Thinking about The Interloper on the way home tonight, but apparently it was much later than I realized and I didn’t have the time I thought I did, so I started at the top, though I didn’t get to work my way down:
When I came up with the bisected jaw yesterday, my first thought was that it would be like a pair of thumbs covered in teeth that it could use to shred food, or at least push it towards the throat.
So naturally, the mental leap was something more like the maxillae (labeled “mx” below) that many arthropods (most notably the grasshopper, which I did actually draw inspiration from for the legs on last night’s drawing, but other insects, like cockroaches have similar mouthparts as well) have.
Figure 1: Chewing mouthparts of a grasshopper. Legend: lr, labrum; md, mandibles; mx, maxillae; hp hypopharynx; lb, labium.
Original artwork by Heds
As I finished typing this up I realized that it’s more than a little appropriate, because tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US of A. Season’s Eatings, everyone.
