Night Stalkers: Venomous Dogs
I will admit; Night stalkers are my favorite animals in the entire Wasteland. It might be because I am a herpetologist - or it might be because, and let’s be honest here, they are just sweet little puppies with incredibly venomous toxins.
So, let’s talk about that. The dog and the snake, the hunting and the toxins, the ecology and behaviour of the Mojave Wasteland’s Night Stalkers.
Part 1: He got that dog (and snake) in ‘im
Night stalkers are a manmade abomination, and I don’t mean that as an insult. Just like Centaurs, Deathclaws, Spore Carriers and more, Night stalkers are classified as “abominations”, a special class of creature in the wasteland known for being scared off by flares. Funnily enough, the “Animal Friend” perk still affects Night stalkers, which does not happen to other Abominations, which might suggest that Night stalkers are more “animal-like” than the other Abominations (which is why I have placed them in this chapter).
Night stalkers were created in the Z-9 Crotalus DNA Preservation Lab, in the Big MT, by Dr. Borous, as a “hybrid” between a rattlesnake and a coyote. Now, one of the reasons why Night stalkers are not just manmade animals instead of abominations is the impossibility of such hybridization: coyotes are mammals, and rattlesnakes are reptiles. In this sense, it is more likely that Night stalkers are instead a physiological mutation of the coyote (Canis latrans) to “house”, or as the name of the laboratory suggests, “preserve” the DNA of rattlesnakes (of the Crotalus genus) - basically, the coyote was used as a template of sorts to create a dog-like snake, rather than an actual hybrid.
This “fake hybridization” begs the question: are Night stalkers reptiles or mammals?
Reptiles. It’s actually a pretty easy answer. You see, for an animal to be considered a mammal, it needs to have mammary glands, which are usually gathered up in clusters which form nipples and teats, but in the case of monotremes, they are simply dispersed around the skin; these mammary glands are tasked to produce “milk” (a nutritious, fatty liquid) that serves to feed its young. While I have never gotten close enough to inspect if a Night stalker has or does not have nipples, it doesn’t seem likely that they produce milk to feed their young, instead feeding them pieces of prey. They also necessarily shed their skin - rattlesnakes form their “rattles” via shedding their skin, which tears off at the tip of the tail, leaving a little “nub” behind. Gather enough “nubs” and you got yourself a fully functioning rattle. Besides that, they are oviparous (aka they lay eggs) and are venomous (which is a very rare trait in mammals).
Basically, night stalkers are quadrupedal venomous reptiles. Their body is mainly covered in fur, with certain spots, like the head and the tail, being covered in scales instead. This is not impossible - birds are both feathery and scaly (have you ever looked at a bird’s foot?), so a half-scaly half-furry creature is not out of the realm of possibility. They are nocturnal, following the instincts of both their “predecessors”, and they are social creatures.
Part 2: The Coyote and the Rattlesnake
Being a manmade horror, Night stalkers possess certain characteristics from their “predecessors”, and I will mention the important ones here. It is interesting to mention that Night stalkers have much more “snake” characteristics than “canid” characteristics, which also supports my theory of them being reptiles.
Firstly, they maintain the coyote’s stature and fur, along with the presence of external, movable earlobes - this helps them track down prey at night via sound, which I speculate is the main sensorial organ used in hunting, alongside the sense of smell. I say that, because while coyotes do have good night vision, snakes in general (with the exception of certain arboreal species) are known to have pretty horrible eyesight. It’s possible to tell that Night stalkers have heterochromia, with one of their eyes being decidedly more “reptilian” than the other; I cannot for certain say which adaptation was preserved, but I have never seen a Night stalker blink, so I would wager a guess that they keep the exclusively-snake-like adaptation of having a single, big transparent scale shielding their eyeballs from dust and preventing it from drying out.
The other characteristic these creatures seem to have inherited from coyotes is not anatomical, but behavioral - parental care and sociability. Night stalkers are known to build nests, keep their eggs warm and take care of their young. Not only that, they are often found in packs; this behavior is not common in reptiles as a whole, and definitely not seen in rattlesnakes. The only known reptile that performs this sort of extensive parental care are crocodilians, and, in snakes, exclusively the Python family (a family of constrictors), being known for brooding their eggs (until they hatch, at least. Then, it’s every man for himself). Besides the parental care, reptiles are as a whole solitary (with, of course, a few exceptions). Pack-bonding and parental care seem to have been inherited traits from their canid “predecessors.”
Speaking of parental, they are oviparous and have internal fertilization - This means that, while the egg cell is fertilized inside the female, the fetal development happens outside the female. Some animals, like frogs and fish, have external fertilization: the female will lay her eggs, and the male will fertilize them afterwards. This isn’t really possible without the aid of water to carry the sperm into the eggs, which is why reptiles, birds and mammals (who breed outside of the water) have internal fertilization. The fact that they lay eggs leads me to believe that Night stalkers, instead of having external urogenital organs, have instead a cloaca: one single opening, connected to the urinary, digestive and reproductive tracts. To perform internal fertilization, the males would possibly have a retractable intrusive sexual organ (standard in male reptiles); considering the snake DNA, it would probably take the form of a hemipenis.
Hemipenises are snake penises. Every male snake has two (yes, two) hemipenises, and each hemipenis is forked - two penises, four heads. The theory is that they have two penises so they have a higher chance of breeding repeatedly, but it’s not exactly known why they are forked. It is theorized that it has either something to do with preventing accidentally trying to breed with other species, or with the angle logistics of breeding balls (when certain species of snake will just form giant groups and… well. Go for it as a group activity). I’m not certain if Night stalkers would have one or two hemipenises - parental care and pack dynamics lead to less promiscuity, taking away the need to have two penises at once (and four heads), but I’m sure not enough time has passed for them to slowly lose their penis abundance to the throes of evolution, so make that what you will.
