Terapusmordax

The Terapusmordax was created to fill the role of the Pterodactylus from the original King Kong, and was developed from the Bat Creatures from Peter Jackson's attempted 1996 remake.


 * Vampires of the Sky: Christian Pearce, one of the designers of the Terapusmordax, describes his experience designing the flying rodent as "fun," saying that "You could just try anything you wanted." Though early discussions involving using naked mole rats, which would become the basis of the final design's skin, there was a period where Weta Workshop did not know the final brief from Peter Jackson, leading to many pterosaur-inspired designs. During this period, artist Greg Broadmore also created a flying mammal that had a "vulgar" upright posture. After the brief came in that Jackson wanted to stray away from pterosaur designs for what would become the Terapusmordax, Broadmore created another pterosaur design he dubbed "Uglor" that had a Hornbill inspired crest and a bony emaciated look. "Uglor" would later be reworked into the Foeducrista in The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island.
 * The Flyers: Jackson requested the Terapusmordax to be "as gross as possible". Pearce recalls that Jackson specifically wanted the creature to look infected with its skin bearing diseases and a "disgusting wetness to it" as well as bat-like wings, large enough to pick a human being up, and a humanoid shape. For his drawings, Pearce referenced photos of young Siamese short-haired cats, earthworms, and naked mole rats. Concept artist Warren Mahy notably created a winged simian design inspired by naked mole rats with a prehensile tail and a beak. Mahy worked "out of town" during the design process of the Terapusmordax, but kept in touch with the designers at Weta Workshop. Pearce said of this relationship "we'd get a shipment from him every couple of days: 'Oh, my goodness! Look, what he was thinking! Let's steal some of those ideas.' And he'd get ours and some of those ideas would trigger things in him too. It was right towards the end of the creature design process. We were all fighting to get our little bits into [the Terapusmordax]. I think a bit of all of us ended up in it."
 * Creature Features
 * Name: Terapusmordax obscenus
 * Species: Giant bat
 * Origin: King Kong (2005)
 * Home: Skull Island

Night Terrors
Terapusmordax lived in Matriarchal colonies numbering in the hundreds. The females, which produced testosterone, would grow to incredible sizes. The females lived in their own colonies and raised their young while satellite colonies of males were never far away. Being naturally solitary, and only nesting together, the constant fighting between males led to infected bites and scratches. Females protected their colonies voraciously from males, as they would often attempt to kill the pups to allow their mothers to become available for breeding. Male Terapusmordax pups were driven out of the nest at a young age, and they would often kill one another to reduce competition for resources later on. Young male Terapusmordax were also easy prey for other predators. Terapusmordax were omnivores, and ate mainly lizards, young dinosaurs plucked from the jungle floor, and fruit. They did most of their hunting in flight, and often preyed on small animals.


 * Mama Scarface: A swarm of Terapusmordax was awakened by King Kong in the ape's lair when Kong found Jack Driscoll attempting to rescue Ann Darrow from him. The Terapusmordax proceeded to attack Kong, which allowed Ann to become free from the great ape's hold on her. As she and Jack escaped by climbing down a nearby vine by the cliff's edge, Kong began pulling the vine up towards him with several giant mutant bats circling around the fleeing humans, but Jack grabbed hold of the wing of an attacking Terapusmordax and escaped with Ann. Several of the flying rodents followed them until Jack and Ann fall into a river below.
 * Escape: With light and strong bones, Terapusmordax had good eyesight and were excellent flyers. They were quite maneuverable for their size, being able to tip and roll in the air in pursuit of one another or winged prey.
 * Did You Know? Terapusmordax obscenus meaning "filthy pungent bat"