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Carpetbeast
Carpetbeast
Image from Steve Bowers
Typically an animal-derived neogen or splice designed to thrive as a living carpet or rug, usually for use by human nearbaselines or similar bionts. Some varieties, in addition to being soft and warm, and of a pleasant colour and texture, produce pleasant scents and sounds such as a musky scent and a purr. Most are self-cleaning, sometimes with the assistance of mite to insect sized neogens. These creatures are usually sessile but some variants are capable of slow movement and a few are capable of shaping themselves into items of furniture.

Carpetbeasts usually require a special diet, and once mature produce inoffensive wastes that are absorbed by the house mechosystem or biosystem, though there are a few "zero emission" formats that emit only carbon dioxide, water, and nitrogen if they have access to a power source that will operate an innate bionano suite. They are generally designed as a living but subsentient animal, with a neural network like that of coelenterates but without a central nervous system. Carpetbeasts are distinct from organisms such as carpetplants and fungalrugs, which have a different appearance and origin, and also distinct from animal-based tissue cultures that have the same superficially furry appearance but are not full organisms.

 
Appears in Topics
Daily LifeEverydaytechGengineering
High Tech / HitechNeogenicsOrganic/Biotech
 
Development Notes
Text by John B and Stephen Inniss
Initially published on 04 December 2005.

 
 
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