DuPhee

     The DuPhee are, like the DuSkai, a species of amphibious “cephalo-mammals” native to the then-DuSkai homeworld. Long domesticated, they accompanied the DuSkai away from native home when the DuSkai fled. They prefer an aquatic environment, but are happy in air; they share the DuSkai “dual respiratory” system, with lungs and gills, but their lungs are smaller and less efficient than the DuSkai equivalent, hence their preference for water.

     DuPhee are a small, caniform species – they have four legs, evolved from the “grabbing” tentacles of their ancestors, but as they only have a partially ossified cartilaginous skeleton (excluding the “cuttlebone”) supported by rings of muscle, they are quite slow and relatively ungainly on land. They are faster and more graceful in the water, where the legs take on a new role as stabilisers; they are used to grasp onto rocks and undergrowth, and prevent undersea currents from sweeping an individual away from where it is feeding.

     DuPhee are mostly vegetarian, although not averse to eating the exposed fleshy parts of small primitive coral-like mammals or sponges on the reefs of their natural home. They have no teeth, but rather have blunt, horny beaks, which they use to scrape small plants off rocks, or chop larger plants into pieces. Similarly, they do not have the soft, fleshy tongue of a mammal but a “radula” – effectively a tongue loaded with small toothlike barbs, which is used to grind foods to a pulp. (A “friendly lick” from an excited cuttlepuppy, therefore, can easily take the skin off.) Their preferred food are the small bright aquatic fruiting bodies of a variety of fungal “seaweeds”, also domesticated by the DuSkai, and now grown in shallow sunlit reefs of the tropical oceans on Sotha, but they will happily eat any sort of fruit and have a very sweet tooth.

     Under water, the DuPhee are more mobile, but the so-called “auricular protrusion” – a proto-ear – tends to cause drag, as like their ancestors they are adapted to swim backward. Because this would lead to an increased vulnerability, they have a tough, highly toxic membrane under the chromatophores in their skin, and the wild DuPhee tended to be shy and nocturnal. (Certain breeds of modern DuPhee have very small, underdeveloped “ears” to improve their mobility in the water; these breeds are used for guarding and policing, primarily, but also racing.)

     Most DuPhee senses tend to be “blunted” in air; their hearing is quite poor and their sense of smell almost nonexistent, but their vision is acute and they have a rudimentary electrical sensing ability through their skin. In water their hearing and sense of smell is better, though, and their electrical sense more defined. They are almost mute – certainly incapable of creating sound in water, and only capable of a hoarse “cough” (approximating a bark) in air, as they have no vocal cords.

     DuPhee do not have the same sort of “colour dexterity” of a DuSkai; most can manage anything between off-white and dark brown, including a variety of oranges and yellows, but only a few breeds can achieve reds or pinks, and only one or two have been bred for blue. There are a wide variety of breeds; some with curling frontal tentacles, some with long ears, others with wide fins or long tails – most developments are purely cosmetic, as they can hinder the animal’s aquatic mobility.