Giant Ghostworm

Artwork

Weight:
200lbs

The **Giant Ghostworm** (*Speluncavenator lentus*) is an original species created and designed by TheAgent41. The Giant Ghostworm inhabits the *The Hole* universe, an original universe created by TheAgent41.

## Appearance and Anatomy

The giant ghostworm is a large scolopendriform closely related to the sapphire worm and distantly related to the giant beachdragger. True to the name of its suborder, the ghostworm has evolved a vaguely centipede-like shape. Stretching nearly seven feet in length and weighing just over 200 pounds, it has a long flexible body covered in pale translucent skin and supported by a powerful hydrostatic skeleton.

The ghostworm locomotes by way of seven pairs of featureless, pillar-like legs. The last two pairs of legs are much longer and much stronger than the first five. When not walking about on the ground, it uses these four legs to dangle from the cave ceiling, kept in place by the thick, sticky mucus produced by glands on the bottom of its feet.

The ghostworm's name primarily comes from the appearance of its face, its two large heat pits and small circular mouth orifice creating the image of a typical sheet ghost commonly featured in children's cartoons. However, the tiny mouth orifice actually contains a pair of powerful scissor-like jaws similar to those of the bobbit worm, an ambush-hunting polychaete worm found in Earth oceans.

## Ecology

### Behavior and Intelligence

Ghostworms are troglodytic creatures. This means that they spend most of all of their lives in caves and have subsequently adapted exclusively to a subterranean lifestyle. The lack of sunlight they receive has left their skin extremely pale, similar to other troglodytic organisms on Earth.

Ghostworms are ambush hunters that use a hunting method similar to that of bolas spiders or fungus gnats of the genus *Arachnocampa*. Using special mucus glands on the bottoms of their feet, ghostworms construct large "blankets" of mucus that they hold between their two frontmost legs while dangling from the cave ceiling. These mucus blankets can be several feet across and give off no heat, making them invisible to incoming prey.

### Diet

The giant ghostworm will consume almost anything it encounters, including juvenile ghostworms. It can easily catch flying prey in its mucus blanket, as the prey is unable to perceive it and will thus fly right in, getting stuck like a fly in a spider's web. The ghostworm has also been seen going for terrestrial prey living on the cave floor by lowering its mucus blanket by two strands of mucus and using it like a fishing boat uses a trawling net, dragging the blanket across the cave floor and scooping up unsuspecting prey before yanking them into the darkness above.

When a prey organism is caught, the ghostworm will wrap it up in the mucus blanket used to catch it before sticking it to the cave ceiling where the mucus will begin to dissolve it into a drinkable liquid. When a ghostworm is ready to consume its prey, it will use its bobbit worm-like jaws to tear open the dried mucus cocoon before using its straw-like tongue to drink its now-liquified prey.

### Reproduction

When two giant ghostworm are ready to mate, each one will produce a small cocoon made of dried mucus from the cloaca located underneath its last two pairs of legs. This cocoon is filled with sperm, which will be ingested via the straw-like appendage in the same manner as liquified prey. Afterward, each ghostworm will consume the remains of the other's sperm cocoon to recycle mucus and get any remaining sperm that was not ingested.

When ghostworms are ready to lay their eggs, they will bend their bodies in such a manner so as to allow them to attach their gelatinous, shellless eggs to their second, third, fourth, and fifth pairs of legs. This allows them to still hang from the ceiling and use their first pair of legs for hunting. The eggs are kept moist by the mucus produced by the ghostworm's mucus glands.

## Trivia

* The scientific name *Speluncavenator lentus* loosely translates from Latin as "sticky cave hunter".

## Gallery

Artwork