Besides… All of that, as mentioned earlier, Night stalkers shed their skin. While snakes shed their skin as a whole, crawling out of their old skin like taking out a glove, other reptiles (such as lizards, crocodiles and turtles) shed their skin piece by piece, which is far more likely for the Night stalkers to do, considering animals with fur don’t tend to shed their skin in big clumps, instead shedding individual skin cells all the time. This means that the Night stalker’s rattle is formed by a somewhat big shed in the end part of their tail, that comes off in the specific way required for the rattle to be formed - speaking of which, this means that Night stalker hatchlings, fresh out of the egg, are incapable of making the rattle noise, since they have not had enough skin sheds to form a rattle big enough to, well, rattle.
Another adaptation necessary for their nocturnal hunter lifestyle is their pits and their tongues. First, we’ll talk about their pits - specifically, their heat sensing pits. Rattlesnakes are snakes from the Crotalinae subfamily (named after themselves), and their beaming characteristic, and the one that gives them their common name, is the presence of a pit or a fossa located in the loreal area (between the nostril and the eye) that houses several extremely sensitive infrared-detecting cells (or, heat-sensing). That’s right - when you see the face of a Pit Viper, that hole in their face is not their nostril, but in fact, their loreal pit!
Looking at the big, round holes in the very much snake-like head of a Night stalker, it is my belief that those openings are not the creature’s nostrils, but instead their loreal pits. Their nostrils would be similar to pit viper nostrils - thin slits hidden by bigger scales, higher on the snout and closer to the tip.
Now, their tongue. Much like all snakes, rattlesnakes (and, by consequence, Night stalkers) have a forked tongue - this is their main mode of smelling things. Many animals, including coyotes and rattlesnakes, have an organ called a Jacobson’s Organ, also known as a Vomeronasal Organ. This organ is a bundle of sensitive nervous cells located in the roof of the mouth, near the nasal septum, whose function is to help with detecting scents. Snakes track their prey by flicking their tongues out and around, gathering scent particles - when they retract their tongue, they press the tips of their tongue directly on the vomeronasal organ, which is highly sensitive. Due to the forked shape and the sensibility of the vomeronasal organ, snakes can identify which fork of the tongue has gathered more scent particles, and therefore, where the prey has gone (so if their left fork has gathered more scent particles, then the prey has gone to the left, and so on!). This, alongside their loreal pits and their big coyote ears, makes the Night stalkers extremely good at hunting prey without the need of extraordinary sight.
Keeping it inside the mouth, we can also talk about their teeth, and by consequence, their venom. Rattlesnakes are pit vipers, and pit vipers - as the name suggests - are vipers, snakes from the Viperidae family. These snakes are all venomous, so much so that they have an entire exclusive dentition to themselves that is specialized for inoculating venom: solenoglyph dentition. This means that these snakes, and Night stalkers, have one set of very large fangs at the front of the mouth, which are not only hinged, but hollow - they are capable of “retracting” their fangs by bending them inwards so they’ll be able to close their mouths (even with the giant fangs), and, unlike the other snake fangs that have a little groove that directs dripping venom into the prey, have a hollow passage connected directly to their venom glands. By squeezing their own venom glands, the venom will then shoot through the little duct directly (and much more deeper) into the wound.
Part 3: Speaking of Venom...
This is where things get even more complicated than before. There are more than 50 different species of rattlesnake, and while most of them have the same acting venom, some don’t. So, before I rattle (ha!) off which species is most likely to be the "predecessor" of Night stalkers, let’s talk a bit about venom as a whole.
Venom, also known as zootoxin, is a type of toxin produced by animals that needs to be inoculated (injected) via sting, bite, etc. The process, called envenomation, is performed by a specifically evolved venom apparatus - an organ that has the sole purpose of producing, storing and inoculating venom.
They can kill through the action of four different types of toxins. Necrotoxins, such as the venom of the Brown Recluse Spider (Loxosceles reclusa) causes necrosis on all nearby tissue. Cytotoxins induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) in nearby cells; they can act as cardiotoxins, AKA targeting the cells of the heart, or as hemotoxins, targeting and destroying blood cells. Myotoxins are the ones that target muscle mass, causing severe paralysis of all muscles. The last one are neurotoxins, which can either cause rapid involuntary muscle contractions, or total neural paralysis.
For rattlesnakes, the main toxin is a type of myotoxin; in fact, the first myotoxin to be isolated and identified was Crotamine, extracted out of the venom of a South American Rattlesnake (Crotalus durissus). This fact is rather funny, because this species of snake is known for its venom being mainly neurotoxic, unlike most other species of rattlesnake. The other, more rare toxin present in rattlesnake venom is neurotoxins, which are decidedly more dangerous than myotoxins, since they target the nervous system.
It is my belief, due to both geographical distribution and lethality of Night stalker venom, that the species of Crotalus that was used to create the Night stalkers was Crotalus scutulatus, appropriately named the Mojave Rattlesnake.
The Mojave Rattlesnake, besides being abundant in the Mojave Desert, is also the source of the infamous Mojave Toxin - a potent neurotoxin, similar to the ones found in South American Rattlesnakes, that blocks the nervous cells tasked with movement. This paralytic nature, if untreated (which, considering this is the Wasteland, is unlikely) will eventually cause the diaphragm to also paralyze, effectively suffocating the victim to death. This effect depends on the size of the snake and the size of the victim - Night stalkers would have a much more lethal dose, which suggests that the paralyzing nature of the venom could act even more quickly, leading to death in a few hours, with bigger individuals (like adults) being more lethal than smaller individuals (like hatchlings and juveniles).
