harpoon zooid, which grip flesh and continue to saw deeper into the target until they are deeply buried, injecting venom as they go. Death snails are usually reluctant to waste a harpoon zooid on something that isn't going to give them a good meal, so they will usually use flashy displays, warning colors and patterns, and hissing, clapping, or whistling sounds to warn away predators or anything likely to inadvertently step on them. Only when pressed such that they think they have no other way out will they dart a threat.

The most feared death snails are the candy-stripe death snail and the ram's horn death snail (shown at right), which produce fast acting neurotoxins stored in large venom glands and which can hydraulically launch their tethered darts some distance. A mature candy-striper can hit targets up to a meter distant, while a particularly large ram's horn death snail was once found to have hit a target five meters away (although three meters is more typical for a mature adult).

Gummis have evolved to innately recognise death snails and similar shapes. They can detect even camouflaged death snails in a cluttered background more rapidly than other objects. As a result, Gummis tend toward emotional reactions toward death snails, similar to that of Humans to serpents, which may manifest as fascination and admiration or which may take the form of phobia. Coiled shell motifs are common among Gummi religious art, Gummi mythology often features Gummi snails – often capable of speech and reasoning, often with magic powers, and often of monstrous size, form, and inclination. Gummis with a snail phobia are likely to be similarly freaked out by Earth gastropods and nautiluses.

Many other kinds of non-venomous Gummi Snails exist, as well as Gummi "slugs" that have lost their shells and become slug-like or worm-like animals. Some of the more recognizable of these are the grabber snails, which have adapted their forward-facing parapodia as tentacles for prey capture and manipulating objects.

Gummis have domesticated some kinds of snails. The numerous varieties of construction snails are used to secrete nacre. These have been selected, bred, and engineered to produce nacre at a high rate where it is desired, although there is often a trade-off between rate of production and quality of the product. Many will secrete the nacre directly onto the surface on which they are placed, allowing them to build up nacre structures. This allows nacre to be used as a primary building material for Gummi architecture and construction. The figure to the right shows a common breed of construction snail. When not in use, it secretes a nacre plug in its upper chamber and enters a state of near torpor. To activate it, remove the plug, spread out the sphincter-lips on the outside of its nacre-producing cavity to change it into a nacre-producing surface, and press it against whatever you want to coat in nacre. The snail will adhere and begin coating. The mouth on the underside is now exposed, and it can be fed a slurry rich in calcium and protein that mostly gets turned into nacre.

Gummi pudding: A domesticated variety of creeping crud, pudding is kept by Gummis as a composter, garbage disposal, and food source. A colony of pudding will be kept by a Gummi household and fed table scraps, trimmings, and other organic waste. The mass of pudding efficiently turns the waste into edible biomass. Portions of the pudding colony will be removed for consumption, but a sustainable mass is left to continue to propagate the colony. Pudding can also be used for cleaning, by eating organic material from inorganic items.

There are many varieties of pudding, some cultivated for their flavor, some for their cleaning ability, and some for their decorative properties (such as a pleasing aroma or growth into interesting shapes). Many Gummis get quite attached to their pudding colonies, and many colonies are kept in a family for generations.

Shown is a food cultivar of pudding kept in a nacre bowl.

Pudding grub: These worm-like colonial organisms are adapted to feed on sessile organisms with hard, protective shells. Their powerful jaws crush and grind through silica and nacre, allowing the grub to extract the juicy polyps within. The ground up shell is later excreted as sand. When not feeding, their jaws are covered by a fleshy cowl. Pudding grubs have one sucker on their back end for anchoring their body while the front end mows through adjacent encrusted food sources. The front end has two rows of flexible, sucker-tipped tube feet underneath and two rows of small eyes up above. They move somewhat like an Earth leech or inchworm, anchoring with the back while stretching the front forward, which then grabs what is underneath it allowing the back to be brought up.

Pudding grubs grow quickly and reproduce rapidly. They are important sources of food for many predators. Indeed, without adequate predation, they can quickly explode in numbers until they grind entire land reefs down to sand.

Pudding grubs are a significant part of Gummi cuisine. They take their name from commonly being eaten with Gummi pudding. Depsite their repulsive appearance, many Humans find them delicious!

Mud Rubber: These somewhat centipede-like animals are colonial strings of zooids, each typically having a pair of eyes and a pair of legs for walking, along with other traits like a respiratory, digestive, excretory, and circulatory system. Mud rubbers are named for their resilient, rubbery texture and their common prevalence in moist areas (although several species have adapted to more arid conditions). Depending on the species, they can be omnivores or carnivores. The front segment has forward-facing eyes for depth perception and its legs modified into sensory antennae. The mouth is usually on the second segment, and is equipped with slicing silica teeth. The second segment also has large sideways facing eyes, giving good peripheral vision. The legs of the second segment in many species are equipped with sticky grabbers, suction cups, or impaling claws for prey capture and restraint. Mud rubbers have no bones, making them extremely flexible. They do not have a fixed length, and the number of zooids in the torso and tail can vary considerably even within a single species.

