Weird animal abilities as ideas for monsters

[Yora]

There are lots of animals in nature that have outright freaky abilities. And that's not just bats and dolphins with internal sonar and shrip who laugh at the three visual modes of Predator-vision with it's 16 types of light sensing cells.
There is stuff out that more weird and crazy than anything fantasy and sci-fi writer have come up with, and I think it would be awesome to collect some of these as inspiration to create truly new and bizare critters that put ilithids to shame.

Cuttlefish - Hypnotic Pattern body
Cuttlefish (basically mini-squids) have their entire skin covered in cells that are filled with collored substances, which it can expand and contract. When a cell is contracted, the color inside it is just a tiny dot too small to see, but when it expands the color is easily visible. By contracting all cells except those of a specific color, the cuttlefish can make its skin look any color it wants. However, the control it has over the cells is mind-blowing. It does not simply change the whole body to a different color, but can actually replicate the pattern of pretty much any background it tries to hide on, including stripes and chessboard patterns.
Some cuttlefish even know how to use this power as a weapon. By having it's skin pulse rapidly between bright and dark colors, it can cause a kind of sensory overload in other animals that see it, allowing it to come close enough to simply eat it without any resistance.
Warning: Might not be suitable to people with epilepsy.

Octopus - Meld into Stone, Tree Shape
Octopuses have the same mechanism, but some species have abilities of camouflage that go way beyond what would seem possible. They can take any shape or color that they find in their natural surroundings. They also happen to be really smart and can survive outside of water for a time. There is one known case of an actopus in a zoo that would open the lid of its tank at night, walk to other tanks to eat the fish inside them, and then return to its own tank and close the lid again to hide the fact it ever got out.

Mymic Octopus - Disguise Self
Instead of looking like rocks or plants, this one turns into completely different animals. Usually highly dangerous ones.

Malaria
Technically a virus, but it has one really nasty trick up its sleeve. Malaria is not only transmited by mosquitos. It actually has evolved to cause human bodies that have been infected and reached a state in which they can transmit the disease to other to produce a smell that is irresistable to mosquitos. It calls the insects to be picked up once the disease is ready to move on to a new host.

Gall wasp
The gall wasp injects its larvaes into the flowers of trees. The flower will then mutate and instead of producing a fruit will grow around the larva as a protective shell while it grows. And to make sure that really nothing gets through the shell at the larva, it also secrets a substance that attracts ants and the ants will then chase away all other insects that might try to take away this food source.

Suicide Bees
I forgote what species it is, but there is a type of bee that can move its muscles so quickly that it expends a lot of energy, causing it's body to heat up. When small predators make it inside the bees hive, they will swarm the intruder and burry it under their bodies, then make themselves heat up to the point where they die from overheating, basically roasting the intruder alive.

Platipus - Radar
Bats and dolphins have sonar, but platipuses have something much better. Their beaks include an organ with which it can detect tiny differences in magnetic fields. Differences as tiny as those cause by the electric activity of nerves inside an animals body. It does not need to see you, hear you, smell you, or even notice differences in how soundwaves travel through the ground or water. Holding your breath won't help either, they simply sense your presence.

[hamishspence]

Suicide Bees
I forgote what species it is, but there is a type of bee that can move its muscles so quickly that it expends a lot of energy, causing it's body to heat up. When small predators make it inside the bees hive, they will swarm the intruder and burry it under their bodies, then make themselves heat up to the point where they die from overheating, basically roasting the intruder alive..

Japanese honeybee- some die of overheating in the process, but not all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_cerana_japonica

[Amaril]

This is why I often get kinda annoyed at settings that have two billion types of mythical creatures and templates for each one--you don't need all that stuff to make your world's wildlife fantastical and interesting, real life is like that already!

Except for dragons. I mean, you have to have dragons. Otherwise it's not real fantasy, now is it?

[Geordnet]

Malaria
Technically a virus, but it has one really nasty trick up its sleeve. Malaria is not only transmited by mosquitos. It actually has evolved to cause human bodies that have been infected and reached a state in which they can transmit the disease to other to produce a smell that is irresistable to mosquitos. It calls the insects to be picked up once the disease is ready to move on to a new host.

Actually, Malaria isn't a virus, it's a cellular parasite. It's a protist that can only breed inside other cells.

