Taxxon

Taxxons are insectoid aliens from the Animorphs series.

Physiology and Description
The Taxxon's face consists of a hole-like mouth full of serrated teeth, which it uses to gulp down food. It has four weak red eyes above its "mouth". Its body has a worm-like design while the feet are like needles, and it can regenerate its limbs should it happen to lose them. Taxxons are typically 8 to 10 feet long, about the height of a human when standing upright, due to the lower portion being used for balance. They have 32 limbs: twelve upper appendages that end in pinchers, rather like that of a lobster, and twenty lower appendages for walking.

Though they are slightly slower than humans on land, they are very fast in water, able to keep up with bottle-nosed dolphins with ease.

It has an instinctive need to devour everything it comes across, even other Taxxons. Taxxons have a voracious appetite and will do anything for food, even give up their freedom. They will engage in feeding frenzies if they sense raw flesh or blood. If they are wounded, they will eat their own damaged body parts. No Yeerk, Andalite, or human can control this instinct should they morph into one.

History and Taxxon Homeworld
Before the Yeerks arrived, the Taxxons lived in sentient bumblebee or ant colony structures, which obeyed the Living Hive (see below). The Taxxons possessed little or no technology before the arrival of the Yeerks.

Before the arrival of the Yeerks, they lived in a sentient structure called a Living Hive (aka Mother and Father of the Taxxons, Light of the Taxxons), which was actually a special caste that gave birth to other Taxxons, much like a Queen Bee. The Living Hive resembles a small red mountain with hollow tendrils all over that it uses to push Taxxons all over the mountain. The Hive can talk telepathically, and it sounds loud when heard in ones' head. The Hive controls the Taxxons, though they can be led away if they are given food from another source. The Hive had led the Taxxons all their existence, and was alarmed when many left to join the Yeerk empire. It created an army of loyal Taxxons known as the Mountains to fight and resist the Yeerks. They raided the local Yeerk starports on the Homeworld, but the Hive did not understand the Yeerks or their technology. However, Arbron, who was stuck in Taxxon morph, told them everything he knew of them. With the information, the Hive ordered a massive assault on the largest Yeerk starport, causing damage on both sides. However, the Yeerks eventually crushed the Rebellion and possibly the Living Hive.

When the Yeerks arrived, rather than conquering the planet, they decided to make a simple deal with the Taxxons: In exchange for becoming Yeerk hosts, known as controllers, the Taxxons would be given an endless supply of new and exotic meats from other worlds. Most of the Taxxons readily agreed, save for a small resistance, who fought a guerrilla war with a the Yeerks for a number of years. The Yeerks kept their deal: they used the Taxxons to dispose of prisoners. These became the Taxxon Loyalists, some were complete slaves, others worked for the Yeerks without submitting to total Control. There was an Andalite, named, Arbron, who got trapped in Taxxon morph permanently, who founded the Mountain Taxxons, a resistance group, who in a battle where many Taxxons died, helped to free the Earth from the Yeerk occupation. Near the end of the Animorphs series, all the Taxxons on Earth chose to permanently morph into large snakes and live in the Amazon rainforest, free from the uncontrollable hunger of the Taxxon body. Arbron was later killed by human poachers, however the fate of the rest of the Taxxons is unknown; however they are no longer Yeerk slaves.