Bogan's brown nafen

The Bogan's brown nafen, colloquially referred to as the butterbat, was one of the largest of the many species of nafen found throughout the Galaxy. Bogan's brown nafen was widespread on many of the Galaxy's warmer habitable planets.

Bogan's brown nafen had a three stage life cycle. As juveniles, they were wingless, tailess rodents less than two centimeters in length. They were nocturnal herbivores which burrowed through the soil eating roots and tubers. At some point, a mysterious biological trigger would cause a juvenile's growth rate to greatly increase. Soon afterwards, the juvenile would burrow deeply into the ground and secrete a very sticky sebum from its skin. This sebum combined with its fur to form a cocoon. While in the cocoon, the nafen's wings, fangs, and poison glands developed. Upon maturity, the nafen would emerge from the cocoon, dig its way out of the ground, and fly off to join a swarm.

Like all nafen, adult Bogan's brown nafen were flying insectivores who gathered their food on the wing. Since a population of these creatures would help control the population of insect pests, they were sometimes considered beneficial. However, these benefits were generally outweighed by the hazards of a Bogan's brown nafen population. For one, they were highly territorial, and traveled in large swarms which would attack any creature that strayed too close to their nests. They also had venomous fangs, though their venom was mild enough and their teeth small enough that a humanoid attacked by up to ten nafen would be essentially unharmed. However, larger swarms could inject enough poison to lead to a coma or death. Perhaps because of this effective defense, Bogan's brown nafen had no natural predators as adults.

Even worse than the dangers posed by their venom was their role in spreading disease. The Hardan plague that killed 98% of the population of Dagelin Minor was later traced to a single shipment of Bogan's brown nafen imported to control the dhuru fly population.

It was illegal to import nafen of any species to many systems, primarily to avoid spreading diseases. However, some systems actually encouraged their importation to attack insect pests. Some reptilian sentient species considered juvenile Bogan's brown nafen a delicacy.