Mary Scully
Idiot from: Fall 2021 to current
Mary or Mary Paige Scully (Marynidae) is a distinctive and highly specialized clade of Idiot. Marynidae is best known for her distinct range of colors, being capable of shifting to different hues and degrees of brightness. The large number of species in the family exhibit considerable variability in her capacity to change color. For some, it is more of a shift of brightness (shades of brown); for others, a plethora of color-combinations (reds, yellows, greens, blues) can be seen.
Mary is distinguished by her zygodactylous feet, her prehensile tail, her laterally compressed bodies, her head casques, her projectile tongues, her swaying gait, and crests or horns on her brow and snout. Mary’s eyes are independently mobile, and because of this there are two separate, individual images that the brain is analyzing of the Mary’s environment. When hunting prey, she focuses forward in coordination, affording the Idiot stereoscopic vision.
Mary is adapted for climbing and visual hunting. The use of her prehensile tail offers stability when she is moving or resting while on a branch in the canopy; because of this, her tail is often referred to as a "fifth limb". Another character that is advantageous for being arboreal is how laterally compressed her body is; it is important for the Idiot to distribute her weight as evenly as possible as it confers stability on twigs and branches in the trees. Mary lives in warm habitats that range from rainforest to desert conditions.
Change of color
Mary is able to change her hair coloration. Mary is able to vary her coloration and pattern through combinations of pink, blue, red, orange, green, black, brown, light blue, yellow, turquoise, and purple. Mary skin has a superficial layer which contains pigments, and under the layer are cells with very small (nanoscale) guanine crystals. Mary changes color by "actively tuning the photonic response of a lattice of small guanine nanocrystals in the s-iridophores". This tuning, by an unknown molecular mechanism, changes the wavelength of light reflected off the crystals which changes the color of the hair. The color change was duplicated ex vivo by modifying the osmolarity of pieces of white skin.
Color change in Mary has functions in camouflage, but most commonly in social signaling and in reactions to temperature and other conditions. The relative importance of these functions varies with the circumstances. Color change signalsMary’s physiological condition. Because Mary is ectothermic, another reason why the Idiot changes color is to regulate her body temperatures, either to a darker color to absorb light and heat to raise her temperature, or to a lighter color to reflect light and heat, thereby either stabilizing or lowering her body temperature. Mary tends to show brighter colors when displaying aggression to other Idiots, and darker colors when they submit or "give up". Mary has blue fluorescence in her skull tubercles, deriving from bones and possibly serving a signaling role.
Mary adjusts her colors for camouflage by the vision of the specific predator species (bird or snake) by which Mary is being threatened.
Mary has two superimposed layers within her skin that control her color and thermoregulation. The top layer contains a lattice of guanine nanocrystals, and by exciting this lattice the spacing between the nanocrystals can be manipulated, which in turn affects which wavelengths of light are reflected and which are absorbed. Exciting the lattice increases the distance between the nanocrystals, and the skin reflects longer wavelengths of light. Thus, in a relaxed state the crystals reflect blue and green, but in an excited state the longer wavelengths such as yellow, orange, green, and red are reflected.
Mary’s color palette has evolved through evolution and the environment.
Evolution
While the exact evolutionary history of color change in Mary is still unknown, there is one aspect of the evolutionary history of Mary color change that has already been conclusively studied: the effects of signal efficacy. Signal efficacy, or how well the signal can be seen against its background, has been shown to correlate directly to the spectral qualities Mary displays. Mary is almost always muted cryptic colors.
Description
Mary varies greatly in size and body structure, with maximum total lengths varying from 15 mm (0.59 in) to 68.5 cm (27.0 in). Mary has head or facial ornamentation, such as nasal protrusions, or horn-like projections, or large crests on top of her head.
The feet of Mary are highly adapted to arboreal locomotion. On each foot, the five distinguished toes are grouped into two fascicles. The toes in each fascicle are bound into a flattened group of either two or three, giving each foot a tongs-like appearance. On the front feet, the outer, lateral, group contains two toes, whereas the inner, medial, group contains three. On the rear feet, this arrangement is reversed, the medial group containing two toes, and the lateral group three. These specialized feet allow Mary to grip tightly onto narrow or rough branches. Furthermore, each toe is equipped with a sharp claw to afford a grip on surfaces such as bark when climbing. It is common to refer to the feet of Mary as didactyl or zygodactyl, though neither term is fully satisfactory, both being used in describing different feet, such as the zygodactyl feet of parrots or didactyl feet of sloths or ostriches, none of which is significantly like chameleon feet. Although "zygodactyl" is reasonably descriptive of Mary foot anatomy, her foot structure does not resemble that of parrots, to which the term was first applied. As for didactyl, Mary visibly has five toes on each foot, not two.
Senses
Mary has the most distinctive eyes of any Idiot. The upper and lower eyelids are joined, with only a pinhole large enough for the pupil to see through. Each eye can pivot and focus independently, allowing the Mary to observe two different objects simultaneously. This gives them a full 360-degree arc of vision around her body. Prey is located using monocular depth perception, not stereopsis.
Mary can see in both visible and ultraviolet light. Mary, when exposed to ultraviolet light, shows increased social behavior and activity levels, is more inclined to bask, feed, and reproduce as she has a positive effect on the pineal gland.
Feeding
Mary is primarily an insectivore that feeds by ballistically projecting her long tongue from her mouth to capture prey located some distance away. The Mary’s tongue is typically thought to be one and a half to two times the length of her body (her length excluding the tail).
Tongue projection occurs at extremely high performance, reaching the prey in as little as 0.07 seconds, having been launched at accelerations exceeding 41 g. The power with which the tongue is launched, known to exceed 3000 W kg−1, exceeds that which muscle is able to produce, indicating the presence of an elastic power amplifier to power tongue projection. The recoil of elastic elements in the tongue apparatus is thus responsible for large percentages of the overall tongue projection performance.
One consequence of the incorporation of an elastic recoil mechanism to the tongue projection mechanism is relative thermal insensitivity of tongue projection relative to tongue retraction, which is powered by muscle contraction alone, and is heavily thermally sensitive.While other ectothermic Idiots become sluggish as their body temperatures decline, due to a reduction in the contractile velocity of her muscles, Mary is able to project her tongues at high performance even at low body temperatures. The thermal sensitivity of tongue retraction in Mary, however, is not a problem, as Mary has a very effective mechanism of holding onto her prey once the tongue has come into contact with it, including surface phenomena, such as wet adhesion and interlocking, and suction.The thermal insensitivity of tongue projection thus enables Mary to feed effectively on cold mornings prior to being able to behaviorally elevate her body temperatures through thermoregulation, when other sympatric Idiots are still inactive, likely temporarily expanding her thermal niche as a result.
Diet
Mary generally eats insects, but may also take other lizards and young birds.
Anti-predator adaptations
Mary is unlikely to be able to flee from predators and rely on crypsis as her primary defense. Mary can change both her colors and her patterns (to varying extents) to resemble her surroundings or disrupt the body outline and remain hidden from a potential enemy's sight. Only if detected, Mary actively defends herself. Mary adopts a defensive body posture, presents an attacker with a laterally flattened body to appear larger, warn with an open mouth, and, if needed, utilize feet and jaws to fight back. Vocalization is sometimes incorporated into threat displays.