The front-side view of a fissip.
The fissip is a timand, and one of the most common types of domestic animals native to Zeconis in the Kuhneebo Conglomerate. They are primarily raised as livestock by the kuhneebo for their meat, as dairy animals for their chaon, or sold to other nations.
Appearance and Behavior[]
Fissips are large, mostly hairless animals with a predominantly semi-spherical shape, and an orange color when viewed in the visible spectrum. Their bodies are approximately 1.8 meters in diameter and have three large double-kneed legs located above their head and on either side. The side legs are one meter in length, while the top leg is two meters, and each foot has a trio of long claws used to grip onto trees, such as the Iaddora. They have an external sac on the back of their head that fills with chaon so that it can feed their young. A waste sack is located at the center of their back - the point furthest away from its front - where waste solids and liquids are ejected. It can project its waste at high velocity as a defensive mechanism, which allows it to scare off groups of flying predators.
The have a sizable two-stage mouth chamber that directly attaches to their stomach system. A pair of tusks approximately 0.5m in length project from its outer mouth to its tail, extending to nearly 20cm below its rear. These large tusks are used to plant the fissip into a tree, where it then spends several minutes letting itself be pulled down by gravity. As it falls, the bark is inserted into its mouth. After it has fallen nearly a meter, it pulls its head back and forth to snap off the length of bark that is inside it.
Once it has snapped the bark and closed its lips, the bark is pulled into the rear chamber of its mouth where several circular rows of teeth begin to chew on the wood from every direction as stomach fluids assist in breaking it down. This process takes several hours, until the point where the wood is a pulp that can be pulled into the second chamber of its stomach. This arrangement, with one primary mouth chamber, a combination mouth/stomach chamber, and a stomach chamber, allows a Fissip to gorge itself for half a day until all three chambers are full, so that it can spend days without a new source of food.
Diet[]
Fissips spend the majority of their time eating the bark of trees, occasionally moving onto thicker branches to eat leaves and fruits. They are rarely found on the ground, but when having difficulty finding food they are capable of eating most types of grass.