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Creature Features, Episode One
By Joe Pivetti

An aye-aye's teeth never stop growing oot, his index finger is overly long, and he's a sixth finger to boot. A male peacock jumping spider must put on a masterful performance, or his intended will attend his last dance. Female Hispaniolan solenodons are a kind of venomous possum with teats on their butt, and a ball-and-socket joint at the base of their flexible snout that they jut. A mature coconut crab no longer can swim, smells with 40% of its brain, has a grip 10 times that of a man, and might have dragged Earhart away. Excepting Cinereous mourner chicks, be wary in the Donald Trump Hair regnum, or the Asp moth larvae's sharp-spined setae will inject you with highly irritating venom. Basket stars unfold their severally branched arms at night, sometimes preying in pairs at a spot, but shining a light on 'em makes 'em fold up...and vanish into a rather tangled knot. The blue dragon stores man o' war stinging nematocysts in its finger-like appendages, and, because of its coloring, is known by predators to be equally venomous. Sea spiders (or pycnogonids) osmose through 1 mm to 70 cm long organ containing legs, and are, in Pickover's Spider Legs, murderous gene modified cyborgs climbing up skegs. Naked mole rats (or sand puppies) are cold-blooded eusocial mammals with teeth outside of gums; they don't itch, never grow old, and have skin, that to pain, is quite numb. Tardigrades live eight days in moss, inhabit all mountains and seas, and, cryptobiotically, can revive after ten days in space, or centuries on Earth, all with water bear ease. The OMZ's scavengerous, photophoric and blue-blooded vampire squid from hell...has barbellate webbed legs; and its two long retractile filaments make it a cephalapod rebel. The side-necked Mata mata turtle is a terrible swimmer (but a pretty good snorkeler) and has bundles of nerves in its skin flaps for detection of vibrations and burbles. The fish and stone eating gharial male has 110 sharp, interlocking teeth and a pot, on his snout, that resonates underwater bubbling that females like a lot. The mimetic hairy frogfish can hide in plain sight, and, swallow prey twice its size (which it lures with a modified dorsal spine that they think is a worm of a prize). The peacock mantis shrimp's cavitating 50 mph punch proves its might, and its independently swivelable eyes photoreceive 16 types: colors, ultraviolet, infrared and polarized light. A male platypus hatches from an egg, then nurses its fill, then grows venomous hind claws and electric sensors in its bill. The hoatzin, which ruminates, belches natural gas, and its chicks have claws on their wings to climb into the nest after falling in the morass. The oaxatl retains its external gills for life and can regenerate, or accept transplant of parts, of gills, tails, legs, central nervous system, brains, and the tissues of eyes and hearts. The Venus' flower basket is an electrically conducting glass sponge that can...live up to 15,000 years in symbiosis with captured shrimp and are a symbol of undying love in Japan. A male common cuckoo mimics a sparrowhawk, giving a female time to lay a host-matching-egg to rest, then the chick quickly matures and pushes the other eggs out of the nest. The Northern tuatara of New Zealand is sometimes called "the living fossil" - it is a survivor of the triassic order of Rhynchocephalia and is really quite docile.