Announcements
Welcome to Care of Magical Creatures 401!
This is the third year of the course. Below you can find a link to an optional textbook if you'd like to read something about some magical creatures we aren't covering in our course:
The Care of Magical Creatures Companion Guide
If you have any questions about the course, please contact Professor Aspen, who has kindly accepted to be in charge of it while a new professor is appointed by the Ministry of Magic.
Lesson 6) Jitterbug Shake
Jitterbug Shake
Welcome back! I hope you are feeling refreshed and ready to learn after your midterms! We are very proud of you, as you all did very well in this class. The end of the year is now quickly approaching, and that gives us just a small amount of time to go over everything we have planned for you. I will begin our two part creature discussion today, and then Professor Anne will take over. Let’s get started!
Lobalugs: Of the North Sea
Lobalugs come in several different neon colors, such as yellow, green, blue, and pink. Being very small, no longer than ten inches (or 25.4 centimeters), the Lobalug is a very spongy creature. It has a sac that contains venom. Lobalugs use their venom as a defense mechanism. When the creature feels threatened, the venom sac will contract, and it will spit out the venom from a spout, which feels a little bit like rubber.
If the injury is taken care of quickly and effectively, you are likely to only retain a first degree burn. First degree burns are not that serious and typically last no more than five days. These types of burns only affect the outermost skin layer, or the epidermis. The skin may appear to be dry and red, but no blisters will be present.
If you wait until after the twelve hours have passed to tend to the burn, your injury will definitely develop to a second degree burn. In these types of burns, your skin will experience a more intense pain. The skin will appear either red or white, and blisters will appear. The healing process can take anywhere from ten to twenty days and minimal scarring can occur, but does not always.
It is important to keep in mind that, like Bundimun secretions, the Lobalug venom is very potent. If the venom is not diluted, burns will occur. The venom is used in some potions as an ingredient, but the use is strictly controlled due to the high potency. It is also essential to keep in mind that the younger the Lobalug, the more potent the venom will be.
The merpeople that inhabit the North Sea are aware of the strength of the Lobalug’s venom. In fact, they have taken excretions from the creature and incorporated the powerful venom in many of their weapons. However, if that makes you feel rather uneasy about being around the Black Lake (which is inhabited by merpeople), you should not worry! The merpeople colony in the Black Lake have a lesser need for weapons, and any Lobalugs there could not properly sustain themselves anyway. Although the temperatures of the North Sea and the Black Lake are about the same, Lobalugs cannot survive in freshwater locations.
I hope you enjoyed the short lecture on Lobalugs. I will now hand over the rest of the lesson to Professor Anne, who has another creature for you all. She will also be discussing your assignments for the day.
Shrakes: A Magical Manipulation
The Shrake is a magical species of fish that inhabits the Atlantic Ocean. They have a XXX classification and are considered a beast. Shrakes are usually seen in various colors, we will get to why in just a few paragraphs, and are well known for tearing through Muggle fishermen’s nets with incredibly sharp incisors. They were developed by wizard fishermen in the 1800s, to get revenge against Muggle fishermen that insulted a wizard sailing team. Of course, these Muggles had no way of knowing they were insulting wizards when they told them they would never catch fish as well as they did. Shrakes are well known for their destruction of Muggle fishing nets, letting all of their catch escape. Their name stems from two words. The first being “shred”, because of their purpose of creation, and the second being “hake”. Hakes are a type of fish very similar to that of a cod or haddock. They can grow up to eighteen inches long, the average is fourteen inches, from the tip of the tail to the end of the mouth. Shrakes are carnivorous, eating smaller fish and crustaceans.
Because they are a wizard-created fish, we see several different modifications in the species. Not all of them were intended modifications, but the end product has been spectacular. The first modification, the intended modification, is the Shrake’s razor sharp teeth. The wizards felt that the best revenge to any Muggle fisherman was if they no longer could do their work. Their razor sharp teeth can shred through any net in under one minute. They are careful to not injure any fish in the net, that way wizard fishermen can come along and collect the fish. Shrakes are rarely seen by Muggles because they don’t know where to look. They lurk along the bottoms of the oceans, not visible from the surface, even in their shoals, or schools.