The zooids in the tail of a mud rubber mostly lack legs and eyes. They are used for balance and fat storage. However, one of their primary uses is reproduction. Generally, the first one to three tail zooids are male; the rest are all female while the body zooids are neuter. When two mud rubbers mate, the male zooids inseminate the female zooids. These zooids carry the embryo as it develops, gradually being consumed by their offspring. Eventually, the female zooids fall off shortly before dying and giving birth. The mud rubber will then clone a string of new female zooids for another tail.

Mimic: Experts at camouflage, mimics are ambush predators that can adjust their color, texture, and shape to effortlessly and nearly instantly blend in to the background. Closely related to Gummis, they use their amorphous form to their advantage to appear as harmless natural features. A mimic can wait patiently for food to come by, or slowly creep up on unaware victims. Then, with a sudden pounce, the mimic will shoot out sucker-lined pseudopods to capture its prey, drag it back, and envelop it. The image above shows a mimic in mid lunge as it attacks a looper that ventured too close.

One species of mimic has self-domesticated to life among the Gummis, living in their homes and helping with pest control. They make charming pets, appreciating affection and contact with their owners but largely content to take care of themselves.

Spitter: Spitters are slug-like animals that capture prey by spitting strings of sticky mucous to ensnare their victims. They can then approach and swallow the creature whole. Large spitters can spray their snares up to several meters. Spitters will also defend themselves by spitting this slime at their attackers.

The image shows a spitter that has captured a dappled wingding, hopelessly trapping the victim in a web of snot.

Netter: Netters are predatory colonial animals. They wait in ambush, attached to a solid surface with a sucker-disk, looking like a harmless polyp. When a suitable victim comes within range, the netter suddenly shoots out to many times its resting thickness, spreading its tentacle-arms wide to reveal a sticky net of glue-beaded threads of goo. The net ensnares its quarry, miring it in the glue. The tentacles will wrap the prey in additional strands to glue-web to ensure it does not escape, after which the netter will swallow it whole.

A netter can move slowly, crawling along with undulations of its adhesive disk. When hungry it will look for suitable ambush sites, ideally along a well-used game path or with structure that naturally funnels prey toward a choke point. After eating its fill, a netter will retreat to a sheltered site to digest. Netters are known to re-arrange litter and rocks to make barriers that guide prey toward their ambush site.

Once a netter reaches a large enough size, it will seek a mate. Male and female reproductive zooids will be produced in large numbers. Once fertilized, the netter essentially begins to dissolve into writhing mass of new young. The juveniles feed off the tissues of their parent. When the parent has been fully consumed the young will have grown large enough size to catch prey on their own and they disperse to find their own place in the world.

Most netters range in size from a sesame seed to a basketball. A few species grow large enough to occasionally be a threat to the sapient species of the verge. The most dangerous is the sunflower netter, which can grow as large as an ottoman footstool, has over twenty tentacle-arms, and can trap and consume prey as large as a Human (which will provide enough food to trigger reproduction and death).

Fuzz rug: Grazing a swath across the landscape, a fuzz rug devours anything that can't get out of its way leaving bare ground and its droppings behind. Fuzz-rugs are omnivores, slowly creeping along the ground. Animals that move out of the way are spared, as are those that retreat into burrows or impenetrable shells. Unpalatable organisms, or those that defend themselves with venom or secretions or chemicals, may be avoided by the colonial mass by simply passing over anything that puts up too much of a fight. However, fuzz rugs are highly resistant to many kinds of poison and venom, allowing them a broader diet than might be the case otherwise.

Fuzz rugs are named for the waving carpet of sensory tendrils that cover their edges and upper surface. They are flattened, amorphous masses that move via innumerable tube feet on their underside. These tube feet also pluck food items from the ground and deliver them to the fuzz rug's mouths.

Walking Carpet: Walking carpets are enormous colonial animals. They stand about a meter tall on a plethora of tube legs, but are many meters across taking roughly the shape of a disk fringed with tentacles. These creatures primarily eat sessile organisms, plucking them with their tentacles and stuffing them into their central stomach. They are ecosystem engineers, keeping rangelands open by knocking down larger photoautotrophes, smashing them into pieces, and consuming the fragments. The meat will be digested out from in between the mineralized skeletons, and the indigestible hard parts will be excreted. They prefer organisms with silica skeletons compared to calcareous shells, as carbonates will neutralize their stomach acids – they will crunch up calcareous shells by stomping on them and then pick out the tasty bits with their tentacles but this is more time consuming.

