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| Common Names: | antic, sea queen | |
| Distribution: | Planet Dakka, tropical & subtropical oceans |
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| Habitat: | open ocean, often near egassa sarphagum “oases” |
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| Size: | mean: .80 meters max 4.6 meters |
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| Mass: | 30 – 200 kg | |
| Reproduction: | sexual viviparous brood 4 – 30 |
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| Diet: | heterotrophic – carnivorous, pelagic animalia, esp. small to mid-sized schooling phyla |
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| Feeding Strategy: | hunter, scavenger | |
| Locomotion: | swimming (carangiform) | |
| kingdom: | Type 2 Animalia | |
The ANTIC is an agile, fast-swimming predator Animalia Type II of the oceanic planet Dakka.
The Antic – also called the “Sea Queen” – has 2 pairs of steering fins behind its head, which help give it precision steering at high speeds, while a long, delta-shaped tail provides raw speed.
Its narrow jaws are lined with sturdy gripping teeth and the jaw’s closing muscles, situated well forward in the snout, allow for tremendous leverage and a practically unbreakable grip.
The Antic is an intelligent and social species. Schools of Antic will follow Dakka’s gargantuan floating radiates, like the Egassa sarphagum, when these pass through equatorial waters on their global circumnavigations.
In addition to feeding on the other animals that follow the Egassa Sarphagum’s micro-ecology, the Antics are known to dive deep below the Egassa’s long tentacles and nip at creatures caught there, freshly killed or in the early stages of digestion.
The Antics are canny and agile enough that they are only rarely stung by the Egassa’s tentacles, and even those stings are rarely fatal. Some Antics seem to make a game of it, darting through the thickets of underwater tentacles with reckless abandon, as if trying to see how close they might get without a sting.
Antics are also formidable pack hunters. Groups of ten or twenty are commonly observed harrassing and pursuing other creatures many times their size – even Dakka’s huge superpredator, the Paiki suru.
In these spectacular Paiki Suru pursuits, Brown Antic packs will harrass and tire the Paiki Suru with multiple attacks from multiple directions over many hours, often getting a hold in the Paiki Suru’s flesh with their jaws. Antic’s who fall prey to the Paiki Suru’s mandibular hooks, may still contribute to the hunt by stubbornly hanging on even after death.
There are about a dozen Antic species. The most noteworthy include:
- Black Antic
- Butterfly Antic
- Brown Antic (largest species)
- Queen Antic (most common species)
- Small Antic
