Time for Projectile Venom

4 out of 5, the Isiguli

Something warm and wet hits your neck, is the piping leaking? Maintenance will need a report, but there are higher priorities right now, like the bogie's that are supposed to be in the area. Raising a hand to wipe whatever it is away, the limb doesn’t respond, then the burning starts. For those who don’t know what they’re hunting (or being hunted by) that’s often how a first encounter with a Isiguli goes, snipped from out of the shadows by something that doesn’t even feel like a threat at first. If you could get one of them to talk, a member of the so called “Chimeric Fraternity” would no doubt boast about how the Isiguli was the perfect stalking killer. It’s low profile, chameleon DNA, and cold blooded nature let it easily hide from cursory searches and the unwary. Specialized throat muscles taken from an Archerfish let it project a thick liquid venom many times it’s own body length, and independently tracking eyes let it follow several targets at once. Able to lie in wait for days without movement, they are truly formidable hunters.

 In terms of overall form, the Isiguli most resembles the Giant Otter, of all its constituent parts. Smaller than most records at roughly one meter head to tail, the densely packed fur of their progenitor is gone, replaced by that of a lizard, smooth yet leathery and embedded with nanoscale crystals that allow it to change it’s light reflectivity. The long whiskers at the mouth are retained, now thought to be used to sense disturbances in air currents.
Isiguli’s feet have seen extensive modification, with no remnant of mammalian paws remaining, they are now closer to three digit hands, the undersides rippling with adhesive structures to let the Isiguli climb and cling to almost any surface.

Their heads have seen the most extensive modification, at least of the surface parts, with the most obvious being the mouth, split into five segments for some unknown reason. It’s from here that their deadly venom is projected, by way of powerful neck muscles, in thick globules. To track targets, each of its five eyes has been made similar to a chameleons, able to rotate freely in its socket and independently follow separate movements.

Visual Inspirations: The Giant Otter, Archerfish, and Chameleon, as well as some aliens with multi segmented mouths, like the Predator