Walking carpets may be solitary (as in the image shown), but often congregate into herds. These are commonly related organisms that travel together, with the oldest and wisest among them leading the group. During migrations, these family herds can merge into swarms thousands strong.

Walking carpets are rather intelligent and curious animals. They often gather to investigate novel things or happenings in their environment. These animals will aggressively drive off perceived threats but are quite tolerant of beings that do not seem dangerous. The sapient species of the Verge can usually approach them closely and even engage in respectful contact. They will often allow themselves to be ridden, although passengers which are too rambunctious are likely to be grabbed with a tentacle and dropped on the ground. Those who are too pushy or ignore the carpet's signals that they are not feeling social or have had enough can be roughly pushed or even flung aside. Anyone who seems to be an actual danger to a herd is likely to be trampled and torn apart.

Hoover: The hoover is a large colonial animal, consisting of a large round body supported by several leg-trunks. They generally have an inflatable crest running along their top, used for display and to produce loud booming calls. Hoovers bodies are largely built around one large fermenting stomach vacuole. This allows them to be one of the few Gummiland animals that can digest the cellulose of Earth plants in worlds where both have been introduced.

Hoovers amble about the landscape in large herds, plucking less-mobile food with their leg-trunks and swallowing it to pass down an esophageal tube in the trunk to the stomach vacuole. As amorphous animals, their number of leg-trunks varies, and they can stretch or contract to assume a shape best fitted to their foraging needs – whether stretching tall to feed at treetop level or as a compact lump with a long trunk feeding from a wide swath of ground around it so as to spend less energy moving around.

Hoovers are in constant communication with others of their herd. They use rumbles and low hoots and trumpets as well as inflating their crests and using touch and body language. Their bodies are noticeably iridescent, a trait thought to allow them to visually keep track of each other.

Polyp Trees: Polyp trees are common photoautotrophes of Gummiland. They build a mineralized skeleton for shelter and support, from which they can extrude photosynthesizing and/or filter feeding polyps. Smaller varieties may be called polyp bushes. Some species use venomous stings or sticky oozing toxic secretions to defend themselves, so visitors are cautioned about touching unfamilar varieties of polyp tree.

Shown is the duster scrub, a common variety of polyp bush in semi-arid areas. Duster scrubs are characterized by their puffy terminal branch-ends used to spread gamates during the reproductive season. These puffs resemble the feather-dusters Humans used to use for cleaning, hence their common English name.

Strangleconda: Stranglecondas are predatory, worm-shaped colonial animals. They consist of a double row of zooids, each with a suction pad used for feet. A durable leathery jacket covers their back, often studded with subdermal mineralized plates. Sensory tendrils project from the front end and (in many species) along the sides. Many grow to large sizes.

They grapple their prey with their supply bodies and suction feet. Non-colonial victims can simply be squeezed to death; colonial animals may try to disassociate, allowing the strangleconda to pick off the individual zooids and consume them piece-wise.

If harrassed, many species of strangleconda will coil themselves into a ball with only their tough outer jacket exposed, hoping their attacker will not be able to get through their armor.
Lasso Beasts: These shaggy colonial beasts live in small, generally peacful groups. They browse on high-growing photoautotrophes, such as polyp trees, shrumes, toobs, and screw-feather trees. A feeding lasso beast flings out a tongue-like feeding appendage onto its prey. The appendage wraps around, probes about, and grabs polyps, fronds, and other tasty morsels. These it swallows, moving the ingested items down the length of the appendage by peristalsis until they reach the main body and are deposited in a digestive vacuole.

Lasso beasts amble about slowly on pillar-like pseudopods. When feeding or resting they look like large hairy cone-shaped lumps of fur. They have irregularly placed eyes around their body, typically concentrated near the lasso flinging orifice to provide binocular vision for accurate lasso placement.

Lasso beasts are generally fairly placid creatures. If threatened, they gather together with the young and weak inside the group. Those on the perimiter will defend the group with stomps and kicks, and will grapple and dogpile larger threats.

Goldbottles: Goldbottles are photoautotrophes that live in arid regions with gypsum and iron-containing geology. They build their bottle skeleton-shells out of pyrite, giving them a golden, sparkly appearance. The top of the bottle can seal tight with three hard flaps, preserving moisture and providing protection. To photosynthesize, the flaps open and three branching appendages emerge to soak up the sunshine.

The particular need for both iron and sulfate to build their skeleton means that goldbottles are restricted to patchy areas with the right geology. Where conditions favor them, they can be numerous. Outside of Gummiland, goldbottles are often found on San Agustín where mafic igneous rocks abut evaporite deposits.

Goldbottles are popular ornamentals for gardens and potted displays throughout the Verge Republic and Gummi Space.

