Reach mammoth
From Reach
Big and dumb, reach mammoths are a dangerous denizen of the equatorial desert.
Morphology
No beast on Reach equals the mammoth in size. The largest mammoth carcass on record (affectionately called "Big Mike") was just over a kilometer in length, with cilia over two meters tall. Mammoths have an oval body that tapers towards the back, resembling an egg. Hundreds of hardened armor plates cover the entire body, providing protection against most of the desert's hazards.
The foremost armor plate can pull back to reveal a long, flexible feeding tube ending in a large, toothy maw. Mammoths eat almost anything that they can wrap their maw around, their highly evolved digestive system capable of converting inorganic compounds containing carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen into a full range of organic matter, and can separate edible mass from tons of sand.
Their underside is flattened and covered in millions of flexible cilia. Powerful muscles in the mammoth's lower body propel mammoths across the sand with a distinctive, thunderous rumble that's been compared to a massive industrial fan. This action kicks up a huge cloud of dust, and larger mammoths, can leave a wake of dangerous sandstorms. Mammoths traveling across regions of glass desert leave a trail polished to a mirror finish.
Mammoths generally ignore anything that's not within range of their mouth, gliding along the desert surface at a steady pace, frequently dipping their maw into the sand in front of them, gobbling up hundreds of small burrowing creatures at once. At night, they often drink from chemical pools.
Life Cycle
Mammoths hatch from one tonne eggs, laid several meters beneath the surface. Adult mammoths rarely lay these eggs as they travel, usually once a century. A mammoth egg takes up to five years to come to term. Juvenile mammoths have no armored plates, and cilia cover their entire body. They glide under the sand, filtering tasty morsels as they grow. After 10-20 years, they begin to form bony plates and rise to the surface. By this time, they are usually about 30 meters in length, and continue to grow about one meter a year for the rest of their lives. Mammoths do not appear to have a finite lifespan, and do not stop growing. Older mammoths pick up higher top speeds and are able to filter through much more sand, consuming more and more biomass to fuel their growing bodies. As mammoths have never been observed mating, mammoths are assumed to be hermaphrodites, capable of laying fertilized eggs soon after reaching adulthood (if mammoths mated, it's widely assumed the whole planet would hear it).
When a mammoth dies, Silicon Crawler drones are usually the culprit. "Big Mike" was found with over 800 tonnes of crystalline silicon in his body, including no fewer than 50 whole, inactive, yet extremely small drones in his gullet. The current theory is that these drones actually expended most of their mass in defensive seeds, but could not escape the gullet, eventually running out of stored energy and dying. Thousands of defensive seeds littered his digestive track, and these wounds were the assumed cause of death. There was also evidence that some drones actually dug their way out from inside. Most carcasses have similar injuries, but in smaller proportions.
Ancient mammoths are not particularly agile, and, on rare occasion, kill themselves by freak accident. One giant mammoth carcass was discovered at the base of a large cliff, and is believed to have simply gone over, unable to turn in time. On at least three separate instances, witnesses have reported mammoths in coastal regions flinging themselves into the hydroxide sea, but no bodies have ever been found.
Hazards
The dangers of mammoths are obvious. Adults are giant, fast, and unstoppable. No artifact produced by man can survive a collision with a monster of this size traveling a few hundred kilometers per hour. Those fortunate enough to avoid a mammoth's charge are often caught in the lethal sandstorm in their wake.
While many heavy weapons can penetrate a mammoth's shell, they are extremely resilient, requiring the firepower of a small army to kill. Even in death, mammoths glide easily across the sand, and have tremendous momentum.
Fortunately, mammoth's huge sandstorm wakes can be tracked from orbit by the colony ship. Colonies near the Equatorial desert download periodic sandstorm reports, and this information is publicly available. While the colony ship cannot distinguish mammoth wakes from conventional sandstorms (the kicked up sand conceals the mammoth from space-based cameras), savvy travelers avoid both.
