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Description
Day 8: Amphiptere - A Western dragon with a serpentine body, two wings, and no walking limbs.

Like several other varieties of wyrm, the knucker lineage has evolved several representatives of both the lindwyrm and wurm body types, losing the hind limbs before the forelimbs. However, only one specific family of lindwyrms, the amphipteres, has lost all of their walking legs, instead slithering on their bellies like true snakes and using their wings as their sole locomotor appendages. It was originally thought that amphipteres were descended from the zilant branch of the knucker family rather than the wyverns, but their true ancestry was only discovered after dissection of a dead Egyptian Aspis resulted in more favorable comparisons between the wing structure of this species and those of Mediterranean wyverns, most notably including the lack of any grasping digits (some species do have articulated curved spikes with a similar function, but these have only one segment rather than the three of an actual finger), as well as only one bone to each segment of the limb-like portion rather than the ulna and radius of a zilant's "upper arm". This conclusion was only further supported by the fact that some other amphiptere species also have vestigial spurs where the front legs would be. No zilant, at least to scientific knowledge, has ever lost its back legs, whereas many wyverns, especially the ones related to amphiptere ancestors, have atrophied forelimbs, making it easier for them to have lost them completely.

The Egyptian Aspis itself, as well as its sister species, the Arabian Aspis, are distinguished by their similarity in appearance (color schemes, wings, horns, and tail blades notwithstanding) to certain African and Middle-Eastern species of cobras, respectively, complete with flaps of skin on the sides of the neck that resemble a hood, which has led to their somewhat erroneous alternate name of "Winged Serpents". They are more famous, however, for their seemingly violent life cycle, which has been well-documented since the times of the ancient Greeks. The famous historian Herodotus described it as such:
So too if the vipers and the Winged Serpents (ophies hypopteroi) of Arabia were born in the natural manner of serpents life would be impossible for men; but as it is, when they copulate, while the male is in the act of procreation and as soon as he has ejaculated his seed, the female seizes him by the neck, and does not let go until she has bitten through. The male dies in the way described, but the female suffers in return for the male the following punishment: avenging their father, the young while they are still within the womb gnaw at their mother and eating through her bowels thus make their way out.In reality, the way that amphipteres of the genus Aspis procreate, while certainly as dramatic as it is fatal for the male, is not actually as counterproductive as Herodotus assumed. In both extant species of Aspis, males outnumber females four to one, and females are scattered so widely throughout their native range, and the arid habitat the animals inhabit is so short on suitably sized prey to see them through their brooding periods, that competition between males for a suitable mate is exceedingly ferocious and often lethal. Over 80% of breeding males are killed by others of the same gender, and those that survive would no doubt be too weak to fend off any more rivals by the time they have reached their mate of choice. Because food in general is scarce where they live, the victorious male Aspis are instinctively driven to offer themselves as food to the females (which can reach almost 50% longer than most males, or a good three feet or so) to sustain them while guarding their eggs. These same living conditions pose a problem for developing offspring, as leaving the eggs buried in the shifting desert sands could doom them to die, so the females carry them within their bodies like vipers do. More interesting still is that prior to the eggs hatching - around two dozen or more at a time - a gravid female's brood pouch develops a nutritious membrane lining its interior, and the ventral skin of the creature's rear half becomes thinner to help cultivate it. Thus the young make their first meal of the nutrient lining and eventually the skin of the mother's brood pouch before escaping, hence Herodotus' account of the babies eating their way out of the mother. The hatchlings will go their separate ways immediately afterward, but the hungry parent is not above snapping up the weaker ones that are too slow to escape, both giving her the sustenance to heal her broken reproductive tract and ensuring that the stronger ones live on to fight another day.

Although the Egyptian Aspis was considered a sacred animal in the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, far from being a divine being it is in fact on the smaller end of the amphiptere size spectrum, with relatively weak venom only on par with a wasp sting. It thus has to rely on constriction and a strong toothy maw like a beaded lizard to kill smaller prey such as rodents and even smaller reptiles, and prefers to flee from the numerous larger predators it shares its environment with. Not only are these little wyrms in danger from their own kind due to their cannibalistic tendencies, but ichneumons, cockatrices, carrion ibises, monitor lizards, caterwauls, and many, many larger species of wyrm are also known to hunt them, which probably explains their high reproductive rate. Even humans apparently liked the taste of amphiptere, which threatened many smaller species of these wyrms in pre-colonial times. So it was that thousands of Egyptian and Arabian Aspises were captured for food each year before regulations were put into place to protect the dwindling populations of Aspises among numerous other dragons. Sadly, this wasn't enough to rescue the then-largest Aspis species, the six-foot-long Isaiah's Aspis or Fiery Flying Serpent, which was declared extinct sometime during the Industrial Revolution in the early seventeenth century.

Special thanks to TyrantisTerror on Tumblr for the prompts for this Smoktober art challenge! The link to the challenge is here:

tyrantisterror.tumblr.com/post…

Description
Day 8: Amphiptere - A Western dragon with a serpentine body, two wings, and no walking limbs.