Jack in the bottle: In many areas on Gummiland, competition for skeleton-building materials such as silica or calcium can be fierce. Jack in the bottles take the strategy of stealing fully formed skeletal structures from the orgamisms that built them. This organism is a parasitoid – it's larval form infects and feeds on a host from inside, ultimately killing it. The red, winding tendrils of a larval jack in the bottle signal doom for the helpless victim. After killing and eating its host, the jack in the bottle changes to its adult form; a winding, branching foliated thing that makes a living by photosynthesis, living in its stollen house for shelter and protection. Adults will send up stalks which grow clusters of globes of eggs, each of which will hatch into a wriggling hatchling ready to slither off and find a new host.

Different species of jack in the bottle are adapted to prey on a variety of Gummiland skeletinized photoautotrophes. Each species is usually specialized to a single species of host. Screw feather trees, shrume trees, toobs, polyp trees, and even rock fuzz have their own varieties of parasitoid. Some species of jack in the bottle even parastize other jack in the bottle species.
Darter: Darters are fish-shaped water dwellers from Gummiland. Lacking bones, they nevertheless evolved into powerful, streamlined swimmers. They breathe by sucking water into an intake vent near the underside of the head, passing it over their gills, and squirting the water out a rear-facing siphon. They usually swim using their fins, but can expel a jet of water from their siphon for an instant burst of speed. Darters have radiated to fill similar niches that fish did on Earth, from shark-like apex predators to plankton-eaters to grazers. Any elongated, eel-like varieties are commonly called wigglers.

Looper: Loopers are a group of small to medium sized animals that fill herbivore and omnivore niches, similar to rodents, rabbits, and antelope on Earth (with the caveat that, because Gummiland photoautotrophes are actually animals, the line between herbivore and carnivore is much blurrier than on Earth). They are an important part of the food chain, serving as prey for many larger animals. A few species have specialized for predatory or parasitic niches.

Loopers are monopods, albeit with finger like graspers near their head. At slow speeds, they move forward much like an inchworm or leech – hence their name. First they anchor their rear foot and reach their front section forward, which then grabs on allowing them to move the rear foot forward. At high speed, they hop in long bounds. Most species have a patagium stretching between their fingers and toes down their sides. During a hop, they splay their finger-toes wide and flatten their body top to bottom to give an aerodynamic surface. This allows them to maneuver while hopping and may add some range through gliding.

These animals are alert and wary, quick to flee at the slightest disturbance. Their high speed allows them to escape most predators if they have warning. Small loopers may retreat to burrows for shelter, larger species may take cover in brush or simply live in large herds and keep a sharp eye out in flat, open areas.

The bunkle muncher is an example of a species of looper. They are adapted to graze on puffing bunkles. Bunkle munchers are resistant to bunkle spores, allowing them to pop the bunkles without harm to themselves. When grazing a patch of bunkles, they are often surrounded by a wafting cloud of spores from their prey, squirting from around their oral disk and exhaled from their respiratory openings. This cloud deters predators, allowing the bunkle muncher to dine in peace.

When not eating puffing bunkles, bunkle munchers are more vulnerable and will be more alert and wary. They store a charge of bunkle spores for use in an emergency. If escape is not possible, they will exhale their stored spores at their attacker.

Puckle-loopers, or just puckles, are a commonly encountered species. These animals are arboreal browser-omnivores. Their sharp, curved claws help them hold on to the exoskeletons of various Gummiland "trees", while their elongated bodies better enable them to clamber among branches. Backward facing toes let them prop themselves upright on vertical surfaces. Like many loopers, they are agile gliders capable of leaping long distances between perches.

The fur of some species is dramatically colored saturated shades of purple, red, orange, or yellow. While attention-grabbing in isolation, these colors help them to better blend in with the assorted pigments of the many varieties of Gummiland photoautotrophes.

Puckles use their dextrous front grippers to select choice morsels for transfer to their oral disks. This can include exposed polyps, as well as equivalents of seeds (eggs) and fruits (fleshy nodules encasing digestion-resistant eggs). Not to mention the occasional Gummi slug or inattentive wingding. Puckles regularly cache large amounts of food for seasons of scarcity. Caches are often split up among many locations, so that if one is discovered the puckle will not starve. Puckles thus have excellent spatial memory to keep track of them all.

Puckles are prey for many different predators. Their main defense is their wariness, speed, and agility.

Flit-loops are loopers that have extended front fingers to make an effective wing, and the back toes are adapted into an aerodynamic fluke. Up and down motions of the flit-loop's leg provide propulsion for powered flight. Flit-loops are more clumsy on the ground, but are agile fliers once airborne. The same powerful leg that propels them through the air also allows them to leap directly into flight from the ground.

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