The second modification we see, completely unintentional, was the ability to camouflage. In the pictures above, the Shrake is rainbow in color. This is how they appear to wizards. To Muggles, and other ocean life, they camouflage themselves with their surroundings, often appearing to be a part of the ocean or ocean floor. In the off chance they are seen, they appear to be a lionfish, which I have pictured for you below. Shrakes camouflage themselves in the same way mundane chameleons do. They have several layers of cells called chromatophores, which respond to the chemicals given off by the nervous system and blood stream of the organism. When chemicals are sent off, the small sac inside of the chromatophores which hold color release the corresponding pigment. While chameleons have four pigments, blue, brown, red, and yellow, Shrakes have black, blue, brown, green, orange, purple, red, white, and yellow. Shrakes can release up to all of those pigments at one time, whereas chameleons will release up to two, to mix colors and create new pigments.
The third modification, which is beneficial to wizards but had some unforeseen complications for mundane creatures, is the spines. Because it is believed they were developed with magical modification to the mundane lionfish, we see two interesting things happen with the spine. The first is that they will cause boils to mundane fish and Muggles that are stuck by them. While this does not happen often, as once a spine sticks someone it falls off, the boils caused are extremely painful and often erupt in bright purple pus. The second occurrence we see is that when their spines are pickled and used in potions they are a cure for boils. While it was felt too dangerous to use in the modern potion, in case it actually made the boils worse, Zygmunt Budge used Shrake spines in his version of the Cure for Boils Potion. The results were never as good as the potion currently in use, but he tried to get the potion into mainstream use nonetheless. His recipe of Cure for Boils is published in Book of Potions.
Shrakes are extremely fast reproducers, going into a breeding cycle every four days for exactly 24 hours. With each breeding cycle a female Shrake can have as many as 300 eggs, though only about half of them make it to full term due to environmental conditions. Their eggs take between six and eight days to hatch. The baby Shrakes cannot camouflage until they are of adult size, which depends on how quickly they master the art of net shredding. Adult Shrakes do not teach their offspring how to shred nets; they must learn on their own. This practice makes sure the Shrakes are brutal in their net shredding, instead of merely copying their parents.
Now, I’m sure many of you have heard of a food delicacy called caviar, which are salt-cured fish eggs. On rare occasions Muggle collectors accidentally pick up Shrake eggs. When this occurs, the consumers will experience a horrible acne breakout on their arms, which lasts for two to three weeks. While the breakout will go away on its own, it is very uncomfortable and painful, as the infection under the skin does not dissipate slowly, but all at once. Symptoms usually occur within three days of consumption. This is written off as an allergic reaction by Muggles.
While Shrakes are out in the ocean attacking nets and causing mundane fish to erupt in boils, some wizards keep secret reserves of them. These wizards are often potion ingredient providers. I mentioned earlier that the spines only fall off after they have stuck something. In order to collect the spines, the suppliers will release fake fish, which are usually stuffed animals, and use magic to move them around, bothering the Shrakes. After the Shrake sticks the dummy, the spine will stick to the dummy, and when it comes back in, the supplier will have all of the spines they collected. Suppliers often do this two or three times a week, selling the lot of the spines weekly.
Closing
I do hope you all enjoyed those two aquatic creatures today. As always, if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact myself or Professor Cattercorn. Finals are just a few lessons away, so please make sure you are confident in the material covered to this point. On top of your normal assignments there is an assignment related to your year long project, so make sure to read through it carefully. Professor Cattercorn will be leading the lecture next time, so I will see you all in two lesson’s time. With that, have a wonderful weekend, and good luck with your assignments!
Lesson content written by Professor Elizabeth Anne and Professor Aurelia Cattercorn
All pictures are found using the Google Images search engine, and belong to their owners.
- COMC-301
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