Also, it isn't unique in affecting the host; in fact, it's rather mild.

Toxoplasma gondii travels from rats to cats and back again: studies have shown that it actually removes the rat's instinctive avoidance of cat urine. It also has a disturbingly high infection rate of humans...

Spinochorodes tellinii causes grasshoppers and crickets to commit suicide by jumping into water, so that the mature worm can swim out and breed.

Leucochloridium paradoxum infects snails and then makes their eyestalks look like worms to lure birds into eating them. It may also affect the snail such that it is more likely to expose itself to birds.

And I'd think everyone has heard of what certain species of the fungal genus Cordyceps can do...



I'd also add Assassin Spiders to this list. I mean, just look at them! They're like ****ing spider mindflayers!

Spoiler

Show

...Only, they're real.

[Rhynn]

Well, this thread is bookmarked.

Cordyceps
Fungi that take over the brain and make you behave in a way that infects others. Video. The husks sprouting fungi are completely effing terrifying to me. I've adapted this as an AD&D monster already: a fungal infection that gets in a human(oid)'s brain, makes them climb up to the highest point nearby where they burst forth from the head and send spores everywhere (or, underground, to seek a source of water, where the victim then kneels before it and releases the spores, which float around waiting for someone to drink them up). The idea actually came from a friend of mine.

Langford Basilisk
Hey, if viruses etc. are game, then so are memes. This is the idea that a specific fractal image is a sort of "brain virus" that makes you insane by viewing it, or primes you to go insane when you later view any other repetitive pattern. I've made it into an Ethereal Monster, a strange shifting fractical imagescape that causes insanity in viewers on a failed save.

Termites
Some termite species do really weird stuff. Like explode. With poison. This is just too good not to use.

[Radar]

Pistol Shrimp
They snap their claw to produce a sonic blast capable of stunning other creatures.

Mantis Shrimp does the same thing with just swinging their limbs really fast. Since they do it at point-blank range, it can sometimes kill the target (if their claws don't do it earlier).

[Amaril]

I can't remember exactly what it's called (I'm pretty sure it's a form of crab spider), but there's one particular spider species that steals food from pitcher plants by creating a bubble of air around its mouth, then diving into the plant's fluid, grabbing a dead bug, pulling itself back up on a strand of web, and enjoying an easy meal. That's the best I can think of right away--I'll come up with more stuff some other time.

[Kol Korran]

I once saw a great show about the largests wasps in the world, giant japanese wasps. (Though I don't remember the name) who specialize in taking down bee hives. they produce special kinds of wasps for specifics tasks (which is not that special), but I was intrigued by one of their creations: Once a beehive has been located, they create a special Assassin wasp- a wasp that can live for only few days, have no digestive system, limited function of other system, but they are made EXTREMLEY tough, including being able to survive the over heating and stings of the suicide beesYora has mentioned.

They can sense the hive's queen from a distance (pheromones? I don't remember) They act as a one use disposable guided assassin- they fly in, get through all the defenses, kill the queen, and then die.

Freaking scary!

[Yora]

There are some insects who plant their larvaes in the center of an ant colony and then trick the ants to recognize it as one of their own and feed it.

There also is a wasp (of course), that implants its eggs in these larvaes. But to do that, it needs to get inside the ant colony without being killed by the ants. It does that by releasing a chemical that causes all ants nearby to go berserk and kill each other.

[Grinner]

Cymothoa exigua: Conventional parasites just latch onto their hosts and start feeding, right? Not this fella. He eats his host's tongue off and then grafts himself onto the bloody stub.

Jewel wasp: When it reproduces, this wasp starts by injecting venom straight into a cockroach's brain, turning it into a zombie of sorts. After leading the victim back to her nest, she then lays her eggs inside the cockroach, where they hatch and eat it alive from the inside out.

This is why I often get kinda annoyed at settings that have two billion types of mythical creatures and templates for each one--you don't need all that stuff to make your world's wildlife fantastical and interesting, real life is like that already!

I heartily agree.

[Yora]

The common bear, which really seems to be just a big animal with big teeth and claws, actually has the best sense of smell of all mammals, and possibly of all animals. They can smell meat and follow the scent from 30 kilometers away if the wind is right.

[Rhynn]

This thread is basically going to provide me a Monstrous Compendium's worth of original monsters for my Dark Sun campaign.

