Fauna
Despite the harshness of its environment, Mercury has evolved its own remarkable fauna, including:
- Rock lizards, carnivorous reptiles growing to an immense size, hunted by the Mercurian aborigines.
- Flying lizards, jet-black pterodactyl-like creatures with yellow stomachs (Shannach – the Last).
- Electric beasts, a form of energy-life feeding on the lightning generated in the Mercurian atmosphere, and attracted to metal (A World is Born).
- Mercurian cave-cats or cave-tigers, twenty feet long with four pale eyes, eight legs and a tail armed with bone barbs (The Halfling).
- Mercurian hunting bats, metallic purple and green in color, with wings and fangs. They are attracted to salt, and their bodies are sheathed in silicate scales (similar to glass) that protect them from the lightning (Cube from Space).
Read more about this topic: Mercury In The Fiction Of Leigh Brackett
Famous quotes containing the word fauna:
“The whole fauna of human fantasies, their marine vegetation, drifts and luxuriates in the dimly lit zones of human activity, as though plaiting thick tresses of darkness. Here, too, appear the lighthouses of the mind, with their outward resemblance to less pure symbols. The gateway to mystery swings open at the touch of human weakness and we have entered the realms of darkness. One false step, one slurred syllable together reveal a man’s thoughts.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)