Emperor Sea Strider

Emperor Sea Striders are the largest organisms living on Darwin IV, where they are indigenous. They spend their lives within the confines of the Amoebic Sea, as it is the only area with enough of a food supply to support such creatures. The species goes through an amazing metamorphosis at some point in its life: when they are born, they are capable of flight, but when they reach adulthood, they lose their flight capacity and take on a bipedal stance instead. Their name comes from their ability to walk across the surface of the organic sea's yielding surface, which they can do because despite being towers of flesh, their internal structures appear to become more rigid and lightweight the closer it gets to the crown, while its denser leg muscles and pelvic tissue helps to keep their center of gravity low, keeping them from toppling over.

An enigmatic function of their physiology is their highly unusual feeding system. They possess two mouths, with each being located on their feet, effectively allowing them to eat anything they step on. With these, they shave off great chunks of the sea-matrix for consumption. Identifying traits of the species are the mouthless crested head, flanked on each side by huge orange-glowing bioluminescent cavities, smaller blue-glowing bioluminescent lights accenting their crest and "tails" (likely for communication), and two "tails" - one which is an actual tail and the second of which is in fact a phallus.

A Strider's face is flanked by a cluster of tentacles. The orange cavities in the sides of their head also attract the young Strider nymphs, which orbit around the adult Striders, likely for protection. In an interesting turn of events, young Striders are in fact prey to the Amoebic Sea itself, which extend in tentacle-like columns to catch them in mid-air.

Behind the Scenes

 * According to the writer of Expedition, Wayne Barlowe: "Ships at sea. That was unquestionably the spiritual underpinning of this piece.  Writing and illustrating a book about alien animals can be a tight-rope act.  On the one hand you want your audience to relate to the creatures, on the other, you don't want the fauna to be pedestrian.  Early on, I decided to make the majority of the creatures more or less "readable".  But after creating many alien animals that were, in my estimation, not quite as boundary-pushing as I might have wanted, I decided to mix things up and "evolve" one that was pretty outrŽ.  I know that I was thinking, at the time, "what would something like a giant, walking mollusk look like?" Here's the answer."