merfolk

Basic Information

Anatomy

The common skeletal structure stays mostly the same, but when you go into cartlidge or cross breeds the upper body changes the most, but the fertility and main structure stays.

Genetics and Reproduction

They have a short pregnancy of 2 months before raising them for a minimum of 5 years, they give live birth after the egg hatches inside of them. They will normally give birth to one child.

Growth Rate & Stages

At 5 years it is raised by their social group and/or mother until it is a teenager, then it takes on a series of tasks as it slowly learns how to survive the sea without clinging to its mothers side, for the next 10 years they will learn courting gestures and how to defend their homes before striking out or becoming an official hunter.

Ecology and Habitats

It varies wildly, from low sunlight to high sunlight, from large portions of meat and seaweed to starving their fat off up to 30% because of the tasks laid out to them. They largely eat like scavengers do, but their preferred meal is normally some sort of eel or sea urchin, and for fresh waters they will turn on any meat that isn't poisonous, intellectual or not.

Dietary Needs and Habits

they normally coax the coral into tree like shapes, with as many twists and turns they can get, they will also decorate with skeletons and shiny things, they also prefer to eat the food on the spot instead of waste time, they heard sea urchins like cattle and they do hunt some sharks

Biological Cycle

they shed their scales every year until they reach 10 to 15 years of age, normally coming into bodily maturity and showing their permanent coloring

Additional Information

Social Structure

matriarchy

Average Intelligence

they are intelligent enough to have a fully formed language and understanding of social construct along with acknowledging the fact of sentience

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

When looking at the larger portion of these folk, we find blind, deaf, and whale like mammals, who have bioluminescent tendencies, and have developed a need for the brine pools along with maintaining underwater volcanoes, because of the fickle food source and unstable surroundings, they are extremely nomadic creatures, and never stop growing, unlike their top sea cousins. However, the upper sea community behaves much more like sperm whales or elephants, instead of sharks. They have a very high matriarchy that stretches over most of the top portion of the warmer oceans, while the males occupy the colder portions along with the mid level ocean areas, and the males are quite small, and are only born from fertilized eggs, but if not fertilized at the age of twenty the mermaid will give birth to a female and continue to do so every 5 years until having a male, they will then raise him until the age of 15 when he becomes a formal part of the male patrol, after this the female will not have another child. They can produce fertile offspring with land dwellers and relationships are uncommon but not unheard of, especially when freshwater merfolk are concerned, they do not care for many things except dragging fools into the depths to mate before feasting on their flesh and returning to the ocean to rejoin with the males, the ocean males will not mate with fresh water females because of their their "religion", but despite this, most of the males are born from freshwater females and are governed by them after breaking off from the main society. Fresh water females will return with meat in return for their children being raised, but normally it is some form of monster meat unless they mate again, though unlikely.

Symbiotic and Parasitic organisms

coral feeds off of the scraps and waste they let off and are easily coaxed into different structures

Scientific Name

Merfolk

Origin/Ancestry

humans

Lifespan

50 to 300

Conservation Status

this species is not under protection, but are not common, they are mostly found in deep seas but can be found further inland, but those are mostly treated as mutts or a different species entirely