Terragaster Lithovore

The Terragaster Lithovore is a large alien organism adapted to a planet with extreme gravity.

It spends long hours motionless, anchored to the ground, slowly dissolving the soil with retractable caustic proboscises located beneath its forelimbs. Specialized trophoabsorptive appendages absorb the liquefied nutrients, which are converted into a low-density internal gas. The gas fills the dorsal paraspinal sacs, lightening the body mass, and doubles as a respiratory system: in the absence of true lungs, it is filtered and continuously regenerated in a closed internal cycle.

The skin is covered in adipose folds, the Tegulaminae, that regulate internal pressure and body temperature. To reproduce, it releases gaseous spores: settling on fertile ground, they generate new individuals in larval form through an asexual process akin to parthenogenesis.