Not very fancy, but these made it into my Dark Sun a long while ago:

Andrewsarchus
A prehistoric tiger-hyena-wolf-lion. They were huge. I made them pyrokinetic (because Dark Sun!) and called them "pyrosarchus."

Basilosaurus
A prehistoric cetacean - basically a pre-whale. 60 feet long and looks like a horrifying monster.

There also is a wasp (of course)

There's that Darwin quote (that we're probably better off not quoting here)...

[Yora]

Certainly interesting, but do they have special powers?

[Ashtagon]

Bola spider
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TW6p4Sufhc

Because waiting for your prey to blunder into your web takes longer than whacking then with your web.

Hagfish
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21954779

The original inspiration for aboleth mucus.

[Xefas]

Much like the Valkyrie, the common domesticated dog has natural Tiger Claw initiation.

[Amaril]

Basilosaurus
A prehistoric cetacean - basically a pre-whale. 60 feet long and looks like a horrifying monster.

This thing has given me nightmares ever since I first saw a picture of it. Freakin' terrifying

[Grinner]

Langford Basilisk
Hey, if viruses etc. are game, then so are memes. This is the idea that a specific fractal image is a sort of "brain virus" that makes you insane by viewing it, or primes you to go insane when you later view any other repetitive pattern. I've made it into an Ethereal Monster, a strange shifting fractical imagescape that causes insanity in viewers on a failed save.

I'm not sure what to think of this. On one hand, it's a really cool concept. On the other hand, no such picture has ever been produced as far as I can tell, excepting the contents of various shock websites. In fact, given that everybody processes information in slightly different ways, it seems downright ridiculous.

I guess it doesn't matter where gaming is concerned, but I was hopeful for a moment.

[ngilop]

Tiger Pistol Shrimp in addition to the whole brekaing the sound barrier deal.. don't they also produce a steam bubbles that is as hot as the surface of the sun? or is that the Mantis Shrimp?


either way.. these small animasl should prove that mundane can have nice things, LOL

[Rhynn]

Tiger Pistol Shrimp in addition to the whole brekaing the sound barrier deal.. don't they also produce a steam bubbles that is as hot as the surface of the sun? or is that the Mantis Shrimp?

I was like "come on, you've got that wrong"...

But apparently not really. The sun's surface/photosphere is 5,778 kelvins. When the mantis shrimp snaps its claw, the collapsing cavitation bubbles reach temperatures of "several thousand kelvins," producing a burst of light. It's not a steam bubble, though, it's a cavitation bubble. (Plus the heat is too short-lived to affect anything, and neither the heat nor the light can be detected without special equipment. Of course, once you make the shrimp 10' long and put it in a RPG, that can change...)

As a bonus, mantis shrimp look completely freaky!

[Salbazier]

This is thread freaking scary. *bookmark*

Some of the stuffs can almost be used by itself in a campaign. Not with D&D maybe something like World of Darkness. Or Call of Cthulhu (never play or read it). Or up their sizes and make a zombie apocalypse style games, but with, uh, Cordyceps, cymothoa, or Jewel wasp instead of T-virus. Plus giant assasin spiders and land-adapted Octopus. Better if held IRL instead of PbP, since the GM can then show large-sized printed photos and/or videos of this beauties.

[Yora]

There is one critter that lays its eggs in the brains of animals where they hatch and then start to eat the brain. Including humans. I think it was some kind of wasp.

The African Lungfish has basically the ability of aboleths to survive on land. When their lakes dry up, they burry themselves in the mud and go into a state like hybernation. Once one was lost during transport and the box was found only half a year later. Once they opened the completely dried out and almost airtight box and added water to it, the fish recovered just fine.

The Eucalyptus Tree also has a great mechanism to get rid of other plants that grow next to it and take away water and nutrients from the soil. During summer, the trees allow the eucalyptus oil to evaporate from their leaves, creating a cloud of oily haze around them. Eucalyptus oil happens to be highly flamable and it will not take a lot for grass and small shrubs next to the trees to catch fire from the heat of the sun. Since dry grass and shrubs burn very fast, they are usually burnt out very quickly before the flames can produce enough heat to set the eucalyptus trees on fire. In the worst case, the bark near the ground gets a bit singed, but that's nothing that does actual damage to the trees.

