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Description
This is something that I personally call an "Insomnia Monster." I don't mean in the scary sense, like a monster under the bed to keep kids up at night, but something that keeps me up at night thinking when I should be falling asleep. You know what I mean. It happens when you stare at your computer screen or drawing pad for hours, then try to go to sleep and suddenly your brain has to jump up and down with, "Ooh how about this? Or this? Or this?! I have so MANY IDEAS!" Yeah, this is one of those. I'm not sure where to put this guy, so for now he lives on an alien planet. I'll probably use him again somewhere. Anyway...

Here's some weird history. Long ago, in the I-don't-feel-like-researching-it period of history, sailors would take ordinary dead stingrays and cut them up in funny ways so they'd look like miniature dragons. They'd call them "Jenny Hanovers" because they were probably drunk, or they really hated Mrs. Hanover back home. I don't know. That's where I got the name.

This Jenny Hanover lives in the equatorial shallow waters of its home-world (Shaprut for now) swimming over (alien) oyster beds. It picks up and chomps down on the shellfish with its powerful jaws, then its spiked pedipalps, for which the order is named, dissect and remove the juicy meat inside. Hanovers spend most of their time in water, but need to come back to land to lay their eggs in massive group colonies. Parental care is more like guard duty for the eggs, with rotating "shifts" of parents, male and female, going back to the ocean to feed. That same bite that can crush an oyster shell can do some nasty damage to an egg thief too. Once the hatchlings emerge, the adults leave, but at least they're not so hungry they try to eat their own offspring.

Description
This is something that I personally call an "Insomnia Monster." I don't mean in the scary sense, like a monster under the bed to keep kids up at night, but something that keeps me up at night thinking when I should be falling asleep. You know what I mean. It happens when you stare at your computer screen or drawing pad for hours, then try to go to sleep and suddenly your brain has to jump up and down with, "Ooh how about this? Or this? Or this?! I have so MANY IDEAS!" Yeah, this is one of those. I'm not sure where to put this guy, so for now he lives on an alien planet. I'll probably use him again somewhere. Anyway...

Here's some weird history. Long ago, in the I-don't-feel-like-researching-it period of history, sailors would take ordinary dead stingrays and cut them up in funny ways so they'd look like miniature dragons. They'd call them "Jenny Hanovers" because they were probably drunk, or they really hated Mrs. Hanover back home. I don't know. That's where I got the name.

This Jenny Hanover lives in the equatorial shallow waters of its home-world (Shaprut for now) swimming over (alien) oyster beds. It picks up and chomps down on the shellfish with its powerful jaws, then its spiked pedipalps, for which the order is named, dissect and remove the juicy meat inside. Hanovers spend most of their time in water, but need to come back to land to lay their eggs in massive group colonies. Parental care is more like guard duty for the eggs, with rotating "shifts" of parents, male and female, going back to the ocean to feed. That same bite that can crush an oyster shell can do some nasty damage to an egg thief too. Once the hatchlings emerge, the adults leave, but at least they're not so hungry they try to eat their own offspring.