Naachi

Naachi are humanoid, parthenogenetic, eusocial, egg-laying, carnivorous mammals native to the Great Desert. Naachi have human-like intelligence and resemble small, child-like humans with fox-like ears and tails.
Naachi have dark skin, white hair, and yellow eyes. Naachi ears and tails are darker at the tips. Naachi are largely identical to one another, with differences arising only from genetic mutation, developmental randomness, and life experience.
Naachi have superlative senses of hearing and scent as well as powerful night vision thanks to their tapetum lucida and large quantities of rod cells, though their tapetum lucida also give them poor visual acuity. Naachi color vision is also poor; they cannot distinguish red from green and what colors they can distinguish are washed out.
Naachi stand 3 feet tall on average, not including ears. Including ears, naachi stand 3 feet 9 inches tall on average, the ears adding roughly 9 inches. A naachi’s tail is approximately as long as the naachi is tall and, including fur, about as thick as the naachi is wide.

Naachi are parthenogenetic, with embryos developing from unfertilized egg cells. All naachi are clones of their mother, sharing all of her genetic material. Genetic diversity arises only from mutation. As a result of this parthenogenesis, naachi are unisexual and reproduce asexually.

Naachi are eusocial, with a reproductive caste, the queen, and a non-reproductive caste, the workers. Externally, and when not laden with eggs, queens and workers are identical, distinguishable only by behavior and scent. Internally, queens have a fully developed reproductive system, which workers have only in an undeveloped state.
Queens communicate their position by releasing queen pheromone, which suppress queen development in workers exposed to them. Workers find queen pheromone comforting and spread it between themselves by rubbing up against their queen and then each other.
As queen pheromone density drops, due to illness or absence of a queen, workers begin “queening”, establishing themselves as potential queens. Queening workers are more aggressive toward their fellow workers, trying to bully them out of queening. As queening behaviors intensify, queening workers will even begin releasing small amounts of queen pheromone. If the original queen is still present, they will join the queening workers in their aggression, fighting to keep their position. If the queen forces all queening workers to back down, things will continue as before, though if the queen pheromone density remains low, queening will eventually return. If a queening worker forces all competitors to back down, they will develop into a true queen. If the original queen is still present, they will regress back into a worker. Such ex-queens retain some of their reproductive development, though not to the extent of a true queen.

Naachi queens lay 1 clutch of 4-5 baseball-sized, soft-shelled eggs a year. These eggs are kept in the queen’s nest, where they are cared for by the queen and assisting workers. Once hatched, the infant naachi cannot see or hear and are utterly dependent on the queen and their workers. The queen feeds their infants with their own milk until the next set of infants arrive, after which they are fed solid food. Young naachi remain with the queen in their nest, though as the young naachi grow older, they are allowed to wander further and further from the queen’s nest until, at maturity, they are no longer required to return to the queen’s nest to sleep, and may sleep with the other workers.