Species
Urusai
Legends Canon version → Linked from 6 articles
Legends. This article is part of Legends: the expanded-universe stories that Lucasfilm set apart from canon in 2014.
Native to Tatooine, the urusai was a yellow-and-blue reptavian that feasted upon carrion (often to the point of being too engorged to take flight).
They were essential to the desert ecosystem, as their diet prevented decaying corpses from spreading lethal diseases—their bare skin undermined the collection of bacteria. With their delicate olfactory senses, urusais rode the rising thermals of the blue Tatooine sky, nesting under eaves and on cliff outcroppings.
Females had two wings, while males had four—the larger rear wings were used for flying, while the smaller front ones were strictly for mating displays. Balancing on their strong tails, they wooed prospective mates, who laid two to three eggs per brood. In a harsh microcosm of Tatooine's brutality, the first young to hatch destroyed the remaining eggs—unless two had hatched simultaneously, whereupon the chicks would duel until one fell to the ground.
With a wingspan of two meters, a hefty weight of forty-three kilograms, and a lifespan of up to fifty years, the urusai was an imposing reptavian species.
They formed a symbiotic relationship with Sarlaccs (specifically with the gigantic females) - urusai clean the teeth and tentacles of the female Sarlacc while the female Sarlacc offers up killed food to her flying reptavian custodians, which also may nest near her.
Text and facts from the “Urusai/Legends” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.
Facts
- Designation
- Non-sentient
- Height
- .85 meters
- Wingspan
- 2 meters
- Mass
- 43 kilograms
- Skin colors
- Yellow and blue
- Lifespan
- 50 years
- Origin
- Tatooine
Appearances
3 works, in story order
- Star Wars Episode I: The Gungan Frontier (first appearance)
- Empire 8
- Tatooine Ghost
Linked from
The best-known articles that mention Urusai.