Mealeiaia Gunentel

***Common Name: Bugzilla***

***Conservation Status: ???***

***Date of Discovery: 9/9/16***

***Gender: Prime/Exotic***

***Temperament: Hunter***

***Diet: Meat-eater***

***Weight: 106.94 kg***

***Height: 2.42 m***

## ***Description:***

The Mealeiaia Gunentel is a humongous insectoid the size of the T-Rex of Earth, and is profit between two distinct portions, the heavily armored upper torso, and the less protected lower portion. The carapace is a dull green in coloration, with a more vibrant crest on the chest. The legs have a significantly thinner exoskeleton, allowing for more flexibility when hunting for its comparatively small prey. It is bipedal, with two large legs, and clawed, red feet. Due to the upright posture, it has developed a tail, allowing it to balance with more ease. It does have vestigial forelimbs, which are essentially useless at this point. The animal originally appears to have two, large but immovable, eyes on its head, but upon closer inspection, one can see the antennae actually have similar eyes positioned on the ends of the stalks. The Prime Mealeiaia can be distinguished from the Exotic Mealeiaia by looking at their tails. The Prime's tail ends flat and broad, while the Exotic's tail ends in a chameleon-like swirl.

## ***Behavior:***

As with many large predators, the Gunentel has an individualistic lifestyle, staying away from others of its species as much as possible. They have huge territories, and hunt anything within their home. Occasionally individuals will attempt to invade another's land, resulting in large matches that involve headbutting. These are typically lethal, and often leave room for younger individuals to take up territory for their own purposes.

They are ambush predators. They will hide near the treeline, behind a hill, or behind a rock, and wait for prey to approach. Instead of using teeth, which it has none of, the creature spits out a green acid which quickly immobilizes prey and begins to break them down. It then extends a long tongue from its mouth and slurps up the pre-digested matter like a stew.

If it notices potential prey taking shelter from it, it will attempt to break into said shelter with repeated attacks, as shown when one attacked Seri inside her ship.

## ***Reproduction:***

The Gunentel mates very rarely, often having only one to two children per instance, and only about periods of mating in an individual's lifetime. The specie's mating cycle occurs along periods of several years, with new young gestating for a period of 20 months, beginning with primes and exotics meeting, followed shortly by the exotics retreating back to their territory. Newborn offspring are at approximately 2 feet in height, and move significantly faster than their adult counterparts. The Prime's serve as genetic storage house, allowing exotics to gain genetic material to give birth to copies, corrupted by the Exotic's DNA. This corruption usually causes the children to become Exotics but occasionally creates a perfect Prime copy.

## ***Ecology:***

### ***Where in the food pyramid?***

They are apex predators. They are heterotrophs, and cannot make their own food.

### ***Diet:***

The juveniles eat **Aeusiagiu Kosanus** and **Esporateum Pipetricli**, but the adults will eat whatever they can catch

### ***Predators:***

These creatures have no natural predators, but are often hunted by intelligent beings out of fear or for sport.

## ***History and Mythology:***

Their vestigial limbs, massive legs and head, and tyrannical nature/role on Hoshinowada, means that they likely evolved in a similar fashion to the T-Rex of Earth, meaning they likely are a fairly older species.