HEAVENIAN SHARK
“He was twelve meters of flexible muscle with a razor-sharp tail at one end and a collection of arm-length fangs at the other. His eyes, big yellow globes, were set on stalks more than a meter out from his head. His mouth was so wide that, open, a man could comfortably stand in it. Make an impressive photo for his heirs.”
Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
The soldiers in The Forever War take leave on a small resort planet named Heaven. While there they witness a "shark". This reminded me of Ursula K. LeGuin's story The Eye Of the Heron where animals on another planet are named after things the humans recognize. This thing is NOT a shark, but a shark is the closest thing the earthlings can associate it with.
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