Bearded jax

The bearded jax, or jax for short, was a small species of herbivorous felines native to the forest moon of Endor and Naboo's moon of Rori. One of their most distinguishing features was a beard protruding from the creature's chin. Beast masters were known to domesticate the bearded jax as personal companions. Holographic depictions of the bearded jax were also stored on data cubes, allowing them to be projected as holopets. The mammoth jax was a subspecies of jax notable for their considerably larger size. Bioengineers were also known to use the DNA of the bearded jax to incubate mutated variants known as psychotic jax.

Biology and appearance
The herbivorous species of felines known as the bearded jax was native to the forest moon of Endor and Naboo's moon of Rori. The mammalian vertebrates had a bristly white hide while in the wild, but when domesticated, their hides could come in a variety of different hues, including shades of red, yellow and blue. Distinguishing features of the bearded jax included a predominant beard protruding from their chins, pointed ears, and a long tail with a tuft of hair at the end. The quadrupedal creatures also had small, catlike paws. Subspecies of the bearded jax included the considerably larger mammoth jax, native only exclusively to Rori. The bearded jax also shared a physical resemblance to the felines of Talus known as kima. To a lesser degree, the feline species of kittles were similar to the bearded jax in terms of size and overall body shape.

History
Bearded jax were known to be domesticated by beast masters as personal companions or house pets. During the time of the Galactic Civil War, following the Battle of Yavin in 0 BBY, an officer of the Corellian-based gang of criminals known as the Meatlumps kept a bearded jax named Comet in a cage. Holographic depictions of the bearded jax were also stored on data cubes, allowing them to be projected as holopets in homes and other buildings across the galaxy. Using DNA from the bearded jax, bioengineers were successful in incubating mutated variants of the creature known as psychotic jax. These mutated jax exhibited a more intimidating appearance, including sharp, pointed teeth, longer claws, a spiked head, and a more vibrantly colored hide.

Behind the scenes
Bearded jax were creatures in the 2003 video game Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Sony Online Entertainment and published by LucasArts, prior to its closure on December 15, 2011. In addition to the mammoth bearded jax, there also existed other named types of jax, including the blooming jax, blushing jax, bounding jax, and pouncing jax of Endor, and the fuzzy jax of Rori. However, each of these jax were virtually identical in size and appearance to a typical bearded jax, so it is not clear if they constituted a distinct type of subspecies, or if they were merely descriptive names for different types of the same creature.