 | Watling's Fubrosh (also known as the swamp gleet) lacks almost all muscle tissue; it has no lungs or circulatory system, and only vestigial muscles in its eyelids and intestine. All its bodily needs are supplied by the power of belief. Belief in the ontological uniformity of causal relations, for instance, causes a small cheese-and-onion pasty to materialise inside its stomach. Belief in the healing power of morris dancing supplies its tissues with oxygen. The Fubrosh can defend itself by believing in the essential dignity of the human condition, which causes a violent hailstorm to decimate everything in a five-mile radius.
The Fubrosh never forms beliefs about itself or its immediate environment, as this would accomplish nothing. It breeds by belief in evolutionary selection, which causes a passing deity to create a new, idential Fubrosh out of spite. |
 | The Skewbald Thrung is courteous to the infirm, generous to the needy and weaves beautiful throw-rugs promoting worthy social causes; it delights small children and dispenses gentle yet firm advice to all with extraordinary accuracy. Although it subsists on human waste and garbage, its breath invariably smells of fine cherry tobacco. It would, in short, be popular and widespread were it not for its mating rituals; these are so cacophonous, violent and conspicuously perverse that they would try the patience even if they did not last three months. As it is, even the most tolerant communities tend to form a lynch-mob by the end of the third week, and infant Thrung are so rare as to be virtually mythical. |
 | On the third full moon of March, three and a half months after sunset on alternate leap-years, several million Glabrous Breckwerst emerge from their boreholes in the Magellanic tundra. Each performs a complex and unique dance, flashing a light on their abdomen and emitting a subsonic, intricately distinctive song. Within half an hour, they will all be dead. No actual mating takes place, as Breckwerst reproduce by self-fertilisation and are totally sterile at this point of their lives, but it is considered a great party.
The natives of the Magellanic tundra consider the Breckwerst emergence to be a terrible omen, whose curse can only be evaded by gathering the twitching corpses and boiling them with sugar and pectin to form g'da g'duk, a dish only ever offered to unwelcome and terminally naive explorers. |
 | The physiology of the Boraic Vulg clearly indicates that it is a deadly and voracious predator, but modern science has never been able to determine its natural prey. (Aristotle claimed it subsisted on the invisible insects responsible for fermentation.) The Vulg itself is markedly unhelpful on the matter, going so far as to frequent vegan restaurants and inquire loudly of the staff about tofu-preparation methods; when doing so it always disposes of its meal surreptitiously by means of repeated forays to the toilet. The real droppings of the Vulg are usually incinerated in private.
The most popular theory at present is that the Vulg's natural prey is scientific bewilderment. |
 | The Dust Hermit is a small land crab which, after the manner of the caddis-fly larva, constructs crude shells for itself out of shed hair, toenail clippings and carpet scurf. Although not very robust, this shell can be added to and expanded as the crab grows. They are frequently discarded, however, to enable the dust hermit to escape from its most deadly foes, the vacuum cleaner and the shower plughole. Attempts to train them to discard their shells regularly in bins have met with crushing failure, and the Laboratory Housekeepers' Union has vetoed any attempts at genetic engineering. |