The Horned whiptail is an incredible beast, in truth my experiences with this creature have been both pleasant and unpleasant, I suppose I should start by describing the appearance of a Horned whiptail.
It's a bison like creature that stands 7.5ft tall at its largest and has a length of 5ft, the horns on the creature's head are the length of a grown man's torso, now on to the more interesting details, the tail is unlike any other bison species I've seen up until now, and as the name implies , it works very similar to a whip, made of steel, and extremely sharp trust me it is not a pleasant thing to experience. And now for the most intriguing feature of the creature, it's large almost lion like teeth, which it uses to crush and mince its prey. Due to the large size of the beasts horns it has adapted to be able to rotate them 90 degrees upwards to allow for easy eating.
Next up I believe is the creatures habits, diet, and habitat.
First of all it's diet unlike other bison consists entirely of meat, truthfully this fact terrified me when I first learned of it, after all a carnivorous bison was unheard off in my hometown. It's preferred prey are medium and large sized creature that inhabit the plains it calls home, normally it's prey ends up being the horses that it chases down, yes contrary to its large size this beast is incredibly fast capable of running at a speed greater than a tyrannic thundermare, but that creature is for a latter entry.
Next up are the creature's habitats, most commonly the Horned whiptail is found in grassy plains, normally ones filled with large grazing herbivorous prey. However members of this species have also been found surprisingly on mountainous terrain, which is also where the monicker of the leading whiptail came from, more about that in a short while. The final habitat of the fantastic beast is somewhere unexpected even to the ones that first documented their sightings, the Horned whiptail can also be found in harsh snowy tundras devoid of life, currently there is very little explanation that can be found for their presence there, what is know however is that the particular specimens found in the vast snowy tundra's have adapted much thicker fur, and their teeth are actually in a range of shapes and sizes, some large and sharp whilst others are blunt and flat, this suggests an omnivorous nature, perhaps this particular type of whiptail is actually a subspecies and not just regular whiptails that have adapted. This is something I will be looking into in the near future.
Finally onto my personal favourite part of these entries, the habits of a Horned whiptail are very different from other bison relatives, unlike other bison the whiptail tends to be more of a solitary and aggressive creature. It dislikes showing weakness and will wait until it cannot sense any other presences before it eats its prey.
As for the whiptails that inhabit mountainous terrain, they unlike their plains living counterparts show little to no aggression toward humans, whilst however still entirely carnivorous and very much disliking of showing weakness, this grouping of whiptail are known to lead humans and even other creature that stumble into their territory through a safe path over the mountain they live on.
And finally the tundra variant has very little know about them, other than sharing the aggression and territoriality of its plains dwelling cousins, not much is know. Now for the interesting part, how the beast hunts. The whiptail actually only uses its tail as a last resort in battle opting to go for a more direct charging attack to completely trample its prey, or impale them with its horns and then tear through them by lifting its horns upwards. As for when it actually uses its whiptail, well that is one of the fascinating aspects of the creatures anatomy, the tail seems to have an independent mind and set of instincts, it strikes out incredibly quickly even at foes the whiptail hasn't yet noticed.
Sadly to those reading this, the Horned whiptail are becoming fewer and fewer in number, due to the parties of adventurers that hunt the whiptail to collect its durable horns, it's thick hide, and it's dexterous tail in search of profit and better equipment.