Regal Rainforest Allswallower

As on Earth and many other habitable worlds, there is much biodiversity in the purple and blue rainforests of Hera. A rich diversity of floral and faunal life constitute at least the Great Purpurasilvan Rainforest. The regal rainforest allswallower (Beccoboa ambisexus grandis) is just one of the faunal components of the Great Purpurasilvan Rainforest, and this creature alone represents an odd (though not necessarily unheard of) turn of evolution for the voraphilafaunans.

The common ancestor of all the Voraphilafauna was an endothermic creature that ingested a much smaller male to internalize the testes. A group of voraphilafaunans, the allswallowers (clade Panphagophida), not only reverted back to ectothermy, but the male phenotype is only slightly smaller than the female's. This ectothermy lead to a relatively lazy lifestyle, and permitted the eventual loss of limbs (more primitive panphagophidans retain but small limbs). Furthermore, because of the negligible sexual dimorphism, the courting male can simply roll up into a ball in front of the female, exuding attractive pheromones, and if the female is receptive, she then swallows the male head first, and the relatively elastic body and the lack of a sternoid bone (never mind the jointed ribcage) do the rest of the work.

Outside of this vorarephillic ritual, these allswallowers main prey items are large rainforest beasts, which they first hold onto by biting into their hides using their beak-like mandibular mouthparts, then thrashing them about until they die, followed by swallowing them. A single meal can satiate them for a period of up to six months to a year, depending on the size of the meal. It is fortunate for the female that she is able to kill two birds with one stone in her vorarephillic consumption of her male; indeed, this meal can not only satisfy her for a maximum of eight months, but also provide the nutrients for the initial egg-laying.

When not hunting (or when protecting eggs), these creatures rest coiled in one spot, waiting for a potential meal to come by. Only during the mating season will males become active, as they try to follow the pheromonal signatures of unfertilized females.

In the southerly region of the Great Purpurasilvan Rainforest, an additional subspecies of Beccoboa ambisexus exists, which is the somewhat-smaller Beccoboa ambisexus inferioris.