Θɛlɔno taləlk’

θɛlɔno taləlk’ (Armoured Seal-fish): Small solitary carnivore, hunting within the kelp forests of the open shoreline.

## Biology

The adults reach about 5 ðɛmɪ in length. While the colouring of the adults has minimal variation across the different species, staying a mottled dark grey to blend in with the volcanic rock making up the substrate, the colouring of the juveniles varies to match the bright pinks and purples of the local kelp species.

The body is covered in scales and osteoderms, with smaller scales over the majority of the body, but larger overlapping plates on the neck, along the spine, and the cranial aspect of the pectoral fins. The skull is protected by the largest (and thickest) plate. This heavily armoured but still nimble ambush predator uses its mottled grey colours to its advantage, either crouched with its tail underneath it on the substrate or hovering motionless just above it. The large eyes with vertical slits are perfect from distinguishing movement in the waving kelp, and they wait for a suitable meal to come into range. As adults, they prefer to strike from below, and can hunt animals up to twice their own size. Their mouth is much larger than it appears, and it can be opened at an angle of 0.312 hɛθ. Their dentition consists of three pairs of upper and lower conical (but curve slightly towards the back of the mouth) teeth at the front, with the teeth increasing in size so the third pair is three times the size of the first, and the pairs on the mandible sitting medially to their respective maxilla pair. This is followed by six pairs of upper and lower teeth, which are laterally flattened but still curved back, evenly sized and approximately equal in size to the second pair of front teeth.

The head is rounded in shape, with a thick neck connecting to a tear-drop shaped body that tapers towards a dorso-ventrally flattened gently forked tail. The pectoral fins are long and stiff, though highly mobile at the base.

Starting off life at 0.812 ðɛmɪ in length, the young hatch from soft-shelled and translucent eggs attached to the inside of a vaguely spherical nest constructed by the parent from dead vegetation and attached to the base of kelp plants. Laid in small clutches of 3-1012, with older parents laying larger clutches, the nest and the eggs inside are fiercely protected by the parent. Once hatched, however, there is no further parental care and the young are left to fend for themselves.

Juveniles also hunt as ambush predators, though their small size and strength limits their prey items to things that are less than a third of their size at most. They also mostly hunt horizontally as opposed to the vertical hunting of the adults, hiding within the leaves of the kelp before rushing out at high speed. Solitary hunters from the beginning, while they do not need to worry much about adults of their own species, they are certainly targets for larger juveniles. Their colour begins to change when they reach ~3 ðɛmɪ in length, usually with the larger plates turning grey, followed slowly by the scales. Their growth (and metabolism) slows greatly once they reach adulthood (~4.612 ðɛmɪ), and continues to slow as they age, but will continue to grow throughout their life. Age upon reaching adulthood varies depending on food availability, with some reaching adulthood within a year, and others taking several years.