Na'viyä 'Awvea Taktswìkyu

From the Early Pandora Wiki Na'vi legend Wiki lore

Na'viyä 'Awvea Taktswìkyu ("the First Duck-Sucker of the People"), usually just Taktswìkyu (say tahk-TSWIK-yoo), was an enormous swamp plant of early Pandora. It is famous for catching and eating tak ducks, and for eating every last one. Today it is extinct. In English it is jokingly called the "Na'vi Duck Sucky Upper." Na'vi legend

Description

• Size: taller than three Na'vi standing on each other's shoulders, about 30 feet. Na'vi legend
• Stalk: one thick stalk, bright orange with purple stripes, twisting upward like a corkscrew. Na'vi legend
• Trumpet: at the top, a giant leaf rolled into a hollow tube that bends down toward the water. Na'vi legend
• Glow: a ring of golden light around the trumpet's mouth at night. A whole swamp of them looked like fallen stars. Na'vi legend
• Movement: it could not walk, but it could bend, sway and twist its trumpet like the neck of a direhorse. Its stalk gurgled. Na'vi legend
• Roots: twined together under the mud and "whispered" to the trees through Eywa. Na'vi legend

How it fed

Unlike most plants, the Taktswìkyu did not drink through its roots. It lowered its trumpet and sucked food up the tube: water, bugs, fallen fruit and, above all, tak. Na'vi legend

The nectar trap

1. Making the bait. At sunset it coated the inside rim of its trumpet with sticky golden nectar.
2. Sending out the smell. The nectar smelled of honey and ripe fruit and drifted across the swamp.
3. Turning on the light. The golden rim began to glow, like a ripe fruit hanging over the water.
4. Leaving a trail. Drops of nectar floated on the water, leading the duck closer.
5. Bending down low. The plant lowered its glowing mouth just above the water.
6. The big slurp. The duck stretched up to sip, and then: SHHHLLLUUURRRP! A moment later came a little bloop, the plant's happy burp.

A trick like this is called a lure. On Earth, the Venus flytrap uses sweet nectar and the anglerfish uses a glowing light. The Taktswìkyu used both at once. Real world

Uses by the early Na'vi

Old dried stalks made strong ropes, and the hollow tubes made the very first drinking straws. Na'vi legend Wiki lore adds that young hunters rubbed a little nectar on fishing lines to draw fish, and that nobody was allowed to cut a living Taktswìkyu, only fallen stalks. Wiki lore

Extinction

After the Great Hunger, every grown Taktswìkyu died. One sprout from the last seed survived and became the ancestor of the loreyu. Na'vi legend