Like several other varieties of wyrm, the knucker lineage has evolved several representatives of both the lindwyrm and wurm body types, losing the hind limbs before the forelimbs. However, only one specific family of lindwyrms, the amphipteres, has lost all of their walking legs, instead slithering on their bellies like true snakes and using their wings as their sole locomotor appendages. It was originally thought that amphipteres were descended from the zilant branch of the knucker family rather than the wyverns, but their true ancestry was only discovered after dissection of a dead Egyptian Aspis resulted in more favorable comparisons between the wing structure of this species and those of Mediterranean wyverns, most notably including the lack of any grasping digits (some species do have articulated curved spikes with a similar function, but these have only one segment rather than the three of an actual finger), as well as only one bone to each segment of the limb-like portion rather than the ulna and radius of a zilant's "upper arm". This conclusion was only further supported by the fact that some other amphiptere species also have vestigial spurs where the front legs would be. No zilant, at least to scientific knowledge, has ever lost its back legs, whereas many wyverns, especially the ones related to amphiptere ancestors, have atrophied forelimbs, making it easier for them to have lost them completely.

The Egyptian Aspis itself, as well as its sister species, the Arabian Aspis, are distinguished by their similarity in appearance (color schemes, wings, horns, and tail blades notwithstanding) to certain African and Middle-Eastern species of cobras, respectively, complete with flaps of skin on the sides of the neck that resemble a hood, which has led to their somewhat erroneous alternate name of "Winged Serpents". They are more famous, however, for their seemingly violent life cycle, which has been well-documented since the times of the ancient Greeks. The famous historian Herodotus described it as such:
So too if the vipers and the Winged Serpents (ophies hypopteroi) of Arabia were born in the natural manner of serpents life would be impossible for men; but as it is, when they copulate, while the male is in the act of procreation and as soon as he has ejaculated his seed, the female seizes him by the neck, and does not let go until she has bitten through. The male dies in the way described, but the female suffers in return for the male the following punishment: avenging their father, the young while they are still within the womb gnaw at their mother and eating through her bowels thus make their way out.In reality, the way that amphipteres of the genus Aspis procreate, while certainly as dramatic as it is fatal for the male, is not actually as counterproductive as Herodotus assumed. In both extant species of Aspis, males outnumber females four to one, and females are scattered so widely throughout their native range, and the arid habitat the animals inhabit is so short on suitably sized prey to see them through their brooding periods, that competition between males for a suitable mate is exceedingly ferocious and often lethal. Over 80% of breeding males are killed by others of the same gender, and those that survive would no doubt be too weak to fend off any more rivals by the time they have reached their mate of choice. Because food in general is scarce where they live, the victorious male Aspis are instinctively driven to offer themselves as food to the females (which can reach almost 50% longer than most males, or a good three feet or so) to sustain them while guarding their eggs. These same living conditions pose a problem for developing offspring, as leaving the eggs buried in the shifting desert sands could doom them to die, so the females carry them within their bodies like vipers do. More interesting still is that prior to the eggs hatching - around two dozen or more at a time - a gravid female's brood pouch develops a nutritious membrane lining its interior, and the ventral skin of the creature's rear half becomes thinner to help cultivate it. Thus the young make their first meal of the nutrient lining and eventually the skin of the mother's brood pouch before escaping, hence Herodotus' account of the babies eating their way out of the mother. The hatchlings will go their separate ways immediately afterward, but the hungry parent is not above snapping up the weaker ones that are too slow to escape, both giving her the sustenance to heal her broken reproductive tract and ensuring that the stronger ones live on to fight another day.

Although the Egyptian Aspis was considered a sacred animal in the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, far from being a divine being it is in fact on the smaller end of the amphiptere size spectrum, with relatively weak venom only on par with a wasp sting. It thus has to rely on constriction and a strong toothy maw like a beaded lizard to kill smaller prey such as rodents and even smaller reptiles, and prefers to flee from the numerous larger predators it shares its environment with. Not only are these little wyrms in danger from their own kind due to their cannibalistic tendencies, but ichneumons, cockatrices, carrion ibises, monitor lizards, caterwauls, and many, many larger species of wyrm are also known to hunt them, which probably explains their high reproductive rate. Even humans apparently liked the taste of amphiptere, which threatened many smaller species of these wyrms in pre-colonial times. So it was that thousands of Egyptian and Arabian Aspises were captured for food each year before regulations were put into place to protect the dwindling populations of Aspises among numerous other dragons. Sadly, this wasn't enough to rescue the then-largest Aspis species, the six-foot-long Isaiah's Aspis or Fiery Flying Serpent, which was declared extinct sometime during the Industrial Revolution in the early seventeenth century.

Special thanks to TyrantisTerror on Tumblr for the prompts for this Smoktober art challenge! The link to the challenge is here:

tyrantisterror.tumblr.com/post…