I've been thinking about flarians lately and have been considering whether they might have two sets of teeth, one in front and retractable within their gums, sharp and capable of cutting meat easily. The idea here is that on Earth, differentiated teeth evolved only in a few clades, and a lot of species on Earth have had to evolve fascinating adaptations to simulate what, for humans, is a normal thing. Some of those morphologies are really cool.
So like, retractable teeth.
One thing I like about this, though I'm having a hard time phrasing it well, is it's a detail where they can survive and even thrive even if some of the development goes wrong, or if they suffer a severe injury that causes the foremouth to no longer function properly. r-strategy childhoods can be rough, and sheer numbers is more important than getting all the details "right". While most flarian infants don't survive to sapience, and a serious injury or birth defect causing the loss of a foremouth or its incisors would be terrible for their survival odds, the simple fact is that some do survive, and once they reach shore, they're treated as precious as anybody.

Flarian societies aren't all 100% so caring, of course, but the sheer likelihood of divergence from what's on-model for their body plan, due to genetic or congenital causes or due to the difficulties of infancy in the creches.
And some creches are protected more directly than others. Still, it's unusual for flarians to feel very strongly about the death of a few pre-sapient infants.

Damage to the creches is another matter. Harming a defenseless sessile is considered appalling, at least for flarians with any reasonable sense of morality about the matter. (This can be twisted out of them, such as by greed or hate, but that still involves a lot of choices, just like in humans.) So it'd be more accurate to say it is regarded as genocidal.

#r-strategy-species #flarians #flarian #Not-A-Retread-this-time-but-original-to-this-blag #casual-speculative-bio #as-opposed-to-being-particularly-good-at-it-or-having-a-big-damn-background-in-it-like-some-of-those-badasses-like-Jay-Eaton #scifi #sci-fi #science-fiction