Andamundar

The andamunda is the smaller and more numerous cousin of the famous Mûmak.

Detailed Description
Like all of its cousins, the andamunda has thick, pillarlike legs and flat, padded feet. Its loose skin and large ears (which flap) provide the andamunda with excellent heat regulation, enabling it to adapt to a variety of ecosystems. The creature's most notable feature, however, is undoubtedely its trunk: an enlongated nose and upper lip that serves as both a sensory organ and as a prehensile grasping tool. An andamunda uses its trunk to smell, gather food, drink, and as a weapon in combat.

Andamundar also have a pair of long tusks that they use in melees, but these giant teeth primarily serve as digging tools. Since andamundar subsist on roots, shoots, twigs, fruit, leaves, and other edible vegetation, the tusks act as picks. A typical andamunda eats about 400 pounds of food each day, cutting with the tusks, grasping with its trunk, and placing the food in its mouth. Aside from one or two rest periods at night and a midday break, the great beast is always active, roaming about with a swinging gait in a constant search for security and food. This continual plodding, though, belies the andamunda's strength as a swift, agile runner. If aroused, it can run down and gore or bash a relatively quick foe.

Unlike the mûmak, the andamunda has a slightly humped back and one (as opposed to two or three) fingerlike extension at the base of its trunk. It also has a gland at the side of its head that enables it to secrete, and divest itself of, scented waste. (This process usually occurs during the beast's midday repose.) Like mûmakil female andamundar travel in herds led by an elder matriarch. Each female bears but one offspring at a time (after 21 months gestation) and raises her calf for twenty-four to thirty months.

Common to the Shay lands, Jojojopo, and the regions around the Bay of Ormal in southern Middle-earth, andamundar are domesticated by a variety of cultures. They are used less frequently than the mûmakil as riding animals, but they are much easier to tame.