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SLINGER - Scan from The Art of Avatar Book



Excerpts from the orignal scriptment:

"A slinger. It's stalking the hexapede. Josh doesn't see anything at first... then he spots it. A camouflaged shape moving through the sun-dappled shadows. The predator moving into the glade, is splashed by hard slashes of sunlight, which combine with its cammo pattern making it hard to see.

The SLINGER is smaller than a slinth, but just as deadly. It moves silently, like liquid, through the ferns. It pauses, rearing up, and like the slinth its muscular neck cocks back into a striking position...

The slinger's neck snaps forward, and its long, pointed head detaches, flying through the woods as a self-guiding venomous glider... a smart-dart. The hexapede senses the dart and bolts, bounding in evasive zigzags.

The dart tracks it unerringly through the trees and buries itself in its flank. The hexapede staggers. It stands, its muscles spasming, then falls over. The dart starts emitting a series of high-pitched squeals, which allow the body to home in on it blindly.

The neck bends down, and is rejoined to the dart. Josh catches a glimpse of hair- like tendrils lacing together... some kind of neural interface. Then the slinger starts to rip the hexapede apart.

Grace explains that the slinth, with its striking head, is the evolutionary precursor of the slinger. The slinger's primary brain is in the dart, so if the body and the dart are ever permanently separated, they both die. The dart cannot feed itself.

The body and dart are actually mother and child... the dart is an immature form. When it grows too big to fly, it will mate, then drop off and metamorphose into a small complete slinger, with its offspring already in place, forming the new dart.

Each new generation is the brain for the previous one. Sounds backward, but it works. Josh watches the feeding slinger in awe. He has never seen anything like this... so raw and primal."



Creature Inventory


Direhorse


Fan Lizard

Hellfire Wasp

Hexapede

Medusa

Prolemuris

Slinger

Tapirus

Tetrapteron

Woodsprites





Now we are venturing into the vicinity of the more dangerous creatures, so zip it! You are looking at a SLINGER (Na'vi name: Lenay'ga), or strange terrible sloth, (scientific name: Acediacutus xenoterribili).

The Slinger is one of the oddest and most dangerous creatures yet discovered on Pandora. Growing in size up to 2.4 meters in height, this land predator/carnivore prefers a dense rainforest habitat and it's main food source is the Hexapede.

When hunting, this creature moves slowly and silently through the forest ferns. when it senses prey, its muscular neck cocks back into striking position, then snaps forward.

Its long, pointed, and winged head detaches and flies toward prey as a self-guiding venomous projectile. After the head embeds itself into its target, the dart then emits a series of high pitched squeals.

These squeals act as signals to allow the body (now sightless) to find the detached head. While still separated,the partners consume the prey until sated. The neck bends down and a mesh of hairlike tendrils rejoin the head with the body. Biologists were stunned to discover that their body and its dart like head are not a single creature with a singular method of hunting.

Instead, the dart is actually the 'child' of the body and will stay in the symbiotic relationship with it's 'mother' until it is too large to perform its function as the dart. It then mates, detaches from the mother body and metamorphoses into a smaller, complete slinger with its own slinger dart head. At this time of youth, the slinger is a single color as different colorations are most likely created with subsequent growth.

Left behind with out a dart offspring, the mother-body is unable to feed itself and inevitably dies. In this cycle of renewal, each generation becomes the grain for the previous generation. Na'vi hunters have been known to retrieve a dart that has been orphaned from its mother-body to use later as an effective weapon. Additionally, sap from a specific plant is also rubbed on skin that replicates the smell of a slinger to ward off would be Viperwolf attackers.





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