Did anyone already mention the fungus that infect ants and then starts to cosume their interior organs? It leaves the muscles for last, so the brain-dead ant can still crawl to an exposed location where it will then burst open spraying fungus spores everywhere.
It's the zombie apocalypse of ant colonies.

[Salbazier]

There is one critter that lays its eggs in the brains of animals where they hatch and then start to eat the brain. Including humans. I think it was some kind of wasp.

Seriously? Less scary, but I remember watching some documentary about flies that put their larva inside animals (presumably the the larva eat the host flesh but I forgot the details/of this were true but how else said larva can have food?). The documentary includes an interview of someone who had infested by one larva as such. Just under the skin on the arm, but still. It didn't give actually give me nightmare but it was close to.

Not a real animal, but this is also remind me of this

[Rhynn]

Salbazier, you may be thinking of the mango fly (Cordylobia anthropophaga), an African fly. It lays eggs in, say, the ground. After the larva hatch, they crawl in the soil until they come in contact with a mammal's skin (such as a bare foot, or an animal lying down in the dirt), at which point they (quite unnoticeably) crawl through the skin and begin to pupate, growing into maggots.

Among the things that mango flies lay eggs in are wet clothes (say, drying on a line, or just lying somewhere), apparently.

If you search for "mango fly" on YouTube, you will be beyond disgusted. Don't do it if you've got a weak stomach.

Then there is, of course, the South American human botfly (Dermatobia hominis). The females capture mosquitoes and attach their eggs to them. The mosquitoes then feed on humans, and the larvae burrow into the human's skin where they pupate.

That's right, the human botfly doesn't even lay its eggs in or on people, it makes a mosquito do the carrying, because mosquitoes are specialized in not being noticed feeding, whereas flies are usually less stealthy.

[Yora]

Oh, one that I forgot: Some spiders are large enough so they can build webs to catch birds and bats.

[warty goblin]

The real take-away from this thread should be that if you want the most terrifying RPG ever, just play as insects.

[Yora]

Being a wasp is not always messy fun and violent play, though. There is a parasite that bores into the bodies of wasps and somehow hijacks their nervous system. And from then on they fly around with these wasp as their tiny living airplanes. And once per year, those bugs all fly their wasps to a central meeting point for mating.

Those would be exactly like neogi.

Which reminds me. Several species of fish can grow as large as the amount of food they find allows them. The bigger they are, the less predators can threaten them, so they live longer than most smaller fish and can grow even bigger. Some catfish grow big enough to eat ducks and pigeons. To catch ducks, they just sneak up to them from below when they are on the water. With pigeons, they jump out of the water to snatch them from the shore, then wriggle themselves back into the water.
There has been at least one report of a catfish trying to eat an 8 year old girl.

[Moogleking]

I vaguely remember reading a while back of a special type of parasite that attacked the reproductive organs of whatever it infected.

But it didn't shut down or damage them in anyway; It changed the gender of those it infected. In fact there are species in the rainforests where it lives that have evolutionarily forgotten how to make females; since they rarely survived past birth anyway, and simply go roll around this stuff (or something) when it's breeding time.

[warty goblin]

Being a wasp is not always messy fun and violent play, though. There is a parasite that bores into the bodies of wasps and somehow hijacks their nervous system. And from then on they fly around with these wasp as their tiny living airplanes. And once per year, those bugs all fly their wasps to a central meeting point for mating.

Those would be exactly like neogi.

As I said, constant, utter horror. If something isn't laying eggs in your brain, something else is dissolving your internal organs and slurping them up like a slushie. Or you're eaten alive by a swarm of ants which cut holes in your skin and spray the wounds with acid. Or chomped down by a bat or a frog or shrew or any of the other number of enormous, disturbingly squishy-skinned monsters that prowl the world.

Really, it's exactly like your typical RPG world, except instead of saving the kingdom and growing stronger, triumph is living long enough to lay eggs somewhere where a couple of them just might survive.

[Rhynn]

Really, it's exactly like your typical RPG world, except instead of saving the kingdom and growing stronger, triumph is living long enough to lay eggs somewhere in someone where a couple of them just might survive.

FTFY. For the horror.

[warty goblin]

FTFY. For the horror.

Yep, after half the party dies holding back the army ant incursion, it turns out Steve's new character was a wasp the whole time when he lays eggs in everybody's brains.